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Title: The Salon.Com Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors by Laura Miller, Adam Begley, Salon.Com ISBN: 0-14-028088-X Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 01 August, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.26 (27 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: An enjoyable and informative literary reference work
Comment: "The Salon.com Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors" is edited by Laura Miller, with Adam Begley. It consists primarily of alphabetically-arranged entries on selected writers. Each entry contains a list of books by the author, as well as a critical essay. This collection of writers is international and multicultural, although the selection is (as noted in the preface) limited to authors who write (or wrote) fiction in English and who have had major works published since 1960.
This is a book that I use both to "discover" authors I'm not familiar with, as well as to get new perspectives on authors I already know (either passingly or thoroughly). Each entry is about 1 to 2 pages long. A very short sampler of some of the authors covered: Chinua Achebe, Sherman Alexie, Saul Bellow, Charles Bukowski, Ian Fleming, Allegra Goodman, Ursula K. LeGuin, Amy Tan, Gore Vidal, etc.
The critical articles contain some questionable statements, but that's half the fun of this book: it's a reference work with which an intelligent reader can disagree.
In addition to the main entries, there is a series of sidebar book lists compiled by various individuals. Examples: "Five Contemporary Noir Classics," listed by David Bowman; "A Walk on the Wild Side: Very Original Novels," by Peter Carey; "Smart and Sexy," by Erica Jong; etc. The books are listed with short descriptive paragraphs.
There is also a series of interspersed literary essays: "Every Novel Is a Lesbian Novel," by Dorothy Allison; "Of This World: Why Science Fiction Can't Be Dismissed," by John Clute; etc. If you love contemporary literature, you may find "The Salon.com Reader's Guide" to be a wonderful resource.
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent Reference Guide to Contemporary Authors
Comment: I eagerly took this book home, and quickly flipped through the pages to see how many books I've read by the 225 authors listed in this guide. I've got a lot of work ahead of me. What I appreciated the most about the book is that along with literary giants such as Margaret Atwood, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Toni Morrison, and Robertson Davies, the contributors to this guide also mention commercial success stories such as Stephen King, Tom Clancy, John Grisham, and Michael Crichton. For each entry there is a bibliography given, a summary of the authors works, and a 'see also' paragraph that leads you to other great authors with similar writting styles as your favourites. In between entries there are essays and suggestions given by the said authors themselves which are enlightening and entertaining. I don't know much about salon.com, but I've learnt that they're capable of producing a top notch reference that I'll will use frequently.
Rating: 4
Summary: Fun and Opinionated
Comment: One of the most enjoyable reference works I know of. Some of its opinions are quite strongly stated -- "Without Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal, American literature in the second half of the twentieth century would not exist; without everyone else in this book it would" -- but, for me, this was a plus.
And unlike at least one other reviewer, I didn't find the book "politically correct" or anti-straightwhitemale. (Although its longest -- and probably worst -- piece is titled "Every Novel Is a Lesbian Novel.")
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