Search results for

You don't usually travel to distant places with heavy books. And besides, you're traveling, not reading, right? But author Adam Wilson suggests three books that you should take with you — regardless of their weight. Do you have a favorite book to read while you travel? Let us know in the comments.

Novelist Mary Gordon looks at love and maturity, while Henning Mankell delivers his last Kurt Wallander mystery. In nonfiction, Jim Rasenberger revisits the Bay of Pigs, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon tells of Afghani women's ingenuity, Charles Ogletree probes the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Meagan O'Rourke meditates on her mother's death.

Novelist Tayari Jones explores a father's deception of his family, while historian David McCullough looks at 19th-century Americans in Paris, Roy Blount Jr. revels in verbal curiosities, writer Bill James reflects on true-crime stories, and journalist Diana Henriques probes the Ponzi scheme of Bernie Madoff.

On the lighter side this week, there's a comic Western about two gun-slinging brothers and a memoir by TV's 89-year-old naughty girl, Betty White. Plus a father's wry look at the college admissions game, and a sports writer's tale of the cutthroat world of youth basketball.

It's a rich week for fiction, with new novels from Ann Patchett and Jennifer Weiner, and a debut by Chad Harbach that marries a literary sensibility with a love of baseball — plus Jorie Graham's new poetry collection. In nonfiction, Erik Larson is back with the story of an American ambassador in Germany in 1933.

Author and secretary Lynn Peril knows that writing on the job is a time-honored tradition. She recommends three books that were written while the boss was looking the other way. Have you ever composed a novel at your day job? Tell us about it in the comments.

Next week, Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol finally arrives in paperback, along with Oscar-winning actress Diane Keaton's memoir, journalist Fareed Zakaria's update on the post-American world, journalist Annie Jacobsen's look inside a top secret U.S. military base, and journalist Mitchell Zuckoff's true tale of the survivors in a WWII plane crash.

Being a positive role model is usually a part of a teacher's job description, but author Jennifer Miller knows not everyone lives up to that standard. She recommends three books about educators who lead students astray. Do you have a favorite book about a teacher? Tell us in the comments.

Poet Tracy K. Smith's three favorite poems of 2011 blur the private and public, the personal and political, and will refresh how you look at language and the world.

The money and mansions of the turn of the century provide rich fodder for some fabulous reads. Author Janet Wallach recommends three books that give a glimpse of Gilded Age houses. Do you have a favorite book that highlights architecture? Let us know in the comments.