“There is no such thing as a good writer and a bad liar,” Amy Bloom wrote in her 1999 short story “The Story,” which remains my favorite of all her work. It’s a vivid bit of double vision, Bloom commenting on the process of storytelling even as she engages in it, and it suggests an edge, a brittle humor that I associate with her. In “The Story,” Bloom describes a widow, coming to terms with new neighbors she calls the Golddust Twins ― until, halfway through, she changes direction, bringing her n

Peter Mendelsund’s “What We See When We Read” may be the liveliest, most entertaining and best illustrated work of phenomenology you’ll pick up this year.An acclaimed book-jacket designer and art director, Mendelsund investigates, through words and pictures, what we see when we read text and where those images come from.His breakdown of the reading and visualizing processes yields many insights.For example, readers of Tolstoy may feel intimately acquainted with Anna Karenina, but that doesn’t me

Hope for Film: From the Frontlines of the Independent Cinema RevolutionsBy Ted Hope with Anthony Kaufman (Soft Skull)Ted Hope’s new book “Hope for Film” is part memoir, part manual, part manifesto as it traces his long career in independent filmmaking, mostly and most notably as a producer but more recently with a brief excursion into the nonprofit world and then onto the evolving interface of technology, creation and distribution.Eagle-eyed readers will spot the plurals in the subtitle, “From t

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of PilgrimageBy Haruki Murakami (Alfred A. Knopf)When the bottom falls out of your life, you can’t always figure out what the hell happened. You just have to get through it.But getting through it and getting past it can be the difference between surviving and living.“Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage,” Haruki Murakami’s accessible and often moving new novel, underscores that difference, and the personal journey necessary to bridge that ga

Jo Jung-rae, the author of popular history saga “Taebaek Mountain Range,” has been chosen as the recipient of the first Simhun Literary Award, the organizers of the award said Tuesday. The 70-years-old writer edged out six final contenders, including four Koreans, a Japanese and a Vietnamese, to take the 20 million won ($19,500) in prize money.  Korean novelist Jo Jung-rae. (Kim Myung-sub/The Korea Herald)The organizers, the Simhun Sangnok Cultural Festival Committee, praised Jo for his “continu

Author Kim Jung-hyun shares his thoughts on his new book ‘Ahn Jung-geun Shot Abe

“My voice on the Nixon tapes is really very clear and very good,” says John Dean, adjusting the microphone recording him on a summer day. Aug. 9 marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation from office, and Dean is publishing a new book, “The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It,” a day-by-day chronicle of the Watergate scandal.Although Watergate has been explored in books and film, some of the story has not yet been told, Dean says.“I knew enough to know tha

Susan L. Mizruchi was 12 and living in upstate New York when she turned on the TV one day and watched Marlon Brando playing Fletcher Christian in the 1962 version of the seafaring tale “Mutiny on the Bounty.”She was as she described it “struck by the Brando lightning.”Even to this day, his performance affects her. “It’s still very powerful,” said the Boston University English professor, who has written a new biography, “Brando’s Smile: His Life, Thought, and Work” which was published by W.W. Nor

The Magician’s LandBy Lev Grossman (Viking)All lovers of Lev Grossman’s first two books of The Magicians trilogy: This is the end, beautiful friend. So remember which pocket the magic button’s in, and make sure you have your passport, because we have a lot of ground to cover. Several lands, in fact. From Hackensack to uncharted territory.We last saw our glum hero, Quentin Coldwater, getting booted out of the magical land of Fillory, learning the very hard lesson that being the hero doesn’t mean

The String DiariesBy Stephen Lloyd Jones (Mulholland Books)If there’s one thing I hate as a critic, it’s dancing around the possibility of giving too much away in a review. Spoilers are called that for a reason, and critics despise them every bit as much as readers do.Writers, though ― crafty little devils ― seem determined to concoct spoiler-bait books, titles that are just nigh on impossible to discuss. Which is precisely why this review is so short. Like recent favorites “Gone Girl” and “The

Ko Jung-wook’s works regularly recommended for children, young adults

When she was just 13, Wendy Ortiz began to learn important lessons about love, honesty and human depravity. She was a precocious eighth-grader, and she was about to fall under the spell of her 28-year-old English teacher.“Jeff Ivers,” as the teacher is known in Ortiz’s new memoir (it’s not his real name), was at once charming and manipulative. Almost immediately, he seized on his student’s desire to be a writer ― she’d already produced a handwritten novel ― to get closer to her.“Mr. Ivers wants

“Nowadays people think historians are stuffy types, but history is a kind of magic I doing here.”So says Anette, the most compelling of the characters populating “Land of Love and Drowning” by Virgin Islands native Tiphanie Yanique. A multigenerational novel set in Yanique’s native land, “Love and Drowning” opens just before the U.S. arrives, after purchasing several of the islands from Denmark in 1917. It concludes in the 1970s.The coming of the Americans ― and the ensuing arrival of the touris

One Plus OneBy Jojo Moyes (Pamela Dorman Books/Viking)If you are the sort of reader who talks derisively of “chick lit” in that superior tone ― you know which one I mean ― then you may not be swayed by the charms of Jojo Moyes’ latest novel. But the delightful, comic “One Plus One” is as likable a book as you will come across this summer, light and funny, with surprisingly subtle commentary on how the income gap separates people emotionally as well as financially.Also the author of the novels “M

A Spy Among FriendsBy Ben Macintyre(Crown)A lot of spy novels would have you believe that espionage involves elite globe-trotting adventures laced with good booze and cool toys, and certainly there are elements of all those things in Ben Macintyre’s vivid and fascinating new “A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal.” But this nonfiction book’s most intense scene is prosaic ― two old friends, middle-aged English gentlemen who came up as spies through British intelligence, share a c