Katherine Carreño '13 gives low marks to J.K. Rowling's dull foray into adult fiction, The Casual Vacancy.

"You wonder how many mornings are left," muses Paul Auster in his memoir, Winter Journal. Patricia Kim '14 walks about Auster's dream-like world, and gets a little lost in the author's slightly self-indulgent meandering.

Kaitlyn Tiffany '15 reviews the new short story collection by Junot Diaz M.F.A. '95, This Is How You Lose Her. The stories weave a depressing but potent yarn of love long lost.

Kai Sam Ng '14 explores Cornell's rich history and alumni, both well-known and unknown, in Michael Turback's '66 fascinating book, The Unofficial (and Slightly Irreverent) Cornell University Who's Who.

Kai Sam Ng '14 reviews the ceaselessly entertaining and intelligently crafted new novel The Calypso Directive, written by Brian Andrews '03.

Last Wednesday at the State Theatre, David Sedaris read a story about driving on the road and encountering a car with a “McCain/Palin ’08” bumper sticker, and how scary it is to drive past the car and realize that the person in the driver’s seat appears normal.         

“They walk among us,” he whispered in horror. “Like Canadians.”

Last Sunday, Buffalo Street Books (formerly The Bookery II) hosted its third Works-In-Progress reading for ten local writers. This was an opportunity for the writers to gauge the audience’s reaction to their unpublished prose and verse. For the audience packed into the small front room, the reading was a marvelous display of diverse talents.

Chuck Palahniuk’s publishers initially rejected Invisible Monsters because they believed the novel was too perverse for the then mostly conservative American audience. Instead, the company published Fight Club, which was later adapted into a movie — wait… oops, forgot the rule: “don’t talk about fight club.”

Vladimir Nabokov’s posthumous The Original of Laura, released nationwide today, is marketed as “A Novel in Fragments.” A more accurate title may have been “Fragments of a Novel” — as a collection of detachable notecards with little continuity, they represent only the bare outlines of the master’s final, unfinished work.

I spent the warm week of spring break in Ithaca, lounging around in shorts and reading trashy best-sellers. Having read some positive reviews of the book The Commoner, by John Burnham Schwartz (Vintage Contemporaries, 2009), I decided to armchair travel to the royal compound in Japan.