What People Magazine is Reading This Week (02/28/11 Issue)

For those Kindle readers who read for entertainment, perusing the book reviews in People magazine are good way to check out new people-related books - celebrity bios, popular novels, absorbing nonfiction - just hitting bookstore shelves. Featured in the February 28th issue of People:

Unless It Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing, by Roger Rosenblatt. Harper Collins, 2011. Print Length: 176 p. NONFICTION. Amazon customer rating: 3 1/2 (6 reviews). People's slant: "There is much to love and ponder within these passionate pages." Kindle edition $9.99; Paperback $11.19. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"For more than forty years, distinguished author Roger Rosenblatt has also been a teacher of writing, guiding students with the same intelligence and generosity he brings to the page, answering the difficult questions about what makes a story good, an essay shapely, a novel successful, and the most profound and essential question of them all - why write? Unless It Moves the Human Heart details one semester in Rosenblatt's 'Writing Everything' class. In a series of funny, intimate conversations, a diverse group of students - from Inur, a young woman whose family is from Pakistan, to Sven, an ex–fighter pilot - grapples with the questions and subjects most important to narrative craft. Delving into their varied lives, Rosenblatt brings readers closer to them, emotionally investing us in their failures and triumphs." - Amazon.

The Death Instinct, by Jed Rubenfeld. Riverhead, 2011. Print Length: 464 p. HISTORICAL FICTION. Amazon customer rating: 3 1/2 stars (26 reviews). People's slant: "...ably blends fact and fiction." Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $16.33. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"The destruction of the World Trade Center was not New York’s first terrorist attack. In 1920, a bomb blast on Wall Street sent cars tumbling and bodies flying. Rubenfeld’s novel, opening with the explosion, has the feel of a historical mystery. A cop and his sidekick are on the scene at once. The investigation begins. A witness to the explosion recalls seeing something that didn’t belong but can’t recall it. Thriller under way? Well, not exactly. Suddenly we’re into a 30-page World War I flashback. Then we visit Vienna for tea with Doctor Freud. We learn of Marie Curie’s work with radium. The sidekick has a rocky time with his love life, and we learn all about it. This fat book is heir to Caleb Carr’s The Alienist, using the detective format as a chance to wander in the past... - Don Crinklaw for Booklist.

The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady, by Elizabeth Stuckey-French. Doubleday, 2011. Print Length: 352 p. NOVEL. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (35 reviews). People's slant: "...charmingly off-kilter..." Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $15.54. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Seventy-seven-year-old Marylou Ahearn is going to kill Dr. Wilson Spriggs come hell or high water. In 1953, he gave her a radioactive cocktail without her consent as part of a secret government study that had horrible consequences. Marylou has been plotting her revenge for fifty years. When she accidentally discovers his whereabouts in Florida, her plans finally snap into action. She high tails it to hot and humid Tallahassee, moves in down the block from where a now senile Spriggs lives with his daughter’s family, and begins the tricky work of insinuating herself into their lives. But she has no idea what a nest of yellow jackets she is stum­bling into. Told from the varied perspectives of an incredible cast of endearing oddball characters and written with the flair of a native Floridian, this dark comedy does not disappoint." - Publisher.

A Widow's Story, by Joyce Carol Oates. Harper Collins, 2011. Print length: 432 p. MEMOIR. People's slant: "...as much a portrait of a unique marriage as a chronicle of grief." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (22 reviews).Kindle edition $14.99; Hardcover $15.07. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Brutal violence and catastrophic loss are often the subjects of Oates’ powerful novels and stories. But as she reveals in this galvanizing memoir, her creative inferno was sequestered from her joyful life with her husband, Raymond Smith. A revered editor and publisher who did not read her fiction, Smith kept their household humming during their 48-year marriage. After his shocking death from a 'secondary infection' while hospitalized with pneumonia, Oates found herself in the grip of a relentless waking nightmare. She recounts this horrific 'siege' of grief with her signature perception...Oates has created an illuminating portrait of a marriage, a searing confrontation with death, an extraordinarily forthright chronicle of mourning, and a profound 'pilgrimage' from chaos to coherence." -Donna Seaman for Booklist.