Welcome to our Best of the Month page, where, in addition to our regular Significant Seven picks (our favorite books of the month, which we offer all month long at 40% off), you can find seven more picks on the side (since we always have more books we want to share), our favorite new paperbacks, and up-to-date lists of the topselling books of the month.
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| Spotlight Title: The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead by David Shields | 
"After you turn 7, your risk of dying doubles every eight years." By your 80s, you "no longer even have a distinctive odor ... You're vanishing." "The brain of a 90-year-old is the same size as that of a 3-year-old." And it goes on and on. David Shields's litany of decay and decrepitude might have overwhelmed the age-sensitive reader (like this one), but The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead manages to transcend the maudlin by melding personal history with frank biological data about every stage of life, creating an "autobiography about my body" that seeks meaning in death, but moreover, life. Shields filters his frank--and usually foreboding--data through his own experience as a 51-year-old father with burgeoning back pain, contrasting his own gloomy tendencies with the defiant perspective of his own 97-year-old father, a man who has waged a lifelong, urgent battle against the infirmities of time. (If believed, his love life at age 70 was truly marvelous.) Interwoven with observations of philosophers from Cicero and Sophocles to Lauren Bacall and Woody Allen ("I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying."), Shields's book is a surprisingly moving and life-affirming embrace of the human condition, where inevitable failures and frailties become "thrilling" and "liberating," rather than dour portents of The End. --Jon |
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| Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolaño | | The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff | 
As with the emergence of W.G. Sebald into English a decade ago, the most exciting new writer to watch is one we're just catching up with: the late Roberto Bolaño, whose ground-breaking fiction defined a generation of Spanish-speaking literature. In between last year's thrillingly meandering epic, The Savage Detectives, and the upcoming alleged masterwork, 2666, comes a small and strange book (but no stranger than the rest), Nazi Literature in the Americas. Presented as a biographical encyclopedia of right-wing writers in North and South America, these short, invented lives are full of the stuff of minor literary scenes and forgotten books, with delusion and creation mixed in equal fashion. Funny, melancholy, surprisingly tender, and--once in a while--erupting into fury, Bolaño spins out tale after tale with the joy of sheer invention and the burden of inescapable history. --Tom | | 
On the very morning Willie Upton slinks home to Templeton, New York (after a calamitous affair with her archeology professor), the 50-foot-long body of a monster floats from the depths of the town's lake. This unsettling coincidence sets the stage for one of the most original debut novels since The Time Traveler’s Wife. With a clue to the mysterious identity of her father in hand, Willie turns her research skills to unearthing the secrets of the town in letters and pictures (which, "reproduced" in the book along with increasingly complete family trees, lend an air of historical authenticity). Lauren Groff's endearingly feisty characters inhabit The Monsters of Templeton with enough intrigue to keep readers up long past bedtime, and reading groups will find much to discuss in its themes of "monsters," both in our towns and our families. --Mari | |
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| Things I've Learned from Women Who've Dumped Me by Ben Karlin | | Friend of the Devil by Peter Robinson |  New York magazine knew what they were talking about when they said, "If you've laughed in the last ten years, Ben Karlin was responsible." The latest project of this former senior editor of The Onion, former executive producer of both The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report, and co-author and co-editor of America (The Book) collects 212 pages of semi-insightful and mostly hilarious life lessons from a lineup of writers and comedians in a book with the best title so far this year, Things I've Learned from Women Who've Dumped Me. Ben's own mom kicks things off with "I Think My Son Is a Catch," but read on to enjoy contributions from Andy Richter ("Girls Don't Make Passes at Boys with Fat Asses"), Stephen Colbert ("The Heart Is a Choking Hazard"), Jason Nash ("Don't Enter a Karaoke Contest Near Smith College; You Will Lose to Lesbians"), Dan Savage ("I Am a Gay Man"), and David Rees ("Get Dumped Before It Matters"). Filled with High Fidelity-style insight into the inner workings of the modern male mind, this is an anthology for readers of all genders, no matter their relationship status. --Brad | | 
Fans of Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie novels, and anyone who enjoyed In the Woods as much as we did, will love Peter Robinson's smart and absorbing Friend of the Devil. Be sure to set aside some time to dig in--you'll be tempted to devour it in one sitting, but this gripping and finely plotted mystery deserves to be savored. If this is your first introduction to the intrepid Inspector Alan Banks, count yourself lucky--Robinson has been crafting these award-winning police procedurals for more than two decades now, so there are plenty of opportunities to enjoy what Stephen King has called "the best series of British novels since the novels of Patrick O'Brian." --Daphne | |
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| The Life of the Skies by Jonathan Rosen | | Beautiful Boy by David Sheff | 
In The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature, Jonathan Rosen writes, "I can't think of any activity that more fully captures what it means to be human in the modern world than watching birds." Birdwatching? At first glance, a book of essays on this enormously popular pastime might appear to be as boring as a pigeon loitering on a sidewalk. But rest assured, Rosen's account of birdwatching today and throughout U.S. history is as exciting and moving as a soaring bald eagle. From the get-go, Rosen draws the reader in with incredible stories about the deep South's famous ghost bird--the extinct Ivory-billed woodpecker. Fans of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief will likely appreciate the aura of mystery and mania associated with this beautiful creature. Rosen carefully interweaves historical and literary anecdotes with his own personal ploddings through a Louisiana swamp for a glimpse of the fabled bird. With plenty of self-effacing wit, wisdom, and insight, he reminds us that all around us flies a key to understanding ourselves, our country, and our future prospects in an age of disappearing birds. --Lauren | | 
From as early as grade school, the world seemed to be on Nic Sheff's string. Bright and athletic, he excelled in any setting and appeared destined for greatness. Yet as childhood exuberance faded into teenage angst, the precocious boy found himself going down a much different path. Seduced by the illicit world of drugs and alcohol, he quickly found himself caught in the clutches of addiction. Beautiful Boy is Nic's story, but from the perspective of his father, David. (Read Nic's version in his memoir, Tweak, also out this month.) Achingly honest, it chronicles the betrayal, pain, and terrifying question marks that haunt the loved ones of an addict. Many respond to addiction with a painful oath of silence, but David Sheff opens up personal wounds to reinforce that it is a disease, and must be treated as such. Most importantly, his journey provides those in similar situations with a commodity that they can never lose: hope. --Dave | |
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| | | We're Blogging Books |  | |
Bookmark the Amazon.com Books Blog for regular posts on newsmaking books, author interviews, and any other book-loving thing we think you might like to read.
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| Best Book to Read Over Breakfast
|  A curious and lively history of how the United Fruit Company appropriated this unusual plant and became one of the first global (and most controversial) corporations. --Anne
Bananas!: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World, by Peter Chapman
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Best Book to Shore Up Your Bullpen
|  Get an edge in your roto league with "deadly accurate" projections for more than 1,600 MLB players. --Dave
Baseball Prospectus 2008, edited by Steven Goldman and Christina Kahrl
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Best Music Industry Memoir Disguised As Righteous Office Power Ballad
|  Dan Kennedy's punk-rock attitude gets a wake-up call on day one, when his six-figure major-label dream job kicks off with a promotion celebrating the "Love Songs of Phil Collins." --Brad
Rock On by Dan Kennedy
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Best Cure for History Repeating Itself
|  A history of the great document that reminds us that our ancient rights are always in danger of being reclaimed by tyranny. --Lauren
The Magna Carta Manifesto by Peter Linebaugh
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| | Best Paperbacks of February |
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