http://www.post-gazette.com/books/ Book reviews, articles, Book Editor Bob Hoover's Sunday columns en-us Copyright 2012, post-gazette.com. Tue, 7 Feb 2012 04:09:15 -0500 15 http://www.post-gazette.com/includes/2007design/images/150x30pg_now_logo.gif http://www.post-gazette.com/ 144 39 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12038/1208514-44.stm?cmpid=books.xml Jack Gantos kept his hopes for winning a Newbery Medal -- given annually by the American Library Association to the best-written children's book -- in "lockdown mode" over the past few months. Mr. Gantos, 60, had come close to winning the gold Newbery Medal in 2001 for "Joey Pigza Loses Control." Tue, 7 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12036/1208306-51-0.stm?cmpid=books.xml The visitors have been coming at a steady trickle, reverent, bemused, squinting at the crabbed handwriting in the anguished letters from his American tour ("They will never leave me alone ... I shake hands every day ... with five or six hundred people"), the missives on mesmerism, philanthropy, storytelling, Christmas books and his own manic energy. Sun, 5 Feb 2012 13:47:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12036/1208080-51-0.stm?cmpid=books.xml Three hundred and fifty years ago, using the wrong pronouns in Massachusetts could land you in hot water. If you were a Quaker living in a Massachusetts Bay settlement circa 1660, your transgressive language would have made you a target for the governing Puritans. Quakers rejected the hierarchical pronoun system that required ye, you and your to be used as a sign of deference to superiors. Sun, 5 Feb 2012 11:20:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12036/1208319-51.stm?cmpid=books.xml The august Morgan Library in midtown Manhattan houses the second largest collection of manuscripts and letters after the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, including the original manuscript of "A Christmas Carol," one of only a handful of Dickens' original works located outside Britain, said Declan Kiely, the Robert H. Taylor Curator of Manuscripts at the library. Sun, 5 Feb 2012 11:09:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12036/1207906-44.stm?cmpid=books.xml A list of the best-selling fiction and nonfiction titles. Sun, 5 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12036/1207907-148.stm?cmpid=books.xml Krys Lee's stories in her debut collection, "Drifting House," occupy spaces between, and her characters -- immigrants and refugees, families and lovers -- are nomads of time, place and culture. They make a keen observation of the layers of Korean society the past few generations, and of the dualities that have shaped the peninsula and its people Sun, 5 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12036/1207908-148.stm?cmpid=books.xml Considering how many books on pro football are released every year, it's eye-opening that a definitive biography of the best man ever to take a snap from center has never been published. That man, of course, is Bart Starr, and if you didn't know that, then it is especially important that you read "America's Quarterback" by Keith Dunnavant, the most important book on pro football this season. Sun, 5 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12036/1207909-148.stm?cmpid=books.xml The cover image of Georgia Pellegrini's "Girl Hunter" is fashioned after those old master portraits, the purpose of which is not so much to show what someone looks like, but to display who they are. Sun, 5 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12036/1207942-388-0.stm?cmpid=books.xml A kickoff reception for the exhibit "A City of Rhythm: A Tribute to African American Music in Pittsburgh" will be held in the lobby of the City-County Building, Downtown, at 6 p.m. The reception, which is free and open to the public, will include refreshments, a performance by singer/songwriter Joy Ike and comments by those involved with the city's Black History Month celebration. Sun, 5 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500