Inside Jacket

Original Sin, the sequel to Personal Demons, releases next Tuesday (July 5th)! To celebrate, we’re giving away ten copies of Original Sin. Comment below on this post and tell us whether you’re a member of Team Luc or Team Gabe to be entered for the chance to win.

If you are forced to choose, do you pick Heaven…

…or Hell

New to the series?  Find out more about Personal Demons.

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. You must be 18 or older and a legal resident of the 50 United States or D.C. to enter. Promotion begins July 1, 2011 at 10 a.m. ET. and ends July 8, 2011, 12:00 p.m. ET. Void in Puerto Rico and wherever prohibited by law. Please see full details and official rules here. Sponsor: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Filed under: Sweepstakes

What to read, what to read? Perusing bookshelves for the next thing to take on is tons of fun, but really daunting. So many books. That cover is really cool, but the story sounds kinda lame. That cover is awful, but you've heard great things about that book. Let me make things easy for you. Read these books: The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai and The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan.

I don't typically read the werewolf/vampire books, but a trusted friend recommended this one to me, so I had to listen. I now have to step off my high and mighty "I don't read werewolf/vampire books" pedestal because not only have I read one, I also loved it. Since I'm not a reader of this genre, it's tough for me to say that this isn't your typical werewolf book, but I'm gonna say it. This isn't your typical werewolf book. It's about Jake Marlowe, the last remaining werewolf to be taken out by the World Organisation for the Control of Occult Phenomena. But after already being alive a couple hundred years, Jake just doesn't care anymore. He's the existential werewolf. What more could he possibly live for? Well, there's always something to live for, right? It's not long before Jake finds his reason. The same friend who recommended this book also gave the best description: It's like Le Carre wrote a werewolf novel. That's spot on. Even if werewolf books aren't your "thing," you should give this one a shot.

What's the deal with this one? Ok, so. Lucy Hull is a children's librarian in a small Missouri town. She loves books, but hate the restraints put on her by conservative co-workers and parents. She leads the story time, but can't read or recommend anything too "controversial." You know, like Harry Potter. Fortunately, she and 10-year-old book devourer, Ian, have figured out ways to get him the literary contraband without his fundamentalist Christian parents finding out. But that's not the basis of the story. Things really get rolling when Ian dupes Lucy into kidnapping him. Is she saving him from harmful parents or using the kidnapping as an excuse to break free from her confining life? This book is an homage to books. Many of the chapters are written in the styles of some of our favorite books, from Pat the Bunny to the Choose Your Own Adventure books. It's a fun read, so perfect when you need a break from an existential werewolf.

–Lindsey

P.S.–click the book covers for more info on these books or to order a copy.

Grammarians have been twisting themselves up in recent days, due to a report that the Oxford comma, also known as the serial comma, is being scrapped. Seems it was a mistake, an error, and a miscommunication. The distinctive comma, which precedes the word "and," is sometimes used to help clarify the meaning of a sentence. At The Baltimore Sun, which uses AP style, the serial comma is not favored. But having an Oxford pedigree has helped the special comma endure.

As Linda Holmes of NPR noted about the controversy, the folks at the University of Oxford "haven’t changed their authoritative style guide, but they’ve changed their internal PR department procedures that they use for press releases. The PR department and the editorial department are two different things, so this doesn’t necessarily mean much of anything, except that it’s maybe a little embarrassing to have your own PR department abandoning your style guide."

I’m not one to get excited over punctuation, though it is often the topic of dinner conversation with my wife, a Strict Constructionist Grammarian who often spots tyops and other problems on Read Street. (That one’s for you.) I did invent a significant punctuation mark — the Fini — but it has not caught on. Neither has Patrick’s Tentative Hyphen. So relax, folks. The Oxford comma endures — and probably will as long as there is an England.

We don’t just sell books. AbeBooks offers thousands of old newspapers and magazines recording everything from the Normandy Landings to the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the Apollo 11 mission.

This selection of historic papers, periodicals, journals and magazines has a strong literary slant with contributions from Hemingway, Kerouac, Salinger, Faulkner and Wodehouse.

Catch Up on History

If Tina Brown knows one thing, it’s how to generate buzz, so no one should be surprised that she brought Princess Diana back from the dead. Newsweek’s cover imagines Di as she would be at age 50. And the story, richly imagined by Brown herself, carries a sense of the inner circle (not to mention breathless modifiers like uber- and schadenfreude).

A sampling: "Gliding sleekly into her 40s, her romantic taste would have moved to men of power over boys of play. She’d have tired of the hedge-fund guy and drifted into undercover trysts with someone more exciting—a high-mindedly horny late-night talk-show host, or a globe-trotting French finance wizard destined for the Élysée Palace. I suspect she would have retained a weakness for men in uniform, and a yen for dashing Muslim men. (A two-year fling with a Pakistani general, rumored to have links to the ISI, would have been a particular headache to the Foreign Office and the State Department.)"

Some see the story — and the digitally enhanced photo of Di with Kate — as a brazen attempt to cash in on Brtitish royalty. To others, the reimit will be fun to read. (And not so far from the theme of Monica Ali’s new novel, "Untold Story," which imagines Di faking her death and moving to America’s midwest.) You make the call: crass or a blast?