Philadelphia Inquirer: Books

Cartoonist/author Garry Trudeau has been on the front line of incisive political commentary since his Doonesbury strip made its debut in 1970. In the intervening years, he's taken on hot-button issues like abortion rights and lampooned mighty figures like Reagans, Bushes - and Donald Trump.

The expanded 25th-anniversary edition of Karen Finley's Shock Treatment brings her Thursday to the Free Library. In the introduction, Finley reminds readers of the 1980s and '90s culture wars and social divides that first brought the performance artist/poet to prominence.

'There was a time, and it was many years ago now, when I had to stay in a hospital for almost nine weeks." So begins Elizabeth Strout's fifth novel, My Name Is Lucy Barton.More | Talk | Read It Later | Share

Perhaps no 20th-century writer has had a greater influence than Ernest Hemingway. His novels, short stories, and journalism are penetrating and iconic; his personal life, thinly veiled in his fiction, was the stuff of drama and romance.

On Friday, Mayor Kenney announced that Yolanda Wisher, 39, has been named Philadelphia's poet laureate for 2016-17. She is a community activist, a teacher, and a poet deeply aware of her city and its rhythms.More | Talk | Read It Later | Share

Though short in stature, Truman Capote was larger than life. "I'm different. I'm special. I'm more," he tells himself. In The Swans of Fifth Avenue, author Melanie Benjamin applies her imagination to the relationship between Capote and Babe Pale

To complement his many awards and accolades, Scott McVay should be nominated Most Ebullient Citizen of New Jersey. In Surprise Encounters, the published poet, scientific researcher, conservationist, and founding executive director of both the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation and the Geraldine R.More | Talk | Read It Later | Share

Art imitates life in this first foray into "chick lit" by Elizabeth LaBan, wife of staff restaurant Craig LaBan. Despite the disclaimer that The Restaurant Critic's Wife is fiction, readers familiar with her husband's reviews will undoubtedly be scanning the pages for insight into the man who sets the standard for the area's dining scene.More | Talk | Read It Later | Share

The Tale of Genji is a huge, sprawling book, written in Japan about 1,000 years ago. It's often called, fancifully, "the first novel." And - although it does seem at times to be an anthology of tales woven together - it starts to cohere about midway through, creating a glittering, compelling, immersive world with characters who, though far from us in time and culture, make us care and who are deeply known, fascinating, and memorable.

It is rare for someone to write as well as Edmund de Waal, all the more as it's his secondary vocation.