A new issue of Words Without Borders is out. From The Guardian, what we were reading: Love them or hate them, these are the 50 books that defined the decade. From The Times, here are the 100 best books of the decade. From The Telegraph, here are the 100 books that defined the noughties. From The Latin American Review of Books, a review of Happy Families by Carlos Fuentes; and novelist Cecilia Szperling mines the literary roots of her Confesionario series of reading-performances and argues that these can loosen the straitjacket of good taste imposed on Argentine writers by the ghost of Borges. What Would Jane Do? How a 19th-century spinster serves as a moral compass in today's world. A review of Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Life in Joyce's Masterpiece by Declan Kiberd. This book has no ISBN: A review of Comparing Conrad: Essays on Joseph Conrad and His Implied Dialogues with Other Writers by Paul Kirschner. Not only connected: Brooke Allen reviews Concerning E. M. Forster by Frank Kermode. Thanks partly to his miserable end 40 years ago, Kerouac has lost some of his lustre as a counterculture icon, but that was never what he wanted to be. Christopher Hitchens on Stieg Larsson, the author who played with fire. A funny thing happened in the movie theater the other day: An article on Walt Whitman, denim salesman. The Savage Detectives and 2666 make literature feel like a matter of life and death; Scott McLemee interviews Marcela Valdes, a prominent Bolano-logist (and here's Alex Abramovich's review of The Savage Detectives).
