Book Buzz

This week: Daniel Handler, Alex Kuczynski and best sellers. Popout Original audio source (21bookupdate.mp3)

This Week: Author Calvin Trillin, "House of Meetings" by Martin Amis and "Jimi Hendrix Turns Eighty" by Tim Sandlin. Popout Original audio source (13bookupdate.mp3)

This Week: Author Michael Thomas, "The Notebooks of Robert Frost," and best seller news. Popout Original audio source (03bookupdate.mp3)

You might have already bought it. Maybe you loved it. Maybe you hated it. Maybe you listened to the great Copyblogger radio show about it. What is it? Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions . Its Guy Kawasakis most recent book, and it was a smash hit. But this post is not about that book. Sorry, Guy. Instead, this is a post about the myriad triggers that lead readers to pick up a copy of Enchantment and about the strategies Guy Kawasaki has used to make himself one of the most likable authorities around. This is a post about how you can make a little bit of that Kawasaki magic work for you and it all starts with creating a stamp of approval. Why you need a stamp of approval Guy Kawasakis ventures carry a stamp of approval that catapults his books to bestseller lists before theyre even released. Get your hands on that magic stamp, and you can catapult your own work your blog, your product or service, your business to heights youve never seen before. Im not go...

I've been a huge fan of author Karleen Koen 's ever since reading Through A Glass Darkly and Now Face to Face and now she is back with a new novel titled Before Versailles: A Novel of Louis XIV that is out in stores today! I recently had the pleasure of reading Before Versailles and it was unputdownable! Today I am thrilled to bring you an interview with Karleen Koen and with thanks to Random House I have 2 copies of Before Versailles to give away. It was a treat and a pleasure to have the opportunity to interview one of my idols and I hope you enjoy it. Now, on to the interview.... I see that you dedicated Before Versailles to X and Louise de Vailliere. Is it safe to assume that X is for the Man in the Iron Mask and what made you decide to dedicate this novel to Louise de Valliere? X isn't for the man in the iron mask, but I love the idea, so now, thanks to you, the man in the iron mask is part of X. I think Louise de la Valliere was so important to Louis XIV's...

Posthumous publications fall into three distinct varieties In his study of late style , written shortly before his own death from leukaemia, Edward Said invoked a concept of lateness quite divorced from the traditional view . Rather than seeing it in the standard terms of maturity, a lifetime's accrual of experience and knowledge resulting in a rounded, all-encompassing vision, Said proposed to investigate those composers and writers whose late style was marked by "intransigence, difficulty and unresolved contradiction", that rage against the dying of the light heard at its most paradigmatic in the mingled elegance and fury of the late quartets of Beethoven. On this view, late works express the antagonism of age, a state in which we become less rather than more reconciled to the world, hurling imprecations at our carers, refusing the cliches of tranquil reflection. But what of those latest of late works, the ones that only appear after the final demise of their creators? ...

THE ART OF SAYING GOODBYE BY ELLYN BACHE ABOUT THE BOOK: She was the thread that wove their tapestry together. With a group of women as diverse as the ladies from Brightwood Trace, you might not think them to be close. There's Julianne, a nurse with an unsettling psychic ability that allows her to literally feel what her patients feel, Andrea, a strong fortress sheltering a faltering core, Ginger, a mother torn between being a stay-at-home mom or following her career aspirations, and Iona, the oldest, whose feisty, no-nonsense attitude disarms even toughest of the tough. Not exactly the ingredients for the most cohesive cocktail . . . Until you add Paisley, the liveliest and friendliest of the clan, who breathed life into them all. But when their glowing leader falls ill with cancer, it's up to these women to do what Paisely has done for them since the beginning: lift her up. Overcoming and accepting the inevitability of loss, the women draw closer than ever; fi...

This Week: "Remainder" by Tom McCarthy, "George Gershwin" by Howard Pollack, "The Physics of the Buffyverse" by Jennifer Ouellette and best seller news. Popout Original audio source (24bookupdate.mp3)

Eric Banks Marco Secchi/Getty Images A visitor to this year's Venice Biennale at the Egypt Pavilion which shows documentation of a live performance by the Ahmed Basiony and images taken during the protests in Tahrir Square, June 7, 2011 Has the Venice Biennale outlived its usefulness? By most indications, the question is specious. Witness the preview leading to the public unveiling of the fifty-fourth edition of the gigantic international exhibition of contemporary art in early June. Though long ago the Biennale got so big as to overspill its already commodious accommodations in the citys Giardini and the warrens of the one-time shipbuilding hangars of the Arsenale, it continues to metastasize each year, with a greater number of national pavilions in this edition than ever before (ninety-one countries had signed on before the last-minute defections of Lebanon and Bahrain). Several countriesSaudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Haiti, Andorraparticipated for the first time, while others, ...

Its just about the least fun part of being a writer, and one of the big stumbling blocks a lot of businesses face with content marketing . You never seem to have enough ideas. Or you have a bunch of ideas, but you dont quite get around to writing them. Or you start a dozen different projects, and manage to finish half a page on each one. Its maddening, and its got to stop. And then, some non-writer rolls his eyes at you and says something trite like You know, plumbers dont get plumbers block Well, duh. Im no plumber, but Id imagine that unblocking a sink is pretty much like doing housework it might not be fun, but its not exactly fraught with creative uncertainty. Writing is different. When you write, you pluck ideas out of your head, impose order upon them, and translate them into black marks on a screen. And you hope that those black marks will mean something. Theyll teach, or entertain, or persuade.Theyll touch the lives of people youve never met. Writing takes focus. Dedication. E...

We're busy following up on your suggestions from last week. Do please keep them coming We've been busy rounding up writers for our new series of author webchats based on all your suggestions last week . Thanks to everyone who contributed to our list of the best non-fiction. We had nearly 1,000 suggested additions - so we've split them up into subject specific areas, which you can find on the website here . This week we're going to set off on the next leg of our world literature tour . Voting has closed and our next destination is Indonesia. Please tell us about any future places you'd like us to visit. As always, if you have any idea how we could improve the site, or are having problems finding books via the books search, please tell us here, or have a look at our FAQs . Claire Armitstead guardian.co.uk Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Mobsters get homesick too Misha Glenny BuyMafias on the Move: How Organised Crime Conquers New Territories by Federico Varese Princeton, 278pp, 24.95, March 2011, ISBN9780691128559 Robert Friedmans Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America came out in 2000. Two years before that, in June 1998, he received a phone call from Mike McCall, an FBI agent. McCall warned him that his investigation into Russian organised crime was proving dangerous. I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, McCall said, but a major Russian organised crime figure has taken out a contract on your life. Reporting conflicts like those in Yugoslavia or Sierra Leone was a risky business for journalists in the post-Cold War world, but nobody expected that they would start getting whacked by foreign mafia hitmen in the middle of New York or London. Friedman died in 2002, of a rare disease rather than a bullet to the head. But in the two years before his death, he lived in fear that he had been earmarked for e...

This week an untitled poem, both mystical and down-to-earth, reaching after the mystery of inspiration This week's poem is by Mimi Khalvati, one of my favourite contemporary poets and also the subject of a "special request" from one of our recent Poem of the week posters, Poulter . I've made my choice from Khalvati's 1997 collection, Entries on Light , a book-length sequence of poems, all untitled, all subtly linked. They are both mystical and down-to-earth, innovative and approachable, precise in visual detail but roomy in vision. However well you may know the work, there is always something fresh to discover there. If you're new to it, this poem ("Everywhere you see her") will, I hope, be a good starting point. The word "Entries" suggests a diary, and, though meticulously crafted, the poems reflect the variations of a meteorologically typical English calendar, quick-firing through light, shade and the whole chromatic scale between. Someon...