The Best American Nonrequired Reading features fiction, nonfiction, journalism, comics, and humor, and is doubtlessly the most eclectic of Houghton Mifflin's Best American series. It grew out of the 826 Valencia project, a writing workshop for teens that Dave Eggers founded in San Francisco's Mission District. 826 Valencia has since evolved into 826 National, with writing workshops springing up around the country, and as in previous years, the pieces chosen for The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008 were done so by high school student participants of these workshops... read more.

_{Photo credit: Houghton Mifflin}

Sponsored by Powells.com, the Tournament of Books takes 16 of the year's best books and "pits them against one another in an NCAA-style Battle Royale of literary excellence." The book that rises to the top of the batch is awarded The Rooster, an award named in honor of the classic David Sedaris essay, "You Can't Kill the Rooster."

Though the tournament won't ramp up until March, TMN is naming the competing titles early this year in order to allow Rooster fans the opportunity to read some of the contenders. Powells is once again offering a 30% discount on all Tournament of Books titles, so start reading and be ready when March Madness rolls around!

As this comic tour de force says, "A family of thirteen in modern-day India was a disaster, a game of marbles that had lost its marbles ... a pack of wolves with no Mowgli to raise, a team of jihadis so bored they'd declared holy war on one another." The family that Mahajan so succinctly chronicles is a disaster before it even becomes a family. Read more.

_{Photo Credit: Harper Perennial}

I just heard this great NPR interview with Peter Manseau about his first novel, Songs for the Butcher's Daughter. Manseau is known for Vows, a memoir of having been raised by a former priest and nun. While not Jewish, he speaks in the interview of his becoming fascinated with Yiddish and feeling a kinship with "Jewish garment worker poets." Fascinating.