Rating: 
Summary: An enjoyable and informative literary reference work
Review: "The Salon.com Reader's Guide to Contemporary Authors" is edited by Laura Miller, with Adam Begley. It consists primarily of alphabetically-arranged entries on selected writers. Each entry contains a list of books by the author, as well as a critical essay. This collection of writers is international and multicultural, although the selection is (as noted in the preface) limited to authors who write (or wrote) fiction in English and who have had major works published since 1960.This is a book that I use both to "discover" authors I'm not familiar with, as well as to get new perspectives on authors I already know (either passingly or thoroughly). Each entry is about 1 to 2 pages long. A very short sampler of some of the authors covered: Chinua Achebe, Sherman Alexie, Saul Bellow, Charles Bukowski, Ian Fleming, Allegra Goodman, Ursula K. LeGuin, Amy Tan, Gore Vidal, etc. The critical articles contain some questionable statements, but that's half the fun of this book: it's a reference work with which an intelligent reader can disagree. In addition to the main entries, there is a series of sidebar book lists compiled by various individuals. Examples: "Five Contemporary Noir Classics," listed by David Bowman; "A Walk on the Wild Side: Very Original Novels," by Peter Carey; "Smart and Sexy," by Erica Jong; etc. The books are listed with short descriptive paragraphs. There is also a series of interspersed literary essays: "Every Novel Is a Lesbian Novel," by Dorothy Allison; "Of This World: Why Science Fiction Can't Be Dismissed," by John Clute; etc. If you love contemporary literature, you may find "The Salon.com Reader's Guide" to be a wonderful resource.
Rating:
Summary: Great Collection of Authors
Review: ...This book is not meant to be all-inclusive. It states clearly in the introduction that if no contributors expressed interest in a particular author, he or she was left out (with one notable exception). Having said that, this is a terrific reference for finding new authors or find new books by loved authors. Names I've seen in the bookstore/library, but were hesitant to try from lack of knowledge of their works are now newly elucidated. Cross-referencing gives additional help in finding authors similar to those you like (as well as those you don't like). Plus, the caricatures are fun.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Starting Point
Review: Coming at this book from the angle of someone who hasn't read a great deal of contemporary fiction, I found this book well worth the investment. While some seasoned readers may complain that specific authors didn't make the final cut, for me the book offered a wide selection of styles and genres to pick from. Furthermore, the "See Also" dialogues give several jumping-off points once you've exhausted a specific author's entire bibliography. For people who live and breathe by the New York Times Book Review, this probably won't provide much additional information. But if you've always enjoyed the contemporary literature you've read and want to find out a bit more, you can't go wrong with the two hundred authors listed here.
Rating:
Summary: Good Medicine, and Great Sex!
Review: David Ford has done an excellent job on this book. It tells an interesting story. It is provacative and enlightening. This is the second book I have read from this outstanding author.
Rating:
Summary: Good Medicine, and Great Sex!
Review: David Ford has done an excellent job on this book. It tells an interesting story. It is provacative and enlightening. This is the second book I have read from this outstanding author.
Rating:
Summary: Informative and delightful to read
Review: Despite its 455 pages, this book is a fairly quick read. It is a book about contemporary literature, although not at all boring as book reviews sometimes tend to be. Reading this book is fun, in part, I think, because it is written for readers, not for other critics. The reviewers do not err on the safe side always, which make it so much more interesting. The book is ordered alphabetically, and contains information not only about the books, but also some information about the authors. In order to be user-friendly, the "best" book by each author is marked by an asterisk. I admire this because naturally, everyone will not agree which is the best book, but as the subtitle says: this is "an opinionated, irreverant look at the most fascinating writers of our time". This is just one of the cool features of the book: another one is a section after each author called "see also", where the reader gets recommendations according to the system if you like this author, you might want to try these. There are a few general essays on such topics as science fiction, often written by one of the included authors. I would have liked more of those. There are also lists of book suggestions with interesting titles (sometimes more interesting than the recommended books sound), and those can be browsed like a good magazine. I would have liked more of those, too. This is not a book which will expand your knowledge of literary theories, but people who have studied literature are likely to enjoy this book anyway. I am one of those:) It does not assume that the reader has studied literature and knows lots of terms, concept and are aware of the current discussions; instead, this is a tribute to literature as phenomenon. And a phenomenon that can and sometimes should be experienced intuitively.
Rating:
Summary: Reading Group Notes- Martha's & Alice's Notes in the Margin
Review: Editor, Laura Miller helped found Salon.com. she is currently New York Editorial Director for Salon.com and lives in Manhattan. Ms. Miller wrote in the preface to her book, "We intended this book for those remarkable and slightly mysterious individuals who read contemporary fiction for pleasure. We didn't imagine an audience of researchers or scholars or critics or prize committees or members of the publishing industry. . . " We think, however that she must have imagined an audience of reading group members because she had our interest at heart. Your group will find that Ms. Miller holds them in high regard as readers. She and her reviewers might even sound like a member of your group. Your group needs only one copy of this book. Share it at meetings and pass it around between meetings. Some groups do not like to be influenced by reviews but we often suggest that the group wait until they have fully discussed a book before they pull out the reviews. This would be a great time to turn the pages in The Salon.com Reader's Guide. Martha's reading group is reading "After Rain" by William Trevor for its first meeting this year. She knew nothing about William Trevor--not that he was Irish- and not that his stories are permeated with the sadness of fate. Following the discussion she plans to read the Salon.com review of Trevor to her group and it will be interesting to discuss how Trevor "writes about disappointment." And it will be fascinating to see if the group agrees with the reviewer in Salon.com that while Trevor always writes about the disappointed that his work is never disappointing. Be forewarned that this book is not all-inclusive and could never be. It is a book compiled based upon "personal preferences" and the list is "probably insufficiently balanced." But we accept this as we suspect your reading group will too. What is most pleasing to us about this book is that we got the feeling as we flipped through the pages that we were reading the notes of an eclectic and observant reading group. It felt like we were reading their collected notes in the margin. Our interesting word selection is a word that jumped off the page several times. It is "Bildungsroman". A novel about the early development or spiritual education of the main character. We loved this statement about reading from the reviewer of A.S. Byatt: "What makes aptitude more than a parlor trick and Byatt more than a smirking postmodern jester are her motivating passions and beliefs-in the power of reading and writing to rescue human beings from dull, confining lives and in the transformative capacities of the mind." We do believe in the power of reading and believe that shared reading is truly transformative. Martha Burns and Alice Dillon are the authors of Reading Group Journal: Notes in the Margin.
Rating: 
Summary: There's more out there than Oprah's Book Club choices!
Review: Give this guide to anyone who says "they just discovered Wally Lamb." There are tons of great contemporary authors that the general public has yet to discover because they haven't been sanctioned by Oprah.
Rating:
Summary: great guide, does what it intends
Review: I definitely recommend this book to any friend I have that likes reading contemporary fiction. the writeups are excellent and totally invaluable in building my knowledge of writers these days. I want to DEFINITELY disagree with the writerranger reviewer below who made the ridiculous claim that "Since this is a Salon guide, no heterosexual males need apply." Umm, man, I know what kind of thing it is that you're angry about and that is NOT what is going on in this book. The selection of writers is NOT some PC list, and furthermore, neither are many of the writeups. Take a look at the writeup of richard price, the while male that wrote Clockers... they praise the guy for making the move of being a white male that wrote multiple novels about the lives of inner-city blacks. They say "it's a gutsy move in today's climate of heated territorial wars" or whatever. That's not PC talk, man. The truth is closer to this: this is a collection of many, many writeups by many reviewers and writers, and therefore each writer has a different take on their subjects. SOME of them will likely be to the PC side of you and possibly me. SOME are very much not that way. they're all over the place. that's the way to do it. This guide is very excellent -- it's given me many hours of reference use and many more of just flipping through it reading. Buy it if you're leaning towards doing so.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Reference Guide to Contemporary Authors
Review: I eagerly took this book home, and quickly flipped through the pages to see how many books I've read by the 225 authors listed in this guide. I've got a lot of work ahead of me. What I appreciated the most about the book is that along with literary giants such as Margaret Atwood, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Toni Morrison, and Robertson Davies, the contributors to this guide also mention commercial success stories such as Stephen King, Tom Clancy, John Grisham, and Michael Crichton. For each entry there is a bibliography given, a summary of the authors works, and a 'see also' paragraph that leads you to other great authors with similar writting styles as your favourites. In between entries there are essays and suggestions given by the said authors themselves which are enlightening and entertaining. I don't know much about salon.com, but I've learnt that they're capable of producing a top notch reference that I'll will use frequently.
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