:
Bookish: WHAT CAUGHT
MY EYE THIS WEEKEND (6#) -

# Embedded Books at U.S. military bases in Iraq: "My favorite book collection this trip is at the Habbaniya base, two shelves beneath a poster of the venomous snakes found in southwest Asia. Maybe it’s the setting: an abandoned British hotel. You half expect to see Evelyn Waugh sipping gin and grousing about the locals." [Tony Pery]

# From the page to the silver screen: Eddie Muller reports that The Kind One, a noirish first novel about an amnesiac who is an employee of a vice kingpin by Tom Epperson, is being optioned for Casey Affleck. I believe Casey is the kid brother of movie star Ben.

# In the Shetland Isles, Tora Hamilton is digging a peatbog grave for a pony when she uncovers the body of a young woman who has had her heart ripped out, apparently while still alive, and pagan runes carved into her back. "This debut novel will deservedly be a bestseller, but it remains just a whiff of testosterone short of a masterpiece." Mystery novel SACRIFICE by SJ Bolton reviewed by Peter Millar.

# Dinaw Mengestu's protagonist Sepha Stephanos is a displaced Ethiopian living in Washington DC. He is from a privileged background in Addis Ababa, but was forced to flee his homeland by the change of regime. The author of this novel is a graduate of Georgetown University. Children of the Revolution reviewed by Razeshta Sethna.

# "How to replace
the editor with a computer." [commentary]

# Colette Bancroft in St Pete interviews writer Harry Crews. I've never read him, though I've heard of him. His writing is sometimes described as Southern Gothic.

...