Christian Bauman: Just finished a biography of Edward III, he who (along with his French counterpart) began the 100 Years War. Now beginning the latest John Irving, the highly autobiographical one about the tattoo artist. I actually skipped his last one (The Fourth Hand, I believe) and resisted this one because the reviews were so bad. And then just the other day I woke up and said to myself: "Self, you idiot, how can you of all people, who also has to suffer the whims and fancies of reviewers, actually base your reading on what a reviewer had to say?" Properly self-slapped, I'm cracking the binding tonight and digging in.
Summer Block: I just finished John Updike's Terrorist for review, and now I'm working on two books for IDT, Empress and The Week You Weren't Here. And last night, I stayed home and shamelessly worked my way through Martha Stewart's Weddings magazine, summer issue.
Robert Birnbaum: Gallintin Canyon by Thom McGuane, The Places in Between by Rory Stewart, Friendship by Joseph Epstein, The Creationists by EL Doctorow (forthcoming literary essays), Best American Essays 2006 ed by Lauren Slater, The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn, The Plot Against America
Ross Simonini: Carnivore Diet by Julia Slavin, Pnin by Nabokov, A couple Joseph Beuys biographies, The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker, Charity by Mark Richard, The backs of cereal boxes
Matt Borondy: Not Always So and Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness -- a couple of collections of talks by Shunryu Suzuki (the late founder of the San Francisco Zen Center), Jesusland by Julia Scheeres, Remember Me by Lisa Cullen