Jonathan Franzen

To the small population that tends to the affairs of American literary culture, Jonathan Franzen can't be ignored. His books, most notably the novels "The Corrections" and "Freedom," reliably garner either critical lamentation or reflex boosterism. Time magazine put Franzen on the cover. And everybody and their mother heard that he refused Oprah's desire to anoint "The Corrections" one of her book-club selections. This year already boasts two bouts of Franzy. First, he called Edith Wharton ugly.

To the small population that tends to the affairs of American literary culture, Jonathan Franzen can't be ignored. His books, most notably the novels "The Corrections" and "Freedom," reliably garner either critical lamentation or reflex boosterism. Time magazine put Franzen on the cover. And everybody and their mother heard that he refused Oprah's desire to anoint "The Corrections" one of her book-club selections. This year already boasts two bouts of Franzy. First, he called Edith Wharton ugly.

Oprah Winfrey and author Jonathan Franzen have put their rocky past behind them. Franzen appeared on yesterday’s “The Oprah Winfrey Show,’’ embracing his host after she chose his novel “Freedom’’ for her book club. Winfrey did not have Franzen on her show nine years ago, when “The Corrections’’ was a club selection, because he called some of her choices “schmaltzy.’’ LaPierre back on WBZ A familiar radio voice is back to giving New Englanders their news.

NEW YORK - Michael Chabon credits his latest honor to the gray in his beard. "I knew that when the gray came in it was only a matter of time before my augustness would be recognized," the 48-year-old Pulitzer Prize winner said with a laugh during a recent telephone interview about being voted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an "honor society" where members include Toni Morrison, Maya Lin, and Philip Glass. "I am definitely honored and delighted and when I saw who else was in the academy I was sure they had made some kind of mistake.

NEW YORK - Michael Chabon credits his latest honor to the gray in his beard. "I knew that when the gray came in it was only a matter of time before my augustness would be recognized," the 48-year-old Pulitzer Prize winner said with a laugh during a recent telephone interview about being voted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an "honor society" where members include Toni Morrison, Maya Lin, and Philip Glass. "I am definitely honored and delighted and when I saw who else was in the academy I was sure they had made some kind of mistake.

There's a lot of talk these days about the world ending in December 2012. But, you ask, just because there's nothing after that in the Mayan Long Count calendar, does that really mean that the earth will end in flood and fire? Probably. For even if the Mayans were not right in all the particulars, between economic uncertainty, global warming, social and political unrest, and the return of the ancient and unspeakable gods who will drown the world in blood, they were quite right to expect that something big will happen this year.

The giant armadillo, the blue whale, and the Great American Novelist all have something in common. All of them, the watchers say, are critically endangered. Largely due to what’s euphemistically called displacement. And since Great American Novelists were singular, even in their supposed heyday, the ones who stand to that claim today are as easy to spot as, well, an armadillo in your front yard. They rather have a way of announcing themselves. Jonathan Franzen will be hard to miss these days, emerging from a nine-year absence on fiction shelves with a novel whose ambition outstrips even his...

If you've heard of the fantasy author R.A. Salvatore, you might expect his lair to be a faux-medieval fortress, complete with moat, turrets, and an impenetrable iron gate guarded by a stone dragon. Yet the House of Salvatore is no castle. One of fantasy's most popular authors - and one of Massachusetts's best-selling scribes - lives in workaday Leominster, where he keeps the real world close at hand. "I think I'm a pretty well-kept secret," Salvatore, 52, says with a mischievous smile.

Employees at the Brookline Booksmith kept getting the same questions, over and over. "Where's ‘Twilight?' " Or "Where are the Stephenie Meyer books?" The staff response: "Young adult books are in back. " Staffers noticed that, curiously, most of the inquiring customers were not young adults at all. Many were middle aged. And that led to a revelation: Young adult books are no longer for that audience alone - and, as a result, sales are often outpacing grown-up bestsellers, sometimes by millions.

Jonathan Franzen's next book will be a collection of essays, including two previously unpublished works. "Farther Away: Essays" will be released in May by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. The publisher said Thursday that two pieces, "On Autobiographical Fiction" and "Comma-Then," have never been published before. Franzen is known for the novels "The Corrections" and "Freedom," both chosen by Oprah Winfrey for her book club. His other works include the memoir "Discomfort Zone" and a book of essays, "How to be Alone.

There's a lot of talk these days about the world ending in December 2012. But, you ask, just because there's nothing after that in the Mayan Long Count calendar, does that really mean that the earth will end in flood and fire? Probably. For even if the Mayans were not right in all the particulars, between economic uncertainty, global warming, social and political unrest, and the return of the ancient and unspeakable gods who will drown the world in blood, they were quite right to expect that something big will happen this year.

Oprah Winfrey and author Jonathan Franzen have put their rocky past behind them. Franzen appeared on yesterday’s “The Oprah Winfrey Show,’’ embracing his host after she chose his novel “Freedom’’ for her book club. Winfrey did not have Franzen on her show nine years ago, when “The Corrections’’ was a club selection, because he called some of her choices “schmaltzy.’’ LaPierre back on WBZ A familiar radio voice is back to giving New Englanders their news.

The giant armadillo, the blue whale, and the Great American Novelist all have something in common. All of them, the watchers say, are critically endangered. Largely due to what’s euphemistically called displacement. And since Great American Novelists were singular, even in their supposed heyday, the ones who stand to that claim today are as easy to spot as, well, an armadillo in your front yard. They rather have a way of announcing themselves. Jonathan Franzen will be hard to miss these days, emerging from a nine-year absence on fiction shelves with a novel whose ambition outstrips even...

Marianne Leone Cooper is keeping busy while her husband, Oscar-winner Chris Cooper, wraps up work on a pilot based on Jonathan Franzen's book "The Corrections. " Leone Cooper, an actress and the author of "Knowing Jesse: A Mother's Story of Grief, Grace, and Everyday Bliss," will join Andre Dubus and Richard Russo at an event Sunday titled "Transformed by Art" at the JFK Library. "It's about how writing changed our lives," said Leone Cooper, a product of Catholic schools who cites Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott as early influences.

District and Circle By Seamus Heaney From the Nobel laureate, poems in which the imagination conveys the imprint of the world at large (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $20). The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West By Niall Ferguson With bracing self-confidence, an ambitious historian chroniclesa global series of collisions (Penguin, $35). Matters of Life and Death By Bernard MacLaverty From a master of the telling detail, short stories in which sectarian strife disrupts quiet lives (Norton, $23.95)