
Overbooked specializes in providing timely information about fiction (all genres) and readable nonfiction. Overbooked has been online since 1994. Overbooked is a work in progress . . .
Overbooked is the winner of the 2008 Louis Shores - Greenwood Publishing Award: to recognize excellence in book reviewing and other media for libraries. The award recipient is selected for significant achievement related to a reviewing process that helps librarians make selection decisions.

Booklists and Suggested Reading
Summer 2008
Page Modified:
August 19, 2008
Nonfiction
Nonfiction
All Stars
- The Soloist: A Lost Dream, and Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music
Author: Lopez, Steve
Publisher: Penguin $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780399155062 Date: 2008
Booklist
PW
LJ
Soon to be a major motion picture from DreamWorks, The Soloist is a beautifully told story of friendship and the redeeming power of music.
Updated 5.29.08
- The Bishop's Daughter
Author: Moore, Honor
Publisher: Norton $ 25.95 ISBN: 9780393059847 Date: 2008
Booklist
Kirkus
PW
Paul Moore's vocation as an Episcopal priest took him from prominence as an activist to two decades as the bishop of New York. The Bishop's Daughter is a daughter's story of that complex, visionary man, in a memoir that engages the reader in the great issues of life.
Updated 5.29.08
- The Eaves of Heaven: A Life in Three Wars
Author: Pham, Andrew X.
Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780307381200 Date: 2008
Booklist
PW
Kirkus
From the award-winning author of Catfish and Mandala comes a son's searing memoir of his Vietnamese father's experiences over the course of three wars.
Updated 5.29.08
Travel Tales
- The Fortune Cookie Chronicles
Author: Lee, Jennifer 8
Publisher: Grand Central $ 24.99 ISBN: 9780446580076 Date: 2008
PW
Readers take an unexpected and entertaining journey through culinary, social, and cultural history in this delightful first book on the origins of the customary after-Chinese-dinner treat by "New York Times" reporter Lee.
Updated 2.27.08
- Apples Are from Kazakhstan: The Land That Disappeared
Author: Robbins, Christopher
Publisher: Norton $ 24 ISBN: 9780977743384 Date: 2008
Kirkus
LJ
In this funny and revealing travelogue of Kazakhstan--a blank in Westerners' collective geography--Robbins reveals the country to be diverse, tolerant, and surprisingly modern. A superlative addition to the literature of travel--"The Observer" (UK).
Updated 2.27.08
For Fun
- American Nerd: The Story of My People
Author: Nugent, Benjamin
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 20 ISBN: 9780743288019 Date: 2008
Booklist
PW
American Nerd explores the concept of nerdiness and the history of the nerd subculture: how they developed and how they have manifested in media, literature, schools, the workplace, and in the general public.
Updated 5.29.08
- Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
Author: Roach, Mary
Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780393064643 Date: 2008
Kirkus
The bestselling author of Stiff turns her outrageous curiosity and infectious wit on the most alluring scientific subject of all: sex. In Bonk, Roach shows how and why sexual arousal and orgasm can be so hard to achieve and what science is doing to make the bedroom a more satisfying place.
Updated 5.29.08
- When You Are Engulfed in Flames
Author: Sedaris, David
Publisher: Little Brown $ 25.99 ISBN: 9780316143479 Date: 2008
Kirkus
PW
In essay after essay, Sedaris proceeds from bizarre conundrums of daily life to the most deeply resonant human truths. Culminating in a brilliant account of his venture to Tokyo in order to quit smoking, his sixth essay collection is a new masterpiece of comic writing.
Updated 5.29.08
Good Sports
- Major: A Black Athlete, a White Era, and the Fight to Be the World's Fastest Human Being
Author: Balf, Todd
Publisher: Random $ 24 ISBN: 9780307236586 Date: 2008
Booklist
Balf brings to life the fascinating story of cyclist Major Taylor, America's first African-American sports mega-celebrity and his quest to beat out his white, racist rival for the title of the Fastest Man in the World at the turn of the century.
Updated 2.27.08
- The Crowd Sounds Happy: A Memoir
Author: Dawidoff, Nicholas
Publisher: Twelve $ 24.95 ISBN: 9780375400285 Date: 2008
LJ
PW
From the author of the bestselling The Catcher Was a Spy comes his most original work yet: a memoir of two cities, a family, and a boy who never quite fits in anywhere--and how baseball helps him find his place.
Updated 5.29.08
Biography and Memoirs
- The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, a Son, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood
Author: Coates, Ta-nehesi
Publisher: Bantam $ 22.95 ISBN: 9780385520362 Date: 2008
Booklist
Kirkus
This powerful memoir about coming of age in inner-city Baltimore during the cracked-out 1980s is written with a stunning poetic awareness and gorgeous immediacy (James McBride, author of "The Color of Water")
Updated 5.29.08
- The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century
Author: Dolnick, Edward
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 26.95 ISBN: 9780060825416 Date: 2008
PW
Kirkus
The Edgar Award-winning author of "The Rescue Artist" is back with the riveting story of the brilliant con man--the world's most famous art forger ("New York Times")--who perpetrated the greatest art hoax of the 20th century.
Updated 5.29.08
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