NBCC Roundup April 26, 2010

Here's this week's installment in the roundup series featuring the work of NBCC members and curated by NBCC member Bethanne Patrick. Links to member reviews will also be posted on our Facebook page and on the NBCC Twitter feed. (To submit, send links to Bethanne Patrick, thebookmaven@gmail.com.)

Ron Charles reviews Sue Miller's “The Lake Shore Limited” in the Washington Post:

Miller's exquisite new novel, “The Lake Shore Limited,” is so sophisticated and thoughtful that it should either help redeem the term “women's literature” or free her from it once and for all.

Also in The Washington Post, Thomas Hayden’s environmental books roundup:

Economists and environmentalists are going to have to start talking about that part of the consumption equation, too. Because the authors are right about one thing: Humanity is on an unsustainable path, and a major reassessment of business as usual is in order.

More from The Washington Post! Gerald Bartell reviews “The Third Rail” by Michael Harvey:

Harvey dispenses the pressure plays, cruel surprises and heartbreaking setbacks of his plot with crack timing, never allowing the reader a moment to unfasten his seat belt. And all the while Harvey renders Kelly's Chicago in crisp, tough and ironic prose.

Joseph Peschel covers “Something Red” by Jennifer Gilmore in both The Charlotte Observer and The Raleigh News & Observer; link is to the latter:

Characters are developed in a leisurely, but sometimes painfully slow way. We learn about each through slow-moving flashbacks, half scenes and shifting points of view. Sometimes the story gets bogged in rather mundane character portraits, but “Something Red” is something you should read.

Grigoris Balakian’s “Armenian Golgotha” reviewed on BlogCritics by Tim Gebhart:

Even though this coming weekend marks the 95th anniversary of the beginning of this particular persecution of Armenians, whether to call what happened genocide or something else continues to be debated today. Given that Balakian relates the history from the perspective of someone persecuted by the Turks during that war, his book likely remains controversial today, more than 80 years after the first volume of it was first published.