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This weekFICTION Bay Area Last weekWeeks on list 1A MOST WANTED MAN, John le Carré (Scribner; 336 pages; $28): A man claiming to be a Chechen Muslim seeks asylum in Hamburg.34 2THE GATE HOUSE, Nelson DeMille (Grand Central; 688 pages; $27.99): In the sequel...

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Titles recently published in paperback: Nonfiction Classics for Pleasure (Harvest Books; 352 pages; $15) by Michael Dirda: The Pulitzer Prize-winning critic recommends some of his favorite titles. The Greatest Battle (Simon & Schuster; 384 pages; $16) by...

"Playing the Enemy" is a classic sports-brings-the-community-together story.

"Observation is my weakness," writes Katha Pollitt in the title essay of her collection Learning to Drive .

In his seminal essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent," T.S. Eliot argues that only a poet's grounding in history sustains the work after the tidal upsurge of adolescent passion has receded.

Just to counter the frequently gloomy press on the topic of young people and literacy, it's worth taking a look at this Canadian News piece on what's being call "the Internet generation." A new book says that these young people born between 1977 and 1997 - there are 81 million ...

I just finished reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, in which a yearly lottery forces citizens of 12 districts to participate in a creepy "Survivor"-type game. It was one of the best books I've read this year - and it was written for teens! The story had a nice ...

[The Monitor occasionally reprints book reviews of current interest. This review of "Beloved" by Toni Morrison originally run in the Monitor on Oct. 5., 1987.] The opening of Beloved, Toni Morrison's fifth novel, is deliberately uninviting - an obstacle thrown in our path that puzzles and repels.

Old Nobel literature laureates die and sometimes fade away, but first they typically keep publishing amid an odd atmosphere that combines imperial hauteur and cloying deference.