Browse the bestseller and new release section of your local bookstore and the selection of new releases and popular books might be a little discouraging. With authors like Danielle Steele and Michael Crichton taking top spots on The New York Times bestseller list, sometimes it feels like corporate literature is more frequently featured on the shelves than other more creative and innovative literature.
That being said there are enough new releases to keep some of the most discerning readers from lamenting the fact that even Nicole Richie is now a published novelist with her recent release, The Truth About Diamonds.
One of the most talked-about books that has made its way to the shelves this season is by The New York Times' only woman op-ed columnist, Maureen Dowd. The book, Are Men Necessary?, looks at the new rules of dating, the desirability of smart women and other gender issues in the post-feminist world.
In typical Dowd fashion, the book is witty, irreverent and entertaining, making it a far cry from an updated version of the seminal feminist work The Feminine Mystique.
This kind of work should be expected from the woman who portrays George W. Bush as a brat in cowboy boots and the Democrats as the "mommy party" in her op-ed pieces.
Frank McCourt published his bestselling memoir Angela's Ashes after 30 years spent teaching in New York City public schools. He taught English and creative writing in schools ranging from a vocational high school to the prestigious Stuyvesant, a New York City magnet school.
In McCourt's newest effort, Teacher Man, McCourt recalls his time as a teacher while continuing to reflect on his childhood in Ireland. McCourt explains that his unconventional teaching style, of instructing through his own experiences and recollections, was what allowed Angela's Ashes to come alive.
Age is clearly not going to slow down one of the most prolific living writers, Gabriel Garc'a Marquez, who just released another book, Memories of My Melancholy Whores. The novel examines a 90-year-old man's relationship with a 14-year old prostitute and their time spent together in a brothel.
In many ways, this novel is a departure for Marquez as it is written in the first person and centers on a unique narrator with a distinctive voice.
The much-anticipated return of Zadie Smith comes with her third effort, On Beauty. Smith, 30, gives hope to young aspiring writers and naysayers who too often profess that there is no young literary talent. Smith published the prolific White Teeth at the age of 25, and now at age 30, Smith has continued to build her talent.
The novel is about a college professor and his family who fall victim to the power of beauty in a variety of different ways.
Art and history buffs should take note of Jonathan Harr's new book The Lost Painting, which recounts how one of Caravaggio's works "Taking of Christ" was finally found and attributed to Caravaggio in 1990. Harr's piece of nonfiction reads more like a fantastical thriller as the reader is invited along on a young art historian's quest to find this lost work.
Myla Goldberg's follow-up to Bee Season, entitled Wicket's Remedy, is a far more mature undertaking. The book tells the story of a working-class woman in South Boston in 1918, who has survived the influenza epidemic and her husband, who has invented a snake oil tonic.
Rest assured: there is no reason to give up on new fiction. It just might take a little more research than browsing the bookshelves of your local bookstore to find what is actually worth reading.
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