Some links of note (and mini reviews):

Have you seen the Taschen collectionThe Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm? Talk about a beautiful book. No surprise of course but still - this one is a real show stopper.

Now please take a look at The Group as published by Virago. I'm afraid the copy I have sports a relatively dull cover but this one reminds me of just why books as objects are a good thing. Also, see Josephine Hart on Mary McCarthy at the Virago website.

I have developed some mad love for Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books. I am pretty much the biggest sucker in the world when it comes to peeking at people's book shelves and this book is unabashedly all about that. The fact that it includes interviews with the writers in question is just the icing on the cake (because you always want to know why people arrange their books they way they do or what books they treasure the most, etc.) The one thing that didn't surprise me is the number of people that noted very literary books as their top tens (Virginia Woolf, dead Russians, dead Greeks and more). It's hard not to love a collection with the likes of Alison Bechdel, Philip Pullman and Edmund White although I couldn't help but long for who wasn't there like Anne Fadiman or Ray Bradbury or a million YA and SFF authors.

That's the downside of a book like this - you just get a taste and want more and more and more.

Alex Bledsoe's The Hum and the Shiver is reminiscent of Sharyn McCrumb's Appalachian Ballad series (even though it is not historical in any way) with some serious overtones of the Jessica Lynch story. But it's also completely its own - the story of a female soldier who was wounded in Iraq, has become an unwilling media star and returns home to eastern Tennessee to heal and figure out what to do with her life. Bronwyn is also tough as nails, a major former teen rebel/bad girl/bad ass who comes from a long line of Tufa people - a Native American group with deep ties to their mountain homes, their music and each other.

The scary problem is that Bronwyn's ex-boyfriend is an ass who wants her (even if he pretty much has to kill her to get her) and there is a "haint" (restless soul) haunting her home that wants something and it involves Bronwyn. (Nothing good ever happens when these things show up.) As to how she will navigate all this, mend some fences broken when she left for the military, and get her head on straight, well that is what Bledsoe's book is all about. It's raw, has a thread of violence coursing through it and yet also clearly is a paranormal mystery with a strong message on family and finding inner peace. I liked Bronwyn a lot and I'm looking forward to what Bledsoe does with this character. Just like Sharyn McCrumb, I think he is on to something about a region of the US that is aching for literary attention.

And in case you missed it, Sara Zarr has been celebrating the fifth anniversary of the publication of The Story of a Girl by recounting its road to publication. If you are a writer then you must read these posts - I can't stress that enough, you must read them. Sara is giving us all a gift by sharing so much and it would be a crime not to learn from her journey. If you're wondering what the lit blogosphere was made for then be assured, it is moments like this.