New books in the buzz

Since people are shuffling shoulder to shoulder through the packed aisles of Book Expo America, trying to get through more than 2,000 exhibitors in three days, it’s not hard to find out what names are on people’s lips. According tho the Book Standard these are the books everyone is buzzing about:

Fiction:
Wickett’s Remedy, by Myla Goldberg (Doubleday)
Christ the Lord, by Anne Rice (Knopf)
Lunar Park, by Bret Easton Ellis (Knopf)
In Perfect Light, by Benjamin Alire Salenz (HarperCollins)
Everyone Worth Knowing, by Lauren Weisberger (Simon and Schuster)
Third Girl from the Left, by Martha Southgate (Houghton Mifflin)
Ordinary Heroes, by Scott Turow (FSG)
Faulkner Box set (Knopf)
Consent to Kill, by Vince Flynn (Atria Books)
Lipstick Jungle, by Candace Bushnell (Hyperion)
The Diviners, by Rick Moody (Little, Brown)
700 Sundays, by Billy Crystal (Warner Books)
The Zahir, by Paulo Coelho (HarperCollins)
A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies, by Ellen Cooney (Pantheon)
The Last Days of Dogtown, by Anita Diamant (Scribner)
Memories of My Melancholy Whores, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Knopf)
The Washington Story, by Adam Langer (Riverhead)
Shalimar the Clown, by Salman Rushdie (Random House)
Son of a Witch, by Gregory Maguire (ReganBooks)
On Beauty, by Zadie Smith (Penguin Press)
The Painted Drum, by Louise Erdrich (HarperCollins)
A Wedding in December, by Anita Shreve (Little, Brown)

Debut Fiction:
The Dream Life of Sukhanov, by Olga Grushin (Putnam)
Waterloo, by Karen Olsson (FSG)
Rust and Bone, by Craig Davidson (W.W. Norton)
The Widow of the South, by Robert Hicks (Time Warner Book Group)
The Town that Forgot How to Breathe, by Kenneth J. Harvey (St. Martin's)

General nonfiction:
Spook, by Mary Roach (W.W. Norton)
Bait and Switch, by Barbara Ehrenreich (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt)
Mark Twain: A Life, by Ron Powers (Free Press)
It’s Called a Breakup because it’s Broken: The Smart Girl’s Breakup Buddy, by Greg Behrendt and Amira Ruotola-Behrendt (Random House/Broadway Books)
Are Men Necessary?, by Maureen Dowd (Penguin)
Incendiary, by Chris Cleave (Knopf)
Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion (Knopf)
A Time to Run, by Barbara Boxer (Chronicle)
The Heart of the Home (tentative title), by Robin McGraw, Dr. Phil’s wife (Thomas Nelson)
Al Franken’s new book (as yet untitled) (Penguin)
Rereading, by Anne Fadiman (FSG)
The Assassin’s Gate, by George Packer (FSG)
Politics the Wellstone Way: How to Elect Progressive Candidates and Win on Issues (University of Minnesota Press)
The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham, by Billy Graham (Zondervan)
Teacher Man, by Frank McCourt (Scribner)
The Tender Bar, by J.R. Moehringer (Hyperion)
Julie & Julia, by Julie Powell (Little, Brown)
Our Endangered Values, by Jimmy Carter (Simon & Schuster)
The Smart Money, by Anonymous (so far) (Simon & Schuster)
The Bob Dylan Scrapbook, 1956-1966 (Simon & Schuster)
Generation Rx, by Greg Crister (Houghton Mifflin)
The Osama Bin Laden I Know, by Peter Bergen (Free Press)

The greatest philosopher

On the website of BBC Radio you can vote for the greatest philosopher. One can only groan at its attempt at seriousness and then groan some more at the "light-hearted" replies (Eric Cantona, Steve Irwin, Karl Popper).

Another blog network

Entrepreneur and author John Battelle plans to launch an advertising network for blogs later this fall. The network, dubbed FM Publishing (with FM standing for Federated Media), will launch with between 10 and 20 technology-related blogs, including Boing Boing, as well as Battelle's own SearchBlog. Battelle said he also is considering including blogs that cover culture for the network. Battelle, who co-founded Wired magazine and also founded The Industry Standard, said he is only inviting "high-quality, high-authority" blogs into the network. (Via Mediapost)

The endangered man

Thanks god there is a petition to save him.

11 million job applicants' psych tests

I just went through several psychology test during a job interview. It's comforting to know that I'm not alone:

Over the past few years, personality assessment tests have moved from the realm of experiment to standard practice at many of the nation's largest companies, including the Albertson's grocery chain and retailers such as Neiman Marcus and Target. A recent survey found that about 30 percent of all companies use personality tests in hiring. To many companies, the tests are as important, if not more important, than an applicant's education, experience and recommendations. [...] Annie Murphy Paul, author of "The Cult of Personality", which is about the testing industry, said there is a real danger of stigmatizing people who fail certain components of tests. "If we are labeling people liars and thieves even before they have seen any propensity for them to do these things, it is a real injustice," she said.
Among the giants in the employment-testing industry is Unicru Inc.. Last year, the Beaverton, Ore., company assessed 11 million applicants, which resulted in 550,000 hires by retailers, grocers, trucking companies and others. Christopher Reed, director of marketing for Unicru, compares the firm's mission to that of a dating site. "Just like they are trying to match up potential mates, we are basically making a prediction of whether someone is a good fit or not for a job," he said. The firm said its tests have been validated time and again by their success at companies.

Dictionaricks

Great idea! An English dictionary in limerick form.