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In Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami spins whimsical and daring short stories about a talking monkey, man-eating cats on a Greek island and the girl from Ipanema. The writer himself appears in a few of them.

If David Lipsky had to give an alien one book about American life, it would be David Foster Wallace's Consider the Lobster, a collection of essays that are "experiential postcards." Lipsky is the author of Absolutely American : Four Years at West Point.

Book critic Oscar Villalon offers his appreciation of Bill Buford's new memoir Heat. Inspired by Italian star chef Mario Batali, Buford experiences a trial by fire in the kitchen of one of New York's top restaurants.

Author Anne Cherian was 24 when she first read — and was enthralled by — Beryl Markham's autobiography West With the Night, a beautifully written retelling of the aviator's childhood in Africa and her daring solo flight across the Atlantic.

Author Monica Ali spent an entire year poking around "below stairs" in five London Hotel restaurants before she started writing latest novel.

It is perhaps stating the obvious to say that there is almost no money to be made in poetry. Some poets work as teachers, others in the corporate world. And even a Pulitzer Prize-winning former U.S. poet laureate needs a day job.

Any guy can tell you he loves romance, but how many men would admit to liking romance novels? Jack Murnighan confesses his guilty pleasure: Rosemary Rogers' Sweet Savage Love.

Author Laura Dave remembers the book that taught her about unabashed sin: Peyton Place, a raucous novel of sex, murder and love in a small New England town.

Nikita Khrushchev starred in his own travel comedy back in 1959. Peter Carlson's new book, K Blows Top, documents the Communist leader's unusual tour through the United States.

John Githongo, a journalist and activist who became an anti-corruption czar under Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki, took great personal risk to expose government wrongs. Michela Wrong tells Githongo's story in her new book, It's Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower.