Kaleidoscope

[ biblioscope ]

Its premise — that social networking can change lives — may be Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul-level cheesy, but Emily Liebert's Facebook Fairytales: Modern-Day Miracles to Inspire the Human Spirit (Skyhorse, April 1) is surprisingly deft in its reportage of real-life folks transformed by our favorite time-killer. What hits home here is the inclusion of former City Paper managing editor Brian Hickey's story, specifically his wife, Angie, posting his progress on Facebook as he recovered from a life-threatening hit-and-run two years ago. The day Hickey was well enough to update his own status? No one here's too erudite to call that a miracle. —Carolyn Huckabay

Literary magazines are always a mixed bag, but nobody mixes things up as reliably, or as pleasantly, as Tin House (tinhouse.com). The latest issue, subtitled "Games People Play," has stories by Steve Almond and Martha McPhee, essays by David Mamet and Lord Whimsy (I know), plus reviews, poetry, instructions for German board games and a frickin' crossword puzzle. —Patrick Rapa

After Life of Pi, Yann Martel got real famous, real quick. He even received a handwritten thank-you letter from Barack Obama. Where do you go from there? Martel's new book, Beatrice and Virgil (Spiegel & Grau, April 13), starts with a writer whose first novel made him real famous, real quick. Sigh. But add a creepy taxidermist who asks our protagonist to help him pen a Holocaust parable about a donkey and a howler monkey, and Martel (at the Free Library Festival, April 17) saves himself from semi-autobiographical fantasyland and delivers another downright remarkable fable. —Carolyn Huckabay

It's too late to argue about whether regretsy.com — the site dedicated to mocking the handicrafts group-sold on etsy.com — is a bookworthy concept. Regretsy: Where DIY Meets WTF (Villard, April 6) will soon be wallowing on a shelf near you. And of course it's pretty funny, partly for April Winchell's snarky comments but mostly for the crafts themselves. Serial killer pillows, bacon soap and all manner of vagina-shaped jewelry are easy targets, and it was nice of Regretsy to set them all up for us. —Patrick Rapa