Kaleidoscope

[ biblioscope ]

Jennifer Egan's fourth novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad (Knopf, June 8) — concerning the misadventures of erstwhile-punk-turned-producer Bennie Salazar and his kleptomaniac assistant, Sasha — has been earning praise up and down the web for its hip, techno sensibilities. But what did punk-turned-book-reviewer/still-punk Rodney Anonymous think? Check out the review, then hit the Free Library tonight (June 17, freelibrary.org), where Penn grad Egan will read from her latest work.

To be fair, it's not entirely fair to write a book about the first year of a presidency — especially for this president, who seems to be beset on all sides by inherited disasters and partisan buffoonery. So, as an assessment of the Obama administration, Jonathan Alter's The Promise (Simon & Schuster, May 18) is really just Chapter 1. But the book delivers when it comes to fly-on-the-wall insight. Alter reads at the National Constitution Center on Tuesday (June 22, constitutioncenter.org).

While we wait for the film version of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (starring Natalie Portman as Elizabeth Bennet, destroyer of the undead), Quirk keeps churning out those monsterrific takes on the classics. Android Karenina (June 8), a robotic love story set in a steampunk'd 19th-century Russia, turns Tolstoy's tour de force on its head — sure, there's love, jealousy and betrayal, but there're also cyborgs. The question is, do 'bots have feelings, too?

Kate Bingaman-Burt's blog-to-book Obsessive Consumption: What Did You Buy Today? (Princeton Architectural Press, May 1) has gotten shouts everywhere from DIY microblogs to The New York Times Magazine. It's her daily drawings of purchases — everything from a new iPad (June 8) to a buck's worth of espresso beans (April 22) — that draws such vastly different crowds to this honest take on consumer culture. So what'd Bingaman-Burt sketch the day her book was published? A $2.99 jar of tamarind concentrate. Way to celebrate, Kate.