The latest incarnation of Newsweek, under the editorship of Tina Brown, arrives on newsstand today. In her introductory editorial, Brown makes a valiant effort to explain why a print weekly still matters today.

Our focus is more narrow; what about books? In recent years, the weekly news magazines have cut back their review sections. On the other hand, Brown’s online publication, The Daily Beast, launched a book section early in 2009. We heard that the new Newsweek would include a book section in each issue, so we had hopes.

We haven’t gotten our hands on the print version yet, but in the online version, the book section is rather meager and buried. The only book feature is “Bookbag: Jodi Picoult’s Picks,” in which the bestselling author shines her light on three novels;  Allison Pearson’s I Think I Love You (Knopf; Feb), Benjamin Hale’s The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore (Twelve/ Grand Central; Jan) and Caroline Leavitt’s Pictures of You (Algonquin; Jan).

Picoult calls Leavitt an “undiscovered jewel.” While not exactly “undiscovered” (Pictures of You was a Costco Pick and it was on the extended NYT Paperback Fiction list), Leavitt does deserve a broader audience (check out Carolyn See’s review in the Washington Post).

Pictures of You Caroline Leavitt Retail Price: $13.95 Paperback: 336 pages Publisher: Algonquin Books – (2011-01-25) ISBN / EAN: 1565126319 / 9781565126312

OverDrive; Adobe EPUB eBook
Highbridge Audio; UNABR; 9781615736553; Library Edition, 9781611741025

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 8th, 2011 at 10:50 am and is filed under Review Sources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.