This Week in God: Da Vinci Code Edition

Yesterday I mentioned John Keegan's latest book, The Iraq War. The book is meant to be an overview of the conflict, yet in the eyes of most people the Iraq War is still brewing. Yes, large scale military operations have long been over with, but, with breaking news coming from the region daily, one suspects that the history books, looking back, will not describe this conflict as being finished. As such, it is difficult to look at Keegan's book as a definitive overview of this war. This is Janet Maslin's take in today's New York Times (she also thinks that Keegan's angle is too Western and "snobbish.") My suspicion is that this book was rushed to completion and into book stores by the publisher in order to get in on the brisk sales of Iraq-related titles. Undoubtedly, a little temporal distance from the subject matter would have improved Keegan's effort.Lovers of architecture and books alike are raving about Seattle's new Central Library, a graceful steel and glass structure designed by the Dutch architect, Rem Koolhaas. Here's praise from the Seattle Times, and here's the official website with pictures. One of the more interesting aspects of the new library: the stacks are laid out on continuous, unbroken shelves that spiral through the center of the building.A few months ago there was an interesting article in the New Yorker about one of the world's lost treasures, the Amber Room, "an entire chamber paneled and ornamented in amber presented to Peter the Great of Russia in 1717 by King Frederick William of Prussia as a gift to seal the friendship between their two states." The New Yorker article described the search for the room, thought to have been hidden in Germany by the Nazis during World War II, as well as the construction of a costly replica of the room that was being built in Russia. As with much that occurred behind the Iron Curtain, there was much doubt about the true fate of the Amber Room. Now, in a book entitled The Amber Room: The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure by Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark, new evidence is revealed that solves the mystery once and for all. Read an edited extract from the book.

Lulu, a self-publishing outfit, went back through 50 years of New York Times fiction bestseller lists and determined that the average age of the bestselling author is 50 and a half (via BBC). It makes sense in that the upper reaches of that list are often dominated by franchise-type writers - Stephen King and Danielle Steel are cited - whose careers plateau at a point where every book they write goes to number one, no matter the quality. A younger writer with few books under his or her belt has no reputation to ride on, but the middle-aged writer can ride on reputation to year after year of number ones. But NYT bestsellers are kind of a bore, I'd be more curious about the average ages of the winners of different prizes. Regardless, it almost goes without saying that the most exciting voices in fiction are younger than 50, except for the ones who aren't.

Subscribers to the literary magazine One Story receive, you guessed it, one story in the mail about every three weeks. The magazine isn't as chic as it could be (the choice of title font, for instance, sometimes makes me cringe), but the issues are lightweight and easy to stuff in your purse or back pocket. The stories vary in style and content, and I've been impressed with quite a few. And plus, they're fun to receive in the mail, and even more fun to give away once you've finished them.The magazine recently unveiled a prettier website, which still includes the features I've always liked. You can check out the first lines of every story published by the magazine, as well as short interviews with each writer about his or her story and the process of creating it. It's interesting to see how different everyone's process is: one writer wrote his story in three nights, while another worked on hers for over a year. In these interviews, One Story always asks the writer to share the best writing advice ever received. Some people quote secondhand advice, while others share nuggets of wisdom from a past instructor. On a few occasions, I've written this stuff down, either for myself or for my students (or both).

You recall a couple of weeks ago when I previewed The Morning News 2007 Tournament of Books. As it turns out, they've incorporated a contest for readers - an office pool - into this year's Tournament and I'm involved. How to play along:Here's how the contest works. In addition to this year's brackets, below you'll find a set of brackets filled out by each of our selected Office Pool Book Bloggers. Review them, then select the one you think is the most likely to win - the bloggers will be scored for each match they predict correctly, with scores updated each day of the Tournament. Email us at the address below with the name of the blogger you like in the email subject line, and your full contact information in the body of the email. (You can only enter once.) We'll randomly select one reader for each blogger to "play for," and the winning blogger's reader will win every book in the tournament, courtesy of Powell's Books. Note: The contest will close at 6 p.m. EST this Wednesday, March 7So, go there and pick The Millions' bracket, there could be a whole bunch of books in it for you.