Bookshelf of the Masses

To mark the 100th anniversary of Swann’s Way, the Times published a series of blog posts on the legacy of In Search of Lost Time. Among other things, it includes a reflection by New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik.

Out this week is a highly touted seafaring debut We the Drowned. This book in translation is by Danish writer Carsten Jensen. Another debut effort arriving this week is Open City by Teju Cole, which PW likened to Coetzee, Sebald, and Nicholson Baker. Out in paperback today are Adam Haslett’s Union Atlantic and controversial Millions Hall of Famer Reality Hunger by David Shields.

You may like Scrabble, but are you a Scrabble enthusiast? True devotees of the game amass huge vocabularies of odd and high-scoring words. In The New Republic, Sam Eifling reviews Word Nerd, a new book about the game’s top players.