The Sf Chronicles reviews Jim Shepard‘s You Think That’s Bad: “Each one of these 11 stories stands out for its masterly fusion of technique and subject.” The short story collection also made the Long Beach Press-Telegram’s “10 Summer Books that Cry Out for a Read” list.

Bookforum posts a video of the messiah protagonist from Adam Levin‘s The Instructions making a deadly weapon in a kitchen.

Daniel Orozco creates the soundtrack accompaniment to his collection, Orientation, on Largehearted Boy.

Paste admires Lidia Yuknavitch‘s Chronology of Water, observing that the narrative “takes place entirely off-shore, metaphorically speaking. Nothing about her life has followed the map.”

Washington Post reviews Tayari Jones‘ Silver Sparrow: “Populating this absorbing novel is a vivid cast of characters, each with his own story.”

L Magazine’s “Questionnaire for Writer Types” approaches Tracy K. Smith, author of the poetry collection Life on Mars, asking her: “Have you ever written anything that you’d like to take back?”

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The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reviews Tayari Jones‘ Silver Sparrow, praising the way “the exchanges between mothers and daughters are often moving and always ring true.”

The Poetry Foundation points out how Tracy K. Smith‘s poetry collection Life on Mars jumped 23 spots on the contemporary best seller list to land at number 3, just behind Billy Collins’ Horoscopes for the Dead. Rumpus reader Taylor Hagood reviews Life on Mars, writing that Smith has ” established herself as a poet who continues to work out the nuances of body and spirit while also ranging literally into other parts of the universe.”

Reviews of Deborah Baker‘s The Convert appeared in the Chicago Tribune and in the Huffington Post’s “Religion Summer Reading List.” “Baker’s book remarkably mirrors Jameelah’s vexing life,” writes Tribune reviewer Eric Banks, referring to the author and the protagonist.

The Indie Bookseller’s Choice Awards honored Adam Levin‘s The Instructions with one of their first annual awards.

Chicago Reader discusses Lidia Yuknavitch‘s The Chronology of Water, beginning with some flattery: “The Chronology of Water plays with language, but it also brings an extra dimension to the wordsmith memoir: it’s a sputteringly good read.”

The Outlet takes on Daniel Orozco‘s Orientation, claiming that the real magic of Orozco’s collection is “his ability to convince us that these characters exist, that they are just like us, and that if we could dip from consciousness to consciousness to view each one from the inside—the way a god’s eye might in one quick flash behold an entire life in an instant—then we might know better than to fume over a botched office romance, or pull a trigger and kill a man for no good reason, or spend a life grieving over some sad thing we wish we had never seen.”

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“I took sparrow from the hymn ‘His Eye Is On The Sparrow’ — being the sparrow is the least among us,” Jones told NPR. “Because I think that’s what Dana [the protagonist] is, she’s a silver sparrow.” Listen to an interview of Jones and read an excerpt of Silver Sparrow on the NPR website.

Poor Sap Publishing blogger John Francisconi is taken by Silver Sparrow and Jones’ control of language: “The most remarkable part of Silver Sparrow is its pacing. The novel moves at a very steady rhythm, Jones’s words on the page like musical notes.”

Francisconi also writes up Daniel Orozco‘s Orientation, noting: “Each of Orozco’s characters is made real by his vivid and sharp characterizations, and they’re each burdened with pain, prettified by his prose.”

The Boston Phoenix interviews Orozco here.

PBS Newshour interviews Tracy K. Smith, author of Life on Mars, a poetry collection which explores the human relationship with the universe. Watch the video of the interview.

Tablet ran a feature on Deborah Baker‘s The Convert, a “strange and haunting story” about a Jewish woman who converts to Islam. “To read The Convert is to begin to understand the appeal of that world to someone at sea in ours.”

The New York Times writes: “Deborah Baker is a serious biographer who specializes in fairly crazy writers.” The Times reviewer commends Baker for proving “how a marginal case can be an illuminating way into vast and much disputed subjects, in this instance the meeting of West and East and the role of women under orthodox Islam.”

Jewcy also reviews Baker’s book: “All in all, I’d say this book is a beautiful illustration of a profoundly unique person, Maryam Jameelah. If you like a biography with a twist, The Convert is for you.”

Christy DeSmith, of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, finds Jameelah’s letters to her parents the most beguiling aspect of The Convert: “they’re intelligent and witty and riddled with religious hypocrisy, not to mention bouts of psychotherapy and mental illness.”

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The Book Spy blog spots Levin on the subway and wonders about his flashy jacket.

May’s book club selections are Daniel Orozco‘s short story collection Orientation and Tayari Jones‘ novel Silver Sparrow.

Of Orientation, Yiyun Li writes: “The stories in this collection make one marvel at the bigness of their creator’s mind—each of them has the depth and scope of a novel.”

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Sean Singer explains why he chose Tracy K. Smith‘s Life on Mars as a Poetry Club Pick.

Bookslut reviews Jim Shepard‘s You Think That’s Bad.

The Globe and Mail does too, gushing that it’s “a collection of exquisitely crafted, piercingly intelligent, heart-stoppingly beautiful short stories.”

Scared off by the heft of Adam Levin‘s The Instructions? Bookslut’s Adam Morgan, in his intro to an interview with Levin, convinces you to give it a shot: “To be sure, it’s a long book, but only physically. Reading it is an immediate, visceral experience that subconsciously forces you to become a different kind of reader. You will forget the notion of page numbers, and then, all of sudden, realize that you’ve blazed through several hundred in one sitting.”

Lydia Yuknavitch‘s The Chronology of Water shows up on the Publisher’s Weekly blog. Her Rumpus essay on “The Urgent Matter of Books” also earned a shout-out from The New Yorker’s Book Bench.

Book Club authors Jim Shepard and Lydia Yuknavitch will appear at this Monday’s Rumpus Event, “No Mistakes Left To Make,” along with Cheryl Strayed, Paul Madonna, and Dylan Landis. Don’t you dare miss out!

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TimeOut Chicago’s Jonathan Messinger praises Shepard’s adroit use of research throughout the narrative.

The Sycamore Review examines Noelle Kocot‘s A Bigger World.

After SLOG’s Paul Constant took Lydia Yuknavitch‘s The Chronology of Water with him to lunch, he was interviewed about his reaction to the book. “Her body threatened to rise up from every single page I read,” Constant said of the author. “She’s a furious badass, and I am attracted/revulsed.”

Megan, who works at Powell’s Bookstore in Portland, says of The Chronology of Water: “If I had to recommend one book that I’ve read in the last three years, it would be this one.”

Last week, poet Dean Young got a new heart (he suffers from a degenerative heart disease). A Hunter College blog relays the details, and posts a wonderful poem by Young about the body: Across the bay, fireworks punched/ luminous bruises in the fog./ If only my body wasn’t borrowed from dust!

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The LA Times reviews Jim Shepard‘s You Think That’s Bad: “These stories bring their first-person narrators right up to the point of obliteration, leaving us exhilarated and despairing at once.”

New York Times critic Thomas Mallone writes that Shepard’s “preference for historical quests, for real people’s big gestures, may help keep American short fiction from falling asleep in the snug little precincts of its usual subject matter.”

The Rumpus Book Club interviews Lidia Yuknavitch. Dawn West of PANK writes of Yuknavitch’s The Chronology of Water: “The reader is intimately aware of the body, her body, and what bodies go through.” Caleb Powell reviews Chronology for Bookslut. The Oregonian calls it “a courageous and saucy book.”

David Orr takes on public poetry in the latest issue of Poetry—”public poetry” being “the ocean of humanity that votes in elections, watches the Super Bowl, and generally makes America what it is, for better and worse.” In Timothy Donnelly‘s Cloud Corporation, he finds a voice willing to connect, both whimsically and desperately, with the questions that confront not only the poet, but also the sea of people swimming around him, humanity as a whole.

Maureen N. McClane interviews Donnelly for the Boston Review.

Bhanu Kapil talks about poem-essays, using Jena Osman’s The Network as an example, on the Poetry Foundation website.

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For May, book club editors just couldn’t make up their minds, so they’re trying something unusual: half of book club members will receive Daniel Orozco‘s story collection Orientation, while the other half will get Tayari Jones‘s Silver Sparrow. It’s a mystery flavor surprise!

Today marks the first day of National Poetry Month, and The Rumpus will feature a new poem every day. First on the queue: a poem by Shane Book, author of poetry club selection Ceiling of Sticks.

Jim Shepard‘s You Think That’s Bad is blowing up. The reviews published in the last week or two are too many to count, but here’s a selection of some of the more notable:

• NPR shows how You Think That’s Bad orbits around the theme of disaster.
• The Plain Dealer thinks the novel’s characters don’t harbor much emotion.
• The Kansas City Star takes a look at peculiar professions within the novel.
• “In Shepard’s hands the sense of doom is often transformed by the biting wit and his deep affection for his characters and their fates,” writes The Boston Globe.
• The Daily Beast calls Shepard “the most ambitious story writer around.”
• The Faster Times says Shepard is “author as moonwalker, bounding lightly across such varied terrain, effortless and graceful.”
• “Mr. Shepard makes you forget his copious research as you’re pulled into his exotic imagination,” writes The Wall Street Journal, though it also warns: “pick and choose these Shepard stories over time. Despite its varied subject matter, You Think That’s Bad, when read all at once, feels oddly uniform

Book Club member Josh Anastasia reviews our March pick,  Lydia Yuknavitch‘s The Chronology of Water.

Barbara King, from Science and Religion Today, writes about rock passages interlaced through Yuknavitch’s writing: “No animism-account, geological discourse, or close-schist encounter ever made me see rocks and feel rocks like Yuknavitch has.”

Adam Levin‘s The Instructions was chosen as a finalist for the NY Public Library’s 2011 Young Lions Fiction Award, along with John Brandon‘s Citrus County. Both books were published by McSweeney’s Press.

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Lidia Yuknavitch‘s sentences can be rambling and unorthodox, says Books and Brews blogger of her new book The Chronology of Water. “Easily the most important thing to grasp from this memoir is the idea that memory is an ever-shifting entity.” Read more, and watch the book video here.

Who influenced Deus Ex Machina author Andrew Altschul? Raymond Carver, Salman Rushdie, John Irving, and more. Read why on Courier-Journal.com

So you think you’re a poet? Noelle Kocot has written 1,300 new poems since the release of her most recent collection, The Bigger World. Marvel at this prolific writer by reading the Rumpus Poetry Club interview with Kocot.

News of the strange: Tao Lin was reportedly riding a bus this week that got pulled over  because the driver seemed drunk. Upon further investigation, it turns out police suspicions were founded, and the driver was arrested. True to his nature, Lin spent the duration of the experience sending out Twitter updates.

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Rumpus Book Club member, Anna Newbold, shares her thoughts about last month’s Book Club selection, Jim Shepard’s You Think That’s Bad, ruminating on the book’s familial relationships and rivalries.

Bomb magazine’s Christie Hodgen interviews Shepard about his historical protagonists, the unity of a short-story collection, and the intersection of his short fiction and film.

Largehearted Boy posts a musical playlist for Roy Kesey’s Pacazo, created by Kesey himself; among the songs compiled, “Complemento,” by an amazing Colombian rock group, Aterciopelados.

Guernica interviews Timothy Donnelly about The Cloud Corporation. “Do you see a Romantic influence playing out in your work at all? Are you a Romantic?” asks writer Sean Patrick Hill.

Shane Book’s poem “Almost Spain”  has made the shortlist for the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Centre) Literacy Awards. His collection Ceiling of Sticks also won a Prairie Schooner Book Prize.

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