Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary by Stefan Fatsis (Atlantic Monthly Press). Reviewed by Randy Cepuch. “His lifelong love of dictionaries led him to do a story for Slate about how rapidly things were changing in lexicography (noun: ‘the process of writing, editing, or compiling a dictionary’). Historically, it took many years to produce new editions, and they were almost always somewhat outdated upon arrival because new words are perpetually entering common use, existing words taking on new meanings, and old ones becoming obsolete.”

The Mind Reels: A Novel by Fredrik deBoer (Coffee House Press). Reviewed by Samantha Neugebauer. “Unfortunately, the stretch between the book’s strong opening and Alice’s breakdown — and again before its cliffhanger ending — is bogged down by persistent telling and summarizing rather than showing, all alongside feeble character dynamics and heavy-handed dialogue. The friendship between Alice and her college roommate, for instance, is so flat and forced that it’s difficult to feel any pain or grief at its demise. The same is true for Alice’s other relationships, including her most lasting romantic connection and a cloudy childhood friendship.”

Electric Spark: The Enigma of Dame Muriel by Frances Wilson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Reviewed by Ellen Prentiss Campbell. “Spark’s voice as letter-writer is brittle, funny, and deliberately shocking. An annotated collection of her voluminous correspondence would be good reading; here, the degree of detail is sometimes repetitious. However, Wilson may choose overabundance to provide primary-source testimony and supporting evidence. Spark was, the reader learns, a most unreliable narrator of her own life.”

Emerald City Blues: A Novel by H. Lee Barnes (University of Nevada Press). Reviewed by Beth Kanell. “The work is hot, hard, and far from sweet, and if this is what it means to be over the rainbow, the film oversold things. Still, Eve quickly makes friends among the other women and settles into a wartime support role that includes — as all the others are doing — dropping a cheerful message into each pair of boots, along with dreams of another kind of ‘over the rainbow’: a secure, married life with one of the unseen men who’ll survive the war.”

what’s with baum?: a novel by Woody Allen (Post Hill Press). Reviewed by Michael Maiello. “What comes through in the prose is Allen’s philosophy about how love happens and how it drives us. In his universe, love is not a choice. One of the tensions in Baum’s life is that he made a clumsy pass at a young reporter after she fawned over his work. It wasn’t a choice: He was overtaken, just like when Titania falls for ass-headed Bottom after swallowing Oberon’s love potion in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (Readers’ discomfort with Allen’s reasoning will likely be in proportion to their discomfort with the abuse charges against him.)”

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