Newsday.com - Books

Talking with Ellen Ruppel Shell: discount culture

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:33:00 -0400

Correspondent for The Atlantic and author of a 2002 report on the obesity epidemic ("The Hungry Gene"), Ellen Ruppel Shell explores complicated issues by delving into their history, putting them in a broad social context and delivering the occasional zingy one-liner. "Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture" (Penguin Press, $22.95), for example, warns us that "sometimes what looks like a bargain is really just a bad loan." Shell's hard-hitting new book catalogs the consequences of low, low prices: poor-quality merchandise, limited shopping choices, underpaid workers with reduced security, jobs shipped overseas, imported food contaminated with bacteria and factory-farmed fish prone to disease, to name just a few. Her exposÃÂ© is all the more persuasive because, as she frankly admitted in a recent conversation with Newsday, she is not immune to the temptation to "drive five miles out of your way to save a buck on a six-pack of beer."

BOOK REVIEW: 'The Favorites' by Mary Yukari Waters

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:33:00 -0400

THE FAVORITES, by Mary Yukari Waters. Scribner, 279 pp., $25.

BOOK REVIEWS: 'Down Around Midnight' I'm Off Then,' 'Vanessa'

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:33:00 -0400

DOWN AROUND MIDNIGHT: A Memoir of Crash and Survival, by Robert Sabbag. Viking, 216 pp., $25.95.

'Heavy Rotation' edited by Peter Terzian

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 19:59:00 -0400

Former Newsday editor Peter Terzian's two loves, literature and music, are married in a lovely ceremony of sorts -- his new anthology, "Heavy Rotation: Twenty Writers on the Albums That Changed Their Lives" (Harper Perennial, $14.99 paper). It's a marriage made in eclecticism -- as the assembled contemporary authors explore everything from "Meet the Beatles!" to Gloria Estefan's "Mi Tierra" to the soundtrack for something titled "Topless Women Talk About Their Lives."

'In the Kitchen' by Monica Ali

Thu, 9 Jul 2009 17:13:00 -0400

IN THE KITCHEN, by Monica Ali. Scribner, 436 pages, $26.99

'The Family Man' by Elinor Lipman

Thu, 9 Jul 2009 17:13:00 -0400

THE FAMILY MAN, by Elinor Lipman. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 305 pp., $25.

'The Servants' Quarters,' 'A Day in the Life'

Thu, 9 Jul 2009 17:13:00 -0400

THE SERVANTS' QUARTERS, by Lynn Freed. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 256 pp., $24.

'The Chosen One,' 'The Last Olympian'

Thu, 2 Jul 2009 17:33:00 -0400

Pop one of these audio books in the car to make any road trip this summer a family pleasure.

'The Bolter' by Frances Osborne

Thu, 2 Jul 2009 17:33:00 -0400

THE BOLTER, by Frances Osborne. Alfred A. Knopf,

'The Angel's Game' by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Thu, 2 Jul 2009 17:33:00 -0400

THE ANGEL'S GAME, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Doubleday, 531 pp., $26.95