Wow, its been a few weeks since I've graced The Buyer's Corner with my presence. I didn't mean to be gone that long. I hope everyone enjoyed Bill's musings on Shakespeare in the mean time.

It's been a busy and interesting couple of weeks in the book world. It's no surprise that everyone in the DC area is buzzing about George Tenet's, um, tell-all? Er, tell-some. There's a lot of reviews and Sunday morning commentary going back and forth about whether this book clarifies much beyond the whole "slam dunk" comment, so it's certain to keep the chatter going at a clipped pace in the usual circles.

Speaking of military-political thrillers that are not fiction, I've been reading a book called Blackwater by the journalist Jeremy Scahill. This book grew out of an article he wrote for The Nation in 2005 about Blackwater's confusing deployment in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. If you haven't heard of Blackwater, they are probably the most influential private military company in the world. They provide private security in Afghanistan and Iraq and are highly skilled and trained, and also operate outside of the purview of the US Military. Scahill's meticulously researched book is a riveting account of a major trend in first response to both armed conflicts and natural disasters around the world.

On a lighter note, a couple of very different but very inventive novels are getting a lot of attention. One of which we and I think the rest of the world is eagerly awaiting the reprint shipment on: Christopher Tolkien's shaping of his father J.R.R.'s unfinished pre-pre-quel The Children of Hurin. We've got ample stock coming our way will let you know as soon as it comes back in stock. Not surprisingly, every die-hard Tolkien fan has been eagerly anticipating this previously fabled text. There was even a story on the news about a Russian man who flew from there to be in New York on the morning The Children of Hurin was released so that he could buy it.

And then there's a slight book that's been catching a lot of attention perhaps for its provocative title, The Reluctant Fundamentalist. This is Mohsin Hamid's second novel and it is a smart, taut, and well-constructed meditation on presumption and fear and foreignness in a post 9/11 world. The narrator Changez sits at a cafe in Lahore, Pakistan and speaks conversationally but intensely throughout the book telling a mysterious, burly American who we never meet about his life. He has graduated from Princeton and ensconces himself in prestigious and high-pressure job; this all while he struggles with his desire for and his simultaneous disdain for this American lifestyle. Though very direct in its construction, the book is not simplistic and the conundrum that Changez faces is not so easy to to dismiss.