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Certain writers have put in such long, fruitful lifetimes of accrued, critical erudition, it finally can't matter how you may privately feel about their fiction (good, bad, indifferent). Joyce Carol Oates qualifies as one such laureate. If you've any interest in the writing process, in how writers think about their own and others' works, in literature at its most serious, try simply grazing in the first few pages of Oates' new compendium of essays, lectures and reviews: "Soul at the White Heat: Inspiration, Obsession, and the Writing Life." [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Remember letters? Taking pen to paper and expressing your love, friendship, congratulations or condolences, sometimes even writing a practice draft on scratch paper, so once you committed to the good stationery, it would be perfect? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It was Mark Sarigianis' inspiration to take his $10 used copy of Charles Bukowski's lowbrow paperback novel, "Ham on Rye," and turn it into a higher form of book art - with handmade paper, woodcut illustrations, a pigskin leather cover and a $3,500 list price for each of its 52 copies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

On my neighborhood walks, I'm always happy to come upon a Little Free Library to see what books are gone and what's been added since the last time I looked. Some of these neighborhood nooks were stocked with toilet paper and wipes in March, when such things were in short supply. Others have apples and plums from backyard harvests at their base. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

On paper, Stephanie Danler might inspire a bit of eye-rolling. She is young, pretty and well-educated, and her lifelong dream to become a writer exceeded her expectations when her first novel, "Sweetbitter," became a New York Times bestseller. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When you want to understand complicated things, it helps to have words and pictures. Which is why a whole generation of Americans can't think of Congress without thinking of Schoolhouse Rock's plucky sheet of paper singing, "I'm Just a Bill." [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The day after the Tubbs Fire, Brian Fies stood in line at Target. His cart was loaded with the essentials he'd need to start over: shoes, socks, underwear, two black Sharpies, four highlighters - orange, yellow, blue and pink - and a medium weight 70-sheet sketchbook. Drawings and dialogue were spinning in his head, and he had to get them onto paper before he could even begin the process of recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The same team that collaborated on the Newbery winner "On Market Street" is back with another picture book focused on a loving family of little means. Plot: At 7, Carmela gets her birthday wish: to finally scooter to town with her big brother. But he doesn't want her tagging along to the laundromat, vegetable stand and bodega. She is annoying. Still, he comes to the rescue when her chance at a "dandelion" wish is almost lost. Child-like collaged paintings place Carmela near the farm fields her father once worked, while several pages with Mexican papel picado represent wishful thinking: that her father returns home, his papers fixed, and that her mother sleeps in a fancy hotel bed, not just makes it. Graceful writing further helps transform a testy sibling relationship into something better in one hard-pressed, hard-working Latino family. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

On Nov. 23, 1849, Dr. George Parkman, a wealthy Boston Brahmin, ordered sugar and butter at his neighborhood grocery store and asked the clerk to hold a paper bag with lettuce for him for five minutes. Apparently, he then visited Harvard Medical School, his alma mater. When the perennially punctilious Parkman failed to appear at the remainder of his afternoon appointments, his family grew alarmed. The police conducted a massive manhunt and a reward for information about his whereabouts was offered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Much attention has been paid, understandably, to Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani woman who was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman and has since become a global activist and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate. But Yousafzai is not alone: Around the world, countless young women have fought for their rights, in the present day and in the distant past. Many of these inspirational figures are included in the third book by activists and artists Kate Schatz and Miriam Klein Stahl. Like their previous collaborations, "Rad Women Worldwide" and "Rad American Women A-Z," "Rad Girls Can: Stories of Bold, Brave, and Brilliant Young Women" (Ten Speed Press; $16.99) showcases short, spirited profiles complemented by Stahl's distinctive paper-cut portraits. Schatz and Stahl, both of whom live in the Bay Area, will launch their new book this week. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For a long time, while Oakland author Hilary Zaid was writing her debut novel, the book went without a name or even a working title. Then, during her research, she eventually came upon a traditional Yiddish lullaby, "Paper Is White." [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For a generation of Americans, Daniel Ellsberg was a household name. The intrepid former defense policy analyst has reemerged in the nation's eye on the heels of his new book "Doomsday Machine" and following the portrayal of the frenzy caused by his release of the Pentagon Papers in Steven Spielberg's "The Post." [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Daniel Ellsberg is admired by millions, but in the 46 years since he leaked the Pentagon Papers - a noble deed that helped end the Vietnam War - he's been nagged by the notion that his work remains incomplete. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For two months in 1913, the San Francisco Bulletin published daily installments of the autobiography of an anonymous prostitute the paper called Alice Smith. Her story, despite the impact it had on society at the time, was nearly forgotten and is collected for the first time in more than 100 years in "Alice: Memoirs of a Barbary Coast Prostitute." The book has been published by Heyday, the independent nonprofit publisher based in Berkeley. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

"To be a poet does not necessarily mean that you have to write words on paper." So said, years ago, the man who won the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

BOSTON - Make them an offer they can't refuse and a massive collection of "The Godfather" author Mario Puzo's papers can be yours. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Rachel Cantor's second novel, "Good on Paper," is a book about translation in its many forms. First and foremost, the plot centers on an act of literary translation. In 1999, Shira Greene, a onetime doctoral student and current temp worker and single mother, receives a mysterious request from the Nobel Prize-winning poet Romei to translate his latest work from Italian into English. This work, a poetry-prose hybrid, will resemble Dante's "La Vita Nuova"; it will also reconfigure and rethink Romei's own previous verse. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Imagine the red and white stripes of a candy cane. Now imagine them on the Golden Gate Bridge. That's the design the Army proposed for the bridge when it was built in 1933. Don't believe it? "This is true. This is a factual book," writes Dave Eggers with characteristic dry wit in "This Bridge Will Not Be Gray" (McSweeney's; 104 pages; $19.95). Yes, this is a children's book, but one need not be a child to warm to its celebration of a span that is "bold and courageous and unusual and even strange." Tucker Nichols, who co-wrote and illustrated the equally playful "Crabtree," breathes life into the bridge's origins with colorful cut-paper art. This being a McSweeney's book, there's a cool design element: The jacket unfolds into a charming poster of the bridge in all its non-gray glory. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Following President Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066, issued on Feb. 19, 1942, more than 120,000 Japanese - American citizens and noncitizens - living in California, Oregon and Washington were incarcerated by the War Relocation Administration in "camps" in other parts of the United States and Hawaii. Although no American of Japanese descent had been convicted of espionage or sabotage, the mass evacuation, a product of racism and public hysteria, was justified as a "military necessity." "A Jap is a Jap. There is no way to determine their loyalty," Lt. Gen. John DeWitt declared. "We can cover their legal situation … in spite of the Constitution," Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy said in a memo. "The Constitution is just a scrap of paper to me." [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

At one point in Tom McCarthy's new novel, "Satin Island," the narrator, a man called U. reads a disturbing story in the newspaper: A parachutist has plummeted to his death in England, and the police are "treating the death as suspicious." U. quickly becomes obsessed with the accident, checking the papers for updates, wondering where the crime scene is really located: Is it where the parachutist hit the ground? Where he pulled the defective cords midair? Where the cords were (perhaps) cut? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

I’m old enough to not quite take it for granted that as I type this on a laptop, eventually to hit “send,” I am thus speeding written words to what could be a nearly limitless distribution. I once used “carbon paper” to make a single copy of work that was smudged with corrected typos. But until now I haven’t sufficiently grasped that the definitive innovation behind the computer is glass — the same stuff through which I look out my window. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]