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Jeff Gordinier is one of our guest bloggers during the week of February 2nd. If you have any questions for Jeff Gordinier, add a comment to any of his posts. Here is some more information about X Saves the World:

In this simultaneously hilarious and incisive "manifesto for a generation that's never had much use for manifestos," Gordinier suggests that for the first time since the "Smells Like Teen Spirit"breakthrough of the early 1990s, Gen X has what it takes to rescue American culture from a state of collapse. Over the past twenty years, the so-called "slackers"have irrevocably changed countless elements of our culture-from the way we watch movies to the way we make sense of a cracked political process to the way the whole world does business.

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Catherine Blyth is one of our guest bloggers during the week of February 2nd. If you have any questions for Catherine Blyth , add a comment to any of her posts. Here is some more information about The Art of Conversation:

A wide-ranging, exhortatory look at the pleasures of great conversation, including strategies for how to bring it about, from the witty pen of an Englishwoman wise in its ways

In The Art of Conversation, Catherine Blyth eloquently points out the sorry state of disrepair that conversation has fallen into-and then, taking examples from history, literature, philosophy, anthropology, and popular culture, she gives us the tools to rebuild. Her prose embodies the conversational values she promotes: It's smart, succinct, self-deprecating, and light on its feet.

The Art of Conversation isn't about etiquette, elocution, or knowing how to hold your teacup with your little finger crooked just so. It's about something simple and profound: connecting. In our distracted days, it's easy to forget that each of us possesses a communication technology that has been in research and development for thousands of years. Conversation costs nothing, but can bring you the world.

Blyth offers us a chance to revel in the possibilities of conversation. As Alexander Pope nearly wrote, "True ease in talking comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learned to dance." Okay, Pope was actually talking about writing, but Catherine Blyth has that skill as well. When you have read The Art of Conversation, you'll not only know the steps, but hear the music like never before.

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This past year, Singapore Airlines has begun flying all-business-class flights across the Pacific - Newark to Singapore and Los Angeles to Singapore will start in September.  The demand for business class seats is apparently enormous, so this new venture sounds like it makes perfect business sense.  But the psychological scientist in me wonders whether, at the end of the day, this will prove to be such a good idea.

The reason for my hesitation is that, as growing research shows, people adapt quickly and easily to anything positive that ever happens to them.  When you move into a beautiful new apartment with a view, when you obtain 20/20 vision through LASIK, when you buy a hip new hybrid, and even when you tie the knot, you get an immediate boost of happiness from the new and improved circumstances, but unfortunately the thrill only lasts for a short time.  Over the coming days, weeks, and months, you find yourself taking your new apartment, eyesight, car, and marriage completely and utterly for granted.

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Author of Dead Certain Robert Draper paints a portrait of Mr. Bush as a staunch optimist, supremely confident in his views and judgments and heedless of bad news and disconfirming information.  Needless to say, a strong argument could be made that his dead certainty and abundant confidence have led him to make some policy errors with grave consequences for his administration, his party, and the country.  From assuming that we'd be happily welcomed as liberators in Iraq, to proclaiming "mission accomplished" in 2004, to spending the political capital he claimed to have earned with his 2004 election on such undeniably risky (and arguably ill-advised) propositions as the overhaul of social security and the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, Mr. Bush's compulsive confidence and optimism are partly responsible for his plummeting approval ratings, his party's loss of the House and Senate, and the nation's inchoate sense of unease.

As an experimental social psychologist, my job is not to analyze anyone's personality, let alone an individual whom I've never seen larger than in a 42-inch image.  However, Draper's characterizations of Bush lead me to ask, "How much optimism and confidence is good for world leaders and how much is too much?"

» Kelly Link shares a ghost story and reads an excerpt from her short story collection.

» Listen to other Penguin Podcasts.

Kelly Link, Pretty Monsters, Podcast

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I've been traveling so much lately that I've started to play a little game by guessing what reading material people tend to bring on airplanes.  One of the most frequently sighted books?  The Secret.  No surprise there.  Rhonda Byrne's book, which followed a popular DVD, will be celebrating its one-and-a-half-year anniversary atop the bestseller lists on May 28.  I've been told about it, gushingly, not only by my new agey crunchy granola friends (OK, I live in LA), but by my more ordinarily skeptical friends as well.

"OK," they say, "We know that the law of attraction [which argues that you can manifest or attract whatever your heart desires, from Prada bags to husbands] sounds ridiculous.  But it works!  It has truly, sincerely, and genuinely made me happier."

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Laurie Halse Anderson receives Margaret A. Edwards Award,  The Moon Over Star Awarded Coretta Scott King Honor & Jerk, California wins Schneider Family Book Award

New York, NY...January 26, 2009 - The American Library Association (ALA) announced today that SAVVY by Ingrid Law and AFTER TUPAC AND D FOSTER by Jacqueline Woodson have both received 2009 John Newbery Honors for outstanding contributions to children's literature, Laurie Halse Anderson has received the Margaret A. Edwards Award for her significant and lasting contribution to writing for teens, and that JERK, CALIFORNIA (Speak; September 2008) by Jonathan Friesen has been awarded The Schneider Family Book Award for teens.

Savvy (Dial Books; May 2008) is the story of the Beaumonts, an eclectic family who can move mountains, stir up hurricanes and spark electricity. Each of them possess a "savvy"- a special power that erupts when they turn thirteen - and young Mibs Beaumont is celebrating her big birthday in two days.  Mibs is eager to blow out her thirteen candles, but more importantly, she can't wait to discover her savvy.  When her day arrives, she finds herself on an odyssey that will force her to make sense of growing up - and of others, who also might have a few secrets hidden just beneath their skin. Savvy was published under the joint venture between Dial, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group and Walden Media. The film is in active development with Karen Janszen attached to pen the screenplay.

Ingrid Law is a big fan of words and stories, small towns and big ideas. Born in New York, Ingrid's family moved to Colorado when she was six years old. Now the mother of a teenage daughter, Ingrid still lives in Colorado, where she is hard at work on her next book.

Read an excerpt of Savvy

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Penguin Group (USA) Tops 2008 Publishers Weekly Bestseller Lists

Publishers Weekly recently announced its 2008 bestseller list leaders and Penguin Group (USA) was recognized for its outstanding number of bestsellers.

In an overview essay, PW’s Daisy Maryles wrote: “On the paperback side, Penguin USA had the most impressive performance—32.5% of all paperback slots, a gain of more than 8% in just one year ... In 2008, Penguin had five of the 13 longest-running trade paperback bestsellers (Eat, Pray, Love, Three Cups of Tea, The Kite Runner, A New Earth and The Friday Night Knitting Club), with a total of 205 weeks on the 2008 charts; that adds up to 27% of all available slots on the weekly trade paper lists. Two of its titles—Eat, Pray, Love and Three Cups of Tea— were the only two books last year on the charts every week in 2008.”

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Here’s the thing about anabolic steroids. If they’re bad for guys, they must be really, really bad for girls.

And yet, if I were a teenager today, wouldn’t I be tempted?

I played in the “old days” when girls’ sports were a whisper and not a glory. We wore tunics for basketball, old wool things that made us sweat like linebackers. We played softball on a Little-League baseball field and I—a wicked pull hitter—routinely put the ball in the pond on the foul side of third base. (What…you think we actually had fences?) We played field hockey games on the football practice field, dodging rocks and kicking up dust. There were no accolades and no fan base (not even parents). Except for the gymnasts, who looked really good in their leotards, we all hid the fact that we were varsity athletes.

Title IX changed everything.

NBC will air a two-part, four-hour miniseries of Raymond Khoury's New York Times bestselling novel The Last Templar (Signet) this weekend.  Oscar-winner Mira Sorvino stars as Tess Chaykin, a Manhattan archeologist who is pulled into an international mystery when four horsemen, dressed as Templar knights, burst into a gala celebrating Vatican artifacts at the Metropolitan Museum. During the chaos they steal one specific treasure and vanish into the night.  FBI Agent Sean Daley, played by Scott Foley (The Unit, Felicity), is also put on the case and together with Tess, sets off on an amazing adventure in hopes of finding the truth behind the Templar Knights' greatest secret.

The Last Templar runs on NBC (channel 4 in the NYC area) on January 25 and 26, 2009 at 9:00 pm.  For more information about the film visit www.nbc.com/the-last-templar. Current editions of the Signet paperback feature a burst on the cover with information about the movie and more information about Raymond Khoury and the novel can be found both at the Penguin Books site and Raymond Khoury's web site.