Anne Margaret Daniel

Teacher, New School University

I have my own opinions on former film versions, and I think they all fail for the same reason: Fitzgerald's language has already done all the cinematic work for the actors, directors, set designers and producers. Baz Luhrmann's new movie may well supersede the earlier film Gatsbys, but can it supersede the novel?

Marilyn Wedge, Ph.D.

Family Therapist; Author

Most writers, including myself, present a preferred reality to their readers. It is only natural for a writer to selectively choose or cherry pick outcomes in order to portray a certain image.

Bobby Elliott

Poet and writer living in New York City

Comparing Don Share's new Miguel Hernández with The Selected Poems highlights both of their graces -- Share's translations, on the whole, prove the more literal. But Share hasn't sacrificed a thing by being loyal where others have been liberal.

Dave Astor

Author, 'Comic (and Column) Confessional'

With marriage equality in the news this year, it's worth noting that 2013 also marks the 40th anniversary of the pioneering novel Rubyfruit Jungle.

Khanh Ho

Writer, Scholar, Activist

The debates are all about drawing a line in the sand: a line of culture and merit and standards. This is all well and good until you realize that this line is constantly being redrawn, rubbed out, revisited.

Peter Clothier

Author and Blogger, The Buddha Diaries

I read the last pages of The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes before turning out the light last night. I wanted to like it more than I actually did. I wanted to like the narrator more than I did.

Ilana Teitelbaum

Writer

There's a reason that each new fantasy novel by Guy Gavriel Kay is met with so much excitement by a core of devoted readers. These are books in which everything happens, yet the threads of story inexorably tangle us in something that goes much deeper.

Yoani Sanchez

Award-winning Cuban blogger

Vargas Llosa and his literature are responsible, in a direct and "premeditated" way, for much of what I am today: from my matrimonial happiness and my aversion to totalitarianism, to my having reneged on philology and turned to journalism.

Andrew Offenburger

Ph.D. Candidate in history, Yale University

Spouses and families contribute to an individual's professional success, no doubt. But how should they be acknowledged?

Nicki Richesin

Author and Freelance Journalist

Yvette van Boven's cookbooks seem sprinkled with fairy dust. Her latest one, Home Made Summer, is filled with her fanciful drawings, tempting recipes, and her husband's evocative photographs.

Malik Siraj Akbar

Editor in Chief, 'The Baloch Hal'; Author; Contributing Writer

It is simply hard to overlook today's South Asia because of the enormous challenges it faces and economic opportunities it offers. South Asia, especially India, offers remarkable opportunities of economic cooperation for the United States.

Cilla McCain

Author

To musicians like Bob Dylan or John Lennon, legendary music producer Phil Spector was the go-to genius who could help make their recordings phenomenal. To the public-at-large he is a deranged individual who should have never been allowed out of his castle. But to Nicole Audrey Spector, he is simply Dad.

Matt Mason

Vice President Of Marketing, BitTorrent

For many of us, traditional publishing approaches will not work. But there's more than one option for authors looking to hack bestseller lists.

Maryka Biaggio

Novelist

Márai's novel Embers is so touching that it should be widely known, and I, who pride myself on being familiar with such obscure gems as Zeno's Conscience and Wide Sargasso Sea, am puzzled and shaken by my failure to have previously unearthed it.

Catherine McKenzie

Author of 'Spin,' 'Arranged,' 'Forgotten'

I had never read, or even heard of, Harlan Coben before, and this despite the fact that he's sold more than 50 million books worldwide. My bad.

Jason Lutes

Professor, Center for Cartoon Studies

In 1978, at the age of eleven, I discovered the game Dungeons & Dragons. It was my salvation from the suburban wasteland in which my friends and I found ourselves.

Ben Goldacre

Physician, author

Doctors need the results of clinical trials to make informed choices, with their patients, about which treatment to use. But the best currently available evidence estimates that half of all clinical trials, for the treatments we use today, have never been published.