Leavings from the Banquet Table

What did you read last summer? Salon.com asked several authors that question here.

Colson Whitehead's best book is still his first, The Intuitionist. But based on this excerpt from his upcoming zombie novel (not a typo), his latest looks like a lot of fun.

Speaking of "serious" literary authors choosing to write books about vampires, zombies, and werewolves, The Millions wonders - why the sudden shift to genre?

Speaking of "serious" literary authors who can shift genre at will, the excellent (and new!) Los Angeles Review of Books has a thoughtful piece about David Mitchell, who has written books spanning centuries, featuring ghost narrators, a novel that morphs from 18th century travelogue to hard-boiled noir to dystopian sci-fi (and back again), and another set entirely in a Dutch-trading outpost aside 18th century Japan.