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It is easy to talk about great ideas as if they were light-bulb moments — sudden epiphanies where everything comes together for you. But Steven Johnson, author of Where Good Ideas Come From, says the great ideas of the past have taken a lot more hanging out than you'd expect.

Author Ayelet Waldman, the author of Bad Mother, recommends three books about motherhood that offer a break from brutal "motherhood is hell" horror stories as well as cloying sentimentality.

After a two-year dry spell, Hollywood's summer blockbusters finally busted some blocks this year. Now, the question is how to keep that momentum going.

In Joyce Maynard's Labor Day, a mysterious stranger enters the life of a single mother and her son for a holiday weekend. Apart from being a successful thriller, the book is a fascinating portrait of what causes a family to founder, and how much it can cost to put it back on the right path.

Journalist P. J. O'Rourke says it's good to be from nowhere... like Toledo, Ohio. That's his hometown. He shares his thoughts about the city. His commentary was published in full form in the book, Good Roots: Writers Reflect on Growing Up in Ohio.

The last thing a grad student needs is another reading list, but don't worry — this one will help. Author Adam Ruben recommends three titles that will help you get through the languorous slog of post-baccalaureate education.

George Orwell's dystopian vision offers such devastating political commentary that it's rarely described as a suspense novel. But author and former CIA operative Barry Eisler says the book simply proves just how powerful a thriller with a message can be.

Writer Lev Grossman was raised on a strict diet of literary classics — until he discovered T.H. White's masterful retelling of the King Arthur tale. In The Once and Future King, what was once as stiff and two-dimensional as a medieval tapestry becomes rich and real and devastatingly sad.

Filmmaker Julia Reichert died Thursday at age 76. She chronicled the fortunes of working-class people, especially women, with powerful movies such as "American Factory" and "Union Maids."

The newest version of Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" raised a $1 million within a few minutes of its release on Tuesday. Critics say the song still sends the wrong message about Africa.