As I looked through the entries for this week’s Saturday Review, these are the books that caught my eye and were added to my TBR list.

We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. Recommended by Jackie at Farm Lane Books. I’ve seen this one reviewed and recommended elsewhere, and I thought about giving it a try, even though the subject matter is harrowing: a difficult child who grows up to be a violent criminal. I thnk it might give me something to think about, but if it traumatizes and frightens me, I’ll warn the rest of you off.

Q & A by Vikas Swarup, Recommended by Jackie at Farm Lane Books. This book is the source for the new movie Slumdog Millionaire. It sounds like fun.

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister. Recommended by Megan at Leafing Through Life. This review is from an ARC; the book will be out on the 22nd. It sounds sensuous in the best sense of the word.

Justinian’s Flea: The First Great Plague And The End Of The Roman Empire by WIlliam Rosen. Recommended at Blacklin’s Reading Room. I’m always looking for good, quality, and most of all interesting, nonfiction, especially biography and history. I love history, but only if it’s not dry and not weighed down by a bunch of statistics and unimportant minutia. Justinian’s Flea sounds like something I could enjoy learning from.

Endurance: An Epic of Polar Adventure by F.A. Worsley. Recommended by bekahcubed. We watched Kenneth Branagh’s movie about Ernest Shackleton a couple of years ago, so I’m familiar with the basic outlines of the story. However, this memoir by a member of Shackleton’s expedition would be a good read for a winter’s night.

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson will be released in hardcover on March 19, 2009. Presenting Lenore reviews this new book by the author of Chains and Speak here. It’s about an anorexic teen named Lia, and I’m already intrigued by the review and by the premise of the novel.

My Father’s Paradise by Ariel Sabar. Recommended at Jew Wishes. OK, I know nothing about Kurdish Jews. I barely know where Kurdish Iraq is (north, right?). This book sounds as if it would educate me about a culture and a place that continue to be in the news, but haven’t been a part of my own mental geographical atlas.

Reading the OED by Ammon Shea. Recommended at The Book Lady’s Blog. I can actually picture myself doing this project. Someday when all my kids are grown, and I’m about 80, I’m going to take on some totally crazy reading project like reading the Oxford English Dictionary or reviewing all of the remaining books on the 1001 Books You Need to Read Before You DIe list or reliving the twentieth century by reading one or more bestsellers from each of the years of that century. I don’t know what my project will be, but it will have to do with books, and it will be ambitiously impossible. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy this book about another man’s ambitious and mad project.

Today, by the way, is the birthday of Winnie the Pooh creator, A.A. Milne. To add to your birthday celebration, here’s a link to some thoughts I wrote about Milne’s autobiography, entitled Too Late Now.