LitKicks has been inviting poets to submit their work for public review and response since 2001. To celebrate the end of 2007, we’d like to revisit the poems published on LitKicks this year. LitKicks will be back with new articles, book reviews, Book Review reviews, author interviews, literary news coverage and analysis and new poetry in early January. Happy Holidays!

1. I went to see Atonement, the film based on Ian McEwan’s great novel. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I was worried it would be.

I was most impressed by director Joe Wright’s treatment of the book’s first sequence, the chaotic and ultimately disastrous dinner party at the Tallis household. The film follows the book closely in these early scenes (the actress playing Briony Tallis even looks exactly like the girl on the paperback cover), but embellishes the story with lush …

There were many books I wished to spend more time with and write about in 2007. Here are some that seem especially noteworthy, as the year draws to a close and I prepare for an onslaught of 2008 titles …

All Over by Roy Kesey

The first Roy Kesey short story I ever read was “Wait”, which is included in the new collection All Over, the virgin publication of Dzanc Books. “Wait” begins quietly in an airline terminal where a flight …

I wrote last week, following the announcement that NYTBR editor-in-chief Sam Tanenhaus would be adding the Week In Review news/opinion section to his responsibilities, that this announcement seemed to signal Tanenhaus’s eventual exit from direct responsibility for the New York Times Book Review. Ron Hogan of GalleyCat and Michael Orthofer of the Complete Review saw it differently: Hogan takes the Times’ press release at face value and does not predict that Tanenhuas’s role at the Book Review will change, while Orthofer

I’ve been having a hard time starting this post because I’m not really sure what to write about this book. Not because I didn’t like it; on the contrary, I liked it quite a lot. Which is the problem. I liked it so much that I sort of feel that anything I write will be kind of pointless in comparison. But I’ll try anyway. So. To the Lighthouse is about the Ramsay family (and assorted friends, acquaintances and guests) …

2. I’ve had a strange urge to write about music lately. That’s why I wrote this review of Led Zeppelin’s re-release of the classic 1976 movie/album The Song Remains the Same. I didn’t get to see the reunion in London, but I did …

The Litblog Co-op has chosen Matthew Eck’s debut novel The Farther Shore as the Winter 2007 READ THIS! Selection. This war story by a young veteran of US actions in Haiti and Somalia is one of the most impressive books I’ve read this year, and I was happy to have a chance to interview the author via email last week.

Levi: Your novel’s main character joined the US military to pay for college. Why did you join the US military?

Matthew: I joined the army …

Quick update to today’s Review of the New York Times Book Review: I’ve now heard the news that Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus will be adding the Sunday “Week In Review” section to his editorial duties, replacing Katy Roberts. I’m disappointed to hear this.

The Week In Review is my second favorite section in the Sunday New York Times, and (like the Magazine, and like Arts and Leisure) it boasts a great literary reach. For instance, today’s Week In Review features …

The cover of this week’s New York Times Book Review offers a guessing game: the “Ten Best Books of 2007″ are photographed backwards, displaying only blank page-edge faces and slim slivers of jacket artwork to give their identities away. One can spot Denis Johnson and Joshua Ferris quickly, but the lone paperback original on the list — Michael Thomas’s Man Gone Down — seems to get swallowed up in the stack. Translated novels by Per Petterson and Roberto Bolano add a satisfying …

So, apparently it is time to buy things for other people? Something like that? Here are some interesting and (mostly) literature- and writing-related gift ideas that you can keep in mind as you scour the internet for gifts. (Do people even go to the mall anymore?) They all go well with fruitcake. Enjoy.

– It is a notebook. It is a journal. It is Froot Loops. (I have to love it; I live less than 50 miles from …