The first frame of the Zapruder film

Vincent Bugliosi's new book, "Reclaiming History: the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy," has just arrived, all 1,612 pages, plus the CD. Though polls still find that as much as 75 percent of the American public still believes there was some conspiracy, the book argues that there is no doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald killed the president, and beyond any reasonable doubt that one else was involved. Bugliosi dismisses all conspiracy theories as nonsense, and says the Warren Commission basically got it right.

This conclusion is nothing new, of course. But Bugliosi, the prosecutor in the Charles Manson murder trial and author of a bestselling book on the case, "Helter Skelter," presents his book as the definitive treatment of the events of November 22, 1963, and even disparages other books that have come to the same conclusions, such as Gerald Posner's "Case Closed."

It will be interesting to see how well this massive book (full price is $49.95) sells. Assassination aficionados will buy it, of course, as will libraries and historians. But a quick look-through reveals it to be a formidable undertaking for a reader. It has 1,510 pages of text, including many footnotes in tiny type. If you read 50 pages a day, it would take a month to read it.

One can't help but suspect that, however thorough and persuasive the book is, it will have little effect on the public's view of this event, and certainly will only encourage the conspiracy nuts, who always rise to a challenge. That is the nature of paranoia.

1. Eat, Pray, Love
By Elizabeth Gilbert. Penguin.
2. Blink
By Malcolm Gladwell. Back Bay.
3. A Death in Belmont
By Sebastian Junger. Harper.
4. The Glass Castle
By Jeannette Walls. Scribner.
5. 2006/07 Boston Restaurants
Edited by Ruth Tobias. Zagat Survey.
6. Stumbling on Happiness
By Daniel Gilbert. Vintage.
7. The Year of Magical Thinking
By Joan Didion. Vintage.
8. 1,000 Places to See Before You Die
By Patricia Schultz. Workman.
9. Mayflower
By Nathaniel Philbrick.Penguin.
10. The Tipping Point
By Malcolm Gladwell. Back Bay.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

1. The Road
By Cormac McCarthy. Vintage.
2. Suite Française
By Irène Némirovsky. Vintage.
3. The Inheritance of Loss
By Kiran Desai. Grove.
4. Water for Elephants
By Sara Gruen. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.
5. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
By Kim Edwards. Penguin.
6. Intuition
By Allegra Goodman. Dial.
7. Love Walked In
By Marisa de los Santos. Plume.
8. Blue Shoes and Happiness
By Alexander McCall Smith. Anchor.
9. Everyman
By Philip Roth. Vintage.
10. Absurdistan
By Gary Shteyngart. Random House.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

1. Einstein
By Walter Isaacson. Simon & Schuster.
2. The Secret
By Rhonda Byrne. Beyond Words.
3. Big Papi
By David Ortiz. St. Martin’s.
4. A Long Way Gone
By Ishmael Baeh. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
5. Better
By Atul Gawande. Metropolitan.
6. How Doctors Think
By Jerome Groopman. Houghton Mifflin.
7. The Loved Dog
By Tamar Geller. Simon Spotlight.
8. Where Have All the Leaders Gone?
By Lee Iacocca. Scribner.
9. Grace (Eventually)
By Anne Lamott. Riverhead.
10. I Feel Bad About My Neck
By Nora Ephron. Knopf.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

1. The Children of Húrin
By J.R.R. Tolkien. Houghton Mifflin.
2. The Good Husband of Zebra Drive
By Alexander McCall Smith. Pantheon.
3. Body Surfing
By Anita Shreve. Little, Brown.
4. The Woods
By Harlan Coben. Dutton.
5. Simple Genius
By David Baldacci. Warner.
6. Nineteen Minutes
By Jodi Picoult. Atria.
7. What Is the What
By Dave Eggers. McSweeney’s.
8. Shopaholic and Baby
By Sophie Kinsella. Dial.
9. Boomsday
By Christopher Buckley. Twelve.
10. I Heard That Song Before
By Mary Higgins Clark. Simon & Schuster.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

They might as well go ahead and rename it the PW Book Award. We're speaking of the third annual Quill Awards. Founded after years of grumbling by publishers over the repeated selection of obscure books as winners of the National Book Award, the Quills were rigged to favor books that publishers are invested in. But the rigging has just gotten looser.

Funded by Dutch-owned Reed Business Information, publisher of such magazines as Interior Design, Variety, and Publishers Weekly, the competition had an unusual system from the start. A nominating board composed of 6,000 booksellers and librarians -- PW subscribers -- would make up the initial list, and they had to choose from books that had a starred review in the magazine (a star denotes special merit), or had appeared on the PW bestseller list, the Book Sense bestseller or recommended lists (compiled by the American Booksellers Association, composed of independent bookstores), or Barnes & Noble's or Borders' bestseller lists. Oddly, the New York Times bestseller list was pointedly omitted from the qualifying criteria -- a starless book on that list, but on none of the others, would not qualify. Then the public voted the winners, much like sports all-star balloting, and there was a glitzy New York awards dinner, carried on tape by a bunch of NBC TV stations.

Besides eliminating dark horses like Lily Tuck's "The News from Paraguay," which caused no end of fuming among publishers when it won the National Book Award three years ago, the system created the appearance of democracy (let the readers choose!) and ended with a promotable event that resembles the Academy Awards.

Well, democracy is nice, but the reading public has been told to take a hike. The Quills yesterday announced a new system. The nominations this year will be made by a "Quills/PW Selection Committee," composed of PW editors and chaired by Sara Nelson, the magazine's editor-in-chief, from books which have received a PW starred advance review or appeared on the PW bestseller lists. There's also a criteria called "special selection." The winners will be chosen by the board of 6,000 invited booksellers and librarians. After that, the public will still be able to vote on a "book of the year," presumably from among the winners.

Whatever one thinks of the Quills, and they've come in for plenty of derision by critics and authors, at least the new system leaves the door open for a "News from Paraguay"; i.e., a great book that the public hasn't heard about. The public was never going to vote for unknown books, and well-known books tend to be bestsellers. But obscure books often get starred PW reviews (we hold out hope for "special selection"), and booksellers and librarians are more likely to know about them, and to support them. We'll see. The winners will be announced Sept. 10, a month before the Oct. 22 ceremony.

Back in February, I wrote about a talk by Barry Gewen, an editor of The New York Times Book Review. In it, he offered suggestions on how to get the Times to review your book. Sue the paper, he said, before launching into a description of a libel suit, filed by author Dan Moldea, that went all the way to the Supreme Court. (He lost.) Moldea went on to write another book and, even though it wasn't very good, Gewen said, the Times reviewed it.

Yesterday I heard from Moldea, taking issue with Gewen's assessment of his book: "I think that any reasonable person would agree that the New York Times gave me not one but two great reviews for my next book about the murder of Senator Robert Kennedy -- a daily by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt on May 25, 1995, and a full-page Sunday review by Gerald Posner on June 18, 1995.''

Lehmann-Haupt called "The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy: An Investigation of Motive, Means and Opportunity," a "carefully reasoned and ultimately persuasive new book.''

Posner's review is not available from the Times archive online but Moldea faxed it to me. Posner called the book a "treatise that over all is a notable success for its solid reporting.''

Though both reviews expressed a favorable view of the book, each had criticisms of it. I don't know if they qualify, as Moldea writes, as "great reviews.'' That is a matter of opinion, and everyone -- author, editor, reviewer, reader and on down the line -- is entitled to make their own judgment.

Wil Haygood (formerly of the Boston Globe), who has written biographies of Adam Clayton Powell and Sammy Davis Jr., is now taking on Sugar Ray Robinson. But Haygood himself is a good story, as he explained the beginnings of his writing career during a session at the Newburyport Literary Festival last weekend.

After going through the executive training program at Macy's, he was fired. One of the problems his boss noted was the frequency with which he was found in the storeroom reading books. The day Haygood was fired his boss suggested he go home and write. He brought his work in the next day and his boss said, "Whatever you do, you must write.'' And so he did.

For a tale of his tenacity, check out "A Walk-on Who Refused to Step Aside.'' The essay, originally published in the Washington Post (where he now works), has been reprinted in the current issue of the Miami University alumni magazine. More than once, after Haygood was cut from a basketball team, he refused to quit.

J.R.R. Tolkien

"The Children of Hurin," cobbled together out of a shambles of J.R.R. Tolkien's manuscripts by the great man's son, Christopher, has been selling like mad since its April 17 release date, and today is listed as No. 8 on the Barnes & Noble website.

Notwithstanding mixed reviews of the fantasy tale, a secondary market on signed copies (signed by Christopher, illustrator Alan Lee, or both) has emerged. Abebooks.com, the Canadian online bookseller, reports that it has sold signed copies for more than $100. According to spokesman Richard Davies, the bookseller has sold one copy with a publishers' bookplate bearing signatures of Tolkien and Lee for $390. The list price for the book, though it's heavily discounted by most large outlets, is $26.

If you're really flush with cash and love Tolkien enough, you could buy the first edition of the 1937 classic, "The Hobbit," offered by a private bookseller on Abebooks.com. It's only $169,000.

The New York Times writes today about the strange case of newspapers leaving book editor slots unfilled and sometimes turning their backs on the literary arts. Why strange? Well, what readers are conceivably more loyal to newspapers than those who keep reading (and reading and reading, as in books) after they drop the daily fishwrap sections to the floor? Why would any business throw a dedicated customer base over the side?

Here's a link to the Times piece.

By Judith Maas

SUNDAY: Susie Davidson reads from
her Holocaust book, ‘‘I Refused to
Die,’’ at 2 p.m., at the Medway Public
Library, 26 High St., Medway. ...
Kevin Phillips discusses ‘‘American
Theocracy,’’ at 4 p.m., at the First
Church in Salem, 316 Essex St., Salem
($20); for more information, visit
www.salemathenaeum.net.

MONDAY: Robert Dallek reads
from ‘‘Nixon and Kissinger,’’ at 6:30
p.m., at First Parish Church, 3 Church
St., Cambridge; tickets ($5) available
from the Harvard Book Store, 1256
Mass. Ave., Cambridge (617-661-
1515). ... Dorothy Monnelly dis
cusses ‘‘Between Land and Sea,’’ at 7
p.m., at the Harvard Square Coop,
Cambridge. ... Victoria Rowell dis
cusses ‘‘The Women Who Raised Me,’’
at 7 p.m., at Barnes & Noble, Boston
University, Kenmore Square. ...
Raffael DeGruttola and the Haiku
Society poets read at 7 p.m., at the
Harvard Yenching Library, 2 Divinity
Ave., Cambridge.

TUESDAY: Atul Gawande discusses
‘‘Better,’’ at 7:30 p.m., at Newtonville
Books, 296 Walnut St., Newtonville.
... Amy Dockser Marcus reads from
‘‘Jerusalem 1913,’’ at 6:30 p.m., at the
Harvard Book Store. ... Contributors
to the poetry anthology ‘‘The Other
Side of Sorrow’’ read at 7 p.m., at the
Central Square Library, 45 Pearl St.,
Cambridge. ... Michael Albert dis
cusses ‘‘Remembering Tomorrow,’’ at
7 p.m., at the Harvard Square Coop.

WEDNESDAY: Witold Rybczynski
discusses ‘‘Last Harvest,’’ at 6:30 p.m.,
at the Harvard Book Store. ... Eliza
beth de la Vega discusses ‘‘United
States v. George W. Bush et al.,’’ at 7:30
p.m., at First Parish Church. ... Ste
ven Hall reads from ‘‘Raw Shark
Texts,’’ at 7 p.m., at Porter Square
Books, 25 White St., Cambridge. ...
Arnold Relman discusses ‘‘A Second
Opinion,’’ at 7 p.m., at Barnes & No
ble, Boston University. ... Richard
Flanagan discusses ‘‘The Unknown
Terrorist,’’ at 7 p.m., at Brookline
Booksmith. ... Susie Davidson reads

from her Holocaust book, ‘‘I Refused
to Die,’’ at 7:30 p.m., at McIntyre &
Moore, 255 Elm St., Davis Square,
Somerville. ... Moira Linehan reads
from ‘‘If No Moon,’’ at 7 p.m., at the
Harvard Square Coop.

THURSDAY: Natalie Angier reads
from ‘‘The Canon,’’ at 6:30 p.m., at
First Parish Church; tickets ($5)
available from the Harvard Book
Store. ... Allan Brandt discusses ‘‘The
Cigarette Century,’’ at 7 p.m., at Porter
Square Books. ... Peter Quinn reads
from ‘‘Looking for Jimmy,’’ at 7 p.m.,
at Brookline Booksmith. ... Susie
Davidson reads from her Holocaust
book, ‘‘I Refused to Die,’’ at 7 p.m., at
Robbins Library, 700 Mass. Ave.,
Arlington. ... Alana Newhouse dis
cusses ‘‘A Living Lens,’’ at 7 p.m., at
the Harvard Square Coop. ... Victoria
Colligan and Beth Schoenfeldt dis
cusses ‘‘Ladies Who Launch,’’ at 7
p.m., at Borders Back Bay, 511 Boyl
ston St.

FRIDAY: Chuck Palahniuk reads
from ‘‘Rant,’’ at 5 p.m., at the Coolidge
Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St.,
Brookline ($2).

SATURDAY: Mystery authors Hallie
Ephron, William Landay, and Chris
Mooney speak at 2 p.m., at the Con
cept Home, 17 Ox Pasture Lane,
Cohasset; for tickets, visit rfkchildre
n.org (click on ‘‘Concept Home’’) or
call 617-227-4183 ... Poets Jessie Brown, Susan Lloyd McGarry, Anna Michaud, and Gayle Roby read at 3:30 p.m., at Sweet Sue's Bakery & Cafe, 795 Mass. Ave., Arlington.

Events
are subject to change.

Colleague Mark Feeney notes today's Globe story about an effort to have Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick, or, the Whale," named the official state book of Massachusetts. He suggested a few possible alternatives, including: Thoreau's "Walden," Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" or "The House of Seven Gables," Henry James's "The Bostonians," John Updike's "Couples," or J. Anthony Lukas's "Common Ground."

Excellent suggestions all (maybe not "Couples," as Mark himself acknowledged). But there ought to be still others in the mix, and we would invite emailed suggestions (mehegan@globe.com). One might add "Little Women," or Jack Kerouac's "On the Road." How about Stanley Kunitz's "Collected Poems" or Henry Beston's "The Outermost House"? Wait, there's Edwin O'Connor's "The Last Hurrah" -- certainly as good an entry as "Moby-Dick," most of which takes place, after all, in the South Seas.

In 2004, Jennifer Haigh's debut novel, "Mrs. Kimble," won the PEN/Hemingway Award for first fiction. Her second, "Baker Towers," was a New York Times bestseller and won the 2006 PEN/Winship Award for outstanding fiction by a New England writer. She teaches in Boston University's creative writing program.

On Saturday she shared the podium at the Newburyport Literary Festival with Julia Glass, who also offered some favorite reads.

Haigh said she once tried to take apart "like a clock" the short story, "Oh, Joseph, I'm So Tired" by Richard Yates. And she still marvels at how time moves in "Lie Down in Darkness" by William Styron.

She also recommends:
"We Need to Talk About Kevin" by Lionel Shriver. (She called the novel, told by the mother of a boy who's responsible for a school shooting, "a compulsive read. I can't recommend it highly enough.")

"Runaway: Stories" by Alice Munro

"Kaaterskill Falls" by Allegra Goodman

"Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell (a handful of stories connected by what she called an "invisible hinge")

The strange case of Marilee Jones, the MIT dean of admissions who lost her job last week when it was revealed that she had hidden a lie about her educational background for 28 years, just got a little stranger, or sadder, or something, as Publishers Weekly's online edition reports that her book about college admissions has been selling better since she resigned/was fired.

The book is "Less Stress, More Success: A New Approach to Guiding Your Teen Though College Admissions and Beyond," published by the American Academy of Pediatrics. It is still, apparently, a useful book. One wonders whether Jones's own experience, properly written about by her, might even make a useful coda to this book. Something about the tempations and fatal attractions of credentials of one kind or another. How many people have been tempted in this way, before, during, and after higher education or the military?

I used to have a job entitled, "Assistant to the Secretary of the University," at the University of Massachusetts. In putting together a resume later, I was tempted to make it "Assistant Secretary of the University." Just eliding the preposition and the definite article made it so much more impressive. And who would ever check? No, I didn't succumb. But I have in speech loosely referred to my "B.A," when the dark truth is that I have a "B.S." in English. The Suffolk University English Department would excuse you from the language requirement, but the dignified "A" would be replaced by the workaday "S," which might elicit sly joshing over what one did to earn one's degree.

Marilee Jones, whom I interviewed once for a Globe Magazine profile of former MIT president Charles Vest, is really a nice person, not more of a sinner than the rest of us. One hopes that from this fall she lands on her feet, no later than Don Imus inevitably will.

During a session Saturday afternoon at the Newburyport Literary Festival, novelist (and Marblehead resident) Julia Glass confessed that she was "the only high school student who truly loved 'Moby Dick'" and went on to share the titles of some favorite reads:

"Memoirs of a Geisha" by Arthur Golden. (There was a time, she said, that she didn't read bestsellers because she assumed they couldn't be very good, but this is one of the books that changed her mind on that score.)

"Pearl" by Mary Gordon. A mother who is a child of the '60s and raised a daughter on her own gets a call that her daughter is on a hunger strike in Dublin. "It raises provocative questions about being a parent,'' Glass said.

"Unless" by Carol Shields

Two novels that detail how people deal with loss:
"The Dogs of Babel'' by Carolyn Parkhurst
"Grief" by Andrew Holleran

"The City Of Your Final Destination" by (the underrated) Peter Cameron

"The Feast of Love" by Charles Baxter

"The Position" by Meg Wolitzer (a satire with great heart)

"Love Warps the Mind a Little" by John Dufresne

"A Disorder Peculiar to the Country" by Ken Kalfus (A very dark and very funny satire)

A nonfiction recommendation:
"Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer's Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty" by Scott Turow (a short book that should be read by everyone who has ever debated capital punishment)

Tomorrow: Novelist Jennifer Haigh's reading recommendations

1 FANCY NANCY AND THE POSH PUPPY, by Jane O'Connor. Illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser. (HarperCollins, $16.99.) What kind of dog is best for a fancy girl? (Ages 4 to 7)
2 THANKS TO YOU, by Julie Andrews Edwards and Emma Walton Hamilton. (HarperCollins, $14.99.) Wisdom from mothers and children, illustrated with family photos. (Ages 5 to 8)
3 FANCY NANCY, by Jane O'Connor. Illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser. (HarperCollins, $15.99.) A girl takes her family out. (Ages 4 to 7)
4 SOMEDAY, by Alison McGhee. Illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds.. (Atheneum, $14.99.) A mother imagines her child's future. (Ages 4 to 8)
5 GHOST SHIP, by Mary Higgins Clark. Illustrated by Wendell Minor. (Wiseman/Simon & Schuster, $17.99.) In Cape Cod, Thomas meets the cabin boy of a ship that sailed 250 years ago. (Ages 6 to 10)

SOURCE: N.Y. Times, week of 4/29

1. Eat, Pray, Love
By Elizabeth Gilbert. Penguin.
2. Blink
By Malcolm Gladwell. Back Bay.
3. The Tipping Point
By Malcolm Gladwell. Back Bay.
4. 2006/07 Boston Restaurants
Edited by Ruth Tobias. Zagat Survey.
5. A Death in Belmont
By Sebastian Junger. Harper.
6. Stumbling on Happiness
By Daniel Gilbert. Vintage.
7. The Year of Magical Thinking
By Joan Didion. Vintage.
8. Three Cups of Tea
By Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. Penguin.
9. The Universe in a Single Atom
By the Dalai Lama. Morgan Road.
10. Porn for Women
By Cambridge Women’s Pornography Cooperative.!,Chronicle.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

1. The Road
By Cormac McCarthy. Vintage.
2. Suite Française
By Irène Némirovsky. Vintage.
3. The Inheritance of Loss
By Kiran Desai. Grove.
4. Intuition
By Allegra Goodman. Dial.
5. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
By Kim Edwards. Penguin.
6. Love Walked In
By Marisa de los Santos. Plume.
7. Water for Elephants
By Sara Gruen. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.
8. Everyman
By Philip Roth. Vintage.
9. Absurdistan
By Gary Shteyngart. Random House.
10. Blue Shoes and Happiness
By Alexander McCall Smith. Anchor.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

1. Einstein
By Walter Isaacson. Simon & Schuster.
2. The Secret
By Rhonda Byrne. Beyond Words.
3. Big Papi
By David Ortiz. St. Martin’s.
4. How Doctors Think
By Jerome Groopman. Houghton Mifflin.
5. A Long Way Gone
By Ishmael Baeh. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
6. Better
By Atul Gawande. Metropolitan.
7. Where Have All the Leaders Gone?
By Lee Iacocca. Scribner.
8. The Life of Jews in Poland Before the Holocaust
By Ben-Zion Gold. University of Nebraska.
9. The Paths We Choose
By Sully Erna. Bartleby.
10. The Audacity of Hope
By Barack Obama. Crown.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.

1. The Children of Húrin
By J.R.R. Tolkien. Houghton Mifflin.
2. The Good Husband of Zebra Drive
By Alexander McCall Smith. Pantheon.
3. The Woods
By Harlan Coben. Dutton.
4. Nineteen Minutes
By Jodi Picoult. Atria.
5. I Heard That Song Before
By Mary Higgins Clark. Simon & Schuster.
6. Fresh Disasters
By Stuart Woods. Putnam.
7. The Blue Zone
By Andrew Gross. Morrow.
8. Boomsday
By Christopher Buckley. Twelve.
9. What Is the What
By Dave Eggers. McSweeney’s.
10. My French Whore
By Gene Wilder. St. Martin’s.

From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.