This Week in Calendar

Monday

Jane Ciabattari reviews “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” a novel by Khaled Hosseini.

Tuesday

Tim Rutten reviews “The Reagan Diaries,” edited by Douglas Brinkley.

Joe Conason reviews “The Assault on Reason” by Al Gore.

Friday

Yxta Maya Murray reviews “¡Ask a Mexican!” by Gustavo Arellano.

Saturday

Paul Brownfield reviews “The Big Question: A Novel of Reality Television” by Chuck Barris.

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On the Web

This week at latimes.com/books, Ed Park devotes his science fiction column Astral Weeks to Adam Roberts’ “Gradisil.” Roberts is a professor of 19th century literature at the University of London, but his book owes a playful debt to a practitioner from a more modern period -- Vladimir Nabokov. Park notes the literary gamesmanship, the references and layers, the overriding sense of style. At the same time, he highlights “Gradisil’s” more trenchant realities, in which the future, much like the present, is defined by blood lust and intrigue. The more things change, this novel means to tell us, the more they stay the same.