New in paperback

"The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century," by Alex Ross (Picador). One of the New York Times Book Review's 10 best books of 2007, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism, Pulitzer finalist -- "The Rest is Noise" has evoked a crescendo of praise. This cultural history of 20th-century music is "a work of immense scope and ambition," The Times' reviewer, Geoff Dyer, wrote.

"Diary of a Bad Year," by J. M. Coetzee (Penguin). This novel frolics on the border of fiction and nonfiction as it follows the career of a writer called Senor C, who, like Coetzee, is a South African transplanted to Australia and the author of a novel titled "Waiting for the Barbarians." Dividing the text into three parts -- the opinions C is compiling for a publisher, his account of his dealings with the sexy upstairs neighbor who is typing the manuscript and her take on him -- Coetzee, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003, explores the relations between reason and passion, writer and reader.

"Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism," by John Updike (Ballantine). Book reviews, essays and occasional pieces on a wide range of subjects, written with Updike's "customary geniality" (as he describes it) and graceful style, constitute his first nonfiction collection in eight years.

"Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, From White House Princess to Washington Power Broker," by Stacy A. Cordery (Penguin). This biography of Theodore Roosevelt's older daughter, the first in 20 years, is based on her personal papers, including a diary and a collection of love letters. Alice was the original outrageous first daughter before her White House wedding to Rep. Nicholas Longworth. At 41, she had her only child -- by Sen. William Borah. In her old age, Roosevelt polished her reputation as a Washington wit, calling Richard Nixon and Robert Kennedy "two of the trickiest politicians I've known -- and I like tricks."

"Time and Materials: Poems, 1997-2005," by Robert Hass (Ecco/HarperCollins). Hass' sixth volume of poetry addresses large topics like global warming and "Bush's War" as well as smaller ones. The collection won both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award.

"The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West," by Mark Lilla (Vintage). Lilla, a professor of the humanities at Columbia, adds complexity to our intellectual account of the West's post-Enlightenment thinking on religion and politics, starting with the nature of Christianity itself.

In "Head and Heart: A History of Christianity in America," (Penguin), Garry Wills reconsiders American religious history, arguing that the creative conflict between "head" -- Enlightenment religion, embodied in the deism of Washington, Jefferson and Madison -- and "heart," or evangelicalism, has led to the country's religious diversity and vitality.

"My Family and Other Saints," by Kirin Narayan (University of Chicago). Narayan's life as a child in Bombay in the 1960s was colored by her brother's spiritual questing and her mother's infatuation with a succession of gurus, as their home became a headquarters for Americans in search of enlightenment.

Another account of a religious upbringing is "Foreskin's Lament: A Memoir, by Shalom Auslander (Riverhead). Auslander describes growing up in and eventually breaking away from an Orthodox Jewish community, although he remains "painfully, cripplingly, incurably, miserably religious."

"The Children Of Hurin," by J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Christopher Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin). Some 90 years ago, Tolkien wrote a story about a battle against evil during the First Age of Middle Earth. His son combined various successive drafts and fragments to produce this darkly beautiful tale. Its protagonist is an antihero who resists the original Dark Lord, 6,000 years before "The Lord of the Rings."

"Voices," by Arnaldur Indridason. Translated by Bernard Scudder (Picador). At a Reykjavik hotel at Christmas, Inspector Sveinsson is called to investigate the stabbing death of the house Santa Claus; he uncovers some sad realities about the mistreatment of children in the process.

"The Kingdom of Bones," by Stephen Gallagher. (Three Rivers). Gallagher conjures a perfect demon to symbolize the industrial era of the turn of the 20th century in England and America.