Last night at New York’s Scandinavia House, Icelandic crime author Arnaldur Inridson read the opening paragraph from his U.S. debut, Jar City. While his accented English is good, he chose to read in his native tongue to give his American audience the flavor and rhythms of the ancient language that give birth to the great Norse sagas. (For a quick audio sample of what Icelandic sounds like, check out the BBC’s Quick Fix Essential Holiday Phrases ) Icelandic is currently spoken by only 300,000 people in the world, and Indridason said that the language was predicted to disappear within 100 years, thanks to globalization and the overwhelming dominance of English. And Icelandic is not the only language under siege. According to a fascinating book by journalist Terry Glavin, first published earlier this year in Canada under the title Waiting for the Macaws and to be released next April in the U.S. by St. Martin’s Thomas Dunne Books as The Sixth Extinction: Journeys Among the Lost and Left Behind, every two weeks a language becomes extinct, with half of the world’s five thousand languages expected to be gone by the middle of this century. “A dark and gathering sameness is upon the world” mourns Glavin. How can we fight back? How about a language class? Icelandic, anyone?—Wilda Williams

With several hundred galleys flooding our bookroom daily, my job as a book review editor is bit like an emergency room physician performing triage. I have to sort through the pile and divide the candidates into three categories: the must be-reviewed (big-name authors, highly touted debuts from big publishers, original takes on old or new subjects); interesting small-press possibilities; and finally the definite no’s: new books by long-dead authors, self-published manuscripts, books submitted too late, very dry dissertations, the umpteenth series title. Stilll, there are times when I (and my colleagues)  miss small literary jewels. Such is the case with Troy Cook’s 47 Rules of Highly Effective Bank Robbers, a first mystery out this month from Capitol Crime Press. Here’s what my fiction reviewer—and tipster—Stacy Alesi had to say: “This debut novel about a father training his 9-year-old daughter in bank robbery is zany black comedy at its best. Wyatt Evans is a brilliant psychopath who has made a career out of robbing banks. Along the way, he killed his wife and taught his daughter the 47 rules of the family business. But by the time Tara is 23, she is chafing under her father’s rigid, psychotic thumb and wondering if it is time to move out on her own. Then she meets Max, who empathizes with Tara as he has a nut of a father himself, although on the other side of the law— his father is the Sheriff. Meanwhile Wyatt is heading the FBI’s ten most wanted list, Tara & Max take off and Wyatt, the Sheriff and the FBI are all on the chase. 47 Rules is well written, original, clever and laugh out loud funny. Don’t miss it.”