Washington Post Book World. Included with the Sunday Washington Post, 1150 15th Street NW, Washington DC 20071, Tel: 202-334-6000.

Book World, the literary supplement that comes with each Sunday's Washington Post, can hold its own against The New York Times Book Review -- faint praise though that may seem. If anything, there's less deadwood, in the sense of features that probably ought to be dropped, in Book World than there is in its "Times" counterpart. Brief though they are, Book World reviews are often incisive, and the magazine's editors seem somewhat less concerned than those of the "Times" with enforcing ideological conformity. Still, Book World runs its share of reviews smacking down authors who stray outside of the spectrum of okay opinion, which for the "Post" runs the gamut from neoliberal to neoconservative.

Some of the magazine's incidental features are good. Book World runs a monthly literary calendar that lets you see at a glance who will be reading and speaking around Washington. And for its intended specialist audience, the monthly "Science Fiction and Fantasy" review page, often by the scholarly John Clute, is always worth reading -- usually more so, alas, than the books under review. -- Steve Badrich

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