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The French novelist Marcel Proust immortalized the connection between food and memory when the narrator of his novel Remembrances of Things Past bit into a madeleine and was transported to thoughts of his childhood.

But what if that madeleine were poisoned, so to speak?

That is the question underlying Russian American writer Anya von Bremzen's new memoir, Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking. Though it contains recipes, this is not a cookbook but rather, a history of a family and of Soviet Russia.

Thousands of North Korean defectors have made their way to the South, but it rarely goes in the opposite direction. So, news that South Korean troops at the border shot and killed a man trying to swim north across the Imjin River is unusual.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency reports that the unidentified man "tried to cross the Imjin River near the western border in Paju, north of Seoul, at around 2:23 p.m. Soldiers fired off warning shots and told him to return to the South. When he disobeyed the order and jumped into the river, an Army corporal shot him dead, military officials said."

The New York Times, quoting an unnamed official at the Defense Ministry in Seoul, said the man was wearing civilian clothes.

"We had to shoot to stop him," the official told the Times on condition of anonymity. "We retrieved his body, and we are trying to find out who he is and what was his motive."

" 'He jumped into the river and was holding onto the buoy at the time of shooting,' " a senior official of the Joint Chiefs was quoted by Yonhap as saying. 'A special team was formed to investigate the incident.' "

You may be hearing a lot about the National Book Awards this week — at least that's what the National Book Foundation hopes. That's because they've made some changes to the awards that they hope will get more people talking about them. Over four days starting Monday they will roll out their nominees in four different categories — beginning with Young People's literature and ending Thursday with Fiction.

It isn't the first time the National Book Awards have tried to raise their profile. These glamour awards of the book industry are a chance for writers and poets to leave the solitude of their studies and mix and mingle with some of the movers and shakers in the publishing world. But Carolyn Kellogg, who writes about books and publishing for the Los Angeles Times, says the National Book Awards have an image problem. People in the book world know that N-B-A stands for National Book Awards, but "everybody else in America thinks National Basketball Association," Kellogg says.

In recent years the National Book Awards have been criticized for nominating obscure authors whose books don't sell well as well as winners of the Pulitzer Prize or the Man Booker award. Thus the changes instituted this year: non writers such as librarians, book sellers and critics have been included in the judging panels. And instead of one announcement of five nominees in each category, this week's roll out of longer lists, 10 in each category, followed in about a month by a short list.

"I love books and I'd love to see some of these great books get more readers," says Craig Fehrman, who has written about the awards for The New York Times. "We'll see if the new format achieves that or not but it's certainly not going to be any worse than what happened in 1980 I can promise you that."

Back in 1980 Fehrman says publishers, who fund the awards, decided to revamp them entirely. The National Book Awards became the American book awards. New categories were added, the event was televised with William Buckley and John Chancellor as the hosts. The model says Fehrman, was the Oscars:

"One of the changes in 1980 was: let's create an academy just like movies, a big group of a couple of thousand people to vote on this. They even went so far as to steal technical categories from the movies which makes a lot sense when you are talking cinema but with books you end up with an award like 'best cover' ... so all these changes are an attempt to make the award more popular, and easier to market."

Several literary heavy hitters were nominated that year.

"So [Norman] Mailer, [William] Styron and [Philip] Roth, they were all up for best fiction that year, they tried to withdraw their books and say: We don't want to have anything to do with it this year. More than 40 writers signed a petition saying: We don't anything to do with this, this more populist and popular direction isn't right for us and isn't right for literary culture."

The awards ceremony was not a success. The event was scaled back over the next few years and by 1987 the National Book awards were restored. The changes introduced this year are nowhere near so drastic which is a good thing, says Kellogg.

"If you try too hard to have what you think are people-pleasing choices, then the essence of what you are doing gets lost and that is finding great books," she says.

Harold Augenbraum, executive director of the National Book Foundation, says there is no danger that the National Book Awards will become too populist. He believes the changes that were made this year have led to a rich diversity of writers and books.

"The judges had the ability to be as diverse in voices as they wanted to be," he says. "So when I'm looking at the lists and as I'm reading through the books, I am thinking: My god, this one is so different from the one I just read."

Among the authors of young people's literature who were nominated today are David Levithan, perhaps best known for Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist, which was made into a film and Kate DiCamillo who won the Newbery award for The Tale of Despereaux.

NPR's Tell Me More with Michel Martin hosted a Google+ Hangout on air, focusing on "Emerging Latinos and Innovations."

Latinos are an emerging force in social media. According to the ratings company Nielsen, "Hispanic adults are 25 percent more likely to follow a brand and 18 percent more likely to follow a celebrity than the general online population."

Two of Tell Me More's regular contributors, Aracely Panameno and Manny Ruiz, shared these thoughts in advance of our Hangout.

Panameno, of the Center for Responsible Lending, says Latinos are the "come-from-behind kids" when it comes to digital media.

"Our communities accessed the Internet on the palm of their hands through smartphones," Panameno says. "Early on, few Latino families could purchase computers and Internet service at home. As cellphone technology improved, coverage grew, and data plans came down in price. Latinos embraced technology and never looked back."

"In my family, I was the first to learn programming languages since I was in high school," she says. "I was the first to buy home desktop computers, then laptops, then notebooks. I have not purchased a tablet, because it is not fully functional for what I do. My daughter, who is now 24, doesn't know what it is not to have a computer at home. ... Today, all my siblings have a computer and Internet access at home. We all have smartphones, including all our children. We all have Facebook pages. My daughter and I tweet."

Ruiz believes that using social media is not just for the family, but essential for the Latino community. Ruiz is chairman of Hispanicize, an annual gathering that brings together thousands to talk about social media and marketing, and co-founder of the Latina Mom Bloggers network.

"Social media represents the most powerful medium Latinos have ever had to find their voice and harness their growing strength socially, economically and politically," Ruiz says. "Today no brand, organization or political figure can ignore the fact that if they want to win this demographic segment over, they must engage Latinos in a full-scale way that puts social media toward the top."