Want to win a free short story collection?
New York Times listed its 100 Notable Books of the Year. Out of 42 fiction titles, 9 were short story collections — a ratio that’s not too shabby, in my book. Also, the ratio’s virtually identical to last year, which listed 8 short story collections. All short story selections were the usual suspects, except for one: Legend of a Suicide, by David Vann, published by the University of Masschusetts Press. It’s a nice addition to what otherwise would be a fairly unsurprising bunch. But here’s two that could have been added: Sana Krasikov’s One More Year and Uwem Akpan’s Say You’re One of Them. Both excellent collections, the former concerned with Russian/Georgian immigrants, the latter with children in Africa.
Independent bookstores in Los Angeles try new
techniques to lure customers in during this difficult financial season, including my friend Jerome at the Brand Bookstore in Glendale and Kerry Slattery at Skylight Books.
Another casualty of the economy: agent/editor lunches go the way of the dodo. But some editors argue that business lunches are indispensable:
Still, [Norton editor Bob Weil] said, meals regularly yield projects that end up being important to him, such as the collection of short stories by previously unknown physician Terrence Holt that he bought from Nicole Aragi six months ago after hearing about it over dinner. Also: “Someone at The New Yorker recently gave me a tip on someone who’s a boxer and a philosopher—that came from a lunch!”
