I’ve been a subscriber to a number of journals over the years. Recently, I’ve subscribed to Image, but the last issue in particular disappointed me. It only had a single story — disappointing in itself — but even more disappointing was that the story wasn’t any good. The author was Scott Russell Sanders, whose grandiose […]
I count myself as one of the many ardent fans of Ted Conover, ever since he wrote Newjack: Guarding Sing-Sing, which is a gritty nonfiction story about prison life. And to think once the prison authorities turned him down for access, he simply got a job as a prison guard. He got to write about […]
The movie is called “$9.99.” No, that’s not the price for streaming it, or some price cross-over from the e-book world. And it’s based on Etgar Keret’s short stories. And it’s stop-motion animation. Fun, fun, fun. It’ll actually sell for $24.98 when it comes out on February 23rd. Here’s the trailer:
Bookslut pointed me toward the Economist blog “More Intelligent Life,” where in a post titled “Salinger’s Spoiled Children” Bradley Freedman describes a friend’s pilgrimage to see JD Salinger and present him with a manifesto demanding more fiction. Freedman, as you can infer from the title of this post, disagrees with his friend’s impulse: But instead of […]
Equator Books is shutting their doors after nearly six years here in Los Angeles. The knowledge that independent bookstores seem to be shutting down with metronomic frequency does not reduce the sorrow of the occasion. Since Equator specialized in collectible books, it was a virtual shrine to the book-as-object. I remember browsing through in awe […]
The Guardian has an excellent article rounding up all the sites, authors, and publishing groups boycotting Amazon in one form or another. Some remove all links to Amazon; others encourage readers to buy books from elsewhere. It's this last tactic, encouraged by John Scalzi, which I think will be the most helpful. Instead of limiting […]
It’s 10:00 p.m. here in Los Angeles, on the sixth day of the Amazonian extortion against Macmillan. Counting the days is starting to seem like some kind of foreign hostage crisis where the newscasters count out the length of imprisonment. As many people have pointed out, Amazon doesn’t have the slightest clue of the definition […]
Ted Genoways, editor of VQR, wrote an impassioned call for action in Mother Jones. Essentially, he laments the decline of the literary journal and the explosion of creative writing programs and writers who don't read. About those writers who don't read: "Last summer, Louis Menand tabulated that there were 822 creative writing programs. Consider this […]
Over at The Millions, there's some great journalism going on — an interview with a book pirate called "The Real Caterpillar." One of the most interesting sections is at the end: Perhaps if readers were more confident that the majority of the money went to the author, people would feel more guilty about depriving the […]
Three books have been nominated by The Story Prize: In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin Drift by Victoria Patterson Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower Well, I guessed the winner last year, so I’ll take another stab for 2010. It seems the two frontrunners would be Mueenuddin and Tower, both of whom […]
