Author: Bookfox

  • Oprah Book Club Picks Uwem Akpan image of tag icon

    Is Oprah’s selection of Uwem’s Akpan’s “Say You’re One of Them” surprising? Yes, but maybe it shouldn’t be. Oprah’s picked books with cannibalism of children, incest, autistic-child love stories, hermaphrodites, and pretty much any other theme or style or length you could imagine. So the fact that she’s finally selected a short story collection (yes!), […]

    September 21, 2009

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  • Irvine Welsh “Reheated Cabbage” Review image of tag icon

    Go to The Rumpus and check out my review of Irvine Welsh’s “Reheated Cabbage.” It’s a short story collection in high Trainspotting form — drugs, lowlife characters, and humor. PS. The rat on the dust jacket is likely a metaphorical depiction of one or several characters. Here’s the opening: The unappetizing title of Reheated Cabbage, […]

    September 17, 2009

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  • Dan Brown The Lost Symbol Reviews image of tag icon

    I’m a bit surprised at the book reviews of Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol” — everybody’s handling it with kid gloves. Towards the end of say, the LA Times and NY Times reviews, there’s a few lines of condescension, but as though they had been slipped in. The B&N Review by Sarah Weinman spends most […]

    September 15, 2009

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  • Man Booker Shortlist image of tag icon

    I’m back! And alive and kicking. Thanks for all the kind emails. So the Man Booker Shortlist was announced. A S Byatt — “The Children’s Book” J M Coetzee — “Summertime” Adam Foulds — “The Quickening Maze” Hilary Mantel — “Wolf Hall” Simon Mawer — “The Glass Room” Sarah Waters — “The Little Stranger” And […]

    September 10, 2009

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  • Surprise! image of tag icon

    So my appendix all acted up on me rather suddenly, and I’m sprawled out over various couches and beds in my apartment, recovering from some small incisions round about my bellybutton that don’t feel too small. Guess what? Morphine + Vicodin make hashwork of Marianne Wiggins and Wendell Berry. My eyes glazed over after a […]

    September 6, 2009

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  • But Good Books Can Be Hard: A Reply To Lev Grossman image of tag icon

    Below: a quote-and-reply format with the Lev Grossman article in the Wall Street Journal, in which I quibble with most of his assertions. “Some of which has to do with the book business itself—sales of adult trade books declined 2.3% last year, compared with 2007. Should we still be writing difficult novels? Isn’t it time […]

    August 31, 2009

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  • Plunging Standards: Why Students Don’t Even Know The Word “Canon” image of tag icon

    Okay, so the new craze sweeping the teaching profession is to let students pick their own reading material. Oi vey. As a professor, I already get enough students who have sub-par reading skills — I really don’t want to see more. I also see too many (college-educated) adult friends of mine who read virtually nothing […]

    August 29, 2009

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  • Newspaper Ads Revenue Disparity image of tag icon

    Thanks to Conversational Reading for pointing me towards this article in the Columbia Journalism Review comparing the value of Online and Print readers of newspapers. Annual Worth of a Print Reader to a newspaper: $940 Annual Worth of a Online Reader to a newspaper: $46 As Ryan Chittum points out, “That means a print subscriber […]

    August 25, 2009

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  • Fiction Bonanza image of tag icon

    There's a flurry of new short stories being released over at Five Chapters these next fifteen days. Instead of serializing a story over five days, there's a new short story each day, including some from collections I've been reading lately — Jennine Capo Crucet, who won the Iowa Short Fiction award this year, and Lori […]

    August 24, 2009

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  • Chess Puzzles, Nabakov, and the “Splendid Insincerity” of Fiction image of tag icon

    “Chess problems demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwile art: originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity.” – Vladimir Nabokov I’ve been playing chess seriously for more than a decade, since my graduate school days in New York City, when I first lost money to the hustlers in Washington Square […]

    August 17, 2009

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