There are plenty of “Best Books of 2007” lists floating around out there, so I’m not going to duplicate them. Instead, I’m just going to talk about some of the best short story collections I read this year. While not all of them were published this year, most of them are pretty recent. I decided […]
Chris Adrian recently had a new short story in Esquire. I loved his novel "The Children’s Hospital" and this short story does not disappoint.
The evolutionary beginnings of art. Or, in a world predicated upon survival of the fittest, why do we pay attention to aesthetics? NYRB reviews Katha Pollitt’s latest collection of essays, “In-Between Woman.” You’ve heard all the buzz about the Bad Sex in Fiction award, now read the shortlist. C’mon, you know you want to. And […]
So earlier tonight I found myself reading poetry to Mrs. BookFox, only it wasn’t exactly love poetry: Unhallowed wight, grim and greedy, he grasped betimes, wrathful, reckless, from resting-places, thirty of the thanes, and thence he rushed fain of his fell spoil, faring homeward, laden with slaughter, his lair to seek. Then at the dawning, […]
BookFox is a Los Angeles based literary blog started in May of 2006 by John Matthew Fox. Coverage focuses mainly on new literary titles, such as novels, with a particular focus on short story collections. BookFox does not cover poetry, YA novels, commercial fiction, and rarely covers non-fiction. Small press publications are welcome. BookFox has […]
How poets have been affected by the Hollywood strike. From the frontline of the publishing houses: a reader’s report. The first of the season’s “Best of” lists. Except this one is only design – the best cover art of the year. There’s a whole list here, of which I love the red paper clip and […]
I’ve always been a fan of Umberto Eco, and not only of his fiction (of which my favorite is The Name of the Rose). Eco’s essays, thoughts on popular culture as filtered through his semiotic lens, are always good for re-conceptualizing the way we view everyday items. For instance, I’ve used his essay “Lumbar Thought,” […]
So I just received my copy of the Bookaholics’ Guide to Book Blogs, and naturally looked for myself. There I was – BookFox, in the index – except with the wrong http address. It’s www.thejohnfox.com, not www.bookfox.com. Thanks for fact checking that one. But I shouldn’t worry about it, I told myself, I mean people […]
I googled myself this morning and discovered that BookFox is not alone in the universe. No, second in the Google rankings (and it better stay that way) is my Chinese counterpart, also named Bookfox (but clearly different because the "f" is not capitalized). By virtue of instant translation, I discovered that my website double explored […]
The Literary Saloon chronicles how a bureaucratic error of Kafkaesque proportions in Iran led to the accidental publishing of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s latest novel – Memories of My Melancholy Whores. Usually, Iran bans that sort of thing, and on the second time around, they did. Memories of My Melancholy Whores was one of those novels […]
