Author: Bookfox

The Spring 2007 READ THIS! titles have been chosen over at the Litblog Co-op, and you’re going to have to mosey on over there to check out the selections.

Rattawut Lapcharoensap, born in Chicago but raised in Bangkok, was just named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists. Sightseeing, his collection of short stories, won the Asian American Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. In our recent conversation, we discussed the best Thai writers, how tourism is a form […]

Even though The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins was generally panned by critics (not just by Marilynne Robinson, although her dismantling in the pages of Harper’s was certainly one of the most thorough), his book sold quite well. Perhaps riding on the swell of attention Dawkin’s book received, now we have a book of the […]

Over at the Litblog Co-op, they’re discussing Alan DeNiro’s collection of short stories Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead. Later on in the week they’ll interview Alan, but for now there is some discussion about the wide range of literary journals where his work has appeared (from One Story to Electric Velocipede), as […]

P.S. Nathan Englander’s new novel, The Ministry of Special Cases, came out last week, and hey, there’s nothing wrong with taking ten years to write your first novel. I loved his portrayal of orthodox Jews in For the Relief of Unbearable Urges and The Ministry is supposed to have the same mixture of melancholy and […]

I’m reading at The Mountain Bar in Los Angeles with Aimee Bender next Tuesday night. Please come, drink, listen and make merry.

On the whole, this New York Times article does well at chronicling the loss of print outlets for book reviews and the rise of online attention to books in the form of blogs. They have quotes from many litbloggers, from Ed to Mark and more. David L. Ulin concedes the advantages of blogs. But then, […]

Litblogs: Words Online Ron Hogan Andrew Keen Carolyn Kellogg Moderator: Tod Goldberg Overall, the conversation was disappointingly civil. No one screamed or tried to dismember anyone else (although Tod Goldberg did say that Carolyn Kellogg’s blood would be spilt) and Goldberg kept things light and funny (for a sample of his humor, look at the […]

I arrived far too early this morning (as in 7:30 in the bloody a.m.) at the Festival of Books because I was setting up the USC booth. This involved far too much box-slinging, which marred my lovely blue shirt with grease stains. So I changed to one of the USC shirts we were selling. A […]

Just bought my Festival of Books tickets from Ticketmaster (which was a painful chore – and they added a fee this year). Anyway, here’s what I’m going to see: On Saturday, I’m going to “First Novels” – mainly for Joshua Ferris and Marisha Pessl, then racing over to see a panel on “Jumping off the […]