Just read Jess Row’s Train to Lo Wu, a collection of seven short stories as streamlined as a bullet train. All the stories take place in Hong Kong, using the class, language and political distinctives of the city to ground stories about echolocation and Zen Buddhism. Luckily for me (and you), there’s a new Row […]
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.
The Spring READ THIS! selection has been revealed at the Litblog Co-op, and not only does the short story collection have one of the best titles ever, even the publisher has a cool name.
Just received the review copy of Haruki Murakami’s new novel After Dark, coming out May 8th. It’s a slim 191 pages, a middle length between his novellas (Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball 1973) and the heftier works (Wind Up Bird Chronicle and Dance, Dance, Dance). Can’t wait to give it a read.
The Elegant Variation has new information on the efforts going on to save Dutton’s Bookstore in LA (I wrote about it back in January). To sign the petition, click here for the PDF, or email Diane.caughey@gmail.com with your Name, Address, Phone, Email, and what (if any) way you can help.
Garrison Keillor is in some hot water over comments he made about homosexuals in an article on Slate. Then Dan Savage takes him to task in an overwrought, hyper-sensational article entitled, Fuck Garrison Keillor (via Pinkys Paperhaus). I’m going to have to side with Keillor on this one. Dan Savage, at least in this article, […]
The LA Times, one of the three remaining newspapers publishing a special book review pullout section, is planning on downsizing the space in half. One half of the pullout will be devoted to opinion, the other half to books. Now it’s not as though the LA Times book review section was exceptionally good before, (they […]
Wendell Berry has a new short story in the March edition of Harpers Magazine. It’s called “The Requirement”, and it’s not available online yet. Although usually I tend to like Berry’s essays more than his fiction, I’m beginning to appreciate (some) of his fiction more. This one hit me particularly well, probably because I can […]
As Edward Champion and the Literary Saloon have already noted, Sam Tanenhaus makes a buffoon out of himself in an interview in Queens College Knightly News. In response to the question of whether he reads lit blogs, Tanenhaus says: “No, I don’t. I don’t really have time. Other people here do and they’ll tell me […]
