Category: Writing Life

  • Etgar Keret On The Silver Screen image of tag icon

    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:

    February 13, 2010

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  • Spoiled Salinger image of tag icon

    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 […]

    February 9, 2010

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  • Requiem for Equator Books image of tag icon

    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 […]

    February 5, 2010

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  • Amazon’s Strongarming of Macmillan Day 8 image of tag icon

    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 […]

    February 5, 2010

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  • Amazon’s Extortion of Macmillan Day 6 image of tag icon

    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 […]

    February 3, 2010

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  • Book Piracy image of tag icon

    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 […]

    January 25, 2010

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  • The Story Prize Finalists image of tag icon

    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 […]

    January 25, 2010

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  • The Predictive Power of Book Reviews image of tag icon

    I’ve become disenchanted with book reviews. At one point in my life, I think I relied upon them more. Maybe I trusted the taste and judgment of the seasoned reviewers. Now, I feel a bad review has no predictive power as to whether or not I’ll like a book. A good review actually has more […]

    January 17, 2010

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  • Short Story Collections in 2010 image of tag icon

    Happy 2010, everyone. And get ready for a new spate of short fiction. We got some doozies forthcoming. Here are ten upcoming short story collections I’m looking forward to this year. Sam Shepard, Day out of Days (January) Amy Bloom, Where the God of Love Hangs Out (January) Stories linked by the motif of love. […]

    January 3, 2010

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  • Merry Christmas image of tag icon

    Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone. BookFox will be taking a break for a few weeks. Looking back over this year in reading, I discovered I read about 60 books — half short story collections and half novels, with a couple of nonfiction books thrown in. This is right about average for my reading […]

    December 21, 2009

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