The Sheila Variations (Free subscription) | 05/01/2008
I'm now reading That Night, by Alice McDermott - author of the wonderful and National Book Award-winning Charming Billy (my post about it here). McDermott often writes from the point of view of an innocent bystander, usually a member of...
92Y Blog (Free subscription) | 03/28/2008
Alice McDermott “is a genius of quiet observation,” said the Los Angeles Times . “One of our finest novelists.” McDermott’s books include Charming Billy , winner of the National Book Award, and After This . On January 30 of this year, she appeared at the Y for the Afternoon Night Table Series hosted by the award-winning journalist, essayist and television commentator Roger Rosenblatt. Later in the...
The Sheila Variations (Free subscription) | 02/27/2008
Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt - on my adult fiction shelves: Charming Billy by Alice McDermott Alice McDermott writes about Irish-American life and the Irish-American experience (straddling Vatican II into now) - like nobody's business. Charming Billy is...
92Y Blog (Free subscription) | 01/26/2008
Brian Forde - Associated Press Ron Charles, senior editor of Washington Post's Book World , reviews the latest in pork-related literature . First course, Roger Rosenblatt's academic satire Beet : Rosenblatt starts off by noting with mock solemnity that for 250 years Beet has been one of America’s most prestigious colleges. It began with the beneficence of Nathaniel Beet, “the wealthiest pig farmer...
The Happy Booker (Free subscription) | 01/25/2008
Politics & Prose Bookstore presents Carole Burns with Marie Arana, Alice McDermott, Carolyn Parkhurst and Mary Kay Zuravleff for Off the Page:Writers Talk About Beginnings, Endings, and Everything In Between Friday, January 25, 7 p.m.
Thinking About... (Free subscription) | 01/17/2008
Well, it's a new year, and apparantly in the book blogging world, that means, time to take on some new challenges. Amongst the select few books that got to stay when we purged our bookshelves recently, one shelf is full of books that I want to read, but haven't had a chance to get to [...]
92Y Blog (Free subscription) | 12/27/2007
Tom of the married couple blog ” Tom & Alissa ” reviews the Robert Alter reading from earlier this month at the Y: Robert Alter read from his new translation of the Psalms (quite a stunning one, too), as did Marilynne Robinson, who was there as a theologian and writer. There were a few musical settings of his translations as well as two of the Psalms in Hebrew. Between readings, Alter and Robinson...
The Happy Booker (Free subscription) | 12/13/2007
Writer Carole Burns stops by today to give us her holiday book lists. Carole's own book, Off the Page, is an addictive book on the writing life, featuring interviews with forty-three contemporary authors including Edward P. Jones, Jhumpa Lahiri, Marisha...
Commonweal Magazine (Free subscription) | 12/03/2007
Alice McDermott This year's fuss over Harry Potter's grand finale serves as a reminder of both our longing to glimpse some magic behind the veil of the familiar, and literature's unquestioned (...)
PR News Wire (Free subscription) | 11/19/2007
WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The US-Ireland Alliance today announced the names of the 2008-2009 George J. Mitchell Scholars. The new class includes Duke University's newspaper editor whose coverage of the Duke lacrosse scandal won him and the paper universal praise, an environmental activist, an intellectual property specialist and distinguished musician and composer, a genetic researcher,...
Baltimore Sun (Free subscription) | 10/21/2007
A book that deserves the prize it wonBy Tim RuttenReviewNovel>>>The GatheringBy Anne EnrightBlack Cat-Grove Press / 272 pages / $14Anne Enright is part of a remarkable generation of Irish writers who have helped transform their country's literature as surely as globalization has transformed their nation's economy. In some ways, the process has been remarkably similar - an enthusiasm for and immersion...
The Happy Booker (Free subscription) | 09/24/2007
Anyone out there catch underground music photographer Pat Graham at Olsson's in Dupont Circle this weekend? Graham was in town on Sunday promoting Silent Pictures, one of the most the most riveting coffee table book we've seen in a long...
World Magazine Blog (Free subscription) | 09/14/2007
Mary Collins says her daughter just completed another summer of school-assigned reading, and it's getting her down. Why? The stories are all doom and gloom and disaster.She first complained about the number of sad, even sinister, story lines two years ago. But this summer the problem became a crisis. Normally an avid reader, she began to shy away from any form of fiction for fear it would focus on...
Hebdomeros (Free subscription) | 09/12/2007
A few weeks ago I pitched the idea to our book display committee at work (yes, there is actually a committee for that) to do a display based around the writers attending the two big book fests in the area: Virginia's Fall for the Book at George Mason University and the National Book Festival located on the National Mall in downtown D.C. The whole concept of displays in libraries has really changed...
HoustonChronicle.com (Free subscription) | 07/15/2007
Michael Chabon, whose fictional reach extends from comic-book superheroes to Jewish gumshoes in Alaska, kicks off the 2007-08 Inprint Brown Reading Series.Other standouts in this season's lineup include McSweeney's founder Dave Eggers, National Book Award-winning novelist Alice McDermott and Nigerian-born novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.Chabon, who reads at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 10 at the Alley Theatre,...
