Perpetual Folly (Free subscription) | 6 hours ago
Here's the list of the New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year . Surprises? I'm happy to see Brad Leithauser's new book, The Art Student's War , but I didn't know it was out yet. The review will appear on Nov. 27. There are a bunch of short story collections, including those by Wells Tower, Jean Thompson, Daniyal Mueenuddin, Aleksandr Hemon, John Updike, Kazuo Ishiguro, Antonya Nelson, Paul Yoon,...
MND/BlogWonks: Your Alternate Daily (Free subscription) | 11/24/2009
Practically everyone, both left and right, considers awarding President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize to be a joke. The late John Updike wrote that the Nobel Prize in Literature was a “prank.” But practically everyone still considers the Nobel Prizes in the hard sciences to be serious prizes, awarded to scientists with genuine accomplishments. Is this [...]
Dictionary Quotes (Free subscription) | 11/23/2009
“What art offers is space – a certain breathing room for the spirit.” John Updike quotes
Brit Lit Blogs (Free subscription) | 11/23/2009
It took me a few weeks to read Blake Bailey’s exhaustive and exhausting (770 pages tip to tail) biography of John Cheever. Living with Cheever even for a month was no picnic: as his wife or children would tell you. He was a depressive, conflicted alcoholic, notably “enchained within the prison of self” even for a writer: when his children read some of the thousands of pages of his...
The Observer (Free subscription) | 11/21/2009
'I felt that the only thing I was on earth to do was to write' A couple of months ago Mavis Gallant had a dream. A messenger came to the door carrying a cardboard box with a lid on it. On top was written "Mavis Gallant" in big letters – and underneath it "Bad Prose". "I was devastated. Devastated for days. I thought, they aren't telling me the truth." In fact, Gallant...
Emerging Writer (Free subscription) | 11/20/2009
As in written about Bad Sex. I've personally written sex badly and written bad sex quote badly too. Here's the nominees for this year. Paul Theroux’s A Dead Hand (Hamish Hamilton) Philip Roth’s The Humbling (Jonathan Cape), Anthony Quinn’s The Rescue Man (Jonathan Cape), Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones (Chatto), Amos Oz’s Rhyming Life and Death (Chatto), Nick Cave’s...
read_warbler (Free subscription) | 11/20/2009
There's nothing like a surprise package to cheer up your day and I got one yesterday. Deslily at Here, There and Everywhere has become quite famous for two things - her wonderful photos of the pond life where she lives *and* her crocheted toys . They're as cute as ninepence and so, imagine my surprise when I opened my surprise parcel and found these two lovelies... Aren't they wonderful'?? And then...
The Independent (Free subscription) | 11/20/2009
What, apart from being dead and, in their different ways, remarkable, do the following authors have in common: Kingsley Amis, Saul Bellow, Roberto Bolaño, Jorge Luis Borges, William Burroughs, Italo Calvino, John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, Janet Frame, Allen Ginsberg, Czeslaw Milosz, Yukio Mishima, Edward Said, Susan Sontag, Hunter S Thompson, John Updike, Evelyn Waugh... and Vladimir Nabokov?...
<HTMLGIANT> (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009
Thanks to Tony O’Neill for the tip off: christwire.org calls Jonathan Safran Foer “A Jewish Star Christians Really Can Follow!”. Some direct quotes from the article: John Updike crowned Foer the genius voice of his generation, but sadly, the rest of that generation was off growing goatees and clicking around MySpace. His soaring words put cruel and negative [...]
The Huffington Post (Free subscription) | 11/17/2009
Vladimir Nabokov's never-finished novel, "The Original of Laura," has finally been published to great interest and excitement . In honor of the new publication, LIFE Magazine is today releasing a gallery of rare photographs of the "Lolita" author. The Huffington Post brings you some highlights from the gallery below, along with LIFE's captions. From LIFE: "Nabokov writes prose...
Central Crime Zone (Free subscription) | 11/16/2009
Blogger and Crimespree contributor Patty Abbott runs Forgotten Friday. For those of you that are not familiar with it, FF runs on Fridays (but you figured that out, right') and featured a number of folks offering up some little known books that we should all check out. Here is the line-up for Nov 13th. Mark Arsenault, The Mysterious Stranger, Mark Twain Paul Bishop, The Venetian Affair, Helen MacInnes...
silencing the bell (Free subscription) | 11/14/2009
So we had a mad dash around the charity shops today after M decided that she wasn't well read enough to get into Yale . Her reading list now includes: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte Persuasion by Jane Austen Hard Times by Charles Dickens Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (labelled as a first edition but we have established it is not) The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike War and Peace by Leon Tolstoy...
Maya Reynolds (Free subscription) | 11/13/2009
Another Author Strikes Back controversy. On October 15, George Packer reviewed Mark Danner's book Stripping Bare the Body: Politics, Violence, War for the New York Times Book Review. Read that review here . On November 4, Danner wrote a 1,400-word Letter To The NYT Editor, protesting the review. While it's not news for an author to protest a review, it is news for the Times to print such lengthy letters...
Silliman's Blog (Free subscription) | 11/13/2009
Recently Received Books (Poetry) Ryan Adams, Hello Sunshine , Akashic Books, New York 2009 Sherwin Bitsui, Flood Song , Copper Canyon, Port Townsend 2009 Adrian Blevins, Live from the Homesick Jamboree , Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT 2009 Ana Božičević, Stars of the Night Commute , Tarpaulin Sky, Grafton, VT 2009 Neeli Cherkovski, From the Canyon Outward , R.L. Crow Publications,...
Music Is The Heart Of Our Soul (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
ABC has decided not to order any additional episodes of its new Wednesday night drama "The Witches of Eastwick," which is about as close as a network gets to saying they're canceling a show these days. Although much of ABC's Wednesday night has been a pleasant surprise with "The Middle," "Modern Family" and "Cougar Town" getting full-season pickups, "The...
Videos