New York Post (Free subscription) | yesterday
Joan Schenkar begins her biography of author Patricia Highsmith with a warning: “She wasn’t nice. She was rarely polite. And no one who knew her well would have called her a generous woman.” Highsmith, the prolific author of crime fiction including ...
New York Times (Free subscription) | 12/03/2009
Joan Schenkar’s biograpy of the author Patricia Highsmith takes an unconventional approach to telling the story of an unconventional woman.
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 11/29/2009
Dan Burt Reading From his Poems thepoetryarchive.org £12.75, 48 mins Dan Burt's craftsmanship is complex – villanelles, tercets – and his cross-referencing wide-ranging – Jewish history, Cranach, Mozart. It's also combined with disarming simplicity and a striking exploration of metaphor – the "debt bond" in a relationship where "closing the books is hard...
Reading with Tequila (Free subscription) | 11/20/2009
Thriller & Suspense Challenge 2010 Hosted by Book Chick City Timeline: 01 Jan 2010 - 31 Dec 2010 Rules: To read TWELVE (12) thrillers in 2010 Details: You don't have to select your books ahead of time, you can just add them as you go. Also if you do list them upfront then you can change them, nothing is set in stone! The books you choose can crossover into other challenges you have on the go....
Maud Newton (Free subscription) | 11/13/2009
Theodora (Roosevelt) Keogh, the mysterious novelist, ballet dancer, wildcat owner, chicken farmer, and president’s granddaughter whose fiction inspires comparisons to Colette, was living in Paris with her first husband, artist Tom Keogh, when The Paris Review started up in the early fifties. As I mentioned in The Week this summer, Tom’s drawing of Keogh [...]
Super Punch (Free subscription) | 11/13/2009
Japanese book cover for Patricia Highsmith's Eleven, spotted in this Highsmith cover gallery . And a few more links: 1. That's a lot of wedding bands . 2. Captain Morgan hoped to promote its brand by encouraging players to celebrate by assuming that moronic Captain Morgan pose. After one Philadelphia Eagle did it, the NFL warned against further displays. 3. Stephen King intends to write a new Dark...
Reading with Tequila (Free subscription) | 11/09/2009
Awesome Author Challenge Hosted by At Home with Books The idea behind this challenge is to read works by authors who have been recommended to you time and again, yet somehow you haven't managed to read any books by those authors. These are the authors that everyone else tells you are awesome, thus the "Awesome Author Challenge" title. The Rules: The challenge starts January 1, 2010 and ends...
ComingSoon.net (Free subscription) | 11/06/2009
Myriad Pictures will release the psychological thriller Cry of the Owl domestically in the fall, reports Variety . The film, which stars Julia Stiles and Paddy Considine, is based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith, who wrote the "The Talented Mr. Ripley." Written and directed by Jamie Thraves, the story centers on a young woman (Stiles) who discovers she is being stalked by a troubled local...
Rotten Tomatoes (Free subscription) | 11/05/2009
Julia Stiles and Paddy Considine will co-star in "Cry of the Owl," an adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith book about the bizarre complications that arise from a woman's attraction to her stalker.
Perpetual Folly (Free subscription) | 11/05/2009
The November issue of The Short Review is up, and it's got a fresh new look and logo. Very nice! Included this month are reviews by Shellie Zacharia, Deborah Kay Davies, Richard Lange, Patricia Highsmith, and others! Don't forget the interviews--always fascinating.
The Rap Sheet (Free subscription) | 11/04/2009
At the conclusion of a interesting post about various smartly designed editions of Patricia Highsmith ’s five Tom Ripley novels, the Caustic Cover Critic blog notes: “Highsmith, by the way, is the only serious writer I can think of who had the dubious honour of getting a nude photo of herself put on the cover of her biography (and not by her choice, given that she was dead several years...
Rafe McGregor (Free subscription) | 11/02/2009
It's been some time since my last McConfidential, so I'm very pleased to be back with one of my favourite hardboiled detective story authors, Sean Chercover . The natural successor to Chandler, Parker, and Crais, in my humble opinion... Rafe: Tell me a bit about your latest novel or current series. Sean: Trigger City is the second book about Chicago investigative reporter-turned PI Ray Dudgeon, who...
The Independent (Free subscription) | 10/30/2009
This enjoyable PR job for the mollusc by an Oxford GP reveals that Patricia Highsmith was always accompanied by her pet snails, usually in her handbag but "carefully positioned under each breast" when travelling abroad.
'Do You Write Under Your Own Name?' (Free subscription) | 10/29/2009
The first book in the Patrick Hamilton’s Gorse trilogy, part of which sourced the excellent tv series The Charmer, was The West Pier . Graham Greene generously described it as ‘the best book written about Brighton’. It was published in 1951, and was followed by Mr Stimpson and Mr Gorse (1953) and Unknown Assailant (1955). The series was actually meant to be a quartet, but the fourth...
Reading matters (Free subscription) | 10/22/2009
BBC Radio 4 is carrying out an interesting exercise as part of its Open Book programme. It asked 10 British/Irish authors to nominate the books that they "feel most deserve to be re-read and reinstated onto our bookshelves". The list of neglected books, which is being discussed on radio, looks like this: William Boyd nominated The Polyglots by William Gerhardie Susan Hill nominated The Rector's...
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