John Foxx - The Quiet Man (Free subscription) | 11/25/2009
THE UNCONSOLED A truly unique piece of writing. What this book does better than any other is to articulate the authentic grammar of dreams. In it, you recognise all your own dream tones - anxiety, unexpected resolution, timidity, social embarrassment and dread, wish fulfilment, pathos, tragedy, narcissism, emotional blindness, unresolved longings, nostalgia, selfishness, desire, regret, neglect, fear,...
<HTMLGIANT> (Free subscription) | 11/27/2009
Cool piece on writing processes of a range of writers, including Kazuo Ishiguro, Michael Ondaatje, Richard Powers, Margaret Atwood, at Wall Street Journal [via Rozalia Jovanovic] Most days, Nicholson Baker rises at 4 a.m. to write at his home in South Berwick, Maine. Leaving the lights off, he sets his laptop screen to black and the [...]
the Literary Saloon (Free subscription) | 11/27/2009
... The Age of Entanglement by Louisa Gilder There are also review-overviews of: Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel What is shocking is how few works in translation made the top-100: all of two ! (The Fallada, and Orhan Pamuk's new novel (which I'll be covering as soon as I get my hands on a copy ...).) Granted, as I often note, under the Tanenhaus administration very...
Perpetual Folly (Free subscription) | 11/26/2009
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,...
The Millions (A Blog About Books) (Free subscription) | 11/27/2009
... Stranger by Sarah Waters ( Booker Shortlister ) Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro ( The Lion, The Witch and Ishiguro ) Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead ( a most anticipated book ) The Song Is You by Arthur Phillips ( Anne’s review , Arthur Phillips’ Year in Reading , Arthur Phillips on Kelly Link ) Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel ( Booker Prize Winner...
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 11/25/2009
... literature from Forster and Hemingway through Bellow, Roth and Updike, to Peter Carey and Kazuo Ishiguro. Taken together — and this month the fourth volume of the collected interviews was published – they are a remarkable literary artefact, surely the greatest collection of first-hand testimony on the writing life, and craft, ever assembled. But what else would we expect...
the Literary Saloon (Free subscription) | 11/23/2009
There will be a lot more of these in the coming weeks, but the first 'book of the year recommendations', where newspapers and magazines ask their contributors or people in the public eye for their best reads of the year, have begun to appear. Today The Observer asks a variety of people -- including Peter Carey, Kazuo Ishiguro, David Cameron, Geoff Dyer, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali -- for their...
Pete Lit (Free subscription) | 11/25/2009
... (2005) 40. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight trans Simon Armitage (2007) 24. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005) 22. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman (2000) 3. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama (2004) Comments: + Trevor is on the "read" list with an asterisk, because while I haven't read that specific volume, I've read several of his other...
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 11/22/2009
... an old flame in an Italian restaurant. The story is sad, as well as funny, and very enjoyable. Kazuo Ishiguro – novelist My reading this year was dominated by Roberto Bolaño's two massive novels, The Savage Detectives and 2666 (both Picador). The first is the superior, but 2666 , for all its occasional longueurs, is still quite magnificent. Bolaño links seamlessly...
