April 2011
20 posts
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Al Gore & Ex-Apple Engineers Team Up to Blow Up... →
“Developed by former Apple engineers, Push Pop Press with be a publishing platform for authors, publishers, and artists to turn their books into interactive iPhone or iPad apps - no programming skills required.”
“According to blogger Seth Abramson, who tracks creative writing program rankings...”
– The Millions : Pitons in the Monolith: Jonathan Franzen’s Despair and the Millennials’ Dream (via housingworksbookstore)
This essay is really great.
“A novel never sells anything but itself, which means that the whole huge noisemaking machine we call popular culture leaves novelists...
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A Visit from the Goon Squad
A Visit from the Good Squad was one of those books you feel intimacy with immediately. I hunkered down to read the first short story and realized an almost effortless rhythm to Egan’s prose. Each of her narratives, each voice, sounded flawless, and it is the beautiful alternating of characters - always wanting more from each one - that drives the success of this book. Each story/chapter...
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Does the Novel Have a Future? The Answer Is In... →
“Novels—and memoirs—are perhaps the most comprehensive reports humans can deliver, of their private experiences, to other humans. In these terms there is only one kind of novel: a human attempt to transfer or convey some part or version of their world of noumenon to another’s world of noumenon.“ -Tao Lin
Lin reduces the novel to the questions, “What are you thinking...
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Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
I just read Gravity’s Rainbow. This book, this tome, felt like my constant companion for the past month, and when it ended, I felt like summer camp had ended. I had that empty pit in my stomach erstwhile campers have when they open their bedroom door upon returning from a summer of swimming, making friends, and adventures. I miss Slothrop, Jessica, Roger, and Pirate.
The ambition of...
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Roger Ebert - Does Anyone Want to Be Well-Read? →
“That’s how I’ve done my reading: Haphazardly, by inclination. I consider myself well read, but there has been no plan.” - Roger Ebert
“I could tell she was upset, but someone who didn’t know her well might well have...”
– “Never Let Me Go” (Kazuo Ishiguro)
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“My advice for young female writers would be to shoot high and not cower.”
– Jennifer Egan from this WSJ piece: http://on.wsj.com/ginb6r
HEAR HEAR!
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2011 Pulitzer Prize Winners! →
Stopping by Book Court on my way home from work today to pick up A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD.
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The Ageless Appeal of Beverly Cleary →
52books:
Today’s must read is the NYTimes profile of Beverly Cleary.
How does Cleary explain her popularity? “I wrote books to entertain,” she told me. People often asked what she was trying to teach in her books. She would reply, “I’m not trying to teach anything!” This was the same attitude she had when she was first reading. “If I suspected the author was trying to show me how to be a...
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“Greta lights a kerosene lamp. It warms the rainlight with a handful of yellow.”
– Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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“They drew the chair under the plum-tree, which was snow-white with blossoms and...”
– Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden (via bookoasis)
They are playing THE SECRET GARDEN at the theatre by my house, and I was so excited until I found out it was playing on a Monday afternoon.
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Tom McCarthy
I went to go see Tom McCarthy speak at The Center for Fiction last night, and it was a very bright, good natured, and intriguing lecture. I really loved the lightheartedness of the event, everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. But mostly, I appreciated McCarthy’s candor about publishing, and what people in publishing do and read day-to-day. I feel like we need to be examine the way we...
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Inside David Foster Wallace's Private Self-Help... →
Sometimes, I just start to cry when I read DFW pieces. Like the first quotes at the top of this one.
How Ayn Rand Ruined My Childhood →