Monthly Archives: September, 2010
Pocket Review: Kings of the Earth by Jon Clinch
Kings of the Earth Jon Clinch Random House, 2010 Writing upstate New York is hard. I’m not talking about writing IN upstate New York—that would be as easy or difficult as writing anywhere—but the essence of the place is deceptively hard to pin down. It lies along the same parallel as New England, but there [...]
Listed!
Reason to be cheerful: Like Fire has been featured in Best Colleges Online′s 50 Best Blogs for Creative Writing Students. And how’s this for a swell blurb: “Like Fire is devoted to everything wonderful in literature.” May it be so.
New Yorker fiction (Sep 27) – “The Warm Fuzzies”
If, in an oddly wry moment, you took a large, white, fundamentalist, musical Christian family, a troubled black foster teenager, a worldview so strict it would give a SWAT team pause, mixed those all together with the endearing and unsettling vagaries of adolescence, and threw in a vague hint of mental illness, would you have [...]
Strata: Lauren Baratz-Logsted
Lauren Baratz-Logsted has been a bookseller, a doughnut seller, a window washer and a freelance writer and editor. With the sale of her first book eight years ago, however, she threw herself fully into the life of a novelist, and hasn’t looked back. She now has 19 published books to her credit (for adults, teens [...]
The Short Shelf: Captives
By Lynn Reed Of the six books on the 2010 Man Booker Prize shortlist, Emma Donoghue’s Room seems to be the early popular favorite. I read it and liked it, although I’m not sure I thought it was Booker-worthy. It reminded me of two other works about kidnapped young women, one I read recently and [...]
Journaling Serendipities: One Story, Tin House and Reif Larsen
Once you’ve spent some time knocking around the world of journalism, or are just a busy reader with a shrewd and slightly suspicious eye, you realize that there are no coincidences in publishing. If an extensive and well-received book on, say, the history of grackles comes out and you realize that you just read an [...]
Pocket Review: The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence by Alison Brown
The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence Alison Brown Harvard University Press, 2010 De Rerum Natura, the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius’ epic poem “On the Nature of Things,” enjoyed a widespread popularity during his lifetime in the first century B.C., disappeared entirely during the early centuries of the so-called Dark Ages, enjoyed a brief [...]
The Paris Review Online, New and Improved with Interviews
The Paris Review website has undergone a sharp redesign, all integrated content (from the blog, Twitter, the current issue, and the archives) and peachy tones that coordinate nicely with the Fall 2010 issue. Designer Jennifer Over worked with editor Lorin Stein and art editor Charlotte Strick to integrate the slightly rustic look of the print [...]
Man’s Name/Bad Job
Now that What We Talk About When We Talk About X is officially an overused snowclone, can Raymond Carver Mad Libs be far behind? From Yankee Pot Roast: 19. angry sarcastic question 20. a really bad place 21. way of saying good bye 22. another bad place 23. another alcoholic drink (via The Millions.)
New Yorker fiction (Sep 20) – “Birdsong”
Will the bare bones of your infidelity sustain a gift of flesh and skin? Will a skeletal shelf bear the weight of your illusions and dreams and desires? In this story, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie suggests not. We learn of one who seeks to evade detection by his wife and another, younger of course, who seeks [...]
