Category Archives: Uncategorized
The End of the Orange?
The Orange Prize has always been a favorite topic around these parts, whether we’re celebrating, handicapping, or complaining. So it was with heavy heart that I read the Guardian’s announcement last week that Orange, the UK telecom company behind the prize, is withdrawing its sponsorship. The prize was first established to address the fact that [...]
No More Prix Fixe Lunch: Justice Department Sues Apple, Publishers
OK, so this is big. Today the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division sued Apple and five of the big six major publishers—Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster—claiming they conspired to thwart Amazon by artificially raising prices on eBooks. The alleged collusion originated with the introduction of Amazon’s Kindle in 2007, and the company’s tactic [...]
2012 Orange Prize Longlist Announced
Ladies and gentlemen, your 2012 Orange Prize longlist: Island of Wings, Karin Altenberg On the Floor, Aifric Campbell The Grief of Others, Leah Hager Cohen The Sealed Letter, Emma Donoghue Half Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan The Forgotten Waltz, Anne Enright The Flying Man, Roopa Farooki Lord of Misrule, Jaimy Gordon Painter of Silence, Georgina Harding [...]
Penguin Love
No, this post isn’t about our little friend Tango—he and his daddies were in the spotlight enough last month. Melville House has just come out with two English translations of Russian writer Andrey Kurkov’s crime fiction series starring a penguin named Misha, Death and the Penguin and Penguin Lost (translated by, no kidding, George Bird). [...]
Having a Wonderful Time
Those of you who know me personally, even a little, probably know that I’m a great lover of snail mail. I remember coveting stationery, envelopes, and stickers pretty much since I could write, and even though email has slowed down the flow to a certain extent, I still have an entire shelf in my home [...]
Addendum: Open Letters Monthly, September 2010
Reading back over some old posts, I realized that my overview of the September Open Letters Monthly inadvertently left out the comment on one of my favorite pieces, Joshua Harmon’s The Annotated Mix-Tape, #7. Here he posits a hypothetical mix-tape segue—Big Star’s “Big Black Car” into Black Tambourine’s “Black Car”—and discusses the deep rock’n’rollness of [...]
Open Letters Monthly, August 2010
The best thing about the beginning of August, other than having survived July, is that the new Open Letters Monthly is up! This issue leads off with some considerations on the art and craft of adaptation: Amardeep Singh and John G. Rodwan, Jr. each look at the subject of film adaptations from literature (Singh’s contains [...]
Beach Book Bingo
Snowing again. And I’m thinking that right around now everyone in the northern hemisphere is wishing they were someplace like Australia’s Bondi Beach, where Ikea put up an outdoor library in honor of their BILLY Bookcase’s 30th anniversary last month. Sunbathers and surfers could either swap their own books for those from the bright red [...]
The Original Yoknapatawpha
So cool. Emory professor Sally Wolff-King made what she calls a “once-in-a-lifetime literary find” while conducting interviews for a book on William Faulkner: a plantation diary filled with names, places, and happenings that Faulkner seems to have used as a source for many of his novels. Wolff-King discovered the connection between Faulkner’s work and the [...]
Open Letters Monthly, February 2010
The February issue of Open Letters Monthly is up now, and it’s packed with good stuff. The idea behind the lead piece, Bad Books, Good Hooks, would have reeled me in even if I weren’t a contributor: “Be it a third martini, or a second Gulf War, we’re all familiar with ideas that look great [...]
