he Los Angeles Times Book Section reported back in May that the top 10 e-books on Kindle are all free. Not surprisingly, Steig Larsson now holds the top three slots with his Millennium Trilogy, which range between $7.15 and $9.99.
That still leaves plenty of free books in the top tier. The current top of [...]

Jacob Paul’s debut, Sarah/Sara, is not a joyful read, but it is a deeply moving one. The novel unfolds as the journal of Sarah Frankel, an American-born Jew who, shortly after finishing college, moved to Israel, where she took the Hebrew version of her name (”Sara,” pronounced Sah-rah) and became far more ritually observant than she was raised to be. After her visiting parents are killed in a suicide bombing in the café below her Jerusalem apartment, Sara embarks on a six-week, solo kayaking trip through the Arctic. Throughout the beautiful yet dangerous trek, Sarah’s thoughts turn not only to her past—memories—but also to an imagined future, one that challenges her faith.

t happens to all of us, despite our best intentions: sometimes, you cannot bring yourself to finish that book. You know which one I’m talking about—the one that’s been sitting on your desk or nightstand or coffee table for months, a bookmark protruding from its pages. You mean to do it. You [...]

What happens to a writer who can no longer read? NPR’s Morning Edition presents this fascinating (true) story of Canadian novelist Howard Engel, who forgot how to read—literally—after suffering a stroke. Engel managed to teach himself to read again and shared his story with neuroscientist Oliver Sacks.
When he looked at the front page [...]

Here’s a great blog post from FWR favorite Aryn Kyle, on writing “happy literature”:
“You should write something happy,” people tell me, and I don’t understand. Happy like Anna Karenina? Happy like The Grapes of Wrath? Happy like Lolita or Catch-22 or Revolutionary Road? Happy like Hamlet?
What, I’d like to ask [...]

“One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius.”

– Simone de Beauvoir

“During my years as a bookseller, I cherished the opportunities to talk with fellow readers who were enthusiastic about books: how we read them, why we read them, where we read them—you name it. And whether mysteries or metaphysics, non-fiction or nature writing, Chaucer or children’s literature, there was a world of writing to discuss, much of which I had never heard of. I loved nothing more than learning and contributing to that community. It is this same sense of community that we try to foster at Fiction Writers Review. One that is made up of tastes and interests as divergent and varied as our contributors. But if there’s one unifying element, I have to say it’s that very same enthusiasm for books. An unabashed, unapologetic, earnest love of ’shop talk.’”

Today’s technological delights are well on their way to becoming tomorrow’s demands, entrenching themselves in ways that will do more than force bookbinding as a business model to adapt, but allow writing, as an art form, to expand and thrive. These are good things. Welcome to the age of Binary Bookmaking.

Six months ago, we here at FWR (and many others) mourned the end of long-running PBS show Reading Rainbow. Now, rumor has it that Reading Rainbow may make a comeback. Host LeVar Burton recently tweeted:
You heard it here first… Reading Rainbow 2.0 is in the works! Stay tuned for more info. But, you [...]

If all the recent talk about the iPad and the Amazon/Macmillan ebook pricing catfight has you longing for a simpler time, look no further than this ode to the deckle edge on The Millions:
Opening a book can already feel like opening a gift. Armed with a knife and freeing the pages and the story hidden [...]