Suspend Your Disbelief

Archive for 2011

Shop Talk |

BookPig rents books, Netflix-style

by Celeste Ng

Netflix revolutionized the movie-rental industry when it launched, allowing subscribers to have movies sent to their homes and keep them as long as they wanted, all for a monthly fee. (Okay, until recently.) The site BookPig aims to do the same for children’s books, which are (1) expensive and (2) quickly outgrown. Says the site: When you are ready for more books, just return the first set in the pre-paid mailer provided and we’ll “swap” them for the next set of books from your queue! For faster turnaround, we recommend that you log in and use the “Instant Return” feature […]


Shop Talk |

Book of the Week: The Swan, by Jim Cohee

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

This week’s feature is Jim Cohee’s novel The Swan. Cohee, a retired editor for Sierra Club Books, lives in San Francisco. This is his first book. This novel is also one of the first titles to be released from Break Away Books, an imprint of Indiana University Press. Edited by Susan Neville and Michael Martone, this series will focus on “fiction, memoir, creative nonfiction, and poetry with a Midwest connection.” Like Switchgrass Books, the imprint of Northern Illinois University Press, which launched in the fall of 2009, the goal of this series is to feature work that is rooted in […]


Shop Talk |

Book-of-the-Week Winners: The Family Fang

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Last week we featured The Family Fang as our Book-of-the-Week title, and we’re pleased to announce the winners. Congratulations to: Kristin Costa (@antaram310) Monique Nerestan (@modiva70) Jonny Zine (@interrobangzine) To claim your signed copy of this novel, please email us at the following address: winners [at] fictionwritersreview.com If you’d like to be eligible for future giveaways, please visit our Twitter Page and “follow” us!


Shop Talk |

Quit your day job

by Celeste Ng

Recently Chip Cheek, a writer and the administration coordinator at Grub Street in Boston, quit his job—even though he loved it. He explains why in an essay on Grub Street’s blog: I have always had a full-time job, even while I was getting my MFA. It has seemed the prudent thing to do: keep a steady, reasonably well-paid job, so you can dedicate all your worrying to writing. It’s a good idea; Flaubert said something similar, although Flaubert didn’t have to worry about actually having a job. Also he took forever to write his books. Over time, in this multitasking, […]


Shop Talk |

The Games Writers Play

by Celeste Ng

So you’re hanging out with some writer-friends on a Saturday night.  Perhaps you’re gathered your salon sipping absinthe, or–let’s be realistic, here–snuggled up on hand-me-down sofas drinking Yellowtail and arguing about why people don’t read short stories.  (Uh, just me?) Anyway, at some point you call a truce in the debate on whether “chick lit” is a useful term, or  you call a halt to the V.S. Naipaul-bashing.  How to occupy yourselves now? By playing a literary board game, of course. In the New York Times, Dwight Gardner outlines something he calls “the paperback game“: One player, the “picker” for […]


Reviews |

Right of Way, by Andrew Wingfield

Andrew Wingfield’s short story collection examines how suburban sprawl in a neighborhood outside of Washington, D.C. impacts its inhabitants, both human and animal. Residents new and old must navigate rapid economic and social change in the face of American politics.


Shop Talk |

"Work with the puppy that is your brain"

by Celeste Ng

It’s easy to be hard on yourself when you’re a writer. But does beating yourself up really help? For 99.9% of us, the answer is no. How do you learn to go easier on yourself? The Rejectionist is here to help: So imagine you have a new puppy, and your new puppy does the things that new puppies do, which are: pee on the floor, eat your favorite shoes, poop in your laundry hamper, chew on your plants, chase the cat. Right? Bad things. Now, how do you deal effectively with the misbehaviors of the new puppy, which does not […]


Shop Talk |

Literature, drop by drop, on dripread

by Celeste Ng

For those of us trying to sneak reading into our busy lives, DailyLit is a great resource: choose any of its 1000ish titles, and it will email you a snippet a day until you finish the book. (See our blog archive for more details.) But what if you want to read something that’s not in DailyLit’s library–or if you’ve already read all of DailyLit’s titles, you speed-reader, you? Enter dripread, which functions in much the same way but, in addition to a library of titles, allows you to upload a book of your own choosing in ePub format. Says the […]


Interviews |

How to Leave and Why You Stay: An Interview with Jennine Capó Crucet

by Melissa Scholes Young

When The Clash asked the question “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” Jennine Capó Crucet had an answer. In How to Leave Hialeah, Crucet’s debut short story collection, characters wrestle with how the places they’re from shape their identity, how to grow beyond them, and why leaving is sometimes the only answer.


Shop Talk |

We're going to miss almost everything

by Celeste Ng

NPR commentator Linda Holmes has a beautiful essay on how we’re going to miss almost everything—and why that’s okay: Culling is the choosing you do for yourself. It’s the sorting of what’s worth your time and what’s not worth your time. It’s saying, “I deem Keeping Up With The Kardashians a poor use of my time, and therefore, I choose not to watch it.” It’s saying, “I read the last Jonathan Franzen book and fell asleep six times, so I’m not going to read this one.” Surrender, on the other hand, is the realization that you do not have time […]




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