I think this lovely, kicky video speaks for itself: Happy Valentine’s Day! from Whitney Blank on Vimeo. Which of your books seem attracted to each other, aesthetically or intellectually–or both? Here are a couple of pairings from the bookshelf nearest to my desk: Thanks to Valerie Laken for finding this video.
When I first got to college, I was pretty sure that I was an admissions mistake. My roommate was one of Glamour‘s College Women of the Year. Another girl downstairs played piano with the Philharmonic; the guy down the hall was almost sixteen. A guy on the first floor held two patents. You get the idea. Even now, I occasionally get the feeling that I am a complete fraud, and I have no idea how I managed to convince people I had anything worthwhile to say. In my worst moments I suspect I will get a phone call rescinding awards […]
Nicole Louise Reid’s So There! is a book of harrowing and darkly funny short stories about original, compelling characters refusing easy answers, seeking out lives that share a property line—maybe even a driveway—with Death.
Joseph Herscher reads—but his Rube-Goldberg-esque machine does all the heavy lifting. The New York Times has a schematic–but the video is much more fun: Further Reading Watching: Books cavort in a bookshop in “The Joy of Books“ Busby Berkeley meets bookshelf Book dominoes!
I love getting recommendations for blogs about reading. I love lists, year-end or otherwise, of people’s favorite books, and I love to dip into someone else’s reading list for a moment, to get a glimpse of great titles out there that I haven’t even heard of yet. And I also love snark. So while this post is a call for your book blogger recommendations, dear readers, I’ll recommend one of my own: Lazy Self-Indulgent Book Reviews. The author, “Lazy” is a late 20-something Canadian woman who went to Harvard, made a bunch of money working for a hedge fund, and […]
Musical, prayerful, mindful, compassionate—FWR’s Aaron Cance talks with Melanie Rae Thon (The Voice of the River) about what these qualities mean in fiction and in life.
For a while now, I’ve been concerned about raising a kid who loves to read. Evidently I am not the only one, as shown by the BabyLit series of board books featuring Romeo and Juliet, Pride and Prejudice, and Jane Eyre. These books bill themselves as “counting primers”—the “Little Miss Austen” version of Pride and Prejudice includes pages like “2 rich gentlemen” and “3 houses” (that would be Longbourne, Netherfield, and Pemberly)—but they’re clearly intended to introduce at least the elements of these classics to young children. The forthcoming Little Miss Bronte: Jane Eyre features quotes from the novel, like […]
This week’s feature is Ana Menendez’s new story collection, Adios, Happy Homeland!, which was published by Black Cat, an imprint of Grove/Atlantic. Her first collection of stories, In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd, was a 2001 New York Times Notable book of the year and the title story won a Pushcart Prize. In addition to her other books—Loving Che (2004) and The Last War (2009)—she’s worked as a journalist and prize-winning columnist for the Miami Herald. Now Menendez is establishing a creative writing program at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands. She lives in Amsterdam and Miami. In […]
Last week we featured Margot Livesey’s new novel, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, as our Book-of-the-Week title, and we’re pleased to announce the winners. Mira Bartok (@miraslist) Ben Pfeiffer (@bppfeiffer) Nadine Feldman (@Nadine_Feldman) To claim your free copy, 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!
Recently, the New York Times tackled the burning question of why authors tweet. One main reason? To connect with the reader, of course: For one thing, publishers are pushing authors to hobnob with readers on Twitter and Facebook in the hope they will sell more copies. But there’s another reason: Many authors have little use for the pretension of hermetic distance and never accepted a historically specific idea of what it means to be a writer. […] Jennifer Gilmore (3,463 followers) finds hearing from readers helps her understand the influence her novels have on them: “On Twitter, I have a […]
