Celeste Ng is the author of the novels Everything I Never Told You (2014) and Little Fires Everywhere (2017). She earned an MFA from the University of Michigan (now the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan), where she won the Hopwood Award. Her fiction and essays have appeared in One Story, TriQuarterly, Bellevue Literary Review, the Kenyon Review Online, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the Pushcart Prize, the Massachusetts Book Award, the American Library Association’s Alex Award, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
For the delightfully dorky ones in your life, may we suggest these punny T-shirts from Mental Floss? Celebrate your love of hyperbole, homonyms, punctuation, cliches, or idioms. And for the younger set, there’s this onesie: All shirts are available at Mental Floss. Wear. See who laughs. Find kindred (dorky) spirits.
In case you doubted it: we live in the future. I think this dawned on me when I got a smartphone shortly after my son was born. Suddenly, despite having a babe (literally) in arms, I could still read my favorite blogs and newspapers. I could still get my email. I could even read books and spent an entire month working my way through the complete Sherlock Holmes—in fifteen-minute segments, during my son’s naps. But the one thing a smartphone isn’t very good for is actually writing. Sure, you can take notes or jot down a sentence when a great […]
Are publishers just eternal optimists? Continually self-deluded? Or–could print be alive and well after all? Apparently, sales of books—actual books, those things printed on paper, bound with glue, and sold in stores—have been up this holiday season. U. P. UP. Reports the New York Times: Barnes & Noble, the nation’s largest bookstore chain, said that comparable store sales this Thanksgiving weekend increased 10.9 percent from that period last year. The American Booksellers Association, a trade group for independents, said last week that members saw a sales jump of 16 percent in the week including Thanksgiving, compared with the same period […]
For the manly-man reader on your list, what about these books packaged in cigarette packs? Each is unabridged and wrapped in cellophane for… freshness. Available from Tank Books, the packs offer titles by appropriately macho authors: Tolstoy, Kipling, Conrad, Stevenson, Kafka, and, of course, Hemingway. U.S. customers can also order from Ten Over Six. Check back at FWR every day in December for another bookish gift!
We’ve talked before about ways to get yourself to write. There are tools to help minimize distractions, and even tools like Write or Die that dole out punishment if you don’t keep the words flowing. But what is all you need is some positive motivation? That’s where Written? Kitten! enters the picture. Written? Kitten! is a free web-based writing tool. And yeah, the punctuation there is correct. As you type, the site periodically rewards you with… wait for it… a picture of a cute kitten. You choose your level of feline reward—every 100, 200, 500, or 1000 words. Perfect for […]
This T-shirt is like a book-lover’s visual quiz: it features cartoon representations of 25 famous stories. (Click the right-hand image above to view larger—how many can you name?) It’s available in men’s, women’s, kids’, and infant sizes from Threadless. And check back here at FWR every day in December for more bookish gifts for everyone on your list.
Do you know Bookfessions? This Tumblr offers confessions of voracious and passionate readers. If you’re such a reader, you’ll find many of these confessions strike a chord with you. These, and many more, at Bookfessions. (All images: Bookfessions.) And if you’ve got book-related confessions of your own, share them with us in the comments.
David Milch, the creator of NYPD Blue and Deadwood, will be bringing Faulker’s literary works to HBO. Yup, you read that right. Reports the New York Times: “I’m not, probably, the first person they would have thought of approaching them,” Mr. Milch said in a phone interview, referring to his months-long discussions with the William Faulkner Literary Estate. “But a number of conversations were fruitful and here we are.” But the Times points out Milch isn’t as far-fetched a choice as you might think: But before he started putting colorful words in the mouths of Andy Sipowicz and Al Swearengen, […]
Here’s a great gift for a young writer, a game buff, or a teacher. The Storymatic provides 500 cards suggesting characters, images, and events to lead players into a story: First, draw two gold cards. Combine the information on the two cards to create your main character. For example, if you draw “surgeon” and “amateur boxer,” your character is a surgeon who is also a boxer. Next, draw one or two copper cards. Let the information on the cards lead you into a story. Wild cards are interspersed throughout, and they prompt you to go in directions you might not […]
These bright yellow bookends would add a pop of bright color to any book-lover’s shelf—while keeping all those tomes in line. (Though really, for most book-lovers, is there ever an “end” to the books we’ll own? Methinks not…) Available from CB2. And check back here at FWR every day in December for another bookish gift idea!
