Spotted on the Huffington Post: a gallery of 11 awesome bookcases. Most are designer prototypes, but a few (like the “Sticklebook” invisible bookshelf) are for sale, and you can make the upside-down one yourself. (drool…)
We’ve talked about book trailers on FWR before (see below)–and it seems they’re gaining an even larger (and more interesting) presence…one aspiring to an adaptation genre of its own. GalleyCat reports that the trailer for Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters will be shown in movie theatres around the country. That’s the book trailer, people. On the big screen. Meanwhile, the 1993 novel Going West by Maurice Gee inspired the New Zealand Book Council to create this absolutely jaw-dropping short film. Part book trailer, part adaptation, it’s a bona fide work of art in its own right. The council’s website […]
GalleyCat attended the recent National Book Awards and asked attendees for tips on how aspiring writers can survive the recession. The two-minute video includes advice from fiction finalists Bonnie Jo Campbell and Marcel Theroux , YA finalists Rita Williams Garcia and Laini Taylor, poetry finalist Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, and nonfiction finalist Sean B. Carroll.
Step 1: Wait for a celebrity to buy your book. Step 2: Be sure the book is in the celebrity’s backseat when he crashes his car in the middle of the night. Step 3: ??? Step 4: PROFIT!
Serial literature might make you think Dickens, but it seems to be all the rage now. This being the 21st century, Twitter is a natural tool for serialization. In conjunction with Electric Literature, Rick Moody published a short story serialized into tweets, with one installment posted every 10 minutes. Reactions to the experiment were decidedly mixed, but its existence speaks to the renewed interest in the serialized fiction. Meanwhile, online lit journal Five Chapters publishes a short story a week, with one part of the story issued each weekday. And Daily Lit allows subscribers to read variety of books–from Tom […]
The old adage is right: you can’t judge a book by its cover. On the other hand, the cover still makes a difference. In a recent New York Times essay, satirist/memoirist Joe Queenan has a startling realization: But in the next room, in the cabinet where I keep my unread books, I was stunned to realize how many of these neglected works were eyesores. Some were bland or ugly because they dated from earlier eras or because they came from England. Particularly ghastly was the 1951 Modern Library hardcover edition of Edward Bellamy’s “Looking Backward,” which looks like a trash-bagged […]
Joan Silber’s elegant sixth book, The Size of the World, probes what one character describes as “the elusive connection between happiness and place.” In prose both beautiful and spare, Silber crafts a novel of thematically linked stories that span continents and generations, and whose predominantly American characters look for adventure and contentment abroad—or in the arms of lovers who will always remain, at the core, unknowable.
So you didn’t win the auction for Cormac McCarthy’s typewriter. (Ahem–if you did, we know a great literary site that you could support as well!) For everyone else without a spare $254,500, we offer this interview with McCarthy in theWall Street Journal, available online for free. In the wide-ranging conversation, McCarthy discusses the film adaptation of his novel The Road, how his relationship with his 11-year-old son influences his work, the violence in his work, and much more: WSJ: Does this issue of length apply to books, too? Is a 1,000-page book somehow too much? CM: For modern readers, yeah. […]
As you know, we’re a big fan of DZANC Books here at FWR. They’re the definition of an independent press, and their excellent taste in literature is a big part of the reason that their authors are regular recipients of everything from NEA grants to Andrew’s Book Club picks. However, not everyone knows that DZANC is more than just a publisher. They also run several charitable programs that seek to promote and increase literacy, especially among young people. One way that they do this is with the DZANC Writer in Residence Program, which operates in several different school districts in […]
I love giving magazine subscriptions as presents: it’s like a new gift every month. If there’s a reader–or a write–on your holiday gift list, how about a subscription to your favorite literary magazine? Most subscriptions run under $40, a bargain for a present that provides a fresh infusion of stories, poems, and essays over the course of a year. And you’ll provide much-needed support to literary journals and the writers they publish. Old standbys like The Kenyon Review, Glimmer Train, Tin House, and Virginia Quarterly Review put out beautiful, hefty issues 4 times a year. Want your stories more frequently? […]
