Suspend Your Disbelief

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adventures in book touring

by Anne Stameshkin

A writer friend and I were talking the other day about our book-tour fantasies; we’re both guilty–against our better judgment–of romanticizing the potential of this grueling marketing tradition as some kind of literary road trip, a 50-state (hey – why not 5-country?) bookstore-to-bookstore campaign. There might be a parade float with a literary salon atop it. The readers would pitch their tents outside at dawn, renouncing jam bands and iPhones, reading Housekeeping around the illegal campfire… Reality check: Yarn Harlot and Ann Patchett share ruminations and frustrations, while Teresa Mendez explores why author tours might be becoming “passé.” Anyone have […]


Reviews |

The Flying Troutmans, by Miriam Toews

by Lee Thomas

From its beginning The Flying Troutmans evokes Tolstoy’s famous line “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The Troutmans take top honors for truly unique dysfunction, and Miriam Toews writes their road trip saga brilliantly; here is one hot mess of a family in a book so enchanting it’s hard to tear your eyes away.


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2008 Whiting Prize winners / recommended website: Brevity

by Anne Stameshkin

The Whiting Prizes are annual honors bestowed on emerging writers who show “exceptional talent and promise.” Congratulations to fiction writers Mischa Berlinski, Laleh Khadivi, Manuel Muñoz, Benjamin Percy and Lysley Tenorio. Click here to see a full list of winners. Whiting-winning essayist Donovan Hohn got a nice shout-out from Harper’s Wyatt Mason, who invites us to make Hohn’s work our “Weekend Read.” For a sampling of exquisite “concise creative nonfiction,” FWR highly recommends a detour to a website mentioned in said shout-out, Brevity. The site also features book reviews.


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adaptations forecast at Powell's blog

by Anne Stameshkin

I recently discovered this frequently updated string of Powell’s posts called “Read It Before They Screen It”. Among the most intriguing adaptations-in-the-making is Jim Crace’s Being Dead. Another fun fact: film rights to The Story of Edgar Sawtelle will be bestowed based on the quality of proposals pitched in person to author David Wroblewski.


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new novel from Lorrie Moore

by Anne Stameshkin

According to the Bookseller, Lorrie Moore’s new novel — her first in over a decade — is coming out in 2009. Stephen Page at British publisher Faber gushes that A Gate at the Stairs “is a masterpiece for our times and only re-enforces her as one of the great writers of our age,” and Vicky Wilson at Moore’s US publisher, Knopf, calls the novel “a stunner.” The UK edition is due to publish next autumn; I’m not sure about the US-release date. What I am sure about is how excited I am to pick up A Gate at the Stairs. […]


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recommended: cover contest at Bookninja

by Anne Stameshkin

Falling behind on Google Reader, I almost miss awesome things like this contest by Bookninja. The premise is to “rebrand” literary titles with covers and quotes that make them more mass marketesque. If you click nowhere else today, click here to behold the finalists and here to see Bookninja’s own offerings, including Beloved-as-apocalypse. The entires will make you laugh and think about the more serious repercussions of rebranding. Voting is still open; email editors@bookninja.com with your top three picks by Friday. One of my favorite contenders is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road “as parenting book.” (For a higher-res version, check out […]


Reviews |

Bottomless Belly Button, by Dash Shaw

by Jesse Hassenger

Without the need for description, and with the supposed thousand words per illustration, graphic novelists are allowed quiet moments of focus that might be dull or ponderous–or even nigh-impossible–to convey with straight prose. In Bottomless Belly Button, cartoonist Dash Shaw takes this technique to an extreme, decompressing what might typically, in prose form, be material for a short story or a novella into 700 pages of evocative panels: three grown siblings reunite at their childhood home after learning that their elderly parents have decided to split up.


Shop Talk |

recommended interview: Meeting House talks to Kelly Link

by Anne Stameshkin

“I really loved reading books when, at some point, I got the feeling I wasn’t supposed to be reading them.” My love for Kelly Link just grows and grows. That quote is from a great interview with her from Meeting House, a self-described “weekly journal of New England Literature and the Arts” whose site I will definitely be returning to. Another Link-able quote: “I don’t trust people who seem trustworthy, at least not in fiction. I’ve read too many mystery novels. In real life I think I’m more often gullible than not, easily disarmed or charmed by people I shouldn’t […]




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