Warm congratulations to Hannah Tinti! Check out the story here. Bonus: Hannah is guest-teaching my fiction workshop tomorrow. As a longtime fan of her work (and a One Story subscriber) I am thrilled to formally meet her and introduce her to my students. And a review of the dazzling The Good Thief is forthcoming (this weekend or next week) on FWR.
Vote at the Book Design Review for 2008’s best cover. I hope this one wins:
It’s December, officially List Season. Those long, all-encompassing ones are fun to bitch about and debate, but my favorite lists are short and specific. A short list demands more careful consideration on the part of the list-maker, and readers have a prayer of actually checking out most or all of its best-of books/films/what-have-you. Today Jessa Crispin (aka Bookslut, here for NPR) offers a concise and enticing list of best foreign (or non-American) fiction of 2008, with links to full reviews and excerpts. I, for one, am adding Metropole to my reading pile; Roberto Bolano’s books are already there, waiting for […]
If you’ve read Watchmen and haven’t seen this yet, behold. But if you haven’t read the original yet, abstain from clicking; you’ll meet a host of spoilers dressed as stick figures. Instead, pick up a copy and get ready to argue about the adaptation in March.
It’s not a work of fiction, but some are calling Michelangelo: La Dotta Mano (“the learned hand,” “the wise hand”) the most beautiful book in the world. The 62-pound hand-made volume–which features images of Michelangelo’s work and samples of his poetry, as well as commentary on the artist’s life and work–will be on display at the New York Public Library from Tuesday, December 2 through Monday, December 8. You can also see the book’s marble cover and take a tour of its interior here on FMR’s (its publisher’s) website. It takes six months and Renaissance artisan skills to hand-make a […]
A heartfelt thank you to the fabulous FWR reviewers and essayists who have contributed (and/or are currently working on) pieces for the site. Happy T(of)urkey Day!
The Guardian offers some excerpts from this year’s worst sex scenes. Try reading them aloud at your Thanksgiving feast! From Simon Montefiore’s Sashenka: He’s a madman, she thought as he made love to her again. Oh my God, after twenty years of being the most rational Bolshevik woman in Moscow, this goblin has driven me crazy! He eased out of her again, showing himself. ‘Look!’ he whispered as she did. […] He made her forget she was a Communist.
Writing the His Dark Materials series was awesome in and of itself; now Pullman is fighting, along with a host of other writers, to save school libraries across the UK. He recently wrote to the Meadows Community School, which plans to replace their books–and librarian–with a “virtual learning environment,” whatever that means. From Pullman’s letter (via the Guardian): The idea that fiction is not worth looking after properly and does not need a qualified librarian runs contrary to every experience I have ever had. Are you going to relegate the whole activity of reading fiction to the status of a […]
Don’t miss clmp‘s last Periodically Speaking event at the New York Public Library; editors from lit magazines Salt Hill, H.O.W., and Raritan will each introduce new writers. Details: Tuesday, December 9th, 6 – 7:30 pm DeWitt Wallace Periodical Room, The New York Public Library, Humanities and Social Sciences Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd (Fifth Ave. entrance; admittance is free)
Alan Cheuse, for NPR: Giving a book is not something we ought to do blindly. We give books to people we love because we think they will convey something about ourselves, something about the world as we see it or something about the world as we would like it to be. We only have one life to live, but we have so many lives in literature — giving a book remains an extraordinary gift. Well put. I also think that with the book-as-gift, we try to convey our understanding of the person we’re giving it to; the gift shows we […]
