From the Archives: What does our reading have to do with our writing, exactly? Charlotte Boulay departs from traditional talk about fiction, reflects on her own reading list, and finds comfort and enthusiasm in reading Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell’s letters to each other, in which they discuss everything they read—and the fact that they read all the time.
From the Archives: In this 2010 interview Charlotte Boulay talks with Hannah Tinti about the influence of art in her work, how writers find their subject matter, her editorial approach at One Story, and trusting your gut during the drafting process, among other subjects.
“I don’t think poets have a responsibility to do anything, which is the great thing about being a poet. And the competing but equally true fact is that to write good poems poets have a great number of responsibilities.”
In Nell Freudenberger’s new novel, The Newlyweds, a Bangladeshi woman finds that the dream of a better life in America carries risks, just not the ones she expects.
TV, greed, comfort, surprise: but a few of the reasons sequels bewitch us. Why we love more – more story, more character. How sequels draw us in, why we crave them, and which ones we’d pay a million bucks to see in print.
In my early 30s, I don’t think of myself as old very often. Except sometimes when I’m on the train or at a park and I see everyone (everyone!) who looks to be about my age or younger, and sometimes people a bit older than me, too, texting like the wind. I’m a super slow texter. Even with my fancy new smart phone, I don’t see myself getting faster any time soon. I guess texting is okay, but I still like to actually talk to people most of the time Am I just not willing to work at it? Or […]
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.
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 […]
Image credit: Literary Kicks Every week for the past two months, I’ve played a game where, on Sunday mornings, before I open the New York Times Book Review, I try to guess how many more books of nonfiction than fiction it will review. Fiction is consistently outnumbered, and don’t even get me started on the Book Review’s nearly nonexistent poetry coverage. But the past week surprised even this pessimistic grouch—only TWO fictional works are reviewed in the January 8, 2012 edition, plus Marilyn Stasio’s excellent crime reviewlets, in contrast to ELEVEN nonfiction works. The two fiction reviews are both skimpy […]
You’ve probably read about Amazon’s most recent promotion–they encouraged customers to use their price-check app in stores, scan an item, and then get an extra 5% discount for buying that item on Amazon instead. This promotion occasioned much ranting, including a piece by Richard Russo in the Times, and then a rant from an opposing perspective by Farhad Manjoo in Slate. It won’t surprise regular readers of this site, which routinely suggests buying from independent bookstores and which links to Powell’s most often, rather than Amazon (though we get no kickback from Powell’s, we just like them), to learn that […]
