Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘lit and tech’

Shop Talk |

The Best Sentences, One Tweet at a Time

by Celeste Ng

New York Magazine book critic Sam Anderson is running a literary Twitter experiment — and no, this isn’t a Twitter novel. In fact, it’s almost the exact opposite. Anderson tweets the best sentence he reads each day, and as he points out, “‘Best,’ in this context, can mean almost anything: funny, beautiful, enlightening, stylistically amazing.” A few of his selections: “Rain patters on a sea that tilts and sighs.” (philip larkin, ‘absences’) I think that at least a third to half of all MFA seats should be reserved for people with families. (junot diaz, panorama interv. w eggers) “But according […]


Shop Talk |

Single-serve Short Stories on Kindle

by Celeste Ng

Most of the talk about e-readers centers on full-length books. But The Atlantic has recently worked out a deal to publish a series of Kindle-only short stories, each retailing for $3.99. It’s the literary equivalent of a pop single. Six stories have been published so far, by authors such as Jennifer Haigh, Curtis Sittenfeld, and Paul Theroux. Here’s a description of Patricia Engel’s story “The Bridge”: Available exclusive to the Kindle, “The Bridge,” by Patricia Engel, is the story of Carlito and Reina, a brother and sister from Miami. When he was a boy, Carlito was thrown from a bridge […]


Shop Talk |

Writing for the Long Haul

by Celeste Ng

In the L.A. Times, author Dani Shapiro reflects on the challenges of a writing career–the lost days of “writing in the cold” for years while building a reputation, the recent “blockbuster or bust” mentality, and how emerging writers can persevere in spite of all of this: I recently had the honor of acting as guest editor for the anthology “Best New American Voices 2010,” the latest volume in a long-running annual series that contains some of the finest writing culled from students in graduate programs and conferences. Joshua Ferris, Nam Le, Julie Orringer and Maile Meloy are just a few […]


Essays |

Writing the Great American Novel Video Game

by Michael Rudin

For some time I was one of few standing firmly in both camps—writer and gamer, fiction-fiend and pixel-popper. But the innovative nature of Next-Gen gaming, with its leaps in technology and massive install-base, means games have developed new depth–and the future of gaming promises to look a lot more like literature than flight simulators. This is, in many ways, the rise of a new novel. Like its lexicographic predecessor, the pixilated form revels in moral ambiguity, character motivations, conflicts between free will and fate.


Essays |

Writing the Great American Novel Video Game

by Michael Rudin

For some time I was one of few standing firmly in both camps—writer and gamer, fiction-fiend and pixel-popper. But the innovative nature of Next-Gen gaming, with its leaps in technology and massive install-base, means games have developed new depth–and the future of gaming promises to look a lot more like literature than flight simulators. This is, in many ways, the rise of a new novel. Like its lexicographic predecessor, the pixilated form revels in moral ambiguity, character motivations, conflicts between free will and fate.


Shop Talk |

Serial Fiction

by Celeste Ng

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 […]


Shop Talk |

New Yorkers heart books and satire, want free Times, music

by Celeste Ng

Last week, New York magazine polled 100 pedestrians in SoHo about where they got their information and entertainment and found some encouraging news–at least about books. Of those polled, 67% spent $50 or more on books in the past year; 19% had spent over $250. (By way of comparison, well under half of those surveyed spent $50 or more on music–whether online or on CD–and 63% said they’d be unwilling to pay anything for online access to the New York Times.) Additionally, 90% said they did not own an e-reader like the Kindle or the Nook, and 68% said they […]


Shop Talk |

Book World seeks subscribers

by Celeste Ng

Lit journals fold if no one subscribes, and in the digital age, the same goes for podcasts. For the Washington Post‘s Book World series, it’s get subscribers, or get the ax. Ron Charles, deputy editor of the section, explained the dire situation in an interview with Washington City Paper: [T]he paper’s top brass have threatened to kill the section’s podcast if it can’t rally more iTunes subscribers. There’s no concrete deadline for adding more subscribers, Charles says, or even a goal for how many it needs, just “a general mandate to make sure we’re concentrating our efforts on projects that […]


Shop Talk |

We've got a book for that.

by Celeste Ng

A recent report finds that in the last four months, book apps are now more popular than games on the iPhone. Says the UK’s Telegraph: [I]n the last four months, book apps have exceeded the popularity of games apps – with one out of every five new apps launching in October having been a book. In September, games apps were overtaken by book apps for the first time. The reporting firm, Flurry, suggests that the iPhone might even compete with e-readers like the Kindle. Read the full report here. If you’ve got an iPhone, do you read on it? Now […]


Shop Talk |

Does the brain like e-books?

by Celeste Ng

The rise of the Kindle, and the recent advent of competitor e-readers the QUE, the Nook, and the Alex, have sparked much discussion about the future of paper books, publishing, and the universe. But there’s been little discussion about whether e-books are really a good substitute for, you know, book books. The New York Times‘s “Room for Debate” column asked several experts to weigh in: Is there a difference in the way the brain takes in or absorbs information when it is presented electronically versus on paper? Does the reading experience change, from retention to comprehension, depending on the medium? […]




Literary Partners