Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘reading’

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Love Letter to the Deckle Edge

by Celeste Ng

If all the recent talk about the iPad and the Amazon/Macmillan ebook pricing catfight has you longing for a simpler time, look no further than this ode to the deckle edge on The Millions: Opening a book can already feel like opening a gift. Armed with a knife and freeing the pages and the story hidden beneath the folds, it becomes something more, “a penetration of its secrets” and an act of discovery, shot through with a suggestion of violence and danger or of the painful gestation of the words themselves. This act of cutting open pages to read a […]


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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 […]


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When one book closes…

by Anne Stameshkin

After finishing a book you love, is it hard to move on? How long do you wait to open another — and how do you shake that feeling it won’t measure up to the last? On the Kenyon Review‘s KR Blog, Elizabeth Ames Staudt considers this dilemma: An insistence on finding a book that’s impossibly similar to the last will ultimately prove as disappointing as eating a falafel sandwich anywhere in Paris but at L’As du Fallafel, as will an arbitrarily ‘opposite’ selection when you’re still craving fried chickpeas. What’s an appropriate pining period when it comes to novels? How […]


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Are Books Recession-Proof?

by Celeste Ng

A recent poll of 3,000 people made a surprising find: books are an indulgence many people can’t live without. Three-quarters of adults questioned in an online poll said they would sacrifice holidays, dining out, going to the movies and even shopping sprees but they could not resist buying books. Dining out came in a far second with only 11 percent of Americans naming it their top indulgence, followed by shopping at 7 percent, vacations at four and movies, which was chosen by only 3 percent of Americans. “The recession highlighted the downside of greed, indulgence and giving in to temptation, […]


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One (Love) Story

by Celeste Ng

Yet another reason to read literary journals: they could help you find your soulmate. One Story has a great story up on its blog about how the magazine brought a couple together: Outside the Harvard Bookstore we prepared to part, making the non-committal noises of people who are never going to see each other again. Misery mixed in with relief. Within a few minutes this poetic, literary woman was going to vanish into the bright lights of the bookstore. The kind of woman I’d been dreaming about my whole life. But that’s what it was: a dream. Before she left, […]


Essays |

A Valentine: Books We Loved in 2009

by Anne Stameshkin

Every book we feature on Fiction Writers Review has won the admiration of our reviewers. But because it’s a new year, and it’s award season, and today is the official holiday of love, we asked our contributors to tell us which books of 2009 they most adored, cherished, and crushed on. What we received often transcended mere lists; writers shared why these certain books affected them, woke them up, even made them jealous. So in addition to the “favorites” that received the most votes, we’ve also included some of these endorsements and mini-reviews. Most selections are arranged by genre (Novel, Story Collection, etc.), and then there are less conventional categories–like Book You Loved But Would Be Embarrassed to Be Caught Reading.


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On (Non-Social) Reading

by Celeste Ng

From to Oprah’s Book Club to Goodreads, reading has become a more social activity than ever before. But what about those people who still like to curl up with a book–alone? The New York Times examines the private reader: Particularly with the books we adore most, a certain reader wants to preserve the experience for reflection, or even claim the book as hers and hers alone. Lois Lowry, an author of books for children and a two-time winner of the Newbery for “Number the Stars” and “The Giver,” said she recently read that Katherine Paterson, also a two-time Newbery winner […]


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The Books People Steal

by Celeste Ng

Abbie Hoffman would be proud. *** In Harvard Bookstore, one of my favorite local indie bookstores, there’s a small, unobtrusive sign on the fiction shelf. For books by Bukowski and Kerouac, it says, please ask at the register. I couldn’t figure out why and finally asked one of the staff. “People tend to steal them,” she explained bluntly. As a horrible goody-two-shoes, the idea of stealing a book had never occurred to me. (And really? Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac? Okay, I do live in Cambridge.) In the New York Times, novelist Margo Rabb investigates the most-stolen books at independent […]


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Who should ReadThis help next?

by Anne Stameshkin

In 2009, the now year-old organization ReadThis hit the ground running with a number of ambitious (and notably successful) projects–such as sending books to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and creating libraries for a Bronx public school and a Harlem children’s hospital. Who should ReadThis help supply books to in 2010? If you have suggestions, the board would love to hear from you. Via today’s Facebook message: ReadThis will be having a board meeting in a couple of weeks to plan the next six months of ReadThis activities. If you know of a school, workplace, hospital, military base, literacy organization, […]


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Literary Gifts #3: MotherReader's 105 Ways to Give a Book

by Celeste Ng

Books always make great presents, but just wrapping it up and handing it over is a little… blah. MotherReader offers a list of 105 books paired with complementary gifts. Ideas are grouped by recipient’s age range; many are aimed at kids and could be great ways to encourage budding readers. Here’s a sampling of my favorites: 3. Give a book with a movie theater gift card to see the upcoming film. 10. Give an interesting, insightful book with a restaurant gift card and a date to discuss the book together over a meal. 44. Everyone needs Mo Willems’ book Don’t […]




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