March 11, 2010
As Max has it, this database of 337 bestsellers with extensive notes is bibliographic crack.
For instance:
Upon The Reivers’s June, 1962 release the novel experienced an interesting array of reception. The more “important” critics of the day “lambasted” Reivers as a...
So we announced the Best Translated Book Award winners yesterday. Here’s the winners at Three Percent.
And Omnivorcaious has a pretty good interview with judge Michael Orthofer. We learn:
Of the eligible books (around three hundred) I would guess I read and reviewed about a...
March 10, 2010
(This posts comes to us from Andrew Wessels, who contributes to The Quarterly Conversation, as well as a number of other literary pursuits. His new site The Offending Adam delivers new poetry and book reviews every week and does so with an innovative approach to. Here he explains where the site comes from and how it works.)
I have been in an email conversation with G.C. Waldrep about the choice of title for our journal,...
March 9, 2010
Interesting discussion going on at The Constant Conversation surrounding Levi Asher’s recent point that e-book adoption is proceeding too slowly to really be a revolution, as everyone’s calling it.
Check the comments for some great points on both sides, including Mark Thwaite, who says in part:
Further, I’m still at a loss, really, to think why I’d bother to read an e-book...
Alas, so much cool stuff happens on the East Coast that I’m not able to attend. And here’s a great example: tomorrow Chad Post et al. will be announcing the BTB winners for Fiction and Poetry. You know what to expect: booze, food, lots of schmoozing, books. If you’re in the area, definitely try to make it:
Here are the details:
BTBA Winners Announcement
Wednesday, March 10th at 7pm@
Idlewild Books
12 W. 19th St. (near 5th Ave.)...- Reality Hunger
I can usually tell that I’m enjoying an essay when I think as I read it “I should really blog about this.” And one of the marks of a truly great essay is when, once I’ve decided I’m going to blog it, I think “ahh, here is the perfect part to excerpt” . . . and then, a paragraph later, “ahh, here is the perfect part to excerpt” . . . and then again...
March 8, 2010
- About a Mountain — Read It
Since I’m currently reading John D’Agata’s book-length essay, About a Mountain...
March 7, 2010
- An Idea Every Independent Bookstore Should Steal
Last Friday I helped host the “bookswap” at San Francisco independent bookstore The Booksmith. (I also do a translated fiction reading group there; if you’re in town, think about joining us.) It’...
March 5, 2010
It’s not every day you review a Nobelist in your hometown paper: my review of Kenzaburo Oe’s The Changeling...
Most of the time when I see something about Michel Houellebecq, I sigh deeply, read the first couple paragraphs, and then completely lose interest. He’s always seemed like the kind of writer that would interest me, but most of the criticism concerned with his writing tends to follow the same cliches and make the actual books sound more or less dreadful. It’s along the lines of “That hateful bad boy Houellebecq. He’s written another dispiriting, nearly suicide-inducing...
