Erin Morgenstern‘s debut novel The Night Circus went from National Novel Writing Month project to 6-figure book advance after being rejected by more than 30 agents.
NaNoWriMo Author Scores Big
Beyond Campus
David Lodge never set out to be a writer of campus novels, but that may end up being his legacy, thanks to his most famous books, Changing Places and Small World. In the LRB, Stefan Collini reviews a new book of essays and an autobiography by the author, the latter of which covers the first forty years of his life.
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Ye Olde Best Books
Of course this is always an ongoing discussion about which books will endure, and which books are the best. Such talk is fueled by annual “Best Of” lists. But what did that conversation sound like… in 1898?
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.literature
Amazon’s attempts to control literary domain names like “.book” and “.read” are not making the publishing community happy.
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“He proposes that assholism is more rampant in society than ever before.”
Is this image of John McEnroe a great visual complement to John McWhorter’s review of Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, the First Sixty Years, or is it the greatest visual complement to John McWhorter’s review of Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, the First Sixty Years?
A writer by any other name…
Using pen names has been a common practice for, well, a very long time. George Eliot is a nom de plume, as are George Orwell and George Sand. Though not a George, journalist Sarah Hall chose to publish her fiction under a different name. She writes for The Guardian about this decision, the history of the pen name, and the reasons authors continue to use them.
Querying the Card Catalog
Looking up a book title on Google? The search results now include listings at your local library, reports The Digital Reader. See also our own Jacob Lambert’s entreaty, “An Open Letter to the Person Who Wiped Boogers on My Library Book.”
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Throwback Thursday: 1930s Cheever Edition
What better way to celebrate Throwback Thursday than by reading the first John Cheever short story ever published?
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