Apparently the idea that vampires and zombies aren’t real but serial killers are didn’t occur to anyone associated with the book, Gossip Girl, Psycho Killer.
Gossip Girl Violence
2010 Giller longlist announced
The longlist for Canada’s 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize has been announced. Notable omissions: “Ilustrado by Montreal’s Miguel Syjuco, which won the Man Asian Literary Award before it was even published; Beatrice and Virgil, Yann Martel’s first novel since his breakthrough Life of Pi; and, most notably, Room by Emma Donoghue, which was recently shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.”
“Instead of Sobbing, You Write Sentences”
“Most of the time I think of the self as a snare, and I don’t like being trapped in it. I try to reach out beyond my pittance of experience and connect to the world, but it turns out one way to do that is to be honest and accurate about my own life.” Leslie Jamison interviews Charles D’Ambrosio for The New Yorker. Pair with our own Hannah Gersen‘s review of D’Ambrosio’s Loitering.
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What’s Your Top 5?
We’ll be revealing the top 5 vote getters in our “Best Fiction of the Millenium (So Far)” poll on Thursday and Friday. We’d love to hear your predictions here.
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Multi-Tasking
“When you want to read a long book, for reasons of weight a paperback must do, and you’ll just have to suck it up re: its inevitably smaller print and wind-catchingly thinner pages.” Here’s a handy guide to reading while you walk from the good people over at The Awl.
How to Backfire
Turns out the Streisand effect applies to book sales. The Wall Street Journal reports that banning a book in China causes sales to increase both at home and abroad. “These days, smothering someone is as good as crowning that person,” the article quotes a Chinese reader as saying. You could also read Deanna Fei on being a Chinese-American writer in China.