Check out new fiction from You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine author Alexandra Kleeman.
Choking Hazard
The New York Times Broadens Book Coverage
The New York Times is broadening its book coverage by adding more staffers and launching three new features: a literary advice column, a weekly Q&A about writing processes, and a column looking at “contemporary issues through the lens of recent and historical books.”
Hats Off to the World’s First Chinese Laureate
On Thursday, the fiction writer Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize for Literature, which marks the first time a Chinese writer has won the prestigious award. Lauded for his command of “hallucinatory realism,” Yan (whose pen name translates to “not talking” in Mandarin) has drawn comparisons to Faulkner for the complexity of his fictional settings. Back in 2005, John Updike published his thoughts on the writer.
Step Right Up and Meet The Millions!
Tonight! Come out and meet The Millions! Listen to readings from Emily St. John Mandel, Sonya Chung, Michael Bourne, and Garth Risk Hallberg. Also, you can meet our editors C. Max Magee and Ujala Sehgal. Or, if you’re feeling testy, you can debate me in person about my recent eReader article!
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Found in Florence
“It was just one small sign in a bustling city. But it was a sign, nevertheless, that Florence has not forgotten the Brownings after all.” In the New York Times, novelist Ann Mah explored Florence looking for signs of the literary couple who called it home for many years: Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. From our archives: a more sober look at the famed city.
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The Fantastic Flying Books
Have you watched “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” yet? You should. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
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Bonus Links
Simon & Schuster is planning to put out full-length audio editions of Ernest Hemingway’s novels. At the blog Okay Terrific, Steve figured out that Islands in the Stream will be read by Tommy Lee Jones and For Whom the Bell Tolls by Campbell Scott (and Steve is launching a campaign to get his own narrating gig.)Remember my post about book news RSS feeds? I’ve added the USA Today book news feed to the list. I use the book news feeds to generate the headlines that appear to the right. Any feeds that I’m missing? Let me know in the comments.Recently discovered The Publishing Contrarian via Books Inq. It’s full of all sorts of insidery book industry commentary.
I’m sorry but this is a terrible story. Good gosh. I thought Kleeman was supposed to represent the new avant garde. This is straight out of an undergrad fiction workshop. Plot, prose, characterization all tedious. Yet this will be the only piece of fiction many people read this week. Contemporary American lit has so much more to offer than this. Fiction can be inventive, funny, fun, emotionally resonant, edgy…alive…this has all the life of a last-minute high school English paper.
Yipes! Agreed. I’ve read a hundred pieces as time-wastingly “okay” (until that amateurish finish) as that, online, in the past year or so. Why is that particular not bad/not good thing in the NYer? I can only imagine a shrug in response.