The faux short-fingered vulgarians (a little inside joke) at Coudal Partners have come up with a swell idea, not the least of which because they have shown dubious judgement in including me—they asked an assortment of writers/readers to recount (in a few hundred words) a reading experience
With regularity there is much caterwauling and ululating directed to the depredations and idiocies that emanate from the newspaper book review that people love to hate (guess who?)—this is engaging and amusing only to a point—one that in my estimation has long passed. Recently, it has occurred to
Last week I noted that the recently concluded industrial gathering—the one that occasions much forgettable verbiage and disposable text—has in part the task of previewing the next season’s book industry’s offerings. Having spared myself the company of strangers and being subjected to other predations, I believe
This past week, book-business types and then some gathered in Washington, D.C., to do commerce and rub shoulders at the big annual industry gathering known as BookExpo America. I hope some good comes of this melee—many of the then-some types are filing web reports, which I
A Bee Stung, So I Killed All the Fish (Notes From the Homeland 2003-2006) by George Saunders The seven tidbits in this limited-edition booklet (cover art by Sean McDonald) are vintage George Saunders of the reigning (ironic?) aesthetic that has culminated in his latest collection, In Persuasion Nation,
As someone who reads a fair amount and is surrounded by books and never travels without a few books, and whose inner monologue is frequently preoccupied with things literary, I must confess to a certain amount of navel-gazing about this activity that has become the engine of my life.
It doesn’t take omniscience or prescience to know that as you read, this editors at relevant media (a category opening room for much debate) around the nation are preparing their list for the dubious seasonal thing known as Summer or Beach Reading. I know this because I have (for
I don’t get out much but I make occasional forays to events that include rooms full of strangers, and so I recently attended the latest version of the yearly PEN Hemingway awards at the JFK Library at which Joyce Carol Oates was the keynote speaker. Her talk, a loose
&My editors here regularly hector to me about my inclination for citation—as opposed to the expression of my own thoughts. Now I must say, I love my editors. [Hey, thanks. —eds] And no doubt my humility (I often feel what I have cited is far better than anything
Elsewhere on this site you will soon find a recently rediscovered, never before published conversation with Alberto Manguel, author of The History of Reading, and more recently A Reading Diary. Growing up in Buenos Aires, he came to know one of modern history’s most renowned librarians, Jorge Luis Borges.
