|
|
Updates, top stories & our favorite links straight to your inbox.
|
|
|
Archive for December 2009
 Who and what do you want to be in 2010 (but more importantly, why)? Today is New Year’s Eve and like many people at this very moment, I’ve been thinking about my resolutions. I’ve shunned this tradition the past couple years because for some reason – if I clearly stated I was going to do something – the likelihood of it not happening was even higher than if I had not said anything at all.
I enjoyed a pretty successful first year out of college but like many, the recession soon found me and my hopes for steady work and monetary stability were knifed in the face. This year, I learned that “Freelancer” was just a glorified term for “Intermittently Unemployed.” Naturally, this leant me quite a bit of time to sit on my couch and stew in my own thoughts. It took awhile to boil down the carcass of my early twenty-something idealism, but at the end of 2009 I found myself with a rather flavorful confit of hope and aspirations. Since I wasn’t sure where to start, I asked a handful of friends what their personal resolutions would be. Most were pretty run-of-the-mill (you know, like “getting in shape” or “getting out of debt”) and I’m not really the biggest fan of run-of-the-mill. I was also set on making my resolutions concrete and more specific (you know, like “double the income I had in 2009” instead of “earn more money” or “master the Arabic language” instead of “learn new stuff”). My desire to prevent my resolution from being ill-defined was shot to death (wow, my writing is violent tonight) upon asking my friend Bryan what his resolution was going to be.
“I’m going to be more awesome.” Read more »
 As the decade draws to a close and my reading habits slow down to a trickle of Us Magazine and the occasional novel bought in a fit of fear that my brain is going soft from all the reality television I watch instead of reading, I’ve decided it’s time to memorialize the weirdest, craziest book I’ve read in the last ten years. Mostly to prove to myself that I once read actual literature, but also to let the rest of you know about perhaps the most messed up, most beautiful book written in the last decade.
And that book is Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis.
I’ve been a fan of Ellis ever since I read American Psycho over the course of two weeks (when I say ‘read’ I mean mostly read with occasional skimming because a girl can only take so many detailed descriptions of mutilated prostitutes). I liked his style, how he didn’t seem to care about what people were going to think about the blatant narcissism and the way women were treated (or disemboweled) in his words. Read more »
 2009 has been a busy year for aggrieved authors.
This summer, Alice Hoffman infamously lashed out on Twitter at Boston Globe critic Robert Silman, who had given her novel a lukewarm review. Hoffman called Silman “a moron,” and added, “Now any idiot can be a critic.”
A few weeks later, Alain de Botton responded to a negative review by commenting on the reviewer’s blog: “I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make.”
In October, Maurie Sendak, responding to concerns that Where the Wild Things Are may be too scary for children, told worried parents to “go to hell.”
And last month, a kerfuffle erupted on the Amazon page for romance author Candace Sams’ novel, Electra Galaxy’s Mr. Interstellar Feller. Negative reviewers were attacked by a user called NiteflyrOne, who was soon exposed to be Candace Sams herself. After 15 pages of back-and-forth rancor (most of which has been deleted by Amazon), Sams threatened to report everyone to the FBI.
Although these sort of sophomoric responses baffle me–as writers, aren’t we trained to communicate our thoughts rationally, preferably after many revisions?–I can understand where they’re coming from. Read more »
Welcome to this week’s Free Book Friday, wherein we give you the best titles in indie publishing for the low low price of nothing. Congrats to last week’s winner Jess for scoring a free copy of The Best of Philadelphia Stories from PS Books.
This week, we are giving away a copy of The Vows of Silence by Susan Hill. In this fourth and most compulsively readable installment of Susan Hill’s Simon Serrailler crime series, The Vows of Silence, the enigmatic and brooding Inspector returns to investigate an execution-style killer who is terrorizing young women in the cathedral town of Lafferton. This unhinged murderer hunts and shoots his victims – all of whom are young brides – leaving Simon and his colleagues stymied by the apparent absence of viable clues as panic spreads throughout the town. The Vows of Silence is not just the story of a crime in need of solving, it is an exploration of the dark mind of the criminal. As Susan Hill exposes each piece of the plot’s puzzle with masterful and tantalizing control, readers are also presented with complicated issues of illness, isolation, family drama and death both natural and unnatural. Hill’s perfectly crafted character studies and relentless plot twists challenge the genre as she proves that the consequences often of crime tell more of a story than the crime itself.
 This week’s Free Book Friday is sponsored by The Overlook Press. Read more »
 Just one of many negative perspectives of the Twilight saga. An ambitious sophomore in high school three years ago, I checked out Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Striving to seem mature and sophisticated, I lugged the book around for over a month. It was the hardest read of my entire life. The worst part is I had no clue as to its significance. Grasping the bare bones of the plot, I knew there was more the novel wanted to communicate.
Sure, one reason I didn’t catch the significance was because I was a sophomore in high school. In my first year of college though, I’ve discovered I’m not the only person confused. There are whole courses devoted to Dostoyevsky and The Brothers Karamazov; the underlying significances, symbols, motifs and so on.
Maybe I should’ve stuck to Harry Potter like the rest of my classmates.
In my short time, it seems the literary world places most value on novels with human messages, even more so on novels taking long intricate routes to get to those messages. However, it seems the literary world also tends to cast novels not adhering to such standards as a “literature of diversion” as Jonathan Franzen puts it.
At school, literary high brows’ nostrils flare at the sight of a Twilight or Harry Potter novel. “That’s not real literature,” they say. I’m not a fan of genre novels myself, but I think my fellow undergrads and the literary community are wrong for totally writing off such novels. Read more »
Sydney’s Mitchell Library is celebrating it’s 100th Anniversary with a “sexy” new alphabet that utilizes objects from the library’s collection.
While I agree that it’s time to bring some sexiness back to the library system, I don’t know that a new typeface would be my first thought. So I brought in some help from the ultimate authority in sexiness to construct a new library anthem.
Justin, take it away….
 The Ultimate Authority in Library Sexiness Read more »
Christmas carols. They’re inescapable this time of year, they’re waiting for you behind every corner. From diners and taxicabs to lobbies and laundry mats, these upbeat tunes are there to get you all fuzzy and drunk on the spirit of Christmas, whether you want to or not. However, the next time you hear one of these jaunty jingles, you should listen a little bit closer. What you’ll hear in the margins of some of these songs may surprise you. Some of our most popular carols, songs that we’ve all probably sung along to at some point or another, actually contain dark undertones of melancholy and aggression. Read more »
DV25YHEGSR4M
Welcome to this week’s Free Book Friday, wherein we give you the best titles in indie publishing for the low low price of nothing. Congrats to last week’s winner Ayesha for scoring a free copy of The Withdrawal Method by Pasha Malla.
This week, we are giving away a copy of The Best of Philadelphia Stories, Volume 2 from PS Books. This best-of anthology offers a wide selection of the literary voices that make Philadelphia so unique. Authors include doctors, lawyers, students, teachers, journalists, playwrights, and a detective – all talented writers who spend their precious free time honing their craft. James W. Morris (Regalia) grew up in Philadelphia and worked as a monologue writer for Jay Leno. David Sanders (School of Fishes) has been widely published and was the founder of the InterAct Theatre Company “Best of Philly” reading series. Ona Russell (The (O)ther Kahn) is the grand-neice of Philadelphia architect Louis Kahn; she is now working on her third Sarah Kaufman mystery. This is just a sampling of the many diverse voices featured in the second Philadelphia Stories anthology.
This week’s Free Book Friday is sponsored by PS Books. Read more »
|
|
RSS Feed
