The good news is that John Irving doesn’t believe that the book is dead. On the other hand, in a recent interview for “Big Think”, he says that if he were a 27-year-old novelist trying to get his first book published today, he’d be tempted to shoot himself.

I think my favorite response to this interview so far is from the Fiction Circus’ Miracle Jones, who says:

“As a 27-year-old writer trying to get his first novel published, I’d much rather kill John Irving.”

Instead of my typical point-by-point rebuttal, I thought this time I’d respond to Irving’s sentiments with a list of contemporary writers under 27  (or who have recently been 27) who have been doing just fine. Read more »

Some lawyers have canceled a Harry Potter-themed dinner for children. Then, they kicked a puppy.

Tom Cruise has been revealed as the inspiration for Christian Bale’s performance in American Psycho. I feel vaguely unsurprised.

Walt Whitman in a Levi’s commercial. Wait, what?

A research associate at NYU has procured funding to rewrite Melville’s Moby Dick entirely in emoticons.

If you liked bad poetry, here are some awful opening sentences from a bad fiction writing contest. Also, if you’re interested in writing some bad fiction of your own, some tips include using as many adjectives as you can, describing every character in minute detail, taking no account of narrative pacing, and more.

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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 Henry Powderly for picking up a copy of The Shanghai Gesture by Gary Indiana.

This week, we are giving away a copy of Some Things That Meant the World to Me by Joshua Mohr. A San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller, Some Things That Meant the World to Me is the highly praised first novel from Joshua Mohr, and has elicited comparisons from reviewers to Kafka, Lewis Carroll, Haruki Murakami, and Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son. Some Things is the coming-of-age story of a 30-year-old man named Rhonda who suffers from depersonalization. When Rhonda was a child – abandoned and ignored by his mother; abused and misguided by his mother’s boyfriend – he imagined the rooms of his home drifting apart from one another like separating continents. Years later, after an embarrassing episode as an adult, Rhonda’s inner-child appears, leading him to a trapdoor in a most unlikely place that will force him to finally confront his troubled past.

This week’s Free Book Friday is sponsored by Two Dollar Radio. Two Dollar Radio is a family-run outfit founded in 2005 with the mission to reaffirm the cultural and artistic spirit of the publishing industry. They aim to do this by presenting bold works of literary merit, each book individually and collectively providing a sonic progression that they believe to be too loud to ignore.

You can read the first chapter of Some Things That Meant the World to Me for free on Two Dollar Radio’s website.

To enter the giveaway, leave a comment with your e-mail address in the space below, or send an email directly to contact@litdrift.com. We also recommend doing any or all of the following: Read more »