ThreeGuys1Book has 1605 followers | By Jason Rice   I can’t remember where I read about this book, maybe it was the advertisement in the New York Times Book Review, but to be honest, once I knew it was Unbridled Books, that may have been where I saw it.
The door is swinging open for the independent world of book publishing as the larger trade houses seem to be feeling this sharp end of the stick…so when I read a fantastic debut like this, (the author is thirty years old) I have to wonder…if she even bothered submitting this to the majors, and just went straight to Unbridled Books. This Continue reading Last Night in Montreal – Emily St. John Mandel By Dennis Haritou  
Mary Gaitskill’s ‘Lost Cat’ is an essay in the latest Granta, I07. The cat was lost twice since there’s the body of the cat, the fact of it…now missing… and then there’s what seems more important than that…the emotional form of the cat which haunts Mary Gaitskill. We don’t have a word in English for this ghost cat. Greek drama, millennia ago, suffered direct. The text bled in your face. But I’ve talked to writers about how difficult it is to express emotions in prose. The cruelty of the gods, the pounding of the three fates on the door…we don’t have that to explain our Continue reading Mary Gaitskill’s Lost Cat By Jason Chambers  JE: My friend Bill Kenower of Author Magazine does an excellent series of interviews with touring writers in conjunction with Third Place Books in Seattle, one of the great indie bookstores anywhere. Andre Dubus III rolled through our town recently, and Bill has given us the go ahead to share part one of his interview with our readership. To view the second half, go to Author Magazine and click on interviews.  By 3G1B   JE: In recent days, we four at Three Guys have been discussing the trials and travails of authordom, from the rigors of composition, to the art of absorbing rejection, to the epic and often fruitless journey to finding an agent, to finding a publisher, to building a readership, and now it seems a logical progression would be to talk about what an author might do to help his cause in the arena of bookselling. What happens to a book after it emerges hot from the printing press is for the Continue reading Demystifying the Vagaries of Bookselling By Jason Chambers   Alex Burrett wants to take you by the shoulders and turn you around. In ‘The Expanding House’, one of the stories in My Goat Ate Its Own Legs, an elderly widower is dropped off at his house. He is to be alone in it for the first time. He grapples with the front door keys; sensing that everyday routines are going to get a lot harder. It’s weird to enter a house with a “ghost” in it. Have you ever done it? There’s a person missing from your home now and they are not coming back. I’ve been through this. I know how strange it feels.
Continue reading My Goat Ate Its Own Legs by Alex Burrett By Jonathan Evison  From our friend, James P. Othmer, and his aforementioned Adland, coming this September: JE By Jonathan Evison   JE: Independent publicist Lauren Cerand, who we’ve mentioned before here at Three Guys for her ability to help generate and foster the ineffable buzz, is one of the coolest people I’ve met in the business. When LC is trumpeting a project, I listen. I follow her tweets. I like her style, her approach, and her enthusiasm for her work. And she’s got a great smile to boot, which is imperative in the world of publicity! This weekend, Lauren let me throw some questions at her for the benefit of the writers among us. Listen. Learn it. Live it. Lauren, can you give
Continue reading Picking Lauren Cerand’s Brain By Jason Chambers   DH: I led a book club for about two years. It’s the art of just letting people talk….and intervening with your own talk if the conversation flags or loses its vector on the book. Once I discovered an author with a first book that I thought our group would love. I asked their publisher if the writer could visit us. What I got from the pub’s marketing department was a one-sentence answer: “How many copies can you sell?” Well…our club had 15 members on a good day. That’s really as large as a book club can be. Any larger and the group will end up being
Continue reading How Novelist Joshua Henkin Joined 175 Book Clubs By Jason Chambers  JE: Last week, JR and I engaged in a lively discussion about agents and champions and dental insurance and surviving–financially and spiritually—as a writer in the twenty-first century. This week I thought we could pick up generally where we left off, and talk about audience building. I believe that the successful author in century twenty-one must be a force of nature, a tireless connector, social networker, and above all, accessible to his readership. Monetizing the relationship between reader and writer is going to be the key to survival from here on out. The successful writer will take it upon himself to find readers, rather than leave it up to his publisher. I’m of the opinion that a good writer ought Continue reading Surviving the Odds as A Debut Novelist By Jason Chambers   I promise not to bitch too much, but I’m doing this review from a PDF that the publisher sent me, which is probably the last format a critic should be working from when reviewing a book of photography, especially one as brilliant as this. 1.3, which you can buy for an incredibly low price over at Amazon.com, makes a fine gift for the photography lover in your life.
Cell phone photography is an art unto itself; it’s not pretty, pixels are hard to deal with – but sometimes you see things that you have to take a picture of and you only Continue reading Joel Grey – 1.3: Images From My Phone By Jason Chambers   The Other Guterson
I vowed shortly after the release (or should I say, the unleashing) of “Marley and Me,” that I’d never read a book with a dog on the cover so long as I lived. Unless Jack London wrote it. Then my best friend wrote a book with a dog on the cover. Shit! Sorry Mary, but I had to tear the cover off my reader’s copy, or expose myself as a sham. The author is Mary Guterson, and the book is “Gone to the Dogs,” which St. Martin’s Griffin releases today (and I’ll be amazed if somebody doesn’t Continue reading Gone to the Dogs – Mary Guterson By Jason Chambers In the second part of Happyland there is an incredible scene that J. Robert Lennon sets up by introducing the Mayor of Equinox. Archie Olds is the proud owner of an apple orchard in town and started the enterprise of selling apples by setting them out on the side of the road near his home and selling them on the honor system. To his surprise, people paid for them and left him money. Lennon takes us through a town meeting and we get to see Happy Masters discuss aloud her hopes at capturing the town’s Americanness and she is on stage to defend her decision to buy up the town. But this little slice of Main Street USA is delivered Continue reading Happyland, J. Robert Lennon, Part II By Jason Chambers   Jonathan Evison and Jason Rice talk about getting a literary agent and making a living as a writer.JR: I wanted to start a conversation about getting a literary agent. Jonathan you’ve crossed over to the side of getting published. Most aspiring writers never get that chance. Right now I’m trying to get an agent or editor to read my novel, you’ve given me advice, which is sound (results have been slow and disappointing)…but it is different than the traditional route of writing a query letter and sending it off to agents who represent books like the one your trying to
Continue reading Getting an Agent and Making a Living as a Writer By Jason Rice   Of the four guys here at the blog, I’m probably the best person to review a children’s book.
My son is almost four years old and I read books to him every night, sometimes more than once, and most nights he picks the books we read. My greatest achievement in the realm of reading books to my son was when I taught him to say the world ‘philharmonic’, which is from the book Jake the Philharmonic Dog (I’ve read this book a million times), which isn’t nearly as good as Billy Twitters and his Blue Whale Problem. Illustrator Adam Rex has a Continue reading BILLY TWITTERS AND HIS BLUE WHALE PROBLEM Written by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Adam Rex | |
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