Dennis Haritou: Here’s what I thought of the fiction part of the Penguin Summer list, the part of the list that seems blog worthy anyway. The first Viking I come to has reached the mountains of Wyoming. I am talking about The Signal by Ron Carlson. Now I know that my beloved friend, Jonathan Evison (who I have never met) thinks that I wouldn’t like any novel that had a tree in it…but that’s not true JE, I can take a few anyway. But when JR, who can detect a good galley even if I hide it in my file cabinet, saw The Signal, I thought I was losing it for sure…like I would come in one morning and it would be gone. Get your own, JR. If that wasn’t enough, JC also immediately pounced when I mentioned the book to him. A marriage in failure mode in mountains with dark secrets by the author of the acclaimed Five Skies. I am reading this.
Wyoming is followed by Maine in my literary geography and Ron Currie’s debut novel Everything Matters!. I have already talked about Ron a lot on the blog. I have read half of Everything in my computer. I decided to wait till the Jasons start reading it before I finish it. Ron illustrates what the word “intelligent” means and kicks ass besides in Everything Matters!. I think the cover presented in the catalog sucks…too “boys great adventure stories” for me, but the book looks like a triumph.
Why hasn’t my rep given me a galley of Nick Laird’s Glover’s Mistake?…he’d better…and in the category of “You must have this in your collection if your taste is weird.” there is the final volume of Library of America’s series of Phillip K. Dick novels…this includes Valis.
Everyone at Penguin Press is apparently excited by Reif Larsen’s The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet…excited enough to print 125K copies. But I have to say that I am very eager to read it…12-year-old genius mapmaker, massive volume with illustrations apparently. The author went to Brown which is a positive sign…maybe he knew Josh Bazell? Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice? I’m stunned with excitement. I want Penguin Press to know that there is a lunch at Bayonne’s best diner with Pynchon’s name on it for anytime he wants it. And all Three Guys would email interview him together if camels could fly.
The guys have Riverhead galleys for the linked stories of Aleksander Hemon, (Love) and Obstacles. We love short stories at Three Guys…perhaps the best way for an author to find their audience. Hemon, of course, already has an audience but pile it on bibliophiles! There is always room for more readers in the great library. The Wish Maker by Ali Sethi may be a reach for the guys but I’d like to read it. The Fall by Colin McAdam looks hot and double that for the Latin American Juan Gabriel Vasquez, The Informers. Shades of 2666? I plan to find out.
Dennis Haritou: Here’s what I thought of the fiction part of the Penguin Summer list, the part of the list that seems blog worthy anyway. The first Viking I come to has reached the mountains of Wyoming. I am talking about The Signal by Ron Carlson. Now I know that my beloved friend, Jonathan Evison (who I have never met) thinks that I wouldn’t like any novel that had a tree in it…but that’s not true JE, I can take a few anyway. But when JR, who can detect a good galley even if I hide it in my file cabinet, saw The Signal, I thought I was losing it for sure…like I would come in one morning and it would be gone. Get your own, JR. If that wasn’t enough, JC also immediately pounced when I mentioned the book to him. A marriage in failure mode in mountains with dark secrets by the author of the acclaimed Five Skies. I am reading this. 
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