As I detailed in my WWFIL piece a month or so back, I generally hated reading in high school. I hated the Brontë sisters with the passion of a thousand suns (one of those thousand, I’m honest enough to admit, was ignorant to enough to think that the author’s name was actually Jane Eyre). I couldn’t even lift Moby Dick. If we needed an incredibly abridged version to even get through the text (ahem, Mr. Dickens), I was out.
It is crazy that I have not read this book. John reminds me of myself, I never wanted to kill anyone, certainly not. But the horrors of work, the mundane brutality, and how cold life can be, is something I can identify with. John realizes that life is short and to live it sober would be such a mistake. So he takes after booze like a dog chasing a car, with the same results.
The Icelandic sagas were an ancient path that subsequent writers didn’t go down. I’m fascinated by lost versions of reality and thought I had found one in the still-born Icelandic sagas that seemed to dead-end their literature.
In my life as a reader, the first significant thing I remember is sitting on my dad’s lap listening to him reading The Hobbit to me. I don’t know how old I was; I must have been preliterate or just learning to read. It was a gorgeous book, a hefty hardback bound in dimpled earth-green leather that slid out of an earth-green leather box; both the book and the box were decorated with primitive borders and gilt runic inscriptions in one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s invented languages.
I am in the cat bird seat here, and feel very lucky to have this rare chance to look at these stories months before they goes on-sale. To watch Mr. Ross thread the needle with a short story, instead of the giant masterpiece that was his debut, is great fun.
Friend of the blog, Gina Frangello, tells me that LA crime writer Tod Goldberg (Fake Liar Cheat, Simplify, Other Resort Cities) is the funniest person she’s ever met, and watching this video which Goldberg made right before AWP, that’s not hard to believe. I peed my pants watching this thing. Something about the off-beat deadpan deliveries makes it even sadder and funnier.
Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich
When We Fell In Love – Helen Sedwick
When We Fell In Love – Helen Sedwick
The Delivery Cut Download
Our Frail Blood by Peter Nathaniel Malae