Interview with Emily St John Mandel
JC: While several of the guys have loved Emily St. John Mandel’s novels, Last Night in Montreal and The Singer’s Gun, JR has been singing her praises far and wide for years.…
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Month: April 2012
When We Fell In Love – Bruce Holbert
JC: I’m reading Bruce Holbert’s Lonesome Animals now and enjoying it. The marketing materials told me it would be like True Grit and The Sisters Brothers, which is a damned happy reading place. …
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Old Filth by Jane Gardam
Jane Gardam’s Crusoe’s Daughter releases on April 24 from Europa Editions in trade paper. I’ve already reviewed it on Three Guys.…
Read MoreThe Petrified Forest of Book Marketing and the Great Chain of Other People’s Writers
I call petrified any form of book marketing that is doesn’t encourage the end user to give back. Example: newspaper ads. …
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Dead Tree Readers
There was this French guy in the later 19th century who wrote a controversial Life of Jesus. Ernest Renan’s premise was that Jesus was a historical figure who should be investigated scientifically just like any other historical figure.…
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Rosemary, from Other People We Married, by Emma Straub
from Other People We Married by Emma Straub “Did you hire a psychic?” When Matt realizes that his wife Claire has hired a woman who claims to be an animal psychic, he’s less than pleased at how she spends her days and their money.…
Read MoreAmbition & the Writer
Imagine the young writer as a paradox whose ambition leads to a hunger to be recognized that is so urgent that it’s physically painful.…
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Some People Must Really Fall In Love by Emma Straub
from Other People We Married by Emma Straub “Just because something was impossible didn’t mean it couldn’t happen.” Which sort of says it all about my relationship with this book.…
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Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich, Rabbit at Rest by John Updike
It is a glorious thing, this repackage. Beyond wow. I never knew Updike very well, his writing was always something off in the distance, on a road I never traveled.…
Read MoreP.E. by Victor Lodato
The new story in the April 2nd issue of the New Yorker rocked me. It’s been awhile since I’ve reviewed a New Yorker story and there have been one or two near misses in the past several months.…
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