On Murakami’s 1Q84
DH: Haruki Murakami has a knack for presenting his characters as regular guys and gals. He’s also a very physical writer, a natural give-and-take athleticism is part of his prose.…
Read More
Author: Three Guys One Book
Housewifely Arts by Megan Mayhew Bergman
From Birds of A Lesser Paradise: Stories by Megan Mayhew Bergman – Scribner – March 2012 “At first, it is so quiet my teeth hurt.”…
Read More
Lev Grossman at Vroman’s Bookstore
I was never interested in Lev Grossman. I resisted reading The Magicians for two years, mostly because it’s described as, “Harry Potter for grownups,” which sounds terrible.…
Read More
The Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst, Part Two
Wrapping up reading of The Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst: As I read towards the last page of Child, which is page 564 in the galley, I found myself racing, anxious for a sense of completion.…
Read More
Why I Wrote a New Moby Dick by John Minichillo
JC: John Minichillo’s The Snow Whale is another of the great books to come out from Atticus Book this year. He and I were emailing back and forth about him contributing a WWFIL piece and I mentioned that I was thinking about a longish blog post about Moby-Dick and the recent uptick in it’s legacy and influence.…
Read More
Widow: Stories by Michelle Latiolais
Widow: Stories by Michelle Latiolais is a compact collection, intimate and charged. The female protagonists in these eighteen stories are unnamed and vary in ages, and the theme of widowhood is entwined with stories that share a sense of loneliness and loss.…
Read More
You Deserve Nothing by Alexander Maksik
This book has been my constant companion for the last three days. It is nothing short of breathtaking. Now it’s over, and will ruin the next book I read.…
Read More
Green Apple Books to petition state government to become exempt from sales tax
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Pete Mulvihill – pete@greenapplebooks.com | (415) 387-2272 Green Apple Books to petition state government to become exempt from sales tax.…
Read More
Don DeLillo, I Denounce You
The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories by Don DeLillo (Scribner) There is a huge gap in my reading history, and it is filled with unopened copies of every book written by Don DeLillo.…
Read MoreThe Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst, Part One
When you read a great novel, you feel like your intelligence is being enhanced, that your imagination is being trained to be sharper.…
Read MoreThe Naturalist by Maureen F. McHugh
“The Naturalist” is the first story in After the Apocalypse by Maureen F. McHugh coming soon from Small Beer Press. 1. …
Read MoreWhat Readers Know – Ed Haley and Victoria Patterson
Edward Haley, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College, attended a recent reading and Q & A in Newport Beach, California for This Vacant Paradise. …
Read MoreThere But For The by Ali Smith
The wordplay in Ali Smith’s new novel reminded me of Shakespeare crossed with Ira Gershwin. It’s verbal vaudeville put to the service of a nervy, upper educational caste British novel.…
Read More"The Slap" by Steven Millhauser
One afternoon, in a quaint (there is no better word) bedroom community on Long Island, emptied of commuters to NYC in the morning and refilled again each afternoon, a small crime wave begins.…
Read More
I Married You For Happiness by Lily Tuck
It is very difficult to describe a marriage — especially if you are married. In painfully slivered prose Lily Tuck tells the reader exactly what it is like.…
Read MoreThe Inverted Forest by John Dalton
Okay, full disclosure: The Inverted Forest sat around for awhile because I thought is was written by John Darnton, who, while he has his place, is not my cup of tea.…
Read MoreHow to Write Like a Viking
After my Three Guys review of Olaf Olaffson’s beautiful work in Valentines, I backtracked down to my main library and pulled out The Sagas of Icelanders by the appropriately named Viking Press.…
Read MoreBen Loory Giveaway
On Monday, JE gave us a preview of Ben Loory’s new collection Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day saying, among other things: “I have no idea what they were about.…
Read MoreStories for Nighttime and Some for the Day by Ben Loory
I’ve said it before: Ben Loory’s stories aren’t like anybody else’s (JR, you probably wouldn’t even consider them stories). They totally have their own logic, their own sensibility.…
Read MoreGames to Play After Dark by Sarah Gardner Borden
How this book got by me is a mystery, and I feel like a loser for picking it up now. A book about a miserable marriage told from the perspective of the long suffering wife?…
Read More
Valentines by Olaf Olafsson
Valentines is one of those treasures of contemporary literature that reside in the vast Vintage/Anchor backlist. I discovered it by accident while doing a Monday morning reorder cycle of Random House titles.…
Read MoreLast Werewolf Giveaway
If you read yesterday, you know I liked Glen Duncan’s The Last Werewolf a lot. For those of you who weren’t compelled to run out and buy one in the last twenty-four hours, we’ve got just the thing.…
Read MoreThe Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan
Glen Duncan’s novel The Last Werewolf is released this week and you’re bound to hear a few hyperbolically positive reviews floating around the web.…
Read MoreDeath as a Side Effect by Ana María Shua
Picture an urban dystopia, where disparate gangs of marauders own the streets, armored taxis are the only safe mode of transportation, and lock-down gated communities and 24/7 personal security guards are the norm for a struggling middle class.…
Read More