"Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl"
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Really enjoyed Carrie Brownstein’s impressive, observant, terrifically titled memoir.books
Silverblatt & Knausgaard
Saturday, February 6, 2016
Having just finished book three of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle (I enjoyed the first two more, though this volume’s still captivating), I was eager to listen to both part one and part two of the author’s interviews on Michael Silverblatt’s “Bookworm.” It’s great listening. These insights from …Year in Review: 2015
Friday, January 1, 2016
Continuing a15-year tradition (though one that’s gotten briefer with age and fatherhood), here’s a roundup of some of my favorite things experienced during the past 12 months: Books My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, Elena Ferrante The Story of a New Name, Elena …Ta-Nehisi Coates on Longform
Saturday, November 28, 2015
Two of my favorites.Year in Review: 2014
Sunday, January 11, 2015
Back before Tamara and I had our son in the summer of 2013, I used to keep regular lists of my “Annual Favorites” of the year — the best books, movies, TV shows, podcasts, exhibitions and so on that I’d consumed that year. To say my rate of cultural digestion changed with fatherhood would be an …Hemon: "The Book of My Lives"
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
I’ve written before of the penetrating, often funny essays of Aleksandar Hemon, the Bosnian writer who, fortunately for us, calls Chicago home. His new collection, The Book of My Lives, is terrific, whether the subject is gravely serious (war, illness) or much more fun (pick-up soccer with a …Karen Green: "Bough Down"
Monday, April 1, 2013
BOMB offers an extraordinary excerpt from Bough Down, a volume by artist Karen Green, who is also David Foster Wallace’s widow: September again and I take your parents to the lighthouse, I do. There is nothing but September fog to cover our shame, and your father laughs just like you, at the …"More commas, please"
Saturday, March 23, 2013
At McSweeney’s, Teddy Wayne’s “Feedback From James Joyce’s Submission of Ulysses to His Creative Writing Workshop.”Richter: Painting What's Fun
Sunday, March 10, 2013
"> <figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " style="max-width:500px;"> <div style="padding-bottom:100%;" class=" image-block-wrapper has-aspect-ratio "> <img …The Ecosystem Known As Reading
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Andrew Piper, writing in Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times: Books will always be there. That is what they are by definition: there. Whether in the classroom, the library, the archive, the bookstore, the warehouse, or online, it is our choice, however, where books will be. It is time …The Risks of Rereading
Sunday, February 10, 2013
I really like this bit from Katherine Boo, taken from her interview for the New York Times Book Review’s “By the Book” series: I was working my butt off trying to investigate the violent deaths of some homeless children, under circumstances that had been covered up by the police, when I reached the …"The sirens had hoarse throats"
Saturday, January 5, 2013
From William H. Gass’ forthcoming novel, Middle C: Joey … rails ran across France then, rails ran through the mountain passes and through tunnels into and out of the mountains, rails ran along the Mur, through forests of fir trees, because the war was over, the sirens had hoarse …Virginia Woolf, Observing
Saturday, January 5, 2013
A passage of exceptional precision in The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Vol. 1: On Sunday Lytton came to tea. I was alone, for L. went to Margaret. I enjoyed it very much. He is one of the most supple of our friends; I don’t mean passionate or masterful or original, but the person whose mind seems …Year in Review: 2012
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
The Frank Lloyd Wright house in Ebsworth Park, which we visited in February This post is part of my “Annual Favorites” list I’ve been keeping for the past decade-plus. Favorite Books (Goodreads profile) The German Genius, by Peter Watson (choice passages) Journey to the Abyss: The Diaries of Count …Towards the Gass Interviews....
Sunday, December 9, 2012
I’m still at work editing The Ear’s Mouth Must Move: The Essential Interviews of William H. Gass. While I’d love for this to be published in a gloriously beautiful print version, I haven’t yet found an interested publisher. So it’s likely that, as with Abstractions Arrive, I will publish it myself …Andrew Piper on E-Reading
Thursday, November 15, 2012
The subtitle of this Slate piece is way too glib, but the essay from Piper — a literature professor at McGill — is worth reading. Thoughtful and thought-provoking. It’s excerpted from Piper’s book, Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times."Small Presses & Self-Publishers: Enemies? Or Half-Siblings?"
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Interesting piece by Sean Bishop in the VQR blog. (And yes, I agree with this sentiment, and not just for literary publishers, but other groups in the arts: “There is still a contingent of presses and publishers who bristle at the idea of ‘branding,’ 'marketing’ and the lot. …Kessler Continued: On Rilke, His Lips & War
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Following up on my previous post about this extraordinary 900-page book — I finished it last night — here are a few more remarkable passages around which I drew my customary lines, stars, and exclamation marks: Paris, February 1905: With [Théodore] Duret to Mademoiselle Courbet, Courbet’s sister. …Count Harry Kessler: "You Cannot Waste Time When You're Young"
Sunday, September 30, 2012
<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " style="max-width:338px;"> <div style="padding-bottom:147.63313293457%;" class=" image-block-wrapper has-aspect-ratio "> <img …"50 Books/50 Covers" Winners for 2011
Friday, September 28, 2012
Some beauties in this annual competition, which is put on by Design Observer, AIGA, and Designers & Books.MATCHBOOK. bikinis meet their match
Monday, July 30, 2012
“Clever matches between bathing suits and books." Great idea.“The Gass Sentences: A Top 50”
Monday, July 30, 2012
Today is William Gass’ 88th birthday. For the Big Other website, John Madera asked some writers, readers, and publishers to name their own “literary pillars,” as a tribute to Gass and his “50 Literary Pillars” project from the early 1990s. After being invited to …Craig Mod: "Hack the Cover"
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
As ever, Mod offers smart, forward-looking thoughts on books and publishing. His central question: [I]f so much of what book cover design has evolved into is largely a brick-and-mortar marketing tool, then what place does a ‘cover’ hold in digital books? Especially after you purchase it? But, more …"Not His Riches, But Ours"
Sunday, May 13, 2012
A member of the Wallace-L listserv posted this Pascal quote this morning, commenting (insightfully) on how it brings to mind many statements DFW made about reading and indeed love: When a natural discourse paints a passion or an effect, one feels within oneself the truth of what one reads, which was …Craig Mod on Building an App (and a Book)
Thursday, March 29, 2012
As thoughtful and personal as his previous pieces.Dwight Garner: "The Way We Read Now"
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Great piece in The New York Times, with clear-eyed (and entertaining) commentary from a writer and book critic about how technology has improved his reading life. This bit comes from his section on the smartphone: Keep an audio book or two on your iPhone. Periodically I take the largest of my …Tim Parks Defends E-Books
Monday, February 20, 2012
At the New York Review of Books blog, a refreshingly contrarian post: The e-book, by eliminating all variations in the appearance and weight of the material object we hold in our hand and by discouraging anything but our focus on where we are in the sequence of words (the page once read disappears, …"The Germans Dive Deeper"
Saturday, February 11, 2012
<figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " style="max-width:332px;"> <div style="padding-bottom:150.60241699219%;" class=" image-block-wrapper has-aspect-ratio "> <img …Building a Mind Created in Words
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Two passages, among many, that struck me in William H. Gass’ wonderful new essay collection Life Sentences: Literary Judgements and Accounts: From “The Literary Miracle”: Emerson’s essays build the mind that thinks them. It is that mind that is the miracle that interests me. Did he think the thinker …Nicholas Carr: "Why publishers should give away ebooks"
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Kind of. Readers today are forced to choose between buying a physical book or an ebook, but a lot of them would really like to have both on hand - so they’d be able, for instance, to curl up with the print edition while at home (and keep it on their shelves) but also be able to load the ebook …