For thoughts on a topic related to yesterday’s post, see Michelle Richmond’s brief comments “On the Joy of Not Finishing What You Started.”
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Here are nine books by debut authors to consider for your summer reading list, courtesy of NPR.
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What makes a memoir publishable? See what you think of agent Jim McCarthy’s take. (Thanks to Tayari for the link.)
The Brooklyn neighborhood where I spent a chunk of my childhood (and where my dad’s parents lived for more than 40 years) makes absolutely no appearance among “The Brooklyn Literary 100.” It was a decidedly un-“hot” area back then, and for some reason I have to admit that I’m not displeased to see it remain so.
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Chalk it up to human complexity: Despite the foregoing, I’m happy to identify with several of the locations cited in this article on the “literary hot spots” in another place I’ve called home.
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Finally, any of you familiar with some of the “obsessions” that have permeated much of my own writing won’t be surprised to learn that Rachel Shukert’s essay on Nextbook resonates for me. (I’ve now ordered Shukert’s new book, too.)
So glad to see Publishers Weekly bring some attention to one of my favorite “small” presses: Toby Press.
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Thanks to Miriam Herrera for letting me know about the set of poetry resource links she has assembled.
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And after reading yesterday’s NYT review I’ve added William Styron’s Havanas in Camelot to my TBR list. Other practicing writers may well wish to do the same!
I wandered over to 42opus recently (yes, I admit it–I went to log in and check on the status of three poems I submitted in December) and found Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” posted there. I hadn’t read that story for several years, and I have to say that reading it in the midst of a cold snap here helps restore perspective (I won’t be complaining about the weather anytime soon).
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Lucette Lagnado has won the $100,000 2008 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. I’ve been meaning to read her prizewinning memoir, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family’s Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World. Now I know I have to.
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Lagnado likely won’t feel the pinch of the latest news from the United States Postal Service. That’s right, folks: We’ve got another postal rate increase to look forward to! (Wasn’t it just the other day that the cost of a first-class stamp went up to $.41?) Stock up on those “Forever” stamps while you can. The new rates take effect on May 12.
If you’ve read my review of Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française, you know that I have great admiration for the book. You also know, however, that my admiration for the author–her tragic end notwithstanding–is somewhat more qualified. And you know why.
So you wouldn’t be surprised that this Literary Saloon post has captured my interest.
One major issue at stake here (and it’s not new, or isolated to Némirovsky) is a specific question about how a writer’s actions and personal qualities can (or should?) affect the ways we approach his/her works–and how the contents of one book might affect our judgment of another book by the same author. All this is, I think, a particularly complicated question when the writer we’re talking about is a fiction writer.
Read the Literary Saloon post. Then come back here and share your thoughts.
(Coincidentally, just as I read the Literary Saloon post, an e-mail bleeped in to let me know that the biography of Némirovsky that I’d requested from the library had, in fact, just arrived. Now you know what’s going to the top of the tbr list….)