July 2010
20 posts
poll for brooklynites and manhattanites:
where are your favorite coffee shops and cafes to read and write? i’m trying to put together a solid list of places where lingering isn’t frowned upon. where are your favorite places and what makes them great?
1 tag
“I read like an animal. I read under the covers, I read lying in the grass, I...”
– nicole krauss on her experiences with literature as a child, from this interview.
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lit.
believe it or not, lit is mary karr’s THIRD memoir. i’m pretty sure my stable, paltry existence could barely fill 75 vaguely interesting pages but karr is on her third volume of recounting her nutty southern upbringing. lit painstakingly details karr’s battle with alcoholism, fractured marriage, and eventual spiritual discoveries while alluding to past events that deposited her...
“writers had heretofore been mythical to me as griffins—winged,...”
– mary karr, lit.
i feel like i owe it to my childhood to see ramona and beezus.
“even at the age of thirteen, they gravitated, these tenderhearted vultures, to...”
– sarah shun-lien bynum, ms. hempel chronicles.
Watchwalkwhilereading:
For Bailey Kennedy. Junot Diaz discusses his greatest pop influences.
!!! thanks casey :)
“500 words-ish. long enough to cover the subject, short enough to be...”
– have i mentioned how much kelsey rocks as an editor?
No really, this is how we find rare books...
housingworksbookstore:
Volunteer: Does it matter if one of these dollar books is signed?
Staffer: Probably not. The truth is, most author’s autographs aren’t worth anything.
Volunteer: Oh, okay. Does it matter that it’s signed by Robert Frost?
amazing.
literary public service announcement. →
the 92y has the next reading series up on their website. notables? lorrie moore, margaret atwood, nicole krauss, salman rushdie, john mcphee, and v.s. naipaul.
if you’re under 35, tickets are only $10(!).
shakespeare in the park.
after seeing the winter’s tale last night in central park, i wish these words were still part of our modern vocabulary:
alack
betwixt
fie!
“we have to read musically, testing the precision and rhythm of a sentence,...”
– james wood, how fiction works.
“the true writer, that free servant of life, is one who must always be acting as...”
– james wood, how fiction works.
how fiction works, james wood.
i finished how fiction works on the A train platform at 59th last night. aspiring writers or serious readers of fiction should pick up a copy as it was pretty damn insightful and instructive. the section on weaving narrative voice and character voice together was particularly great.
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ten of the best summertime novels. →
an article i wrote for flavorwire.
nerd alert.
who plays words with friends on the iphone? let’s play! my username is bails84.