Month: February 2009

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New This Month: The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

February 27, 2009 admin 0

Think 50 First Dates without all the zany antics or Memento without the buckets of blood and you have the central conceit of The Housekeeper and the Professor (Picador) the latest translation from contemporary Japanese literary icon Yoko Ogawa. The title’s Professor is a brilliant mathematician whose mind is stuck in the 1970s and whose short-term memory is only 80 minutes long. The Professor shows the Housekeeper the poetry in numbers and the magic in […]

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Minnesotan Bill Holm Passes Away at 65

February 27, 2009 admin 1

Minnesota poet and author Bill Holm, the “Polar Bear of American Literature,” and the author of The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere On Earth, died Wednesday. From the Minneapolis Star Tribune: He was larger than life, a man of letters, a man of the prairie, a man of the world. Poet and essayist Bill Holm collapsed Tuesday after getting off a plane in Sioux Falls, S.D., and died Wednesday night of complications from pneumonia. He […]

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Book Celebrations Should Go On Forever

February 26, 2009 admin 0

Wow: do I ever feel like a dope. Library Lovers Month is nearly over and it just this minute sunk in that the future is now. On the one hand, though, I have a good excuse: I love libraries all the time. On the other, well… even though there’s only a few days left in February, you still have time to party. Here are a few links to help out with that. And on a […]

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Translating Their Way to Publishing Success

February 26, 2009 admin 0

We’ve had enough hard news from the publishing trenches of late. Good news was bound to come eventually. We just didn’t expect it from such an unlikely source. Imagine: a small New York-based publisher kicking things up old-school by translating little known European works of literary fiction and publishing them and making a profit without the aid of either vampires or magical boys. Impossible? One would think so. The New York Times’ Motoko Rich says […]

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Remembering Bill Buckley One Year On

February 26, 2009 admin 0

William F. Buckley Jr. died on February 27th, 2008. On The Daily Beast, son Christopher (Thank You for Smoking, Little Green Men), a wonderful writer in his own right, wonders what his father would have made of the year that was: My father, William F. Buckley, Jr, died a year ago this week, and I thought to mark the occasion in this space, normally devoted to making raspberries at the cosmos and endorsing Democrats for […]

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Philip Jose Farmer Dies at 91

February 26, 2009 admin 0

Science fiction great Philip Jose Farmer died yesterday morning “peacefully in his sleep,” according to his official Web site, just weeks after his 91st birthday. From CNN: Farmer was known for his science-fiction and fantasy novels and short stories. He was 91. The Peoria, Indiana, native’s most popular work was his “Riverworld” series, written in the 1970s. Joe Lansdale, a critic, writer and friend of Farmer’s, credited Farmer with changing the face of science fiction. […]

Review: The Ten Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer

February 25, 2009 admin 0

Today in January Magazine’s fiction section, contributing editor Diane Leach reviews The Ten Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer. Says Leach: Wolitzer’s terrific novel follows the lives of four women who have left the workforce to raise children. Amy Lamb, Jill Hamlin, Roberta Sokolov and Karen Yip are all talented, highly educated, happily married New Yorkers when their babies arrive. And those babies change everything. Suddenly the twelve-week maternity leave is insufficient; each woman, with varying […]

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Bezos’ Jon Stewart Visit Kindles Laughter

February 25, 2009 admin 1

The best thing about the launch of Amazon’s shiny new Kindle was watching Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos laugh his fool head off on the Jon Stewart Show last night. If you missed it, you must see it. And, fortunately, Gawker makes that possible here as well as in a snarky piece on the same page and quoted below: Jeff Bezos turned up on the Daily Show couch to promote Amazon.com’s newest Kindle e-book reader. And […]

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Your Coverage May Vary

February 24, 2009 admin 2

One of the things you’ll have noticed if you spend much time either here or at our sister publication, The Rap Sheet, is that we give a lot of thought to book covers. This is especially true over at The Rap Sheet, where editor J. Kingston Pierce has turned the whole matter into something of a fine art. So it was with some amusement today that I came across this short piece on the Abe […]

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Author Snapshot: Elizabeth Kelly

February 23, 2009 admin 0

Elizabeth Kelly’s overnight sensation status need not come as a surprise: a magazine editor and award-winning journalist, Kelly has spent a lifetime wrangling words. That shows in her debut novel, Apologize, Apologize!, an in-depth visit with the dysfunctional Flanagans, an old money Massachusetts family with many branches and quite a lot of dogs. Apologize, Apologize! is charming, funny, accomplished and oddly muscular. And it seems likely that Apologize, Apologize! will only be the beginning for […]