Books/Mags/Blogs

Genre fiction lives or dies by its structure. No matter what happens in the plot — and there are no rules there, except for a rather loose one about killing cats — the conventions of the genre must be followed. In science fiction, that modern version of the Western, good must triumph over evil. In romance, two people must find each other despite the odds. In mysteries, the puzzle must be solved. Genre fiction, because of its conventions, is idealistic. Literary fiction, it could be argued, is realistic. Neither idealism nor realism is superior or inferior. It all depends on […]

Our good friend Karen Palmer has taken over the helm at The Elegant Variation. We are not going to suggest that she’s already making us look bad by posting like a madwoman, but, well, she’s hit all the news that’s fit to report while we’re still staring at the coffee maker, wondering why it can’t read minds. Go visit Karen — ask her some tough questions in the comments (as you page forward through the site, there’s plenty of material to work with. We are so jealous.). She’s read the manual* and is prepared for anything. * – There’s a

We recently had the distinct pleasure of meeting Martha O’Connor, and are very excited about her book The Bitch Posse. She was very gracious when she gently noted that we were a bit behind on our reading…she’d gone ahead and done a Backstory while we were slaving away at the Evil Empire. We’re going to coerce her to drop by to share her thoughts on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (also strange men on airplanes). In the meantime, we’ll start the story here: In February of 2003, I was one disheartened and frustrated girl. After three failed novel

When you look for something to read, you want your characters to be: Vampires Aliens Shapeshifters Gods and/or Goddesses All of the Above While there is no right answer (though we do wonder about those who chose “e”, for obvious reasons), there is finally a blog especially for you. Though they seem normal* in real life, the authors who have formed Out of the Blogosphere like their characters on the toothy, furry, otheworldly side. Go forth at your own peril. * – After all, what is normal anyway? Out of the Blogosphere

We are in total passive mode: the news needs to flow to us. While some might think this is another ode to the Beauty of RSS, it’s actually more of a warm fuzzy to those who have kept up with the world while we, and this is not a joke, found out the secret, true name of the movie commonly known as Paperback Romance. So anyway, these two girls walk into a blog. The first one says: I’ve been thinking of what you said to me the other night on the telephone about us being veterans of the same war–

GalleyCat has come to the rescue of those looking for detailed plot information, but unwilling to take that extra step and read the cover copy. Yes, you can judge a book by its cover (it’s always worked for us). . .especially if you know the shorthand. BECAUSE MUCH MORE THAN A BOOK’S CONTENT IS PRONE TO UNORIGINALITY. EPISODE 5: LEGS, FEET, SHOES

Here is the thing: when you have two unavoidable topics, it is better not to avoid them. Avoidance leads to more questions. If you come up with a highly probable but incredibly dull response to the questions, more power to you. Nothing kills reader interest in a topic faster than dull responses. And why do we have to explain this to Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Safran Foer? Because clearly they cannot be bothered to hire media consultants to do this helpful work for them. Refusing to discuss your spouse and feigning wide-eyed innocence when confronted with the similarity of topics

We know, we know. We said we were bored with the death of the book stories. No more, we swore. That’s so 2004. But that was before the Europeans started thinking about this book digitization thing that captivated us a few months ago. Turns out they’ve been studying the fine print while the rest of us have moved on. Probably there’s a life lesson there, but we can’t see it. Robert McCrum starts by quote Nigel Newton of Bloomsbury, a born worrier if his words are anything to go by: According to Newton, professionally cautious, mass digitisation is not a

Did Freud destroy the art of creating characters? If so, you’ve got to hand it to the guy. Very few of us have the power to change the course of a single profession. Freud managed to re-engineer at least two. It seems character development was arrested by the introduction of ids and ego and superegos. No great characters have been written since. Much as we were fascinated by this theory, we couldn’t buy into the argument. Maybe because it implies that the entire postwar writing profession fell lockstep into Freudian analysis. We were lost when this statement struck us as