Square Pegs

As this week continues to careen out of control, we look to others to provide wit and wisdom. Or at least interesting reads. Over at the Co-Op, Elizabeth Poliner stops by to discuss her book Mutual Life & Casualty. In addition to expanding on her themes, she also addresses how she sees the novel-in-stories: As far as the novel-in-stories being successful as a novel, I’d like to throw out the possibility that they’re different creatures. Often more a fiction of community than anything else, novel-in-stories often jump, as my book does, from character to character, with an aim of gathering […]

We have often wondered how certain books would fare if presented to contest judges in manuscript format (sans author names). If a book is stripped of all identifying markers and judged simply by the words inside and how they are presented, would genre fiction have a fighting chance? It is a fair question — how much of how we perceive literature is determined by the label given a particular work? We also feel like we’ve written that exact paragraph once before. Either it was a dream or we’re getting repetitive in our old age. If the latter, oops. As he

We have been making merry at a few other blogs. With almost no effort, we found two books that couldn’t be more different to write about. At Paperback Reader, we’ve shared our (lengthy) thoughts about The Last Heiress by Bertrice Small. You know the old saying: we read, you decide. At the Litblog Co-Op, we kick off the discussion of Mutual Life & Casualty by Elizabeth Poliner. While this title didn’t resonate with many of our fellow bloggers, we were particularly drawn to Poliner’s portrait of women in a changing world. In a time where women’s was reduced to a

Hmm, that’s not exactly true. It much more stormy than dark — it’s amazing how bright lightning can be, especially when you’re trying to sleep. We spent far too long this morning trying to compose sentences that made sense. We abandoned the project in favor of staring off into space. Luckily, we have found someone who can write with eloquence. After a week of discussions about his book, Kirby Gann weighs in over the LitBlog Co-Op. He talks about how he envisioned his stor, his goals, and the sense of place he evoked. A Few Words From Kirby Gann

The Smart Bitches are picking up the idea of ebook royalty rates at traditional publishing houses — and they’re examining the issue with all the fervor of, well, smart bitches. We firmly believe that the more this issue is discussed, the better for the publishing industry. It is near-impossible for publishing houses to make the case that electronically published titles should be treated in the sam manner as other ancillary publishing income, yet so few authors and agents (or even publishers) understand the economics behind this revenue stream. As you leap into the discussion, remember one thing: ebook sales are

In its continuing quest for publicity, lulu.com has announced a new contest. We report, you decide: The website Lulu.com, which enables amateur authors to publish and sell their own books, is sponsoring the first literary prize for “blooks” — or books based on blogs or websites. In, uh, related news, Susan Gable informs us that lulu.com has also added to its product line. They have moved into useful items. Meanwhile in the U.S., the Blooker Prize is born Rejection Toilet Paper

There is a thing called “the heat of the moment”. We’ve all encountered it. It happens when you get all worked up about something and engage in rash behavior. It is often a moment one lives to regret. Either that, or you wear your moment as a badge of honor for the rest of your life. We are not one to question the heats of others moments, but surely you all recall that the 2004 Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded, give or take, a year ago. For many reasons, Elfriede Jelinek’s selection was a controversial — or at least

The first annual Quills Awards has come and gone. Except we think there’s going to be a televised special. We will continue to puzzle over the lack of suspense airing a show after the awards have been announced will create*. We swear that sentence made sense before we typed it. We will also puzzle over this: But the Quills can hardly claim a broad mandate with readers. According to comScore Networks Inc., which tracks the Internet, the Quills site attracted so little Web traffic during the voting period, fewer than the threshold of 25,000 unique visits a week, that it

We will warn you in advance that we are feeling disagreeable this morning*. And we will admit we read Brenda Coulter’s post on romance novels and reviewing while in this mood. She started her post with this statement, quite possibly certain that someone would take exception to her position: The world of published romance writers is a small one, and many of us have forged some strong friendships within it. Also, it’s disloyal for an author to trash the books of someone who writes for the same publisher she does. But although nobody can spot the faults in a romance

Laila Lalami (known to many as MoorishGirl) has written as essay for Powell’s about the strange relationship American fiction has with poverty. Or rather it’s about the lack of relationship. She asks: And yet, despite the increasing divide between the haves and the have-nots that affects the entire world, where is the talk of the state of fiction in the age of poverty? Where are the novels that address class divides? Why aren’t people wondering whether fiction can truly reflect a reality where the richest monopolize media attention while the poorest are seen only in times of crises? Since reading