Given my on-going struggle to find the right title for my book, I was excited when I read about this site. It’s done by comedian Dan Wilbur, who might just be on to something. The idea is that these new titles “cut through the cryptic crap”, as Wilbur puts it, and tell you what the book is really about. I …
Super Sad True Love Story
These days any self-respecting new novel comes with a You Tube-friendly video – presumably in the hope that it will “go viral” and become some sort of internet phenomenon. Well, that’s fair enough in theory – the problem is that usually these video trailers are awful. Usually they feature the author squirming in front of a camera talking awkwardly about …
New Reading: Emily St. John Mandel and Jennifer Egan
In Monday’s post I mentioned two exciting novelists whose work I had just discovered and was devouring in huge, quietly ecstatic chunks. Here’s more on them both. I’ll try and write more about the stuff I’m reading in future. Since, you know, this is a blog about books. Emily St. John Mandel is published by Unbridled Books, a small publisher …
The Laptop is Now a Celestial Sandwich
I suppose it was inevitable in the wake of the massive success of the new wave (geddit?) of Old Spice adverts that others would follow, either in parody or homage. But, well, libraries? Actually, I think this works rather brilliantly. Thanks to Maw Books Blog for sharing.
Status Update
We’re back from a wonderful week away. Four days with friends in Boston, then four days in Maine. There we visited an old friend, Don, and his wife Samantha. Don and Samantha own Rabelais Books, a bookshop dedicated (and I do mean dedicated) to cookbooks. We loved our time with them. I will write more about it in another …
Why Didn’t I Think of That?
This is such a cool idea: http://corpuslibris.blogspot.com
Required Reading (Unfortunately)
I wrote here about how much I dislike doing research for my books. It’s still true, but I have had to knuckle down and change my ways. Here’s a list of books I’ve read recently, all in the name of research for my next novel: Birdmen, Batmen, and Skyflyers Please Kill Me – the Uncensored Oral History of Punk Amusement …
David Foster Wallace
I’ve just finished reading a book by David Lipsky called Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself. That is, David Lipsky is the guy with his name on the cover and his photo on the jacket, but in fact 80% of the words in between the covers belong to the late, lamented David Foster Wallace. I’m still in two …
Please Switch Off Your Book
I wrote in this post about my mixed feelings about the Barnes & Noble Nook – which I eventually returned. I know that the emergence of this new format is more or less inevitable over time, and while I was in New York I went into an Apple store and played with an iPad, which was irritatingly impressive – but …
How to Make Books More Interesting
In a previous post I shared with you evidence of my son’s extraordinary ability to read books in the most uncomfortable positions imaginable. Well, he’s at it again. Triumphantly, in this latest version he has succeeded in doing away with the need for a chair completely. So proud.