Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing by Margaret Atwood
“Original and awe-inspiring.”
Margaret Atwood’s thoughts on her writing themes and practices. Original and awe-inspiring, like just about everything she has published.
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Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books by Paul Collins
“A nicely morose and well-written antidote to all those silly Americans-in-Provence memoirs.”
There’s a small town in Wales called Hay-on-Wye which possesses 1,500 inhabitants and 40 bookstores. This is Paul Collins’ account of his family’s attempt to make their home there. The book is a nicely morose and well-written antidote to all those silly Americans-in-Provence memoirs.
The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern Worldby Lewis Hyde
“The original subtitle was Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, which makes it sound like an academic treatise on the sex life of real estate.”
If you are interested in making things, you need to read this. The original subtitle was Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, which makes it sound like an academic treatise on the sex life of real estate. However, the book is a careful examination of how ideas are acquired, built upon, and circulated; it’s also about Ezra Pound and Walt Whitman. It’s about how to be a writer and/or a human.
The Once and Future King by T.H. White
“A consideration of the futility of war.”
This is an old favorite of mine, a consideration of the futility of war viewed through an inventive retelling of the Arthurian legend. All the recent Obamamania put me in the mood to read this again; it’s a very beautiful and sad reminder that there’s nothing much new, ever.
boring boring boring boring boring boring boring by Zach Plague
“This art-students-run-amok fantasia is irrational, gorgeous, and not a bit boring.”
Zach Plague is actually Zach Dodson, who in real life is the designer half of the Chicago indie publishing house Featherproof Press (with fiction writer and TimeOut editor Jonathan Messinger). This art-students-run-amok fantasia is irrational, gorgeous, and not a bit boring; you can also acquire it as a poster or a mix CD if you want a multimedia extravaganza.
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Audrey Niffenegger is best known for her debut novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife. Her second novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, is due out in the fall of 2009.
