Out of Reading Limbo: What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt

I just finished What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt and it was the best read I've had in a long while. The story itself spanned years and decades and the narrator was an aging professor in the middle of the happenings. What can be said about the story without spoiling it, is that it is literally a story of things and people the narrator had loved; basically it was a story of two families, ...

Richard Yates surveyed at the Guardian.

"Literary failure comes in many, equally cruel forms. Obviously, you can try and get nowhere. It is possible for an author to have one book published, and garlanded with praise, only to sink into oblivion. The experience of half-success over a long career is commonplace. Rarer (and most frustrating) is the writer who is always praised, but whose books never sell, and whose failure to reach a ...

Pappa won't leave you

I am sunburned and have driven around lots of Australian back roads, and spent time in the company of small children. The farmland is dry, dotted with gum-trees and beset with lots of flies. We waved a lot to get them to go. I'm working on an idea to help with that, perhaps some kind of little swatters hanging from head-gear . Just before we left for Australia I read one of the earmarked ...

Douglas Gresham on C.S. Lewis

Read his tribute in The Guardian . I especially like the excerpt featured on the Endicott Studio blog : "I think that in today's sad and dark world many people will have difficulty in believing in the real Jack," writes Gresham. "He was a man who had grown up with the thinking of the 19th century. He believed in honesty, personal responsibility, commitment, duty, courtesy, courage, chivalry ...

To Cut a Long Story Short , six word stories by contemporary authors, collected by The Guardian. My favorite: Pain, unutterable pain, stertorous exhalation. Death. (Will Self)

Meanwhile, from The Guardian , yet another article heralding the revolution in online publishing and PoD that's going to chance the book trade. Excuse me if I take this with a large pinch of salt and reserve judgement for a good while yet.