I'm liking Ron Charles more and more and more, and
this video review of Jonathan Franzen's Freedom makes just makes me giddy.
Over at Critical Mass, the blog for the NBCC, Wyatt Mason
writes about Roth's "tenth, short, and perfect novel, The Ghost Writer." I agree with Mason; this is one great novel, and a great place to start if you're looking to get to know Roth. Here is
my review. It wasn't my first Roth, but it is the book that made him one of my favorite writers of all time (if not my favorite).
This promises to get interesting. Anis Shivani of
The Huffington Post has posted his list of the
fifteen most overrated contemporary American authors. As usual, he makes some great points. Often when I see these, though, I think, "Okay, so they are bad. Now, tell me who is good -- and why the difference." Shivani promises to follow-up with the most
underrated contemporary American writers. Followed with similar lists for American writers of the past century, and going further to include lists for the global writers.
Patricia Zohn interviews Jennifer Egan at
The Huffington Post. I still think
A Visit from the Goon Squad is one of the best books of the year.
New York Magazine has a nice
look at independent bookstores in the City, which are rising "against all odds."
At Reading Matters, Kim has featured my blog on her
Triple Choice Tuesday. My choices?
The Ghost Writer,
So Long, See You Tomorrow, and
Butcher's Crossing. Pop on over and see my fresh, brief write-up of each title.
For Independence Day, the Huffington Post has a slide show of
fifteen great independent publishers, featuring a few of my favorites --
Open Letter,
Archipelago -- and a few I didn't know about.
New Directions is a model of perfection, and I agree. I have stacks and stacks of books from these three presses, and I'm anxious to see what the others have to offer.
Michiko Kakutani's
review of Jacob de Zoet is surprising in its lack of substance. It's mostly just a plot rehash (which I think gives away a bit too much). It's boring to read and insightless, where I usually enjoy her reviews even if I disagree (as I do here). I'm not saying my reviews are better, surely, but this is pretty poor for
The New York Times daily and from a Pulitzer-winning critic.
In the new issue of
The New Yorker, James Wood
takes a look at The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: "This is to argue not that David Mitchell should be more like Tolstoy or Conrad or Beckett but, curiously, that he might be more Mitchellian—that the reader wants a kind of moral or metaphysical pressure that is absent, and that has ceded all the ground to pure storytelling."
The Paris Review blog has a
Q&A with Jennifer Egan, author of
The Goon Squad, a piece of which was published in
The New Yorker and discussed
here.
Click
here for the
Never Let Me Go trailer. I didn't like the book as much as I hoped I would, but the trailer makes the film look good.
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Click 
KevinfromCanada has reviewed The Archivist’s Story, one of the books on this year’s shortlist, on his blog today. Sounds like a good one on a very good list of books.
Hi Trevor I have been reading your blog and that of kevinfromcanada and just want to endorse his view of ‘The Archivist’s Story’. I posted a small review on our shop blog here midletonbooks.blogspot.com/ but also want to emphasise how good the books picked for the IMPAC Award are. They represent some of the best and enduring fiction of the last few years. Carole
Thanks for dropping by, Carole. I look forward to seeing more of your blog as it develops!
I didn’t know what The Archivist’s Story was about until Kevin reviewed it, and it definitely has my interest, more so than the three books to win and be finalists in the Pulitzer (though that can change in just a sentence!).
Can anyone tell me when the IMPAC winner is announced? I can’t find a date on their site, or anywhere. Is it a surprise?
June 11.
I’ve reviewed one of the five not in the “Big Three” (Oscar Wao, Reluctant Fundamentalist and Animal’s People — all with excellent reviews here and elsewhere) and will be posting reviews on the last four starting next week. A most interesting list and perhaps a surprising result. I will have a “predict the IMPAC winner” contest up on my site by June 1 — trying to figure out the tiebreaker right now.
Thanks, Kevin. I must be blind to that date for some reason; the first few times I read your comment I skipped over it.
It’s June 11th. They’ve never really been any good at keeping the site updated – the FAQs still talk about submitting books for 2007, which would have been in 2006 – but you can get the information from the news page</a., which has the following to say, tucked in amongst everything else:
Whoops! That didn’t come out quite right. Still, if you’re going to miss the date, at least you can’t miss the link. ;)