I don’t really have anything deep to say about Phillip Roth or Tom Wolfe as novelists and cultural commentators, despite the title to this post, but I do have a couple of links. As Phil noted earlier, THE FIRST ANNUAL TMN TOURNAMENT OF BOOKS concluded today with David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas taking first prize (Ed [...]
Rebecca Pawel’s most recent novel is The Watcher in the Pine from SoHo Crime. She was kind enough to answer a few questions for us. Hi Rebecca. Tell us whatever you’d like to share about your background, current life, childhood, whatever strikes your fancy. I was born and raised in New York City, and that’s [...]
“When I have a lull in my life, I write, and that’s fairly often,” Lauren Bacall, 80, said, according to the AFP. “Nothing is ever as good as it is in the beginning,” she added. “I’d suddenly had this fairy-tale life, at such a young age, who would have thought something like that could happen?”
Nominated by the Mystery Writers of America for an Edgar award, Chirs Haslam’s Twelve Step Fandango takes the reader on a fast trip through Spain’s Gibraltor region. Martin Brock, the main character, scratches out a living dealing stepped on cocaine to tourists along the Costa del Sol. Martin’s a despicable guy, whiny, greedy, disloyal; his [...]
The First TMN Tournament of Books concludes Monday, and I think it has been successful. I suppose the goal is reader enjoyment, but maybe they are measuring the sale of the competing books at Powells.com, in which case, I don’t know that it succeeded and they may not tell us. Did you read the results? [...]
Sorry for the lack of updates around here, but we have been busy. Ella keeps us on our toes what with the feeding, the changing, and the cuddling (not to mention the cooking and cleaning). Plus Ella’s grand parents (Lisa’s parents) were here last week. But I have some pictures to share so I thought [...]
Somewhere I’m sure I read The Inimitable Jeeves labeled as a novel. If it is, then it’s a novel in the sense that it’s a book of fiction, not “a sustained work of prose fiction a volume or more in length” as my encyclopedia would have it. This book is close to a collection of [...]
As anyone who has tried it can tell you, writing book reviews is hard. It is one thing to read a book and post a couple of sentences on why you liked it, another thing to capture in more detailed and insightful ways the books strengths and weaknesses; to communicate to a reader why they [...]
Mental Multivitamin has named Collected Miscellany as one of her favorite blogs; she called the writing here ‘smart and worthwhile.’ Kevin and Phil…way to go. Kevin recently posted a list of books he’s going to review; I’m looking forward to reading his thoughts on all of them. Hunter Thompson’s Amazon ratings are soaring, to be [...]
Earlier this week, OGIC revealed her secret identity. She’s Elastigirl. Of course, she goes by Laura in most places, but that’s understandable. How can a journalist go by a cool name like Elastigirl and be taken seriously? Some are disappointed about this revelation. They say the mystery is gone, that the magic has left the [...]