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The 10 Most Recent Dispatches
- The Bat Segundo Show: Agnieszka Holland
- The Bat Segundo Show: Stephen Fry
- The Bat Segundo Show: Deborah Scroggins
- Komen for the Cowards: Betraying Breast Cancer
- The Bat Segundo Show: Susan Cain
- Forgotten Writers: Dorothy Uhnak
- Dwight Garner’s Revisionist Ignorance: Ayaan Hirsi Ali
- Forgotten Writers: The Novels of John P. Marquand
- The Situation in American Waffles
- The Bat Segundo Show: Elliot Perlman
Modern Library Reading Challenge
On January 10, 2011, Managing Editor Edward Champion pledged to read the top 100 fiction books from #100 to #1. Read about his progress as he makes his way through the Modern Library canon!
84. The Death of the Heart (January 6, 2012)
85. Lord Jim (November 30, 2011)
86. Ragtime (October 30, 2011)
Books To Jump Up and Down Over
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (Bat Segundo interview with Murphy)
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (Bat Segundo interview with McClear)
Miéville, China Archive
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Miéville Goes YA?
Posted on October 11, 2006 | No CommentsRick Kleffel gets his hands on the new Miéville: “The Miéville you’ll find here is a rather different writer than the one who wrote ‘Perdido Street Station’. He’s stripped down... -
Fantasy: A Genre Tailor-Made for Political Fiction?
Posted on March 8, 2006 | No CommentsHenry Farrell on China Miéville: “For Miéville, fantasy shouldn’t merely justify what is, in the service of a self-defeating escapism or consolation; to the extent that it does, it’s merely... -
Miéville Alert
Posted on August 31, 2005 | No CommentsIt’s out, it’s here, and it’s in my hands. Sui generis fantasist China Miéville has a new collection of stories called Looking for Jake out. Some previously collected stories, such... -
Literary Media Bias? Nah, Just Good Books.
Posted on February 18, 2005 | No CommentsChine Mi鶩lle, whose latest New Crobuzon book The Iron Council was just nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award (and whose first two books, at least, you should read immediately),... -
Love for Three Miévilles
Posted on January 14, 2005 | No CommentsFor those who are as devoted to China Miéville ‘s Bas-Lag books as I am, there’s a lively debate on The Iron Council over at Crooked Timber. One thing I... -
More Voices
Posted on December 12, 2003 | No CommentsNow that the New York Times has brought it up, BBC Four has a designated place for author audio. You can find Kingsley Amis, Agatha Christie, Robert Graves, Vladimir Nabakov,...