It looks like Anne Rice has outdone Salman Rushdie!
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Sarvas Watch
In his continued efforts at Angeleno media domination, Mark Sarvas chats with the LAist. Bicycles are mentioned, of course. Among other things.
Welcome to Another Edition of Readerdome
You can keep the blog away from the insider, but you can’t keep the insider away from the blog. Welcome back, Mad Max Perkins!
75 Books, Book #4
You may be shocked to hear this, but I didn’t do a lot of reading over the three-day weekend. Book #4 was David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green. I’ll withhold my opinion until I get a chance to take this up with Megan. Needless to say, my reaction is extremely complicated and requires a good deal of thought. I read this book very slowly for a reason. I’ll only say that I think this novel was definitely the right step forward for Mitchell. But it’s an ambitious attempt that’s definitely going to split readers. I think we’re going to see the same heated and divisive reactions that we saw with Ian McEwan’s Saturday. More to follow.
NBCC, NBA — What’s the Difference?
The National Book Critics Circle Award nominees have been announced. And, rather suspiciously, it resembles the National Book Award nominees. Will Vollmann garner another win? Or will it be Mary Gaitskill this time? Personally, I feel very sorry for all the non-Didion nominees in the autobiography section. Here’s the full slate:
FICTION:
- E.L. Doctorow, The March
- Mary Gaitskill, Veronica
- Andrea Levy, Small Island
- Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
- William T. Vollmann, Europe Central
NONFICTION:
- Svetlana Alexievich, Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
- Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East
- Ellen Meloy, Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild
- Caroline Moorehead, Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees
- Anthony Shadid, Night Draws Near: Iraq’s People in the Shadow of America’s War
BIOGRAPHY:
- Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
- Carolyn Burke, Lee Miller: A Life
- Jonathan Coe, Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson
- Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
- Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life
AUTOBIOGRAPHY:
- Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
- Francine du Plessix Gray, Them: A Memoir of Parents
- Judith Moore, Fat Girl: A True Story
- Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories and the City
- Vikram Seth, Two Lives
CRITICISM:
- Hal Crowther, Gather at the River: Notes from the Post-millennial South
- Arthur Danto, Unnatural Wonders
- William Logan, The Undiscovered Country: Poetry in the Age of Tin
- John Updike, Still Looking: Essays on American Art
- Eliot Weinberger, What Happened Here: Bush Chronicles
POETRY:
- Simon Armitage, The Shout
- Manuel Blas de Luna, Bent to Earth
- Jack Gilbert, Refusing Heaven
- Richard Siken, Crush
- Ron Slate, The Incentive of the Maggot