- Jay Matthews shares his efforts to learn Chinese, prompted in part by this Asia Society report which describes how Americans can learn the Chinese language effort more effectively.
- If you haven’t been receiving David Abrams’ reports from Iraq (which because of a variety of reasons, including a book deal, have only been sent by email), the Tireless Dan Wickett alerts us that one of Abrams’ excerpts is now publicly available through the EWN blog. Abrams is a fellow January Magazine contributor and his memoirs are reminiscent of Anthony Swofford’s Jarhead in their brutal honesty.
- This relates in part to our next installment of the Bat Segundo Show, which we hope to post tonight, but “morning sickness” may be as ignoble as the notion of “hysteria” applied to women during the Victorian era.
- Marilynne Robinson and Kevin Boyle have won the Chicago Tribune Heartland awards. Here’s hoping that the incomparable Golden Rule Jones will offer copious coverage of the Chicago Humanities Festival.
- Online Satanic newscasts? Are today’s online publicists getting desperate or is this innovation?
- Heather Covington chronicles the Harlem Book Fair.
- The Boston Globe has the skinny on the National Book Club Conference.
- Ebony/Jet founder Marian Anderson gets a Washington Post profile.
- A short talk with J. Robert Lennon over at Dogmatika. His next book is described as “a literary police procedural.”
- The boatyard that inspired by Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogyis on thin ice.
- And Frances Dinkelspiel describes what it’s like to research at the California Historical Society.
The “I’ve Got Tedious Meetings But Here’s a Quick” Roundup
– August 9, 2005Posted in: Awards, Roundup, Wickett, Dan
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. (
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. (