David Abrams's Blog, page 134

Friday Freebie: Orion's Daughters by Courtney Elizabeth Mauk

Congratulations to Jim Mastro and Lewis Parker, winners of last week's Friday Freebie:  Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 by Francine Prose.

This week's book giveaway is the freshly-published novel by Courtney Elizabeth Mauk, Orion's Daughters .  The good folks at Engine Books have supplied me with a copy to send to one lucky reader.  Will it be you this week?

Here's the publisher's summary of the book's plot:

A postcard arrives straight out of her past, forcing Carrie to con...

Discovering Ice in the Desert: Gabriel Garcia Marquez and My Year of Solitude in Iraq

When I heard, just a few moments ago, that Gabriel Garcia Marquez had died, I immediately thought of three things: the fine grit of Iraqi sand that scratched between the page and my fingertips, the metal cot with springs that squeaked like those beneath a prostitute's well-worn bed, and the way my forearms ached as I lay in my hooch on Camp Liberty (Baghdad, 2005) and held a hardbound copy of 100 Years of Solitude above my head, absorbed in what I'd long put off reading.

That year--my persona...

War, Death, Laughter: Vassar Students React to Fobbit

Midway through writing my debut novel, Fobbit , I started to feel uneasy about what was making its way from my head to the page.

On the one hand, I had a well-meaning buffoon named Captain Abe Shrinkle who, despite his years of Army training, found himself in one scene giving way "completely to the dread and terror of close-order combat and releasing the clench on his bowels."  This, during a stand-off with a suicide bomber, could be construed as funny....or the gallows humor could go comp...

A Marital Division of Books: Courtney Elizabeth Mauk's Library

Reader:  Courtney Elizabeth Mauk
Location:  Manhattan apartment
Collection size:  400 or 500 (and steadily growing)
The one book I'd run back into a burning building to rescue:  Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (I’m imagining mine is a signed first-edition)
Favorite book from childhood:  Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
Guilty pleasure book:  I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith


I grew up in Ohio in a house crammed with books.  The bookcases my dad built...

15 Random, Belated Thoughts on The Pale King by David Foster Wallace

I.David Foster Wallace's posthumous novel The Pale King is boring.


II.The Pale King is funny, inventive, brilliant, engrossing.


III.The Pale King is both I. and II.  But not at the same time.


IV.I started writing this "review" two years ago shortly after I finished reading The Pale King.  Why I never followed through and put all my initial thoughts down on paper at that time, I don't know.  Distraction, I guess.  Maybe I was on sweaty, bowel-cramping deadline to finish filing...

Trailer Park Tuesday: The Farm by Tom Rob Smith

Welcome to Trailer Park Tuesday, a showcase of new book trailers and, in a few cases, previews of book-related movies.


If you were tempted by my tease of Tom Rob Smith's new novel in the latest edition of Front Porch Books , then this slick, haunting video should firmly set the hook.  The trailer for The Farm is one of the best of the year; if you didn't know this was for a book, you'd swear it was promoting a new Hollywood movie.  Though some of us can't afford the bundles of money w...

My First Time: Jessica Levine

My First Time is a regular feature in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands.  Today’s guest is Jessica Levine.  Her debut novel, The Geometry of Love , is just out from She Writes Press.  Her stories, essays, poetry, and translations have appeared in many journals, including Green Hills Literary Lantern, North American Review, The S...

Sunday Sentence: Memory Wall by Anthony Doerr

Simply put, the best sentence(s) I've read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.


Drops of dried blood are spattered on the linoleum beside the hospital bed; they look like tiny brown sawblades.

"Procreate, Generate" from Memory Wall by Anthony Doerr

Friday Freebie: Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 by Francine Prose

Congratulations to Beverly Sizemore, winner of last week's Friday Freebie--a bundle of three novels:  The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin, The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer, and The Road From Gap Creek by Robert Morgan.

This week's book contest prize is Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 by Francine Prose.  I have TWO brand-new hardback copies of the novel to give away to two lucky readers.  Here's more about the new prose from Prose:

A...

Front Porch Books: April 2014 edition

Front Porch Books is a monthly tally of books--mainly advance review copies (aka "uncorrected proofs" and "galleys")--I've received from publishers, but also sprinkled with packages from Book Mooch, Amazon and other sources.  Because my dear friends, Mr. FedEx and Mrs. UPS, leave them with a doorbell-and-dash method of delivery, I call them my Front Porch Books.  In this digital age, ARCs are also beamed to the doorstep of my Kindle via NetGalley and Edelweiss.  Note: most of t...