David Abrams's Blog, page 139
February 14, 2014
A Valentine's Day Gift For You: "Carbon" by Dan Rhodes
Here's a treat for you, just in time for Valentine's Day (or, as the snickering boys in my junior high school used to call it, "VD Day"--ignoring the stuttering redundancy). The good folks at Europa Editions have given me permission to publish a piece of flash fiction which appears in the new short story collection Marry Me by Dan Rhodes.
In Marry Me, Rhodes looks at love and marriage through 79 fictional vignettes which The Times call "strangely funny, startlingly original." The I...
Friday Freebie: Road to Reckoning by Robert Lautner
Congratulations to Carol Wong, winner of last week's Friday Freebie: the bundle of Timothy Schaffert novels The Singing and Dancing Daughters of God , The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters , and The Coffins of Little Hope .
This week's book giveaway is
Road to Reckoning
by Robert Lautner. It's a novel which shot straight to the summit of my always-growing To-Be-Read mountain (aka Mt. NeveRest) based simply on a gangbusters plot and some adept writing (at least in the opening pages). Here's...
February 9, 2014
Sunday Sentence: "Three Autumns" by Anna Akhmatova
Simply put, the best sentence(s) I've read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.
But the wind's started to blow
Everything clean open, and straightaway
It's clear that this is the end of the play,
This is not the third autumn but death.
"Three Autumns" by Anna Akhmatova
February 7, 2014
Friday Freebie: A Timothy Schaffert Bundle
Congratulations to Stephen Lyons, winner of last week's Friday Freebie: Kids These Days by Drew Perry.
This week's book giveaway is a bundle of three novels I'm especially proud and excited to offer to blog readers. Novelist Timothy Schaffert has long been a personal favorite of mine--he reminds me of a delicious cocktail that tastes like John Irving, Lewis Nordan and T. R. Pearson--and now he has a new novel hitting bookstores this week: The Swan Gondola , a romance set against the 1898...
February 3, 2014
Tragedies of Good Intentions: An interview with novelist Lisa Gornick
Interview by Rochelle Jewel Shapiro
In both Tinderbox (Sarah Crichton Books/ Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013) and her first novel, A Private Sorcery (Algonquin, 2002), Lisa Gornick combines her expertise in two fields, psychoanalysis (she is on the faculty of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research) and creative writing (M.A. from New York University.) Her stories have appeared in Agni, The Massachusetts Review, Prairie Schooner, Slice, and other journal...
February 2, 2014
Sunday Sentence: North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
Simply put, the best sentence(s) I've read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.
There were the yellow, sea-stained letters, with the peculiar fragrance which ocean letters have.
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
February 1, 2014
Bookstore of the Month: Politics and Prose
Politics and Prose
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20008
202-364-1919 or 800-722-0790
books@politics-prose.com
Politics and Prose on Facebook
Politics and Prose on Twitter
I'm often tempted to think of Politics and Prose as "the nation's bookstore." Like everything else in the Capitol City, even the smallest business--whether it's a tapas restaurant on 7th Street or a brake repair shop in Adams Morgan--takes on larger-than-life significance simply from its proximity to the White...
January 31, 2014
Friday Freebie: Kids These Days by Drew Perry
Congratulations to Carol Wong, winner of last week's Friday Freebie book bundle: The In-Between Hour by Barbara Claypole White, Outerborough Blues by Andrew Cotto, Reunion at Red Paint Bay by George Harrar and Lighthouse Island by Paulette Jiles.
This week's book giveaway is
Kids These Days
by Drew Perry which comes to us courtesy of the good folks at Algonquin Books. A wild and wacky novel set in Florida, Kids These Days has drawn comparisons to Tim Dorsey, Nick Hornby, Dave Eggers, an...
January 27, 2014
My First Time: Jennifer Tress
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 Jennifer Tress, the author of
You’re Not Pretty Enough: Extraordinary Stories from an (Un)ordinary Life
and founder of the You’re Not Pretty Enough movement. She currently resides in Washington, DC, with her husband Dave. Tress performs stories live in b...
January 26, 2014
Sunday Sentence: A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel True, 1907-1940 by Victoria Wilson
Simply put, the best sentence(s) I've read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.
"Forget it, Harry," said Capra. "She's not an actress, she's a porcupine."
Director Frank Capra to Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures, after Stanwyck refused to do a screen test
A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel True, 1907-1940 by Victoria Wilson
