David Abrams's Blog, page 142

Looking Ahead to 2014: 20 From the To-Be-Read Pile

Yesterday, I told you where I've been ; today, it's a look ahead to books which will be published in the next twelve months.  Here are 20 books from the To-Be-Read pile which have my undivided interest.  Bear in mind the ever-towering, always-growing TBR stack also includes dozens of titles from 2013 which I haven't yet found time to read.  So, will I actually be able to read all of the following books in 2014?  Weatherman says, fair to partly cloudy.  Another note: I'...

Every Book I Read in 2013

Taking a cue from some of my fellow bookworms and authors (in particular, Matt Bell , who read an impressive 113 books this past year), I thought I'd share my entire book log from 2013.  I've already posted  the statistics from my reading year , but here's the meat which belongs on those mathematical bones.  A couple of other notes: 28 of the 81 books were written by women;  35 of the books were published in 2013, 11 were published before 2000, and four won't be published unt...

Trailer Park Tuesday: A Christmas Carol

Have you reached the saturation point of Seasonal Charles Dickens Syndrome?  No?  Okay then, this will put your SCDS into overdrive (don't blame me if you get the hives).  In the spirit of the Ghost of Christmas Presents, I thought I'd round up a few of the many different theatrical versions of Dickens' A Christmas Carol for this special Christmas Eve version of Trailer Park Tuesday .  Here's everything from one of the earliest Carol films (from 1901) to the Jim Carrey-ed A...

Charles Dickens: "Ready made to the point of the pen"

While this Monday space is normally reserved for words of wisdom from present-day writers, I thought I'd take a week's break from the My First Time series and go farther into the past for some inspirational quotes from Mr. Charles Dickens.  I maintain a document on my computer hard drive full of snippets like this--aphorisms on the writing life, stanzas from poems, crystal-beautiful passages from novels and short stories, and so forth.  As anyone who knows about my obsessions with A...

Sunday Sentence: Western Taxidermy by Barb Howard

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


By the time he retired from teaching math and physics at Campbell Heights Senior High School, Simon had been heckled by obnoxious students, threatened by a father whose child's mark had dropped from 90 to 88 percent, stalked by a gang member who flunked Math 14, and tackled by a drunk student while chaperoning a school dance.  On the home front, after Simon's wife died from a cancer...

Publisher of the Year: Nouvella Books

It started with the antlers.

When I saw the deer staring at me, nose-level from the bottom of the cover for Panio Gianopoulos' A Familiar Beast , I was a goner.  There was something about that chandelier of a rack, curving like parentheses, which promised a hint of something great which I could not resist.

It was the beginning of a beautiful reader-relationship with Gianopoulos' publisher, Nouvella Books .  Like my favorite literary magazine, One Story , Nouvella is singularly focused i...

Friday Freebie: Best of Books by the Bed by Cheryl & Eric Olsen and We Wanted to Be Writers by Eric Olsen & Glenn Schaeffer

Congratulations to Will Evans, winner of last week's Friday Freebie: American Dream Machine by Matthew Specktor and The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner.

This week's book giveaway is for those of you who haven't been able to get enough of year-end list-o-mania.   Best of Books by the Bed #1 edited by Cheryl and Eric Olsen, is subtitled "What Writers Are Reading Before Lights Out" and it is guaranteed to add heaps of books to your wishlists or maybe it will prompt you to go to your own shelv...

My Year of Books: Best Fiction of 2013

This was the year I went all Lewis & Clark on my shelves. Authors who'd been on my "gotta-read-someday" list for far too long came out with new books, providing me with an opportunity to "discover" them.  Writers like Fiona Maazel, Andrew Sean Greer, Jamie Ford, J. Robert Lennon and Neil Gaiman provided many hours of joy between the covers.  But for every author I checked off my bucket list, there are triple that number still waiting to be read for the first time: Jeffrey Eugeni...

My Year of Books: Best of the Backlist

Everything old is new again. That's certainly the case with my reading habits.   As I lamented earlier this week at the blog , I own more books than I'll ever be able to read in seven lifetimes.  Every time I get a new novel, it's added to the ever-growing To-Be-Read pile (aka Mt. NeverRest), pushing older books even farther down the queue and putting me years behind in my reading of "current releases."  It's a constant, agonizing stress for me.  First World problems.

In 2013...

My Year of Books: Best Cover Designs of 2013

As a matter of fact, yes, I do judge a book by its cover—at least, initially.  A good cover has the ability to make or break a book's marketplace success—even in the ever-increasing digital world where cover designs are most frequently seen as small as thumbnails at on-line retailers.  This past year saw some outstanding covers which caught my eye and made me stop to take a closer look.  Here, in no particular order, are my favorite book covers of 2013 (I've listed the designer...