David Abrams's Blog, page 159

Soup and Salad: Harlan Ellison's Haircut, Reading Women, Loving and Hating Jess Walter, Fair Warning on JKT and DFW Auction Lots, Novel Research, Edith Wharton's Curtains, Reading on the Way to Mars, Beautiful Fake Book Covers

On today's menu:

1.  If you're in L.A. this Saturday, you should stop by Sweeney Todd's Barber Shop (4639 Hollywood Blvd.) at 2 p.m.  That's where you'll be able to watch Harlan Ellison get a haircut from "coif king" Sween Lahman.  Using switchblade combs, Sween will cut Mr. Ellison's hair in a specially designed pompadour.  Afterward, leather-clad bodyguards will escort Ellison down Hollywood Boulevard to a benefit reading for Kicks Books , whose Red Hook warehouse was subm...

Trailer Park Tuesday: The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

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




Elizabeth Gilbert's writing career has been defined by Eat, Pray, Love .  That memoir about Gilbert's travelogue into the Self has dominated her other books like a skyscraper, leaving the rest of them in shadow.  But let us never forget that her roots lie in fiction.  Her first book, the short story collection Pilgrims , was a finalist for the PEN/ Hemingway Awar...

My First Time: Susan Choi

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 Susan Choi whose new novel My Education has just been published to great acclaim (New York Newsday called it "a chaise-lounge literary page-turner par excellence: sexy, smart, well-plotted, jammed with observations witty and profound, and so w...

Sunday Sentence: The Stick Soldiers by Hugh Martin

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




At Fort Polk, Louisiana,
the Opposition Force shoots
all three of us,
but we enjoy this death,

which gives us a chance to sit,
smoke, rest our feet.  Dying
is part of training
for war in Iraq.

"Four-Letter Word" from The Stick Soldiers by Hugh Martin

The Day the Clowns Cried: The Circus Fire by Stewart O'Nan

Today marks one of the saddest days in circus history.  On July 6, 1944, fire broke out under the big top during an afternoon performance of the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus in Hartford, Connecticut.  No one left that tent unscathed.

To this day, people are haunted by memories of the disaster--especially those who have read Stewart O'Nan's searing account of the fire.  I first read The Circus Fire  more than 12 years ago and I still can't shake it.  I'm an...

Friday Freebie: Me and the Devil by Nick Tosches, The Distracted Preacher by Thomas Hardy, Float by JoeAnn Hart, Pretty Much True by Kristen Tsetsi, and Kingdom Come by J. G. Ballard

Congratulations to Vanessa Blakeslee, winner of last week's Friday Freebie: A Nearly Perfect Copy by Allison Amend.

This week's book giveaway is a mega-huge grab-bag of some excellent books which have been waiting patiently for their turn to step into the Friday Freebie spotlight. All are new, unread copies and all are paperback, with the exception of Me and the Devil, which is a hardcover. One lucky reader will win all of the following books: Me and the Devil by Nick Tosches, The Distracted P...

War Journal: Fireworks in Baghdad

From time to time, just to keep things in perspective, I like to go back to the journal I kept during my year in Iraq.  Some of the writing is pretty horrible and embarrassingly trite--like so many free-writing exercises tend to be--but it's still good to remember the important things which were dominating my life eight years ago.  I thought it might also be of interest to Fobbit readers to get a taste of the life which inspired the novel.  So, here's the Fourth of July entry,...

My First Time: Russell Rowland

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 Russell Rowland.  He recently published his third novel, High and Inside , with Bangtail Press .  Novelist Kim Barnes had this to say about High and Inside: “You don’t have to love baseball to love this story about one (aging) boy of summer...

Sunday Sentence: Shrapnel by William Wharton

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




War for me, though brief, had been a soul-shaking trauma.
Shrapnel: A Memoir by William Wharton

Friday Freebie: A Nearly Perfect Copy by Allison Amend

Congratulations to Brett Kruger, winner of last week's Friday Freebie: The Possibility Dogs: What a Handful of "Unadoptables" Taught Me About Service, Hope, and Healing by Susannah Charleson.

This week's book giveaway is A Nearly Perfect Copy, the new novel by Allison Amend.  Here's a little more about the book:

Elm Howells has a loving family and a distinguished career at an elite Manhattan auction house.  But after a tragic loss throws her into an emotional crisis, she pursues a r...