David Abrams's Blog, page 163

Franzengroin, Brad Garrett, and the Fate of Quality TV

I've come to the conclusion that my wife and I are series killers.

No, not serial killers, series killers--as in, TV series.  As soon as we start enjoying a show--really plunging into it, getting involved with the characters, looking forward to visiting the TiVo queue every night like it was a trip to Paris--as soon as we make a heavy emotional investment in a program, that's when the TV executives decide to cancel it.  It happened with Better Off Ted , Southland (though that was res...

Friday Freebie: Is This Tomorrow by Caroline Leavitt and The Glass Wives by Amy Sue Nathan

Congratulations to Tisa Houck, winner of last week's Friday Freebie "Mega-Scary-Good Joe Hill Prize  Pack" which included all of Hill's published fiction: NOS4A2 , Horns , Heart-Shaped Box and 20th Century Ghosts .

This week's book giveaway is another multi-book bundle.  I'm very excited to offer up copies of two new novels:  Is This Tomorrow by Caroline Leavitt and The Glass Wives by Amy Sue Nathan.  One lucky reader will win both books.

Is This Tomorrow is Caroline Leavitt's t...

Look What I Found: Charles Dickens Globe editions ("won't injure the eyesight")

Look What I Found is an occasional series on books I've hunted-and-gathered at garage sales, used bookstores, estate sales, and the occasional pilfering from a friend's bookshelf when his back is turned. I have a particular fondness for U.S. novels written between 1896 and 1931. If I sniff a book and it makes me sneeze, I'm bound to fall in love.

It's not like I lacked for any volumes of Charles Dickens' novels in my library.  I have Penguin, Modern Library and Signet paperbacks; a set o...

The Fog-Shroud of Memory

We were lost.

We were driving through a foreign city.  Eugene, Oregon.  It was a city foreign to our present, but so familiar in our past.  Nearly 30 years ago, Jean and I had lived here, worked here, gone to school here, given birth to two children here.  Why did nothing look familiar?  Had the city changed, or was it us?  Our memories were blurred by the soft, unfocused fog-shroud of memory, as omnipresent as the clammy mist which blankets western Oregon.

We'd ju...

Trailer Park Tuesday: Girlchild by Tupelo Hassman

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




As stark, offbeat, and cool as a Cannes Film Festival indie movie, the trailer for Tupelo Hassman's debut novel Girlchild is haunting and engaging.  The book, released in paperback earlier this year, centers around elementary school student Rory Hendrix, "a smart kid living in a poor town" which is "just north of Reno and just south of nowhere."  Out of loneliness,...

Memorial Day Reading List: All That Is by James Salter

I began this Memorial Day weekend by reading the first chapter of All That Is , James Salter's first novel in 35 years, published last week by Knopf.  I bought the book on Saturday as an early birthday* gift to myself (today is, in fact, my birthday, and I baptized the morning by reading Chapter 2).  Even though I'm only 30 pages into it, I can already tell that this novel will be firmly stapled to my year-end "Best Books of 2013" list.

At the center of All That Is stands Phillip Bowm...

Sunday Sentence: All That Is by James Salter

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



There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real.
Opening note to All That Is by James Salter

New Stories: "Arm" and "The Things He Saw"

It's National Short Story Month and I'm happy to announce that two of my short pieces of fiction have recently found their way to print.

"Arm" is in the inaugural issue of The Provo Canyon Review (alongside stories by Joe David Bellamy and Philip F. Deaver).  Here's the first paragraph of that story--the first of my published pieces set here in Butte, Montana:

As I was going into Wal-Mart, a man with a useless arm came out. I’d never seen anything like that arm—a dangle-flesh, rubbery thin...

Friday Freebie: Mega Scary-Good Joe Hill Gift Pack (N0S4A2, Horns, Heart-Shaped Box, 20th Century Ghosts)

Congratulations to Jeffrey Tretin, winner of last week's Friday Freebie: Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution by Nathaniel Philbrick.

This week's book giveaway is a special multi-book prize package.  I'm thrilled to offer blog readers four books by Joe Hill: NOS4A2 , Horns ,  Heart-Shaped Box , and 20th Century Ghosts .  In other words, the entire* Joe Hill Library Collection.  One lucky reader will win all four books (N0S4A and Horns are hardbacks, Heart-Shaped Box and 20...

Front Porch Books: May 2013 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...