David Abrams's Blog, page 54

Soup and Salad: Laila Lalami procrastinates, Patrick Ryan’s 15 unpublished novels, The Worst Book Signing Ever, Care Package Kurt Vonnegut, The Sweetest Book Publicist in the World, Help Put the War On Stage, Parnassus Piggies

On today’s menu:


1.  I have tried to come to peace with my demon, Procrastination, but he continues to sit on my shoulder, as he has done for years, and peck the back of my head with his relentless beak. I take comfort (small comfort, but comfort nonetheless) in knowing other writers—better and more successful writers—are also tortured by this devil. Take Laila Lalami, for instance. The author of The Moor’s Account writes in the L. A. Times :

     I berate myself regularly a...

Sunday Sentence: 99 Poems by Dana Gioia

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


          Money. You don’t know where it’s been,
          but you put it where your mouth is.
          And it talks.

“Money” from 99 Poems by Dana Gioia

Friday Freebie: Brightwood by Tania Unsworth and Two Unbelieveable FIBs by Adam Shaughnessy

Congratulations to Terry Pearson, winner of last week’s Friday Freebie giveaway: The Fortunes by Peter Ho Davies.

This week’s book contest is for three new books from Algonquin Young Readers: Brightwood by Tania Unsworth and The Unbelieveable FIB: The Trickster’s Tale and The Unbelieveable FIB: Over the Underworld by Adam Shaughnessy. These would make a perfect back-to-school gift for the young bookworms in your life (which is not to say adult readers won’t have a whopping good time reading t...

John Domini’s Library: “My Mess, My Mountain”

Reader:  John Domini
Location:  Des Moines, Iowa
Collection Size:  3,500 volumes

Equal parts recrimination and encouragement: isn’t that a library? When I take in the shelves surrounding me, both here in my work-space and elsewhere around the house, certainly I’m shamed, seared, by all the titles still unread, all the authors so much more courageous, determined, and skilled. Yet the same long look allows me to bask a bit, to enjoy a text-besotted soothing, as I consider the chal...

Sunday Sentence: Sinclair Lewis by Mark Schorer

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


Elmer Gantry is the noisiest novel in American literature, the most braying, guffawing, belching novel that we have, and it is its prose that sets this uproar going; if we are to have a novel filled with jackasses and jackals, let them, by all means, bray and guffaw.

Sinclair Lewis: An American Life by Mark Schorer

Friday Freebie: The Fortunes by Peter Ho Davies

Congratulations to Michael Adams, winner of last week’s Friday Freebie giveaway: After James by Michael Helm.

This week’s book contest is for The Fortunes by Peter Ho Davies, author of The Welsh Girl. I have a hardback copy of the new novel to put in the hands of one lucky reader. Will this good fortune come your way? Read on for more information about the book...

Sly, funny, intelligent, and artfully structured, The Fortunes recasts American history through the lives of Chinese Americans and...

Trailer Park Tuesday: Home by Harlan Coben

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




Confession: I have never read a Harlan Coben novel.

Prediction: I will read Home in the very near future.

After seeing the moody, haunting trailer for Coben’s new book, I am definitely intrigued—I want to learn more about the two boys who were abducted from their wealthy families, why the kidnappers seemed to vanish after the ransom was never paid, and what happened over the n...

My First Time: Michael Kenneth Smith

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 Michael Kenneth Smith, author of Scarred: A Civil War Novel of Redemption . Michael trained as a mechanical engineer and began a successful auto parts business in the early 1980s. He sold his business in 2000 and retired. Since then, he's spent time fishi...

Sunday Sentence: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

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


It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a gloomy-looking lady she was; dark, like her brother, whom she greatly resembled in face and voice; and with very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her large nose, as if, being disabled by the wrongs of her sex from wearing whiskers, she had carried them to that account. She brought with her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initi...

Friday Freebie: After James by Michael Helm

Congratulations to Lisa Murray and Timmy Reed, winners of last week’s Friday Freebie giveaway: Dead Inside: Poems and Essays About Zombies , edited by Lynn Houston, Susan Allspaw Pomeroy and Jennifer Spiegel.

This week’s book contest is for After James , a new novel by Michael Helm from Tin House Books. Tristan Charles of Parnassus Books had this to say about the book: “After James reminds me of the best of Hawthorne and Poe—Helm crafts a masterful novel with characters whose realities melt aro...