David Abrams's Blog, page 74

Sunday Sentence: Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins

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


A casino can make an average man lovely.

Battleborn  by Claire Vaye Watkins

The Top 10 Quivering Pen Posts of 2015

This was the Year of Resurrection.

In late 2014, after more than four years of continuous blogging here at The Quivering Pen, I was rapidly approaching burn-out. My own novels were not getting written, short stories were languishing, and my cats were occasionally going unfed—all in service to this blog, which remains a one-man sweatshop operation. So, after long thought and many nights of troubled sleep, I decided to kill The Quivering Pen. On January 13, 2015, I nailed the shutters over the w...

Friday Freebie: Wilkie Collins by Peter Ackroyd

Congratulations to Betty Jeanne Nooth, winner of last week’s Friday Freebie contest: Academy Gothic by James Tate Hill.

For this week’s book giveaway, I have two copies of Wilkie Collins: A Brief Life by Peter Ackroyd to put into two lucky readers’ hands. Wilkie Collins is one of the many authors on my Reading Essentials list and I hope to finally get around to cracking open The Woman in White this year. Ackroyd’s short biography will be the perfect companion for that read. To learn more abou...

A Year of Reading: By the Numbers

This year saw the passing of the legendary reader/reviewer Harriet Klausner who allegedly finished four to six books per day. While I could never reach Klausnerian heights (short of being sentenced to prison or shipwrecked on a desert isle), I did read my fair share of books in 2015.

I’m not one for making resolutions (or, at least, I’m not known for keeping them), but if I was, I doubt I’d be lifting a glass of champagne tonight, vowing to read more books in 2016. As I approach the border be...

A Year of Reading: Best Books From Other Years

While most of the books I read in 2015 were released this year, I have to give a hearty nod of appreciation to those volumes published in years gone by—from the near-past to the farther-distant classics. The piles of books scattered in varying heights throughout my house are populated by authors and their works that I’ve been longing to read for years. Regrettably, most of them are rudely elbowed to the back of the line by louder, shinier, more-impatient releases of the here and now. Every so...

My First Time: Rebecca Yount

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 Rebecca Yount, author of When Half Spent Was the Night , the fifth book in the Mick Chandra mystery series. A published poet, Rebecca trained from childhood as a concert pianist and worked in education reform in Washington, D.C., but she always wanted to...

Sunday Sentence: “Crazy Sunday” by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Simply put, the best sentence(s) I’ve read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary. This week, I’m going to cheat by picking two sentences from the same story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I couldn’t decide which one was “best.”


It was Sunday—not a day, but rather a gap between two other days.

There she was, in a dress like ice-water, made in a thousand pale-blue pieces, with icicles trickling at the throat.

“Crazy Sunday” from
The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A New Co...

Stories to Punch Your Heart: People Like You by Margaret Malone

Of all the books I read in 2015—and there were many—few infected me quite like People Like You by Margaret Malone. This debut collection of stories embodies everything I love about short fiction: it dances on boxer’s feet, moves in quick, punches hard, and then leaves my head ringing. Malone writes about people who are sometimes distraught, sometimes depressed, often anxious, and occasionally misguided; but one thing they are—always, always, always—is real. It’s no accident the book is titled...

The Happy Delusion of Christmas

That's me on the right, mesmerized by flames
1969, Kittanning, Pennsylvania“Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home!”
       –Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

Maybe I’m deluded, but Christmastime really does take me back to my early days as a kid who cou...

Friday Freebie: Academy Gothic by James Tate Hill

Congratulations to Julie Jane, winner of last week’s Friday Freebie contest: The Journey of the Penguin by Emiliano Ponzi.

This week’s book giveaway is a copy of Academy Gothic by James Tate Hill. Read on for more information about the book.

Hardboiled noir meets academic satire in Academy Gothic. Tate Cowlishaw is late for another faculty meeting when he discovers the body of Scoot Simkins, dean of Parshall College. Cowlishaw might be legally blind but sees that a man with three bullets in h...