David Abrams's Blog, page 78

Sunday Sentence: Ongoingness by Sarah Manguso

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



Look at me, dancing my little dance for a few moments against the background of eternity.

Ongoingness: The End of a Diary by Sarah Manguso

Friday Freebie: The Further Adventures of Ebenezer Scrooge by Charlie Lovett

Congratulations to Jon Butters, winner of last week’s Friday Freebie, People Like You by Margaret Malone.

This week’s book giveaway is The Further Adventures of Ebenezer Scrooge by Charlie Lovett. But wait, there’s more! The good people at Penguin Classics will also send one lucky reader a copy of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol , part of their beautiful Christmas Classics series (pictured at right), which also includes books by Louisa May Alcott, L. Frank Baum, Anthony Trollope, Nikolai Go...

Thanksgiving as Jet Lag: Richard Ford, Frank Bascombe and The Lay of the Land

This year, for the first time since my deployment to Iraq , I won’t be cooking a Thanksgiving feast. Instead, I’ll fill my day by continuing to revise my novel-in-progress ( Braver Deeds ), answering emails, and, later, going to a friend’s house for the traditional dinner. In between, I’m sure I’ll manage to work in some hearty gulps of the book I’m currently reading, The Lay of the Land by Richard Ford.

Though I normally put Ford, one of my favorite contemporary American writers, to the top of t...

Trailer Park Tuesday: American Copper by Shann Ray

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




If I compared a book to a twilit mountain range washed in purples and oranges and reds, the sight of it causing you, the reader who has trudged through a dull landscape of ordinary novels, to stumble in your sojourn and fall to one knee in reverence for the toothy horizon; and if I said reading this particular novel was as bracing and invigorating as drinking from a cold, clea...

My First Time: Elizabeth Kadetsky

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 Elizabeth Kadetsky, author of a memoir, First There is a Mountain: A Yoga Romance (Little, Brown); a story collection, The Poison that Purifies You (C & R Press); and a novella, On the Island at the Center of the Center of the World (Nouvella). Her s...

Sunday Sentence: People Like You by Margaret Malone

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



He reached out to shake her hand with his free hand and for a moment the three of us formed a human chain, like together we might break out into song to oppose senseless killings or an oppressive regime; but what had happened to us wasn’t anything like that: it was only a miscarriage, the single quiet slipping away of something that wasn’t quite something enough yet.

“Welcome to Samsara”...

Friday Freebie: People Like You by Margaret Malone

Congratulations to Sherry Devlin, winner of last week’s Friday Freebie, the Big Box o’ Books which contains the following titles: Let Me Be Frank With You by Richard Ford, Preparation for the Next Life by Atticus Lish, Rooms by Lauren Oliver, The Story of Land and Sea by Katy Simpson Smith, Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson, The Sisters Club by Lauren Baratz-Logsted, Say Yes to the Death by Susan McBride, Clinton, Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine by Daniel Halper,...

Amy Gustine’s Library: A Post-Apocalypse Bunker of Books

Reader:  Amy Gustine
Location:  Toledo, Ohio
Collection Size:  800, give or take
The one book I'd run back into a burning building to rescue:  Honestly? My current project, unless I was smart enough to back it up off site. I don’t own any family Bibles, signed first editions, or otherwise irreplaceable books.
Favorite book from childhood:  The Trixie Belden mystery series.
Guilty-pleasure book:   Dewey by Vicki Myron—nonfiction about a kitten abandoned on a bitterly co...

Getting a Grip: a Conversation Between Kathy Flann and Julianna Baggott

Authors Kathy Flann ( Get a Grip ) and Julianna Baggott ( Harriet Wolf’s Seventh Book of Wonders ) recently got together to talk about writing, Bill Clinton, Baltimore, and ducks that sabotage your homework. Here's their conversation, starting with Julianna...

When super-agent Nat Sobel tracked me down as a newbie short-story writer and asked me if I was writing a novel, I lied and said yes. Then I wrote it and was pretty sure it wasn’t very good. So I called up my MFA alma mater, UNC-Greensboro,...

Trailer Park Tuesday: People Like You by Margaret Malone

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



I didn’t intend to make this Margaret Malone Week here at The Quivering Pen; it’s just going to turn out that way. Yesterday, we read about Malone’s “first time” in which she said the joy of selling the first copies of her debut book was like a warm-honey feeling. Today, we turn our attention to the trailer for People Like You , a two-minute reel of film that will jar your sens...