David Abrams's Blog, page 91

Watchlist Countdown, Day 32: “Moonless” by Bryan Hurt

      It took some doing but I finally made a white dwarf star like they’d been making out in Santa Fe. I made mine in my basement because basements are the perfect place to compress time and space. I slammed together some very high frequency energy waves and—ZAP!—a perfect miniature white dwarf. Even though it was very small for its type, no larger than a pushpin, it was extremely dense and incredibly bright. The star was so bright that you couldn’t look directly at it. Had to...

Watchlist Countdown, Day 31: Thirteen Ways of Being Looked at by a Blackbird SR71” by Paul Di Filippo

      We stopped digging vertically in our pursuit of a life free from surveillance when we reached one mile straight down into the bosom of the earth, and began to excavate laterally. With that single perpendicular shaft the only access to our refuge, we finally felt safe from all prying eyes dominant on the panopticon surface. Now we could begin to build our surveillance-free society.

          from “Thirteen Ways of Being Looked At By a Blackbird...

Watchlist Countdown, Day 30: “Second Chance” by Etgar Keret

      On the face of it, it seemed like just another service--innovative, revolutionary, monstrous, call it whatever you want but when you came right down to it, Second Chance was the greatest economic success story of the twenty-first century. Unlike most great ideas, which tend to be quite simple, the idea behind Second Chance was a bit more complicated: Second Chance gave you the opportunity to go to one particular critical moment in your life, and instead of having to choos...

Watchlist Countdown, Day 29: “Viewer, Violator” by Aimee Bender

      It was the third week or so since the museum had re-opened, for as you may know, we had to close down for several months last fall due to a problem with people touching the work. We had an influx of visitors who liked to feel the texture of the paint or the slopes of the sculptures and we were not equipped to deal with them.

          from “Viewer, Violator” by Aimee Bender

Aimee Bender (author of The Color Master and The Girl in the Flammable...

My First Time: Diana Wagman

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 Diana Wagman, the author of five novels, most recently Life #6 . Edan Lepucki, author of California , had this to say about the novel: “Life #6 intrigued and delighted me from the first paragraph, and for two days I read it everywhere: at meals, in t...

Watchlist Countdown, Day 28: “We Are the Olfanauts” by Deji Bryce Olukotun

      We were paid to be cautious, to keep the slipstream of information flowing at all costs, even if it meant removing some of it from the world.

          from “We Are the Olfanauts” by Deji Bryce Olukotun

Yesterday, I had lunch with a woman who, due to an unspeakable accident years earlier, had lost her sense of smell and taste. With as much tact as I could muster, I tried to get her to describe what life was like but, either because she thought...

Sunday Sentence: West of Sunset by Stewart O'Nan

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


Across the hall lived an obese woman who sold her screams to the movies and treated them to free samples, rehearsing at all hours.

West of Sunset by Stewart O'Nan

Watchlist Countdown, Day 27: “Strava” by Steven Hayward

      Strava is a smart phone application invented by Michael Horvath and Mark Gainey, a pair of friends who were crewmates in college and missed competing with each other after they had moved to different cities. Early in 2009, they realized GPS data had become specific enough to identify climbs based on elevation and distance and that it should be possible to record people’s times and compare them. This is what Strava does. It tracks your movement. It tells you how fast and h...

Friday Freebie: The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud, The Enlightenment of Nina Findlay by Andrea Gillies and A Brief Stop On the Road From Auschwitz by Göran Rosenberg

Congratulations to Lewis Parker, winner of last week's Friday Freebie: Where They Found Her by Kimberly McCreight.

This week, I have a nice bundle of books from Other Press to giveaway to one lucky reader. The trio of new releases includes The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud, The Enlightenment of Nina Findlay by Andrea Gillies and A Brief Stop On the Road From Auschwitz by Göran Rosenberg. The latter is hardcover, the other two are paperbacks. Here's more about each of the books:

The N...

Watchlist Countdown, Day 26: “Dinosaurs Went Extinct Around the Time of the First Flower” by Kelly Luce

      Mr. Ukaga wanted her on the horse again.

          from “Dinosaurs Went Extinct Around the Time of the First Flower” by Kelly Luce

Mr. Ukaga likes to watch. Mr. Ukaga is a repeat customer (“always the same love hotel, always Tuesday”) and though Tara admits she’s bad at escorting, there is something about the man which makes her say yes to his requests again and again. He’s a family man living a double life in Tokyo, but Mr. Ukaga also has a fe...