David Abrams's Blog, page 92

Watchlist Countdown, Day 25: “Transcription of an Eye” by Carmen Maria Machado

JUDGE JUDY: So you got a cold sore. So what?
SAKSHI KARNIK: And then it began to bubble and blister and then it erupted.
JUDGE JUDY: So. What.
SAKSHI KARNIK: And there was an eye there.

          from “Transcription of an Eye” by Carmen Maria Machado

I'm not what you’d call a fan of Judge Judy Sheindlin (I can barely tolerate the bombast of Dr. Phil coming from my wife’s TV in the other room), but thankfully Carmen Machado is. In her Watchlist story, she delivers a hi...

Watchlist Countdown, Day 24: “The Witness and the Passenger Train” by Bonnie Nadzam

      A man stands alone in the black night watching a passenger train speed past. Its yellow-lighted windows are splashed with colored hats and coats; flashes of silverware and glassware; with shoulders in black jackets and bright wool sweaters; with pointed and rounded and upturned noses. Three men in hats are drinking glasses of beer. The children dunk strips of buttered toast in cocoa. An old man snores like a happy pig, his mouth open, his giant milk white teeth exposed. A...

Watchlist Countdown, Day 23: “Making Book” by Dale Peck

      They were in the living room when I came downstairs. Even I have to admit we’ve got a pretty fantastic living room, which is centered around these two absolutely amazing Chippendale sofas facing each other. I mean, my dad restores furniture for a living, and he’d done nothing but the best job on those sofas. In particular, the leather on them was like butter, which on the one hand feels especially soft but on the other hand means you sort of have to watch yourself when yo...

My First Time: Martha Woodroof

Photo by Charles Woodroof 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 Martha Woodroof, author of Small Blessings (now out in paperback). Martha was born in the South, went to boarding school and college in New England, ran away to Texas for a while, then fetched up in Virginia. She has writte...

Watchlist Countdown, Day 22: “Ether” by Zhang Ran

      “The finger-talking gathering welcomes you, friend.”

          from “Ether” by Zhang Ran

Zhjang Ran’s story in the Watchlist anthology reminds me of 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, with its alternate universes and shadowy doppelgängers. “Ether” is set in the future (maybe 30 or 40 years?), in an age after “the Internet degenerated into senselessness and everyone tossed aside their complicated smartphones for basic phones that could only make calls.“ T...

Chatterbooks: Recipes for a Beautiful Life by Rebecca Barry

—Meet Rebecca Barry: mother, writer, wife, self-distracting procrastinator who makes clay cats and mermaids instead of working on her novel. Meet Rebecca and Tommy, a charming, witty couple who love, fight, kiss-and-make-up, and then start yelling at their toddler sons to stop peeing on each other. Meet Rebecca Barry–she’ll make you laugh on one page and maybe get a little misty-eyed on the next with this new “memoir in stories” which is full of hilarious dialogue, recipes for things like “An...

Watchlist Countdown, Day 21: “Lifehack at Bar Kaminuk” by Mark Chiusano

      The company was called FicShare. The idea behind it was that people could use the content on their Kindles or iPads that their friends or family weren't using--they could stream it, like Slingbox did for TV. At the moment you were limited to a maximum of five ShareBuddies, but the plan was for up to ten. The online interface was much slicker than the regular e-reading experience, and the ultimate goal was a community of readers, sharing and recommending texts. Marginalia...

Sunday Sentence: The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon

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 break tradition and post several best sentences because, frankly, I am overwhelmed by the feast of words found in the pages of Michael Chabon's debut novel, The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh. I looked at all the candidates, weighed them, and found them all to be deserving of mention this week, beginning with the book's terrific opening line.)


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Watchlist Countdown, Day 20: “Buildings Talk” by Dana Johnson

      Buildings talk. That’s the cool thing about them in case you don’t live in an apartment. It’s true: maybe I don’t really know anybody in a building of what? Three hundred lofts or something? But how do I know all the stuff I know? That’s what I’m talking about. The building’s got a big mouth. That’s how I know that Fatty Hardy lost his job and that’s how I know he lost it by trying too hard to hold on to it. The dudes in the khakis weren’t fucking around. They wanted mo m...

Friday Freebie: Where They Found Her by Kimberly McCreight

Congratulations to Christine Neuman, winner of last week's Friday Freebie: Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life by Tom Robbins.

This week's book giveaway is Where They Found Her by Kimberly McCreight. Here's more about the book from the publisher: At the end of a long winter in well-to-do Ridgedale, New Jersey, the body of a newborn is found in the woods fringing the campus of the town's prestigious university. No one knows the identity of the baby, what ended her very sho...