Mark Sarvas's Blog, page 23

L.A. EVENT - JOSHUA FERRIS **RECOMMENDED**

Joshua Ferris will be making his L.A. area appearance this evening at Skylight Books (see sidebar for details), and I commend him highly to all my readers.

You can check out this interview in the Huffington Post - and I should say that I share the interviewer's sentiment, that the The Unnamed is a wrenching, harrowing work, and I also share Ferris's incredulity at the one-dimensional reading he's been afforded by too many critics.  (It's rarely a great idea, I think, to take one's critics ...

BARNES & NOBLE DISCOVER FINALISTS

Barnes and Noble has announced the 2009 Discover awards finalists.  In fiction they are:

Barb Johnson, More of This World or Maybe Another (HarperPerennial)

Victor Lodato, Mathilda Savitch (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

C. E. Morgan, All the Living (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

I've read both the Morgan and the Lodato and think they are both worthy of the nod.  Maud Newton's appreciation of All the Living can be found here.

VILLAGE BOOKS SALE

If you are a local TEV reader, make sure you pop by Village Books in Pacific Palisades this weekend, where every book in the store will be marked down 25%.  Go and support local independent bookstores!

GIANTS FALL

Zinn.  Auchincloss.  And now Salinger.  A hell of a week.

AMIS WATCH CONTINUES

Marty.  Please.  Shut the fuck up.

His latest:  J.M. Coetzee has "no talent."  Is further comment even necessary?

NOTA BENE: THE INFINITIES

"On the subject of fathers:  Adam has not seen his yet.  When they arrived last night he pleaded his and Helen's weariness after the journey and said they would go straight to bed.  He thought that to visit the old man then would have been gruesome; he would have felt like a body-snatcher measuring up a fresh specimen, or a vampire-hunter breaking into a crypt.  Although he has not told her so he thinks his mother should not have insisted on taking Pa out of the hospital.  Bringing him home t...

HAITI BENEFIT READING

Please attend this night of readings, music and dancing to raise money for medical aid to Haiti. The evening will feature readings from Will Alexander, Gloria Alvarez, Tisa Bryant, Percival Everett, Sesshu Foster, Veronica Gonzales, Jen Hofer, Doug Kearney, Chris Kraus, Maggie Nelson, Abel Salas; plus live music from Ceci Bastida and Domingo Siete and DJ sets from Glenn Red, Concise, and Gomez comes alive.

It will all get started at 8pm this coming Saturday at Trópico de Nopal Gallery in...

MONDAY MARGINALIA - THE "DID YOU MISS US?" EDITION

We're still digging out but we're back on the job around here with a considerable backlog of goodies ...

* During our absence, the Story Prize finalists were announced - including Victoria Patterson, recently interviewed right here at TEV.

* Speculation is rife about the potential impact of Apple's rumored tablet on the publishing industry.  (Enough qualifiers there?)

* The National Book Critics Circle has announced their 2009 award finalists.

* It's been a while since Martin Amis said anything ...

TEV GIVEAWAY: EVERYTHING RAVAGED, EVERYTHING BURNED

Wells Tower's short story collection, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned was one of 2008's critical darlings.  A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year, it received raves from Kakutani to Ruland.  Here's what no less a short story luminary than Deborah Eisenberg had to say about the collection in the New York Review of Books:

The phrase "well-crafted" suggests an unfortunate analogy between a piece of fiction and a piece of furniture. And there is a surprising amount of...

READINGS

We're jet-lagged and thawing ever so slowly, but the Worthy Readings sidebar has been updated with the first spate of 2010 events, so do check them out.  Literary news should return to these parts tomorrow, along with a return of the Friday giveaway this week.  More fun in the weeks ahead, and there still five seats open in the UCLA's hottest Novel I class of the year ...