The path to book publication for “young” poets typically involves entering at least one (more often many) first book contest. The oldest, and perhaps most prestigious, of these contests is the Yale Series of Younger Poets, which began in 1919. Since then, under the banner of the series, Yale University Press has had the opportunity to introduce the world to books such as Muriel Rukeyser’s Theories of Flight, W.S. Merwin’s A Mask for Janus, John Ashbery’s Some Trees, and Carolyn Forché’s Gathering the Tribes. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, living poetry by Les Kay
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Apparently, this is going to be my summer of “literature classics the way I wish they had been written.” In Honors English, I was not terribly fond of King Lear, although I like Shakespeare in general. The play just had too many betrayals, too many people meeting bad ends when they deserved better (I know, I know, tragedy and all that) for me to really enjoy it, but I didn’t care about them enough to be really moved by it. This is a tale that would never have made it past the high school censors, but that every student would be able to recite, chapter and verse. This isn’t a story about a king and his daughters. According to Pocket, King Lear’s jester, and his apprentice, Drool, this is a story about just one thing… heinous fuckery.

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Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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I first read Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park on the recommendation of Vladimir Nabokov, who, in his Lectures on Literature said, “Mansfield Park is the work of a lady and the game of a child. But from that workbasket comes exquisite needlework art, and there is a streak of marvelous genius in that child.” [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, now read this! by Christopher Guerin
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Many years ago when I was a young bachelor I brought home to my apartment a young girl I met in a bar.

While I was preparing a couple of drinks for us she looked over the books in my library.

“You have a lot of books on death,” she said in a questioning tone, noting the numerous titles of books on crime history, true crime and crime fiction, as well those on espionage, terrorism and military history.

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Tags: books & writing, on thrillers and crime by Paul Davis
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I wish I had read this sooner.

Palestine, written and Drawn by Joe Sacco, is an odd sort of a graphic novel. It is almost 300 pages long and divided into only nine chapters. The chapters are fragmented adventures of a journalist who has set out to record his experiences in the form of a graphic novel. Sometimes the story goes on for twenty plus pages and sometimes the story is only a page long. And most oddly, there isn’t a lot of action. The cells are almost entirely filled with faces.  [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, just fantastic by Steve Mazzeo
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It has been a long time since a book made me want to shout out loud and dance around the room, but this book did. When it came time for the final battle, and a certain character stepped up and introduced himself, I literally howled with joy and pumped my fist in the air. I read a lot of books, but it has been ages since any ending has made me so damned happy. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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Earlier this year, I received an email from fellow WFTC contributor Olga Gardner Galvin suggesting that I consider doing a column about “Only connect,” the epigram attached to E.M. Forster’s novel Howards End. I wrote back that I thought it was a good idea, but I would first have to reacquaint myself with Forster’s novel. Shortly thereafter I downloaded Howards End onto my Kindle, where it remained unread until a few days ago.

Unfortunately, now that this reacquaintance has taken place, I am not at all certain I understand the epigram any better than I did before. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, that's what he said, by Frank Wilson by Frank Wilson
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I dislike the term “genre fiction.” It’s pejorative, and is used to make a value judgment on works of art for their content, rather than their execution. There’s a reason why we don’t think of Poe as a genre writer of horror or detective fiction. Though others might disagree, I don’t think of Tolkein’s “Trilogy” (when I was a teenager we referred to it only as the “the Trilogy” and never as The Lord of the Rings) as fantasy genre fiction or Stanislav Lem’s Solaris as science fiction genre fiction, or Stephen King’s The Shining as horror genre fiction. Now, there is some value in having a term to differentiate between works of high quality and works written less well and according to a formula, but “genre fiction” seems ill suited to that. “Pulp fiction” (shorn of its Tarantinoness) would perhaps be more helpful.

A. E. van Vogt’s The Voyage of the Space Beagle, published 70 years ago, is neither genre nor pulp, but one of the most original and influential novels about space and monsters ever written. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, now read this! by Christopher Guerin
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Book five in Sabrina Jeffries’ the School for Heiresses series, Don’t Bargain with the Devil, is the story of Lucinda Seton, a teacher at the finishing school all of the heroines in each novel of the series are in some way connected to, and the famous magician Diego Montalvo. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, romancing history by Katie Colvin
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How can a story capture the moment — just any moment, really — without instantly sounding cliche? Damion Searls’ short story collection (his first published fiction), What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going, has done that with writing that uses restraint and distance. It feels ethereal yet completely relatable. The writing is simple — no charms, not quite all business, but delicately exact. He gives the reader just enough and still we are left wanting more. Maybe that’s been done before. Maybe it’s been done many times before. It works and Searls has found a way to make it modern. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing by Season Evans
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I honestly thought that nothing — nothing — could get me to read Jane Austen again. I know that she has some devoted fans, but those Victorian manners-and-money romances were really not my thing. I was frustrated, even as a teenager, by female characters who seemed completely powerless. Elizabeth Bennet, her life ruined because some man she doesn’t even like doesn’t want to dance with her? How ridiculous! But in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, she has some recourse… [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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Among the many pleasures reading fiction can afford, perhaps the greatest and most lasting has to do with the people one encounters there. Ever since I first met them during my teens, I have thought of D’Artagnan and his fellow musketeers — Athos, Porthos and Aramis — as friends. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Anna Karenina and Prince Hamlet can seem more real than the people one meets in the street, perhaps because, through the exercise of our imagination, we have helped bring them to life.

But how like the people we meet in real life are they really? [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, that's what he said, by Frank Wilson by Frank Wilson
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I won’t often devote this column to poetry. Since much of the best poetry is written in shorter forms, it doesn’t really fall within the scope of a “great books” column. (Though, even as I write this, it occurs to me that I may have to write about handfuls of poems by Stevens, Wilbur, and others, someday.) But, I could not long put off writing about T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, for me the best long poem of the English language of the 20th century. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, now read this! by Christopher Guerin
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So Archie has chosen. And by choosing, he’s taking us down a dark path.

Not since Rene Descartes polished off a sixth bottle of wine and slurred the famous maxim, “I drink therefore I am,” has there been a more culturally critical dualism. I’m talking about the Betty and Veronica dichotomy that has shaped generations of youth — both male and female. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, his & hers by Mark A. Rayner
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“They put Foley and the Cuban together in the backseat of the van and took them from the Palm Beach County jail on Gun Club to Glades Correctional, the old redbrick prison at the south end of Lake Okeechobee,” my friend and former editor, Frank Wilson, read to the audience at the Central Library in Center City Philadelphia prior to introducing crime writer Elmore Leonard on May 14th.

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Tags: books & writing, on thrillers and crime by Paul Davis
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Supergirl ain’t nothin’ but a hotly drawn bitch!

Summary (no spoiler): Supergirl comes to Earth for the first time. We deal with the whole stranger in a strange land issue and the illegal immigration issue. Superman is not alone. Batman wonders about some things that a high school senior could piece together. Blah, blah, blah. Darkseid is the main villain and the application of his entourage is kind of cool. And the ending is somewhat clever. Not a terrible read for a general Superman title, but a terrible six-issue waste of Batman Superman.  [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, just fantastic by Steve Mazzeo
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Okay, okay. You’ve read The Great Gatsby. We’ve all read The Great Gatsby. You were assigned it in 8th grade, then in high school, and again in Freshman English in college (though your subsequent readings were the Cliff’s Notes!). And you still have that crushed paperback with the cheesy neon lights on the cover. You forgot all about it until you saw the movie on TV, and when Mia Farrow went orgasmic over Robert Redford’s tailored pink shirts, you thought, “Well, that’s enough of that!” (And you didn’t even know, thank God, about a remake with Mira Sorvino and Toby Stephens!)

Well, forget all that. You’re a grown-up now and you need to read Gatsby with a grown-up’s perspective. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, now read this! by Christopher Guerin
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The Glassblower of Murano is an exceptional first novel written by Marina Fiorato, who is herself half Venetian and a graduate of the University of Venice. Her love of the city and its history comes through clearly. It’s a very romantic story, full of intrigue and heartbreak; to understand it, a little history is helpful.

Murano is well-known for its art glass, its millefiori and its chandeliers, but its artisans were virtual prisoners on the island.  [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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I first heard of Peter Altenberg while watching The Tonight Show, back in the days when it was hosted by Jack Paar. Alexander King, one of Paar’s regulars, used to talk about Altenberg all the time. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, that's what he said, by Frank Wilson by Frank Wilson
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Novelist Dan Fante has paid his dues; he has overcome alcoholism, scores of crummy jobs, and the desperate fate accorded so many sons of famous fathers. But after nearly 20 years of writing fiction, 2009 is shaping up to be a great year for Dan. His new novel 86’d will be published by Harper Perennial on September 22, 2009, and his three previous Bruno Dante novels will be rereleased on December 1 of the same year. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, drugs & alcohol by Alex Kudera
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