I propose that book publishers allow readers to download individual short stories, similar to iTunes providing the means to download individual songs without having to buy the entire album. In fact, it seems that Apple may be able to compete with Amazon’s superiority in the e-book market, as book downloads has increased by 280% in Apple’s iPhone App Store. [Read more →]
So, book number two in Elizabeth Boyle’s Bachelor Chronicles series, Confessions of A Little Black Gown, came out at the very end of March, and since book number three comes out this next Tuesday (4/28), I thought it would be a good book to read while I await Mary Balogh’s book, which also comes out next Tuesday. If you find the infidelity with authors heinous, get over it. It just isn’t feasible to stick with just one author and patiently await her upcoming release with bated breath. [Read more →]
Saving the world is still a fun and carefree way to spend six issues.
When it comes to very popular series or characters, (Superman, Batman, The X-Men, etc.), there are so many spin-offs in the comic book world that it can become hard to tell which are main storylines and which are ones-offs. [Read more →]
If all chick lit were this well-written, I would read more of it.
This is definitely one to put on your beach-reads list. Lola is funny and engaging, her friends are totally over the top, and her situation is unique enough to be interesting, but in some ways, it is all too familiar. It makes for a charming, funny little romp of a book that I thoroughly enjoyed. [Read more →]
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to visit a class at St. Joseph’s University, which happens to be my alma mater. Sam Starnes, who invited me, used to review for me when I was the book editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He wanted me to talk to his students about reviewing.
What I had to say was the less interesting part of the visit. [Read more →]
My last few columns have all dealt with pretty heavy stuff — time for a palate cleanser. Kurt Vonnegut fans know that Slaughterhouse Five may be his most famous, and even his best, book. But the most enjoyable, the funniest, the most original, and Slaughterhouse’s predecessor by 10 years, is the interplanetary space romp The Sirens of Titan. [Read more →]
Dominic Fortino was forced to serve out many after school detentions in the school’s small library.
Fortino was ordered to detention again on this particular day due to his attempt to push Mr. Pidot’s desk out of a second story classroom window.
Two years ago, on April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech was the scene of a heinous shooting rampage. Soon after, I wrote the below essay, which was published as the cover story in Liberty magazine in July 2007. [Read more →]
Perhaps no other contemporary poet is known more for his writing about poetry than William Logan. As a critic, Logan has been nothing if not divisive. His scathing reviews of almost every volume of verse subjected to his critical acuity have garnered him the sort of notoriety and name recognition that few poets could ever imagine. In fact, in 2002, an article in Slate reiterated the claim that Logan is the “most hated man in American poetry” — in the subtitle!
If you’re going to write great cop fiction, you need two things: great cops and great villains. Richard Montanari has both in his Philadelphia police series and his latest installment, Badlands, delivers an exceptionally creepy villain. [Read more →]
Most of us have read or been obliged to read, by a high school English teacher or college professor, James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Many have read the indelible story collection Dubliners. Hardly any of us have got past the first few chapters of Ulysses, let alone the entire book (even if it was crowned No. 1 in Modern Library’s list of the 100 Best Novels back in 2003). But who among us has the intellectual fortitude (or masochistic compulsion) to get through all 628 pages of Joyce’s nearly impenetrable, nay, opaque final work, Finnegans Wake? [Read more →]
Michael Antman’s excellent piece earlier this week, Poetry, Patience, and Rage, hit very close to home. Some of his experiences were mine; in fact, some were shared experiences between us. Michael refers to haiku he published in the late 70’s. They were part of a collaboration between us when he was working at the Chicago Board of Trade and I was working as a PR assistant for a machine tool company. Together we wrote more than 100 haiku and, ultimately, compiled 50 each, along with an introduction, under the title Here Are More We Missed. [Read more →]
Wandering the books section at CVS as I waited for a prescription to be filled, I came across First Comes Marriage by Mary Balogh, which came out at the end of February 2009. I had never read anything by Balogh, and as I have about 20 or so authors I follow regularly, I generally am not in a position to be randomly picking up new authors. [Read more →]
Photo essays are nothing new. Neither are the fine arts. However, both are being used to tell a complete story in this graphic novel: Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. [Read more →]
I discovered a magazine review of one of my poems for the first time this week, nearly twenty years after the review was published. It was like coming across a $10 bill crumpled up in the pocket of some long-ago thrift-store corduroys that had not only been forgotten, but had slipped to the bottom of the closet and been buried under sedimentary layers of old sweaters and worn-out shoes. What happened between the review’s appearance and my discovery of it is a small story of failure, rage, and acceptance. [Read more →]
Skeleton Creek is young adult fiction for kids who grew up online — think Harriet the Spy meets The Blair Witch Project. Two bored teenagers manufacture a mystery in their hometown, which leads to a real mystery and some dangerous consequences. When one of them is seriously injured, the other continues the investigation, videotaping her adventures and posting them online. In order to solve the mystery, readers have to both read the book and watch the videos on the book’s website. Check out the trailer… [Read more →]
I like lists. Here’s one: Balzac, Dickens, Philip Roth, Haruki Murakami, Tolstoy, Conrad, Nabokov, Hemingway, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Shakespeare. These are my top ten authors calculated by the amount of time I estimate I have spent reading them. The winner going away is Honore de Balzac. [Read more →]
I’ve been a student of crime since I was a 12-year-old aspiring writer growing up in South Philadelphia in the 1960s.
I devoured crime fiction and thrillers. I read, and reread, Ian Fleming, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ed McBain, and of course, Edgar Allen Poe. [Read more →]
Federal tax hike on cigarettes? Smokers feeling abused? Didn’t anybody see it coming?
In my novel The Alphabet Challenge (ENC Press, 2003), I foresaw it years ago. I also foresaw it getting much worse: [Read more →]
There are so many things that could be potentially cliche about Nami Mun’s Miles from Nowhere: the title, the cover, the characters, the plot — just about everything. The main character, Joon, runs away from home when she is twelve. Her father has left the family, which drives her mother to insanity. After leaving her mother, Joon goes down the inevitable path of drugs and prostitution as she copes on the streets of New York City. But there is something keeping this novel from falling into the trap: Nami Mun’s writing. [Read more →]
