Category: Recommendations

  • Knockemstiff

    I just read Donald Ray Pollock’s debut story collection, Knockemstiff, which takes place in rural southern Ohio, in a town of the same name as the book. The stories are dark, deadly, and mythic depictions of something more than what you’d even call small town Ohio, a sort of gothic revision of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg,…

  • Modern Ruins

    One of my favorite sites on the internet these days is Shaun O’Boyle’s Modern Ruins.  Full of photographic essays about places whose industries, way of life, or some other historical aspect, has fallen into ruin, it’s a beautiful way to preserve a particular swath of our cultural memory.  My favorite is the Big Steel collection,…

  • The Gift

    Ever read Lewis Hyde’s famous book The Gift? It’s in its twenty-fifth anniversary edition this year, and it’s still relevant to artists living and working in what continues to be our increasingly commercial market culture.  Hyde is a proponent for a creative commonwealth, of sharing and giving as an essential part of creation.  His ideas…

  • Dog Sees God, and so should you!

    DOG SEES GOD: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead The Oakland Center for the Arts will present Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead on March 14, 15, 20, 21, 22, 28, and 29 at 8 pm, and March 16 at 2 pm.   This is an “unauthorized parody” that features the Peanuts gang –…

  • Just in case

    Been hard at work today on novel revisions, but also I finished reading my first Meg Rosoff book. This one was Just In Case, which I enjoyed thoroughly, except for a couple of things that posed problems for me as a reader. The book is about a boy named David Case, who changes his name…

  • Poverty is Poison

    And telling stories can sometimes be part of the antidote.

  • More on Americans and reading

    Okay, one more entry before I head out for the weekend.  This one is a review by Laura Miller on a book called The Age of American Unreason, by Susan Jacoby.  It seems to be related to the ideas Ursula Le Guin addresses in her essay “Staying Awake” in the most current issue of Harpers. …

  • Are you up to it?

    If you haven’t read it, go out now and purchase the new issue of Harpers magazine. Ursula K. Le Guin has the most perspicacious (not to mention a bit angry) essay on the state of reading, and the book, and the social bonding capacity of books, and their capacity to house cultural information and memory,…

  • Singularity’s Ring

    I read part of this debut novel of Paul Melko’s at the Blue Heaven Novel Writing Workshop several years ago, and loved it then, lots and lots. If you like hard science fiction with lots of humor and heart, Melko’s Singularity’s Ring is where it’s at. I can’t wait till my copy of the final,…

  • Your favorite collections

    In a recent post on short stories, one my local booksellers (hi, Amy!) said her store would put up an end-cap display of collections, and would take suggestions for which collections could be interesting. So I’ve decided to ask here, where many of the people who visit this journal are readers and writers of short…