Fiction Archive
Interactivity and the Game-ification of Books
Author: Matthew Burnside | Categories: Authors, Fiction, Publishing, Reading, Series, Writing No comments
As an undergrad studying creative writing one of the first things I remember learning was the sin of gimmickry. Readers, I was taught, would see through your cleverness—it would be vile to them and they would hate you. But as a kid and teenager my favorite books employed some
Review: GET IN TROUBLE by Kelly Link
Get in Trouble Kelly Link Random House, Feb 2015 352 pages Buy: book | eBook For a long time, with all due respect to the memoirists, I’ve believed that fiction holds a particular truth in literature. Maybe by removing the self from the work, and unburdening the story of actual
Five Speculative Tales Still Relevant Today (And What They Can Teach Us)
1. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood Seven-Word Summary: Women enslaved by tyrannical dicks with dicks. Excerpt: “Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it really isn’t about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death.
Hilarious Discomfort: On Paul Beatty’s “The Sellout”
The Sellout — Paul Beatty Farrar, Straus & Giroux March 2015 304 pages Buy now I sat down to read Paul Beatty’s new satirical novel The Sellout knowing I was going to write about it. In fact, I had committed to writing about it. I had pitched it; it was my idea. This
This Spring’s Must-Reads
Spring is in the air, and good books are in our hearts! Read on for our picks for this spring’s best literary offerings. Night At The Fiestas Kirstin Valdez Quade Norton, March 23 $26 Buy: book ∣ebook Kirstin Valdez Quade is one of the National Book Foundation’s 5-Under-35
Review: THE PAPER MAN by Gallagher Lawson
The Paper Man Gallagher Lawson Published: May 12, 2015 Unnamed Press 261 pages Buy: book A man with a papier mâché body and hair made of yarn attempts to break out of his protected, isolated, and stagnant life and escape to an unnamed city. On the bus, a
Review: GUTSHOT by Amelia Gray
Gutshot Amelia Gray FSG Originals Published: 4/14/15 224 pages $14.00 If Amelia Gray’s collection, Gutshot, was choreography, it would be comprised of violent, animalistic phrases: bodies smashing into each other and hands clawing into skin. But on the page, these assembled short stories use a vocabulary of the body
The Summer of Salinger, A Review
My Salinger Year Joanna Rakoff 272 pages Knopf $25.95 buy: here J.D. Salinger: The Escape Artist Thomas Beller 192 Pages Icons Series, New Harvest $20 buy: here As a boy in Manhattan, Thomas Beller frequented the Museum of Natural History, struggled with his Jewish identity and didn’t apply
This Winter’s Must-Reads
There is no better way to pass the coldest season of the year than by cozying up with a good book, and 2015 has started off with a bang. Here are our picks for this winter’s best literary offerings. Disgruntled Asali Solomon FSG, February 3 $26 Buy: book ∣ebook
Review: COYOTE by Colin Winnette
Coyote Colin Winnette Les Figues Press, 2015 96 pages $17.00 Buy: book It’s a natural tendency to summarize, to distill entire constellations of events and details into a single swallow of information. Near the beginning of Coyote, Colin Winnette’s protagonist attempts just this, saying “I tell the same story