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MAILING LIST: I just started a mailing list for my publishing company. Will mail out every 2 months and will include excerpts from my Robert’s Roundup columns and other random stuff. https://booktoot.club/@nagletx. (Mastodon) and nagletx.bsky.social. (Blue Sky).
Abbreviations: KU means Kindle Unlimited and NYP means “Name Your Price” (that’s an option on Smashwords and other booksellers). If you’d like to submit an ebook to me for review or mention in this column, see my instructions here. Here is my article about methods and search queries I use to locate ebook deals.
My 1965 Project articles have been coming slowly. But here’s a long essay about 1965 children’s books. Here’s an “Elevator Pitch” video I did for Alberto Balengo’s Minor Sketches and Reveries (YT). I think it’s my best so far.
I plan to do a 1965 essay about Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation. I bought and read it from cover to the cover and am re-reading it. Annoyingly, it still hasn’t been discounted as an ebook.
Indie Author Spotlight
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Under the Radar
Another One Bites the Past by Vladimir Provorov. A famous rock singer has an odd concert experience in 1973 and meets a mysterious stranger. What is going on? Here’s a nice review.
Ad Nauseam: A Survivor’s Guide to American Consumer Culture.
A Garden for Ignatius A Novel of Absurd Comedy and Redemption (The Mittelschmerz Cycle) by M.D. Markham. (Free for a short time!) Just started reading this comic novel written in the spirit of John Kennedy O’Toole. The novel “is a celebration of the difficult personality, a critique of societal impatience, and ultimately, a heartwarming tale of finding one’s proper ground.”
Needle in a Timestack and Other Stories (2019) by Robert Silverberg. Humorously, RS released different versions of this story collection over several decades.
By the Shore: A Novel by Galaxy Craze. Tickled by this name, but apparently this ex-actress and YA author uses that name. First novel was well-received.
Yonder Stands Your Opinion by Barry Hannah.
True Grit by Charles Portis. Texas author Clay Reynolds raved about this novel.
Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs Novel by Matthew Dicks.
Notorious Dr. August: His Real Life and Crimes (Novel) by Christopher Bram.
Night Garden by Polly Horvath. Newbery Prize author of children’s books.
Well by Matthew McIntosh.
Hot Damn! Alligators in the Casino by James W. Hall. Humor columns.
Crossways by Sheila Kohler.
Cleopatra’s Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire by Judith Thurman. Literary essays originally published in the New Yorker.
Gone with the Mind by Mark Leyner
Creatures of the Air: Music, Atlantic Spirits, Breath, 1817–1913 by J.Q. Davies
Playing in Time: Essays, Profiles, and Other True Stories by Carlo Rotella
The Chastity Plot by Lisabeth During. Overlooked Sanskrit fiction.
Silence and Silences by Wallis Wilde-Menozzi
Glimmer by Sam Aleks. Young girl traumatized by a fire dives into painting to assuage her guilt about the death of her brother.
Pink Tuxedo. by C.D. Acosta. Clever colorful futuristic tale of a college introverted student who shuns social interaction but attends a concert and is drawn into a crazy plot.
Manual Puig and the Spider Woman: His Life and Fiction by Suzanne Jill Levine
House of Lords and Commons: Poems by Ishion Hutchinson.
Alfa Romeo 1300 and Other Miracles by Fabio Bartolomei.
Fellow Mortals Novel by Dennis Mahoney.
Forty Days at Kamas Book 5 by Preston Fleming.
The World has changed: Conversations with Alice Walker.
Night Life of the Gods by Thorne Smith. “Thorne Smith’s comic genius mixed weird science with mythology, bootlegged alcohol with a chilly eye for the hypocrisy of the very Americans he was entertaining. At worst, sentimental; at best, like a New Yorker cartoon wrapped round a knife.” (by M. John Harrison).
Adventurist: Novel by J. Bradford Hipps.
Damage Control: Stories by Amber Dermont. Rice U. creative writing teacher. Videos: Reading at ABR, Also a 1 hour reading on Vimeo.
End of Alice by A.M. Homes. British tale of sexual dalliance/flirtation between an older man and a way-younger teenage girl.
Two Dreams and Two Hollows by Gary Gautier.
Stone Fields: love and death in the Balkans by Courtney Angela Brkic. Anthropologist’s memoir of exhuming bodies in Bosnia during the Yugoslav war in the 1990s.
Freedoms We Lost: Consent and Resistance in Revolutionary America by Barbara Clark Smith.
Sexual Awakening (4 Novellas) by Lucy Xane.
Copenhagen Papers: An Intrigue by Michael Frayn.
Margo’s Cafe by Tom Milton.
Abundance: A Novel by Amit Majmudar. Indian family saga.
Knee-Deep in Wonder: A novel by April Reynolds. A dazzling first novel about four generations of fear and longing in the deep South. By a philosophy/creative writing prof. This novel won a first novel award.
Accidents: A Novel by Yael Hedaya. Israeli author who created (for Israel) a TV show which was adapted into the HBO series In Treatment.
Perv: A Love Story by Jerry Stahl. Bawdy and hippie coming of age tale of growing up in the 1970s.
Karl Marx and the Lost California Manifesto: a novel by Scott D. Carlson (I). This new satirical work of pseudo-history imagines that Karl Marx travels to California during the Gold Rush in search of gold. Plaudits from both Kirkus and BookLife.
Blink and It’s Gone
Shucks, I dilly-dallied too long and didn’t grab The Mabinogion Tetralogy: by Evangeline Walton when it was still 2.99. There are other translations, but this one is supposed to be highly readable and fun.
Magus by John Fowles. I started reading this 1965 novel but find it awkward to read with glasses. Totally glad I could find the title discounted, though I had to wait a long while.
Tales of the Night by Peter Hoeg. Parallel stories taking place in the same day in 1929.
The Hunger Angel: A Novel by Herta Müller. Post WW 2 East European historical novel. Nobel winner.
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. Well-known comic novel.
Library Purchases/Printed books
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Creative Commons/Freebies
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Literary Articles and Essays
Here’s a nice collection of college reading lists. Here’s another and another. Here’s another much longer list.
Here’s an interview with author M. John Harrison. Here’s a list of his Top 10 favorite novels.
Here’s a collection of reddit threads about obscure Sci Fi. Here’s a summary of book recommendation threads.
Rant
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Capsule Book Reviews
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Multimedia/Podcasts, Etc
This video (which is also available as a podcast and on YouTube) is hilarious. Dave Barry and Carl Hiaasen are two of the funniest people in USA.
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