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
the
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.
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).
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.
Abbreviations: KU means Kindle Unlimited, and APUB means it was published under an Amazon imprint.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.
This post is usually a work-in-progress. At the start it will be blank, and I add to it over the weeks. By the way for the month of November, I’ll be focused mainly on the 1965 Project, a look back at cultural gems from that year.
Indie Author Spotlight
hello
Under the Radar
To Name Those Lost Novel by Rohan Wilson.
The One that Got Away Stories by Zoe Wicomb.
Cutty, One Rock: Low Characters and Strange Places, Gently Explained by August Kleinzahler. (poetry).
Hope Verdad Presents: Short Stories with a Twist by Francesca Flood
Moral Underground: How Ordinary Americans subvert an unfair economy by Lisa Dodson.
All Flesh is Grass by Clifford D Simak. (1965).
This is your life novel by John O’Farrell. (W, ) Also The Best a Man Can get. He’s a British humor writer and actor. See his satirical news website Newsbiscuit.
Meander, Spiral, Explod: by Jane Allison.
Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck. German novel about a literature professor who attempts to help refugees.
Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick.
Haitian Trilogy: Plays by Derek Walcott.
Fling: Commanding 21st Century Stories by Justin Taylor. Also, Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever: Stories
One Fell Soup: Or I’m Just a Bug on the Windshield of Life by Roy Blount.
Literary Seductions: Compulsive Writers and Diverted Readers by Frances Wilson.
Beetlebum by Christian Basso.
All at once: Prose Poems by C.K. Williams
Scar Tissue: Poems by Charles Wright.
Walking Backwards: Poems 1966-2016 by John Koethe.
The Swimmer: Poems by John Koethe.
Chickamauga: Poems by Charles Wright. (W) Pulitzer finalist.
Triumph of the Sparrow: Zen Poems by Shinkichi Takahashi.
Thunderstroke: a Poetry Memoir by Terence Ang.
Another Life by Derek Walcott.
Land End’s: New and Selected poems by Gail Mazur.
Two books (which are first of two separate series) by Texas sci fi author E.M. Rensing: Source Code and Lighthouse of Kuiper.
Deviation a Novel by Luce D’Eramo. WW2 memoir of an Italian girl who learns about Nazi atrocities.
My Family and Other Hazards: A Memoir by June Melby.
American Master: A Portrait of Gore Vidal: James Edmonds.
Three Ways to Disappear by Katy Yocom.
Wakefield Novel by Andrei Codrescu.
Land of Steady Habits by Ted Thompson.
Naked Girl by Janna Brooke Wallack. Ignore the misleading title. It’s about a motherless girl in the 1980s Miami beach and capricious father who strive to survive under harrowing circumstances. “Wallack cleverly walks a tightrope in her writing, balancing the horrors with a child’s unwavering imagination and naive sense of wonder…a distinctive and emotionally rich voice delivering succinct observations…An endearing and fascinating perspective on a uniquely volatile and dangerous childhood.” Kirkus.
Dog’s Breakfast by Tom Navratil.
Points of Departure: Stories by Pat Murphy.
Illusions of Time: Selena’s Tale by Sabina Dazdarevic.
First Contact (In Her Name) by Michael R. Hicks.
Gorgeous East: A Novel by Robert Girardi.
American Master: a Portrait of Gore Vidal by James Edmonds.
A reddit thread about nonnovelists who write novels. Curiously, even though I love Steve Martin as a comedian, I never have been tempted to read his fiction. I would consider reading novels by John Sayles or John Darnielle (of Mountain Goats). Also Ayoade on Top by Richard Ayoade.
Rant
hello
Multimedia/Podcasts, Etc.
Personville Press Deals
I run Personville Press, a small literary book press where all the ebooks cost less than $4. Prices normally appear highest on Amazon, Apple, Kobo and BN, somewhat lower on Google Play Books and lower on the two DRM-free stores which are Smashwords and Payhip. Personville Press is committed to selling DRM-free ebooks and audio files directly from the Personville Press payhip store or from Smashwords. The prices listed here are the non-discounted price on Amazon. Check the links to see if they are discounted at the moment (it happens often).
My Heart For Hostage by Robert S. Hillyer. This tender love story between a young American lieutenant and a French girl in Paris after the first World War was published by poet (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Robert Hillyer in 1942. Out of print for several decades, this novel will be re-released for the first time as a low-cost ebook. A New York Times critic called it a “superbly written book, written perhaps as only a poet with and expert in the discipline of verse could write it.” Includes a critical essay by Robert Nagle. Free download from the publisher’s site, but also available at a nominal price from ebook stores: Payhip | Smashwords | Google Play | BN | Apple | Kobo | Amazon | Amazon UK. You can also read the whole thing online!
Interview with the Sphinx. By Jack Matthews. ($1.50). Hyperintellectual Tom Stoppard-like play which reads like a novel about a strange interview with the ancient Sphinx character. Freud and Florence Nightingale show up too. I loved this play and even produced an audio version of it which you can buy for $2 on payhip (mp3/m4a) but the script reads well too. The audio book is available from most audiobook streaming services like |Audible $6 | Apple $3 | Google Play $3 | Also, now on Spotify Premium.
A Worker’s Writebookby Jack Matthews. $2.25 Matthews distributed a photocopied version of this writing guide to his Ohio U. creative writing students over the decades.
Three Times Time Story Sampler by Jack Matthews (Always Free!) US Amazon customers can sometimes get it for free, but to make things easier, you can down these files directly without having to register: Epub,
Abbreviations: KU means Kindle Unlimited, and APUB means it was published under an Amazon imprint.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.
Mike Royko. It turns out that all his columns were digitized into a 2 million word ebook (Mike Royko: The Chicago Tribune Collection 1984-1997)! The price is a little high $11, but no matter how you look at it, you still are going to get your money’s worth. Royko has always been one of my favorite newspaper columnists, and I wrote a passionate defense of Royko here.
(By the way, you can always look up the word count for a book by finding it on Kobo’s ebook page (which shows it).
Reeducation of Cherry Truong: A Novel by Aimee Phan.
A Taste of Terry Ravenscroft by Terry Ravenscroft. Sampler of his works. TR is a comedy writer in his late 80s. He used to write for British TV and for various comedians. I blogged about him in my first Robert’s Roundup column and even corresponded with him briefly and read his book reimagining Laurel and Hardy called Call Me a Taxi. Since that time, I have noticed that he has written a lot of comic novels — an average of one a year. That genre has recently interested me, so I am definitely going to revisit books by this author soon. Here’s a silly rap song TR did about going old called Grandpapparapper.
Noontide Toll by Romesh Gunesekera.
Beyond Sleep by Willem Frederik Hermans. Highly regarded Dutch novel.
Pride of Eden: A Novel by Taylor Brown
Waltz in Swing Time by Jill Caughtery.
The Skin Above My Knee by Marcia Butler
October: A Novel by Zoë Wicomb
Shelter in Place: A Novel by Alexander Maksik
All the Good Things by Clare Fisher
Lacuna: A Novel by Fiona Snyckers. South African retelling of a story from a character in J.M. Coetzee‘s Disgrace.
Jake & Mimi: A Novel by Frank Baldwin. “A relentlessly plotted and powerfully written thriller and a breathtaking exploration of the pleasures and limits of sex.”
The Meaning of Consuelo: A Novel by Judith Ortiz Cofer.
Luminous Airplanes by Paul La Farge.
Angels Make Their Hope Here by Breena Clarke
The Living Infinite: A Novel by Chantel Acevedo
The World Is Waiting for You: Graduation Speeches to Live By from Activists, Writers, and Visionaries by Tara Grove, Isabel. Ostrer
Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell by Katherine Angel. Author of Tomorrow Sex will be Good Again. This is more of a personal poetic investigation than anything
Three to See the King by Magnus King.
Upstate by James Wood. Novel by esteemed literary critic.
Consequence: A Memoir by Eric Fair.
Writings on an Ethical Life by Peter Singer. Compilation of Singer essays on ethics sold in this low cost edition.
Perverts by Adam Cosco.
Hotels of North America by Rick Moody.
Footprints: In search of fossil fuels by David Farrier. A meditation about how climate change has affected our arts and culture.
The Jade Twilight by Chris Castleman.
The Freedoms We Lost: Consent and Resistance in Revolutionary America by Barbara Clark Smith. Political history of colonial times by a Smithsonian historian (written in 2010). (Oops, the price went to 10$ while I was waiting. Have to wait until next time).
Moira’s Crossing by Christina Shea.
King’s Indian: Stories and Tales by John Gardner. “Midnight tales for the literary intellectual” as Kirkus put it. Mixed review in NYT; basically the stories are embedded in classic works which are told in a self-aware style. More Barth and Borgesian, I guess.
County of Birches by Judith Kalman. (Bio, ). Kalman is a Hungarian-born Canadian author who wrote about the Jewish experience and the Holocaust. “The County of Birches is unique, devoid of the usual cliches of Holocaust or post-Holocaust literature, fresh, told with love, devotion and above all considerable literary expertise.” — Josef Skvorecky,
The Will by Harvey Swados. Tale of three immigrant brothers who fight over their inheritance. National Book Award finalist. Author was a journalist who died at 52 (Obit)
Lunatics a Novel by Bradley Denton. (W, ) 1996 Humorous fantasy novel about a widowed man who meets a moon goddess of desire (!?) His 2001 story collection One Day Closer to Death sells for 2.99, but is discounted often.
Bad Connections: A Novel by Joyce Johnson.
Why Dogs Chase Cars: Tales of a Beleagured Boyhood by George Singleton.
A Plea for Eros: Essays by Siri Hustvedt. I pretty much buy anything from SH, but I already had a hardback copy; having a digital edition was very convenient.
Cutty One Rock: Low Characters and Strange Places, Gently Explained by August Kleinzahler. Prose pieces by distinguished award-winning poet.
It’s All Right Now Novel by Charles Chadwick. Retired British fellow writes a roman-a-clef. (Got great writeups).
Out of My Mind by John Brunner.
Fever: HOw Rock n’ Roll Transformed Gender in America by Tim Riley.
Open Minds by Susan Kaye Quinn. First in the Mindjack series.
Gorgeous East Novel by Robert Girard.
Game of X: A novel of Upmanship Espionage by Robert Sheckley. 1965 comic spy novel.
Generations: A Science Fiction Mystery Thriller by Noam Josephides.
Gatekeeper: Poems by Patrick Johnson. (Author’s Book Page) Here’s a review: “Gatekeeper is the first collection I have ever read that intimately explores the internet from an insider’s point-of-view. It makes one wonder what frontiers digital natives will break in regard to what is labeled as poetry. I’m not talking slick graphic design and multi-media downloads, but true and honest inner examinations that come bound on paper that you can hold in your hand and don’t have 30 000 songs, all your emails, contacts, and family albums—but something deeper, something underneath the user level.”
Collected Novels Volume One: Desert of the Heart, The Young in One Another’s Arms, and This Is Not for You by Jane Rule. Early novels about lesbianism by a Canadian novelist.
Starman After Midnight: A Novel-in-stories by Scott Semegran (Home, Book Page). This was a free Bookbub deal. Semegran is an Austin-based writer whom I’ve been meaning to read for a while. I hope to have time to read at least one novel of his in 2026. Can’t wait!
Rest of Life: Three Novellas by Mary Gordon.
An Uncommon Reader: A Life of Edward Garnett, Mentor and Editor of Literary Genius by Helen Smith.
Berryman’s Shakespeare: Essays, Letters, and Other Writings by John Berryman.
Beautiful by Massimo Cuomo.
Only the Animals (Stories) by Ceridwen Dovey
Collected Novels Volume One by Jane Rule. Noted gay Canadian novelist. Includes her first novel Desert of the Heart when gay activity was still outlawed.
Here Come the Dogs Novel by Omar bin Musa. (W, Home) Musa is a multitalented Malaysian-Australian rapper, artist and storyteller.
The Raising a Novel by Laura Kasischke. I’ve posted about her before. She’s a poet and novelist.
Deep Inside: Extreme Erotic Fantasies by Polly Frost. I’d reviewed Frost’s humor novel, With One Eye Open over a decade ago. She and I her husband wrote erotic stories which they had actors do staged readings for. So I’m sure this is fun as well.
Fredy Neptune: A Novel in Verse by Les Murray (W) “Fredy Neptune is Murray’s best work yet, an almost completely successful round-the-world adventure novel in enticing, flexibly slangy (and very Australian-sounding) eight-line stanzas.” Ruth Padel writes, “”Fredy Neptune” is such a page turner, has such poetic authority and ambition, is so linguistically alive and rooted in such intimate humanity, that it should be on every reading list as this appalling century ends. It makes poetry, humor and intimacy out of the worst things, and finds riches, as Murray always does, in grittily difficult lives. This book is full of dignity, vigor, compassion and bite. It is what poetry ought to be, what the ”Iliad” was, or Euripides’ searingly antiwar play ”Trojan Women”: angry, visceral, necessary and — at the end of another millennium given over to war — a force for good.”
A Dangerous Profession: A book about the writing life by Frederick Busch.
Crawl Space Novel by Edie Meidav. Historical novel about an 84 year old standing trial in Paris for war crimes. Praised by Thomas Keneally.
Blink and it’s Gone
Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon. With a $3 credit to my account, I decided to buy this gargantuan ebook to my collection. This book came on my radar on a listicle ranking Pynchon novels (this came out first), and looking at the glowing reviews.
Grifters by Jim Thompson. Famous hard-boiled crime novel which was later adapted into a major film.
Collected stories by William Trevor.
Library Purchases/Printed books
Sincerely, Andy Rooney by Andy Rooney. I have been a fan of Rooney’s droll columns. This is minor Rooney; it consists entirely of his personal replies to letters sent to him over the decades.
Andersonville by MacKinley Kantor (W) Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller about prisoners in a Confederate prison in Georgia. Two critics called it the greatest Civil War novel of all time. About two decades earlier, Kantor had written two other novels with a Civil War setting. Arouse and Beware (1936) is about how two Union soldiers escape a prison and form a love triangle with a woman who is also trying to return to the North. Long Remember (1934) is about a Westerner who returns home to Gettysburg only to have an affair with a woman whose husband is fighting in the war. Kantor is also known for a 1961 speculative essay, If the South Had Won the Civil War.
Once again, I was caught offguard by the Nobel’s decision to award the literature prize to someone with an unpronounceable name. Here’s Krasznahorkai’s take on the Ukraine conflict:
That the First World War is essentially repeating itself?! What do I think?!
It fills me with horror. Hungary is a neighboring country of Ukraine, and the Orbán regime is taking an unprecedented stance—almost unparalleled in Hungarian history. This is partly because, until now, we were always the ones being attacked and losing, and partly because I could never have imagined that the Hungarian political leadership would talk about so-called neutrality in this matter!
How can a country be neutral when the Russians invade a neighboring country? And haven’t they been killing Ukrainians for nearly three years? What do you mean “This is an internal Slavic affair”?!—as the Hungarian prime minister puts it?! How can it be an internal matter when people are being killed? And it is the leader of a country saying this—a country that has been constantly invaded throughout history. Among others, by the Russians. And these Russians are the same Russians.
This Hungarian regime is a psychiatric case. There is the inhuman calculation behind it: Maybe they have already killed my daughter, but I would rather accept that so that they don’t harm my mother. But they will harm her. They will kill both. Is it so hard to understand?…
A dirty, rotten war is unfolding before my eyes. The world is starting to get used to it. I cannot get used to it. I am incapable of accepting that people are killing people. Maybe I’m a psychiatric case. All of this is happening while, in the digital space, there is a vision of the future promising that the terrifyingly rapid advancement of technology will soon bring a beautiful new world. This is complete madness. While a fundamentally twentieth-century war is raging, someone is talking about how we’ll soon be going to Mars. I hope Putin and his sympathizers will be the first passengers….
Rant
I have been going to GoodReads more often. I have noticed that Amazon (which owns Goodreads) has been making it harder to exclude what ebooks you have been reading from your public profile. I am sick of it. Why should it be so hard to hide or exclude a sexy book you are reading from your public profile?
Capsule Book Reviews
the
Multimedia/Podcasts, Etc.
Perhaps I already read the speech itself, but this morning I listened to the wonderful Nobel Prize acceptance speech by Bob Dylan (YT). I was surprised at how thoughtful his thoughts about books and authors were. In addition to talking about poetry and musical influences, he gave very personal accounts of reading Moby Dick, All Quiet on the Western Front and Odyssey.
Personville Press Deals
I run Personville Press, a small literary book press where all the ebooks cost less than $4. Prices normally appear highest on Amazon, Apple, Kobo and BN, somewhat lower on Google Play Books and lower on the two DRM-free stores which are Smashwords and Payhip. Personville Press is committed to selling DRM-free ebooks and audio files directly from the Personville Press payhip store or from Smashwords. The prices listed here are the non-discounted price on Amazon. Check the links to see if they are discounted at the moment (it happens often).
My Heart For Hostage by Robert S. Hillyer. This tender love story between a young American lieutenant and a French girl in Paris after the first World War was published by poet (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Robert Hillyer in 1942. Out of print for several decades, this novel will be re-released for the first time as a low-cost ebook. A New York Times critic called it a “superbly written book, written perhaps as only a poet with and expert in the discipline of verse could write it.” Includes a critical essay by Robert Nagle. Free download from the publisher’s site, but also available at a nominal price from ebook stores: Payhip | Smashwords | Google Play | BN | Apple | Kobo | Amazon | Amazon UK. You can also read the whole thing online!
Interview with the Sphinx. By Jack Matthews. ($1.50). Hyperintellectual Tom Stoppard-like play which reads like a novel about a strange interview with the ancient Sphinx character. Freud and Florence Nightingale show up too. I loved this play and even produced an audio version of it which you can buy for $2 on payhip (mp3/m4a) but the script reads well too. The audio book is available from most audiobook streaming services like |Audible $6 | Apple $3 | Google Play $3 | Also, now on Spotify Premium.
A Worker’s Writebookby Jack Matthews. $2.25 Matthews distributed a photocopied version of this writing guide to his Ohio U. creative writing students over the decades.
Three Times Time Story Sampler by Jack Matthews (Always Free!) US Amazon customers can sometimes get it for free, but to make things easier, you can down these files directly without having to register: Epub,
Abbreviations: KU means Kindle Unlimited, and APUB means it was published under an Amazon imprint.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.
Cool, I just discovered that St. Martin’s Press (a subsidiary of MacMillian is discounting some of their books to the 50 cent range. Try this search query on for size.
Wow, here’s a new term for me: Ergodic literature. Genre of literature in which nontrivial effort is required for the reader to traverse the text. I have a background in this type of writing (sort of); will explore that some more.
Wow, I just learned about a new prize: the $150,000 Windham-Campbell Prizes, . They have lots of videos with interviews, lectures and readings from the winners. It’s one of these “somebody has to nominate you” kind of prices (like the MacArthur, etc) which gives the awards more freedom in setting criteria and means that judges don’t need to read 100-200 unremarkable books), but ends up being too insular. (although no more insular than the other awards which seem to come only from a few publishers). It has the perverse effect of rewarding authors who have already received some acclaim and success and possibly regular work. It also raises the selling value of works by these authors. Anyway, it’s nice that the award is substantial and can meaningfully help authors.
COMIC-CEREBRAL AUDIO PLAY ON SPOTIFY (64 minutes) A decade ago I produced “Interview with the Sphinx,” a great audio play by Ohio author Jack Matthews. So cerebral that your mind will explode midway through. Premium Spotify users can listen for free — FYI I did the intro and the narration. The actors were great too. (Spotify Link)
Indie Author Spotlight
the
Under the Radar
Prophet of Zongo Street (Stories) by Mohammed Naseehu Ali (W, ). Writer from Ghana who studied in USA and teaches at universities. Here’s a 41 minute audio of Ali reading and a 23 minute Youtube 2024 interview and a 2004 article about the inconveniences of having a Muslim name after 9/11. A NYT review said that it “deftly blends African folklore, dreams, the wisdom of elders, the pranks of children and pitch-perfect, often wry dialogue.” Kirkus “Ali shows an almost anthropological interest in his characters, and a keen eye for the humanistic detail: a richly rewarding cultural study.”
Turtleface and Beyond: Stories by Arthur Bradford.
Marriage of the Sea by Jane Allison .. (W, bio). Here’s a reading she gave . She has written Love Artist (inspired by the life of Ovid) and translated some Ovid poetry. I have been reading and really enjoying Love Artist.
Testament of Yves Gundron by Emily Barton. (bio, blog and an interview) A sort of magical fairy tale about a land of farmers devoid of technology and contact with the outside world. Probably hard to explain. Reviewed somewhat confusingly in the NYTBR, but apparently Thomas Pychon of all people reviewed it (““I found it blessedly post-ironic, engaging and heartfelt, a story that moves with ease and certainty, deeply respecting the given world even as it shines with the integrity of dream.”). Here are essays and short pieces online and an interview.
Destroy all Monsters: Last Rock Novel by Jeff Jackson.
Two novels by Felicia Luna Lemus. Like Son: A Novel and Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties: A novel.
High Cotton Novel by Darryl Pinckney. Upper middle class black in Indiana grows up with awareness of how racism has shaped his society (but not him personally). “What Christopher Isherwood did for Weimar Berlin, Darryl Pinckney has done, more profoundly, for Berlin behind the wall. This haunted, rebuilt city is the perfect setting for an exploration of the artist as a young, black, gay man, unable to shake off his own troubled past. A beautiful book, witty, sophisticated, and intensely moving.” (Ian Buruma) Also wrote the essay collection Busted in New York and other essays.
Yawn: Adventures in Boredom by Mary Mann. (website) Long essay about the phenomenon of boredom, with a historical and sociological perspective. Mann is a librarian who has written about nerdy topics for national publications.
Don’t Kiss Me: Stories by Lindsay Hunter. PW wrote, “these stories land with a wet slap–messy and confrontational. They demand your horrified attention, and they reward it with exaggerated and irresistible humanity.” She hosts a long running lithub podcast called I’m a Writer But. (Here’s a long interview she did with Eva Dunsky about her later novel Hot Springs Drive) .
Blue Stars Novel by Emily Gray Tedrowe (Website and blog).
Lust: Or No Harm Done by Geoff Ryman. (W, Bio) Gay brain scientist stumbles upon an astonishing phenomenon that transforms his sex life (among other things). Ryman is a prolific Canadian sci fi author.
Wonderblood by Julia Whicker. This intriguing novel imagines a future where most humans have died from plague & remaining ones have strange views of the past. (NASA vehicles are described with reverence, etc.) One review described it as “if Blood Meridan, The Road, & Candide had a baby with a tarot deck.”
Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai by Ruiyan Xu. A businessman gets hit with a shard of glass and suddenly becomes unable to speak his native tongue Cantonese. Instead he reverts to English from his childhood, and becomes unable to communicate with his wife and family.
Wonderkid Novel by Wesley Stace. Satirical look at
Love Minus 80 by Will McIntosh.
Flanders Point a Novel by Jacquie Gordon. Writes Merle Rubin in 1997 CSM: “Gordon weaves together the interconnecting strands of her novel with understated finesse. Operating in a literary realm often marred by romantic stereotypes, she manages to endow her characters with a real sense of individuality and to handle the time-honored theme of schoolgirl infatuation with a winning blend of freshness and sophistication.” Gordon died in 2021, and she also wrote a heart-breaking memoir about her daughter who passed away from cystic fibrosis as a young adult.
Arkansas: Three Novellas by David Leavitt.
Messiah of Morris Avenue: A Novel by Tony Hendra. Satirical novel asking what would happen if Jesus Christ appeared in the US today?
Clarinet Polka by Keith Maillard (W, I) Maillard is a distinguished Canadian author. Here’s an audio interview.
Devil Never Sleeps (Essay Collection) by Andrei Codrescu. I love anything that this Romanian-American author has written.
Tale of the 1002nd Night Novel by Joseph Roth.
Swift Thoughts by George Zebrowski. (W) Collection of cerebral sci fi stories by a man who also wrote Star Trek novels among things. Wow, he died at the end of last year. Here’s a nice tribute on SFWA. Wow, I see that Robert Sawyer wrote an Amazon review of this book: “George Zebrowski is one of the most philosophically astute writers in science fiction, and this collection of his insightful, mind-bending tales is long overdue. It’s no surprise that one of his stories is a Nebula Award nominee as I write this. If there’s a successor to Olaf Stapledon, it’s Zebrowski. Highly recommended.” Whoa! I see that I already purchased Macrolife: A Mobile Utopia in 2020.
Two works by Pamela Sargent: Behind the Eyes of Dreamers: And Other Short Novels and The Shore of Women: The Classic Work of Feminist Science Fiction.
Black Deutschland by Darryl Pinckney. “What Christopher Isherwood did for Weimar Berlin, Darryl Pinckney has done, more profoundly, for Berlin behind the wall. This haunted, rebuilt city is the perfect setting for an exploration of the artist as a young, black, gay man, unable to shake off his own troubled past. A beautiful book, witty, sophisticated, and intensely moving.” (Ian Buruma)
You Must Remember This: Poems by Michael Bazzett
The Devil’s Larder: A Feast by Jim Crace
Married Sex: A love Story by Jesse Kornbluth. Story about a couple who have a threesome and deal with the aftereffects. Kornbluth has been a journalist and taught a screenplay writing class. (Obituary, W,) Here’s a Soundcloud interview about the book and a written interview on his headbutler.com site. . NYT review: “Kornbluth’s debut novel, about a happy marriage interrupted by a ménage à trois, could easily have coasted on its promise of titillation. Instead it is a skillfully written, lighthearted and clever story that manages to be steamy but never salacious. Video interviews here and here. Here’s a famous NYT article he wrote, The Woman Who Beat the Klan.
Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness by Willard Spiegelman. Prolific Texas English professor and poetry expert. Essays here and here.
Language and the Rise of the Algorithm by Jeffrey M. Binder
Bleak Liberalism by Amanda Anderson
The Wild Colonial Boy: A Novel by James Hynes
The Black Prince: And Other Stories by Shirley Ann Grau
A Girl Walks Into a Bar: Your Fantasy, Your Rules by Helena S. Paige.
The House on Prague Street by Hanna Demetz
Her Body Knows: Two Novellas by David Grossman
Gravity’s End: Hard Sci-fi Novel in Space by T.Y. Schweid.
What have you done to our ears to make us hear echoes?: Poems by Arlene Kim.
The Cracks in Our Armor by Anna Gavalda
Artist’s Wife Novel by Max Phillips. “An elegant reimagining of the life of Alma Mahler, the lovely, aristocratic fin-de-siècle composer who abandoned her own art to become the inspiration and collector of geniuses.” Writes book reviewer friend Mary Whipple, “this is a fascinating study of the way one woman managed to liberate herself from some of the social restrictions of her day. The intellectual and artistic worlds Phillips recreates pulse with life; the political changes from empire to post-war socialism and the rise of Hitler are smoothly integrated into the story; and the book, overall, is a remarkable portrait of a place and time rarely chronicled in American fiction.”
Something frivolous: Comet Cruise by Niska Morrow. Labeled a “spicy polyamorous novel,” it’s about a woman who joins a sinful space cruise for the sex orgies. (website and an interview with her).
Limbo Novel by Melania Mazzucco. (W,) A moving but unsentimental examination of one woman’s life as she navigates life after war It’s Christmas Eve and twenty-seven-year-old Manuela Paris is returning home to a seaside town outside Rome. Apparently her prize-winning Vita novel is the best known.
Four Fingers of Death Novel by Rick Moody.
Walking West Novel by Noelle Sickels. (Author & Book site). Historical novel about a band of farm families from Indiana who go to California in 1852.
Blink and It’s Gone
Two wonderful books on music history by Andrew Grant Jackson. 1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music and 1973: Rock at the Crossroads. See also the book’s website.
How to Listen to Great Music by Robert Greenberg. 1.99 Delightful intro to classical music by famed musicologist. I loved his classes for the Great Courses.
Encounter: Essays by Milan Kundera. Stupidly, I bought an ebook version of a book I already own. No matter. It was 1.99, and I prefer ebooks anyway. These look more essay fragments than full-fledged essays, but this is Kundera after all.
Language of Climate Politics by Genevieve Guenther. This ebook (on sale for $3.64) dissects climate change disinfo & summarizes the latest research in climate change policy & economics. Unusually in-depth for a nonscientist. This was my favorite book I read last year!
Library Purchases/Printed books
the
Creative Commons/Freebies
When Robert Sawyer invoked Olaf Stapledon, I couldn’t help thinking, who the hell is that? Here’s his wiki page and fadedpage download. I’ve downloaded Star Maker, Sirius and Last and First Man. Arthur C. Clarke considered Star Maker to be “probably the most powerful work of imagination ever written.”
I run Personville Press, a small literary book press where all the ebooks cost less than $4. Prices normally appear highest on Amazon, Apple, Kobo and BN, somewhat lower on Google Play Books and lower on the two DRM-free stores which are Smashwords and Payhip. Personville Press is committed to selling DRM-free ebooks and audio files directly from the Personville Press payhip store or from Smashwords. The prices listed here are the non-discounted price on Amazon. Check the links to see if they are discounted at the moment (it happens often).
My Heart For Hostage by Robert S. Hillyer. This tender love story between a young American lieutenant and a French girl in Paris after the first World War was published by poet (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Robert Hillyer in 1942. Out of print for several decades, this novel will be re-released for the first time as a low-cost ebook. A New York Times critic called it a “superbly written book, written perhaps as only a poet with and expert in the discipline of verse could write it.” Includes a critical essay by Robert Nagle. Free download from the publisher’s site, but also available at a nominal price from ebook stores: Payhip | Smashwords | Google Play | BN | Apple | Kobo | Amazon | Amazon UK. You can also read the whole thing online!
Interview with the Sphinx. By Jack Matthews. ($1.50). Hyperintellectual Tom Stoppard-like play which reads like a novel about a strange interview with the ancient Sphinx character. Freud and Florence Nightingale show up too. I loved this play and even produced an audio version of it which you can buy for $2 on payhip (mp3/m4a) but the script reads well too. The audio book is available from most audiobook streaming services like |Audible $6 | Apple $3 | Google Play $3 | Also, now on Spotify Premium.
A Worker’s Writebookby Jack Matthews. $2.25 Matthews distributed a photocopied version of this writing guide to his Ohio U. creative writing students over the decades.
Three Times Time Story Sampler by Jack Matthews (Always Free!) US Amazon customers can sometimes get it for free, but to make things easier, you can down these files directly without having to register: Epub,
Abbreviations: KU means Kindle Unlimited, and APUB means it was published under an Amazon imprint.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.
I have been working hard on a long interview with Clay Reynolds.
Indie Author Spotlight
the
Under the Radar
And then there were none by Agatha Christie. Apparently the authorized edition costs 1.99 (better formatting), but there’s a crappy 99 cent version available which you should avoid. I was surprised to see that the work won’t be going into the public domain anytime soon. I could have sworn I read it already a long ago, but I have no memory of it.
Pineville Trace by Wes Blake. (Author website) Introspective, haunting tale about a former revival preacher who tries to run away from his past. This first novel by a Kentucky author won a novella prize and was a finalist for a debut author award. On his personal website, here’s an homage/recollection about the author Dennis Johnson.
Best People in the World a Novel by Justin Tussing. (W)
Lacuna a Novel by Fiona Snyckers. (Website and bio) Reimagining the traumatized character in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, a sexual assault victim tries to track down Mr. Coetzee himself. (Fun Fact: I studied with J.M. Coetzee in grad school. He would totally dig this shit! See his earlier novel Foe) . She works on a Hidden Life of Writers podcast. My podcast app wasn’t able to locate it, so I had to use the RSS feed here. Here’s a 50 minute video interview about another book by Snyckers. Update: I forgot to hit the BUY button! Hopefully the discounted price will return soon.
You Must Go and Win by Alina Simone. (W) (Personal website) Humorous memoir by Ukrainian-American musical journalist/director.
Truth’s Ragged Edge: The Rise of the American Novel by Philip F. Gura. Literary history of 19th century United States. In his review, Michael Dirda writes, “While Gura’s book discusses some familiar names, such as Hawthorne and Melville, it is most valuable in creating excitement for the work of, say, Stoddard, whose novels are pioneering works of both psychological fiction and social realism. “
Kissing Strangers by Judy Savinar. 10 stories about women confronting life’s challenges.
Flying Leap Stories by Judy Budnitz. Also: If I told you Once a Novel (4 generations of women from an Eastern European village to US). Glowing review of her story collection in NYTBR who describes her as a 26 year old cartoonist for Village Voice who “reveals a bionic ear for clever dialogue and a picturesque writing style with a fearless tone that rarely wavers, no matter how quirky the conceit.”
Parallax and Selected Poems by Sinead Morrissey.
Hot Flashes by Barbara Rankin. Entertaining stories of women entering menopause.
Good Boys and Bad Girls by Mary Gordon. Essay collection, some on literary themes. By the way, I am reading the excellent Spending novel.
More of this World or Maybe Another: Stories by Barb Johnson. (Website)
No Going Back: Thought-Provoking Psychological Suspense Novel by D.T. Adams
Blink and It’s Gone
Decameron (Wayne Reborn translation). 2.99 I have always wanted a digital copy of this.
Death of the Artist: How Creators are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech by William Deresiewicz. Of course, one way to make money is to get an Ivy League teaching job and write books targeted to starving artists, but this seems like an earnest attempt to understand the problem.
Novels of Ferrara by Giorgio Bassani. Translated by Andre Aciman. Supersize edition. His novels document life as a Jew under fascist Italy. Might be relevant to Americans today?!
Library Purchases/Printed books
the
Creative Commons/Freebies
From Gutenberg there’s Goethe’s Literary Essays — which includes several things from a variety of sources, including Conversations with Eckermann.
Speaking of which, I have been searching for a long lost Texas satirical classic about football. Won’t mention title here, but if Interlibrary Loan turns up a scannable copy, I will probably release it as a Personville Press title. Update: It did!
Up until very recently, I have not used the Oxford comma.
Rant
the
Capsule Book Reviews
the
Multimedia/Podcasts, Etc
Here’s an absolutely amazing discovery. Some Irish bloke online said that this staged reading of Joyce’s Ulysses from 1982 is considered the best audio version of the novel (it’s like 22 hours and unavailable as an audiobook — but a free download). You can stream individual chapters online, but unfortunately the audio files have no metadata. So in addition to downloading these tracks, you need to put metadata on it. I am about to finish Chapter 1/Episode 1 and found it lovely and brilliant and very funny. I had read about half of Ulysses once upon a time and admit to only half-understanding it. I still don’t really understand it, but a lot of the jokes and wordplay make a lot more sense when you hear it.
Personville Press Deals
I run Personville Press, a small literary book press where all the ebooks cost less than $4. Prices normally appear highest on Amazon, Apple, Kobo and BN, somewhat lower on Google Play Books and lower on the two DRM-free stores which are Smashwords and Payhip. Personville Press is committed to selling DRM-free ebooks and audio files directly from the Personville Press payhip store or from Smashwords. The prices listed here are the non-discounted price on Amazon. Check the links to see if they are discounted at the moment (it happens often).
My Heart For Hostage by Robert S. Hillyer. This tender love story between a young American lieutenant and a French girl in Paris after the first World War was published by poet (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Robert Hillyer in 1942. Out of print for several decades, this novel will be re-released for the first time as a low-cost ebook. A New York Times critic called it a “superbly written book, written perhaps as only a poet with and expert in the discipline of verse could write it.” Includes a critical essay by Robert Nagle. Free download from the publisher’s site, but also available at a nominal price from ebook stores: Payhip | Smashwords | Google Play | BN | Apple | Kobo | Amazon | Amazon UK. You can also read the whole thing online!
Interview with the Sphinx. By Jack Matthews. ($1.50). Hyperintellectual Tom Stoppard-like play which reads like a novel about a strange interview with the ancient Sphinx character. Freud and Florence Nightingale show up too. I loved this play and even produced an audio version of it which you can buy for $2 on payhip (mp3/m4a) but the script reads well too. The audio book is available from most audiobook streaming services like |Audible $6 | Apple $3 | Google Play $3 |
A Worker’s Writebookby Jack Matthews. $2.25 Matthews distributed a photocopied version of this writing guide to his Ohio U. creative writing students over the decades.
Three Times Time Story Sampler by Jack Matthews (Always Free!) US Amazon customers can sometimes get it for free, but to make things easier, you can down these files directly without having to register: Epub,
Abbreviations: KU means Kindle Unlimited, and APUB means it was published under an Amazon imprint.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.
Hey, guess what? I made a 12 minute video about my obsession with ebooks (See below).
These elevator pitches are fairly easy to make, and maybe they will help to market the ebook. The question remains though: how will potential readers learn about these videos and will they actually watch them? I personally love them especially if they feature the author; I almost always click on a video if one is available. On the other hand Amazon and other distributors don’t allow video links (except for customer reviews). In these cases, the person talking is not the author; I don’t know if the potential reader would find this useful. I mean, couldn’t they just read the book descriptions?
Maybe their promotional value is limited, but I hope that the elevator pitches could also raise a literary or aesthetic issue about a book. Also, I’d like to do elevator pitches about books I have no connection with.
Random Musing: Someone mentioned online that it’s interesting that nobody ever talks about Updike’s fiction anymore. I’m a big fan of Updike, but Updike reached a level of fame that ensured that all of his books would be reviewed and talked about. It’s inevitable that the interest after his death wouldn’t keep this same level of visibility. I really should read Rabbit is Rich though. On my short list for a while.
Using AI
Perhaps this merits a separate blog post, but using AI engines has been invaluable in doing research for stories I am writing. Often I just need to do background research or research into a certain technology. Sure, search engines have allowed you to find useful information, but in the last decade or so, search results have become cluttered with irrelevant information. I don’t need the information to be 100% accurate. More often, I simply need to know about terminology in a field which my characters can use. Also, this terminology allows me to ask more sophisticated questions of AI.
Here’s a prompt I have been using for book advice:
What are some of the themes in the novel “Vathek” by author William Beckford? Who might want to read this novel? Have any readers criticized this novel? Why do some people not like this novel? Can you list 2 or 3 book titles by contemporary authors which have similar tone & themes? (Replace the prompt with a book of your choice and repeat!)
I have been using Copilot AI in the Windows Edge browser and found it very useful — especially for the book recommendations. Unfortunately I have not found chatgpt that useful or Google’s AI engine.
Indie Author Spotlight
the
Under the Radar
Good To a Fault: A Novel by Marina Endicott (W). Endicott is a Canadian/British Columbian novelist . In this interview with her, Will Johnson writes, “Endicott’s work has emotional and moral complexity, and often explores matters of faith, whether she’s evoking a struggling contemporary family or writing about the vaudeville era.”
Green Grows the Rushes and Other Stories by William Meikle. Fantasy/ghost/monster series by a prolific Scottish author.
Disgruntled a Novel by Asali Solomon. African-American coming of age story. “A coming-of-age tale, a portrait of Philadelphia in the late eighties and early nineties, an examination of the impossible double-binds of race, Disgruntled is a novel about the desire to rise above the limitations of the narratives we’re given and the painful struggle to craft fresh ones we can call our own.”
Love without Gun Control & Other Fantasy, Horror and Sci Fi Stories by M. Christian.
Planet of the Creeps by Walker Long.
2 racy novels by Lisabet Sarai: Raw Silk and Hot Brides in Vegas. Her long running NSFW Beyond Romance blog features and reviews a lot of erotica/romantica titles. Her fiction appears in several erotica anthologies (and some free kinky stories are available on her Medium blog).
Haymaker in Heaven A Novel: by Edvard Hoem. (W) Small town Norwegians move to USA. “Unhurried passages delineating the fickle nature of late-nineteenth-century Norwegian courtship or the finer intricacies of saddle fabrication are in abundance…”
Picador Book of 40: 40 Writers inspired by a Number (anthology). To celebrate Picador’s 40 year anniversary, it asked a dozen authors to write stories that involve a 40 element somewhere. Cool concept, more of a promotional anthology than anything one would ordinarily read.
Norman the Insurance Salesman and Other Stories by Michael Raven. 50 surreal, satirical and absurd stories in the Douglas Adams vein. (Author’s website and Youtube channel Illustrated edition).
Harry Gold a Novel by Millicent Dillon. Metafictional story about a biographer character following a Cold War spy. Dillon herself actually wrote biographies of Paul and Jane Bowles.
First Rule of Swimming a Novel by Courtney Angela Brkic. Well-received first novel.
Incredible Stories at the Bus Stop: A Flash Fiction Collection on Human Experience by Delenda Carthago.
Some of my Lives: A Scrapbook Memoir by Rosmond Bernier. Essays and lectures about living in France, famous artists, etc. Sounds gossipy and fun.
Finger: A Handbook by Angus Trumble. Odd and unclassifiable look at fingers and the role they play in the arts, commerce, language.
Everything Happens Today by Jesse Browner. (W) Single day in the life of a privileged 17 year old Manhattanite. Wow, lots of glowing blurbs for this author who translates a lot of European authors.
Lake Overturn a Novel by Vestal McIntyre (W) Youtube vid,
Cardboard Universe: Guide to the World of Phoebus K. Dank by Christopher Miller. Satirical novel about a Philip K. Dick like author.
Never Mind the Pollacks: Rock and Roll Novel by Neal Pollack. (W) An epic novelistic satire of rock history, told from the points of view of sleazy dueling music critics. (Author Website + Substack). Austin writer, funny guy; used to freelance for a lot of national mags and write humor pieces for McSweeney’s. I met him once or twice. He has quite a book catalog. He asserts his persona into a lot of his books — both in memoir and fiction. He writes for and edits the online zine Book and Film Globe.
by Joshua Max Feldman
Parking Lot Attendant by Nikki Moustaki. First novel by Ethiopian-American novelist. “Immigrant narrative, coming-of-age story, a dystopian fantasy and a political thriller.”
Blood Orange by Troy Blackhawks. South African coming of age during apartheid.
Stich a Novel by Two novels by Richard Stern (W). Stich and a Father’s Words.
Translations from the Natural World poems by Les Murray. (W) Australian poet.
Concerning E.M. Forster by Frank Kermode. (W) Later book of criticism.
Doctor Criminale: A Novel by Malcolm Bradbury. (W)
Robin and the Rednecks by Todd Davis.
Blink and It’s Gone
Super Sad True Love Story Novel by Gary Shteyngart. Someone called this dystopian novel an appropriate read for the new Trump age. (Say no more!)
Alien Sex: 19 Tales by the Masters of Sci Fi and Dark Fantasy (anthology).
How to Do It: Guides to Good Living for Renaissance Italians by Rudolph Bell.
Desert Rites (Desert Trilogy) by Xue Mo. 1st volume of award-winning Chinese sci fi trilogy.
L.A. Success by Lonnie Raines. California comedy about a flabby Forest Gumpy LA anti-hero who gets sucked into a real estate mystery and a gig as a private detective.
Stork Mountain a Novel by Miroslav Penkov. A young Bulgarian living in USA returns to Bulgaria to find his estranged grandfather who had cut off all contact with his family. Fun fact: Penkov teaches at University of North Texas where my nephew goes to school.
None to Accompany Me by Nadine Gordimer. 1994 novel about a lawyer who struggles between her marriage and her political commitments.
Library Purchases/Printed books
the
Creative Commons/Freebies
the
Literary Articles and Essays
Becky Tuch on Can We Talk about Narrative Magazine (about exorbitant submission fees). I have lots of opinions about this (and I think Narrative is doing a lot of things right), but the amount of fees they charge is certainly excessive. Tuch runs the influential Lit Mag News. I love the idea of lit mags and for a while I subscribed to a dozen of them at once. But here are the problems with litmags:
Submission fees make it very hard to regularly submit.
Most of them are subsidized by universities or grants from arts organizations (and not sustainable).
Print copies of these mags are very expensive. They were always pricey, but now they’re ridiculously so.
Their primary purpose is to help adjuncts and writers fill up their CV so they can get better jobs.
Their value in raising an author’s visibility is very small (except to academic hiring committees perhaps).
They are staffed mainly by unpaid grad students and low paid staff.
They pay next to nothing.
Their tastes tend towards the academic/literary type of writings, so that excludes multiple kinds of writing
I used to follow the litmag world fairly closely (and I used to edit my own litmag and had plans to start a new online one). But there were always problems. First, it is really hard to make an online zine work — especially if it featured more creative things like poetry and fiction. Second, monetization means having to make some really terrible tradeoffs. If you lock everything behind a paywall, then you have to spend a lot more time and money on marketing. Or if you put everything online, you have to chase advertising — and for that to work, you have to constantly be chasing eyeballs). Developing a monetizable website is not easy; it requires a lot of planning and technological prowess. I probably am better suited to do this than other people, but ideally you’d want a technical staff to be able to run it semi-professionally.
The only zine I’ve seen do it well is Conjunctions. But there are lots of caveats here. Conjunctions has a long-running history and archive and stable of subscribers and authors. They have received grant money for quite some time. A lot of people already know about them. It probably helps that they are close to New York City. Also, Conjunctions doesn’t put out issues on a regular schedule. They just do it whenever. Frankly, although their issues are very adventurous and thematically interesting, they have the organization, history and funding to solicit lots of high profile authors. And a NY publisher will likely be happy to offer you free content for the publicity alone.
(Fun fact: Older issues of Conjunctions are often discounted on Amazon. If you set a price alert for the editor Bradford Morrow, you can grab lots of old issues for a dollar each or so).
Rant
(In response to a forum question about why books and authors don’t seem to be as important as they used to be).
First, fiction writing has a much different role and cultural impact in the world today than it did, say 50 or 100 years ago. Nowadays a lot of writers go ignored and unread. Contrast with the 19th century where there was no TV or recordings, novels had proportionately more influence. Storytelling still exists, and it thrives in different mediums and genres. Also, fiction and writing is very language-dependent, but TV and movies and music don’t depend as much on those things.
What many people think of as book culture or the publishing world today hinges on the books being highlighted by cultural institutions and mass media. But I wouldn’t call the books that win a lot of attention (the prize winners, the best sellers) that interesting or special. Some look at books as having important political or social messages. The ideas and the conflicts reflected by an age’s fiction are important, but it is rare that society at large recognizes their importance quickly enough to make a difference.
That said, today’s books are cheaper than ever; you can get access to a rich supply of literature for practically nothing. This is good because it’s becoming harder for libraries to keep up with the torrent of books coming out. Budgets are being cut, and conservatives are trying to defund books with interesting messages.
Like the stars above, books and authors are still out there — too numerous to count — and yet their voices are growing dimmer and harder to perceive unless you are actively looking. Meanwhile the world offers all kinds of distractions that keeps us isolated and estranged from our past and blind to today’s most pressing problems.
Capsule Book Reviews
the
Multimedia/Podcasts, Etc
Personville Press Deals
I run Personville Press, a small literary book press where all the ebooks cost less than $4. Prices normally appear highest on Amazon, Apple, Kobo and BN, somewhat lower on Google Play Books and lower on the two DRM-free stores which are Smashwords and Payhip. Personville Press is committed to selling DRM-free ebooks and audio files directly from the Personville Press payhip store or from Smashwords. The prices listed here are the non-discounted price on Amazon. Check the links to see if they are discounted at the moment (it happens often).
Existential Smut 2: Shameful Attractions by Hapax Legomenon. Contains stories, essays, memoirs and philosophical dialogues about art, imagination and the erotic life. 2nd volume in the series. You can buy it on Amazon US | Amazon UK | Payhip | Google | Kobo | Eden Books.
My Heart For Hostage by Robert S. Hillyer. This tender love story between a young American lieutenant and a French girl in Paris after the first World War was published by poet (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Robert Hillyer in 1942. Out of print for several decades, this novel will be re-released for the first time as a low-cost ebook. A New York Times critic called it a “superbly written book, written perhaps as only a poet with and expert in the discipline of verse could write it.” Includes a critical essay by Robert Nagle. Free download from the publisher’s site, but also available at a nominal price from ebook stores: Payhip | Smashwords | Google Play | BN | Apple | Kobo | Amazon | Amazon UK. You can also read the whole thing online!
Interview with the Sphinx. By Jack Matthews. ($1.50). Hyperintellectual Tom Stoppard-like play which reads like a novel about a strange interview with the ancient Sphinx character. Freud and Florence Nightingale show up too. I loved this play and even produced an audio version of it which you can buy for $2 on payhip (mp3/m4a) but the script reads well too. The audio book is available from most audiobook streaming services like |Audible $6 | Apple $3 | Google Play $3 |
A Worker’s Writebookby Jack Matthews. $2.25 Matthews distributed a photocopied version of this writing guide to his Ohio U. creative writing students over the decades.
Three Times Time Story Sampler by Jack Matthews (Always Free!) US Amazon customers can sometimes get it for free, but to make things easier, you can down these files directly without having to register: Epub,
Abbreviations: KU means Kindle Unlimited, and APUB means it was published under an Amazon imprint.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.
Indie Author Spotlight
I keep forgetting to pick authors for this section. This happens because I feel uneasy about recommending authors until I’ve actually read at least one of their books. That hardly seems necessary and besides, I can’t read even a tenth of the authors I’ve mentioned on this column. But I still find authors who seem incredibly interesting.
Susan Kaye Quinn is a sci fi author who writes “hopepunk” or environmentally aware fiction. (Website and substack). I’ve been following her on social media and just listened to my first Bright Green Futures Podcast. She has several series out, and I’ve noticed that Volume 1 of most of them are priced at free on Amazon. Wow, I see the interview with Sarena Ulibarra (website) (which covered lots of ground, especially with regard to small presses). Learned about the Russian anarchist Petr Kropotkin (W) whose Conquest of Bread is apparently (and a free download on PG). I already know about several solarpunk/cli fi anthologies (although I haven’t gotten around to reading any), but I will note the Metamorphosis anthology (Milkweed edition) and Grist’s Imagine 2200 story contest –which will be announcing their winners fairly soon. Aha, I see that Quinn has already covered anthologies and small presses who do climate fiction.
“When future generations look back upon the Great Derangement they will certainly blame the leaders and politicians of this time for their failure to address the climate crisis. But they may well hold artists and writers to be equally culpable—for the imagining of possibilities is not, after all, the job of politicians and bureaucrats.”
(I immediately picked up the Great Derangement on KU and finding it to be a thoughtful and profound meditation on climate change and fiction and the indirect ways climate change affects fiction (did you know that Milton had lots of ability of how weather events reflected God’s wrath and how he wrote it during a particularly awful cold spell)? Looks like Katherine Cox describes this in her Climate Change and Original Sin: The Moral Ecology of John Milton’s Poetry (which is a pricey academic book but individual chapters are allegedly available from jstor).
Under the Radar
Man in the Woods Novel by Scott Spencer(W) . Also Willing (novel) Several of his other titles have been discounted. I plan on reading a Ship Made of Paper very soon.
Selling Out a Novel by Dan Wakefield. Comic novel. Reader reviews are mixed, but this ebook seems to have more praise.
I occasionally look at the academic presses and buy books with unusual topics — especially when the price is so low. U of Chicago has several cheap titles:
Tuhami: Portrait of a Moroccan by Vincent Crapanzano. (W) Famous ethnographic study about a storyteller’s supernatural beliefs. VC is both an anthropologist and comp lit specialist.
Darkness Visible: Study of Vergil’s Aeneid. by W.R. Johnson.
Infinite Nature by R. Bruce Hull. Philosophical piece about how to effectively advocate on behalf of the environment.
Arendt and America by Richard H. King. Well received intellectual history/biography.
Devil At Large: Erica Jong on Henry Miller by Erica Jong. In-depth review of Miller’s life and works, plus some of Jong’s thoughts. Looks great. I read Henry Miller in college — mainly for the sexual lyricism — and regarded him as a second tier writer, but am willing to revisit that judgment.
Doctor Cobb’s Game Novel by R.V. Cassill.
Dirty Blonde and Half-Cuban: A Novel by Lisa Wixon.
Drastic: Stories by Maud Casey.
Madame (Salacious Players’ Club) by Sara Cate. Lesbian BDSM smut? Last in a series? Hey, it was free.
Shorts by Alberto Fuguet. Chilean-born U.S. author who formed a literary movement called McOndo (anti-magical realism)
Little Bird of Heaven Novel by J.C. Oates. Also, Sourland (short stories).
Arkansas Testament by Derek Walcott. Published this at approximately the same time as Homeros.
Imaginative Sex by John Norman. Wacky and raunchy sexual scenarios dreamt up by a noted fantasy/sci fi author.
Tales from the Town of Widows & Chronicles from the Land of Men by James Canon. Political allegory.
Selected Novels Vol 2: Lost Mother & A Dangerous Woman by Mary McGarry Morris.
Unknown Bridesmaid by Margaret Forster (W). Psychological novel about a child psychologist dealing with childhood memories about going to a wedding.
Science Fiction: 101: Exploring the Craft of Science Fiction by Robert Silverberg. A combination anthology + writing guide. I’m a big fan of anything Silverberg writes and curious about his fiction. Update: I just love this book!
2 Comic novels by Larry Doyle: I Love you Beth Cooper and Go, Mutants!
Alibi Breakfast Novel by Larry Duberstein.
Get Down: Stories by Asali Solomon
Infidelities: Stories of War and Lust by Josip Novakovich (W). Croatian now living in Canada. I read some of his stuff in the early 1990s and have been a fan. I see that Dzanc Books is publishing his ebooks now, so most of his titles hover in the 9 dollar range.
In the Night Cafe Novel by Joyce Johnson.
Miss Spellbinder’s Point of View: Biography of the Imagination by Edward Swift. Also the novel Daughter of the Doctor and the Saint.
Falling Water: Poems by John Koethe.
Bird Eating Bird Poems by Kristin Naca.
June-tree: New and Selected Poems, 1974-2000 By Peter Balakian (W). “built from intimate concern with the way that history and the past and present interconnect…” mixing meditations about historical events (the Armenian genocide) w/ lyrical approaches to middle class life.
Kapitoil Novel by Teddy Wayne.
Five Minutes in Heaven by Lisa Alther.
Zix Zexy Ztories by Curt Leviant.
Ship Sooner by Mary Sullivan
Last Waltz in Zurich and other short stories by Amir Tomer.
Whatever You want: We Write, You Decide by Rachel Timms and Laurence Hayes. A spicey adult-themed maze story. (Just started reading, it’s very funny!)
Between US: Erotic Short Stories by Ella B. Himmel .
Where Three Roads Meet: Novellas by John Barth. Former teacher of mine.
Casanova in Bohemia Novel by Andrei Codrescu
Let me Count the Ways Novel by Peter De Vries.
Greatest Hits (Stories) by Harlan Ellison.
Gospel of Anarchy Novel by Justin Taylor. (Website and bio page). Wow, on his books page, I notice that Taylor edited the clever Apocalypse Reader (which I’d thumbed through) and a tribute to Donald Barthelme.
JIMI HENDRIX LIVE IN LVIV ($1.99) by Andrey Kurkov. It can be difficult — no impossible –for me to resist any novel about one of my favorite cities — Lviv, Ukraine. In this one, a Ukrainian author answers the question about whether the Jimi Hendrix’s right hand was really buried in Lviv? Marcel Theroux calls it a “charming but slight addition to the author’s oeuvre.” (I still have Death and the Penguin on my bookshelf — which I still need to read. Lemme see, where is it? 2o Minutes later, I am sad to report that I cannot find it — it’s probably in storage. )
Cardinal Numbers Stories by Hob Broun.
Woman who Cut off her leg at the Maidstone Club and other stories by Julia Slavin.
It is not characteristic of American executives to read books, except books on ‘management’ and mysteries; “The majority of top executives almost never read drama, great fiction, the philosophers, the poets. Those who do venture into this area. . . are definitely sports of the executive type, looked upon by their colleagues with mingled awe and incredulity.” Executive circles do not overlap very much with those of artistic or literary interest. Among them are those who resent reading a report or a letter longer than one page, such avoidance of words being rather general. They seem somehow suspicious of long-winded speeches, except when they are the speakers, and they do not, of course, have the time. They are very much of the age of the briefing, of the digest, of the two-paragraph memo. Such reading as they do, they often delegate to others, who clip and summarize for them. They are talkers and listeners rather than readers or writers. They pick up much of what they know at the conference table and from friends in other fields.
Personville Press Deals
I run Personville Press, a small literary book press where all the ebooks cost less than $4. Prices normally appear highest on Amazon, Apple, Kobo and BN, somewhat lower on Google Play Books and lower on the two DRM-free stores which are Smashwords and Payhip. Personville Press is committed to selling DRM-free ebooks and audio files directly from the Personville Press payhip store or from Smashwords. The prices listed here are the non-discounted price on Amazon. Check the links to see if they are discounted at the moment (it happens often).
Existential Smut 2: Shameful Attractions by Hapax Legomenon. Contains stories, essays, memoirs and philosophical dialogues about art, imagination and the erotic life. 2nd volume in the series. You can buy it on Amazon US | Amazon UK | Payhip | Google | Kobo | Eden Books.
My Heart For Hostage by Robert S. Hillyer. This tender love story between a young American lieutenant and a French girl in Paris after the first World War was published by poet (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Robert Hillyer in 1942. Out of print for several decades, this novel will be re-released for the first time as a low-cost ebook. A New York Times critic called it a “superbly written book, written perhaps as only a poet with and expert in the discipline of verse could write it.” Includes a critical essay by Robert Nagle. Free download from the publisher’s site, but also available at a nominal price from ebook stores: Payhip | Smashwords | Google Play | BN | Apple | Kobo | Amazon | Amazon UK. You can also read the whole thing online!
Interview with the Sphinx. By Jack Matthews. ($1.50). Hyperintellectual Tom Stoppard-like play which reads like a novel about a strange interview with the ancient Sphinx character. Freud and Florence Nightingale show up too. I loved this play and even produced an audio version of it which you can buy for $2 on payhip (mp3/m4a) but the script reads well too. The audio book is available from most audiobook streaming services like |Audible $6 | Apple $3 | Google Play $3 |
A Worker’s Writebookby Jack Matthews. $2.25 Matthews distributed a photocopied version of this writing guide to his Ohio U. creative writing students over the decades.
Three Times Time Story Sampler by Jack Matthews (Always Free!) US Amazon customers can sometimes get it for free, but to make things easier, you can down these files directly without having to register: Epub,
Abbreviations: KU means Kindle Unlimited, and APUB means it was published under an Amazon imprint.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.
This will be a light period for purchases. But I still have been discovering all kinds of great things!
I was reading Summer Abroad, a richly bilingual novel by Ivan Brave (website, YouTube Channel). He just released a multilingual poetry book Lunas и Moons. Turns out Brave lives in Houston and has a Phd in Spanish Creative Writing from University of Houston. I’ll be saying more about his works later.
Making Smashwords Better
Although I wasn’t intending to spend a lot of money anyway, I was disappointed to realize that I wasn’t able to find much from Smashwords (SW) that was worth reading and affordable. That’s a shame because the end-of-the-year SW sale should provide a great opportunity for indie authors. SW distributes ebooks from Draft2Digital, and that’s only about 30-40% of the titles you’d find on Amazon. But Smashwords still ought to have a ton of interesting titles, and authors should be dying to have readers buy them on SW because SW pays higher royalties at the lower price band.
The Smashwords site has some cool things for consumers browsing the site. You can filter by price and word count. Also, you can browse by publisher, which is nice and convenient. The browsing page lets you view a short description of a title, which is also nice.
Here are the problems with the website:
There is no way to filter by language. A lot of SW ebooks are not English, and that is good (but bad for English speakers looking for English ebooks).
A few years ago SW did a site redesign allowing more browsing on the home page. A lot of book covers were featured on the home page and on genre landing pages. Unfortunately that only exposes the reader to maybe 20-50 titles, and dedicated book fans like me want to browse through hundreds. You can use some designated sorting methods, but none of them really help the reader.
Another problem is that prices on Smashwords aren’t particularly low. Perhaps publishers don’t plan sales for smaller platforms like SW. Perhaps publishers don’t believe consumers are that interested in DRM-free titles and are more interested in cloud-based ebooks. So why bother?
Smashwords has pledged not to run ads on ebooks, and that is admirable. On the other hand, it’s sad that it’s so hard to discover writers here. I really don’t like what Amazon has done with the ebook shopping experience (and frankly a 2 trillion dollar company is probably going to be optimized up the wazoo to extract money from people’s pockets).
I can’t remember if I already mentioned novelist Katherine Noel who wrote 2 distinguished novels and got her writing degrees from JHU and Stanford. (She teaches at JHU — which I attended). Also — unbelievably — is married to Erich Puchner and lives in Baltimore. Wait, they both teach writing there as well. I’ve been meaning to read Puchner’s writings, and I guess I ought to add Noel to this list as well.
Messi@ a Novel by Andrei Codrescu
Voice of America: Stories by E.C. Osondu
When the Plums are Ripe a Novel by Patrice Nganang. 2nd volume in a Cameroon historical trilogy. About WW2 at a time when this colonized country was caught between the Vichy regime and Free France.
In the Cherry Tree a Novel by Dan Pope
Never Drink the Kool-Aid: Essays by Toure.
Shmucks by Seymour Blicker.
Shorts by Alberto Fuguet. Chilean-born U.S. author who formed a literary movement called McOndo (anti-magical realism)
Clem Anderson: A Novel by R.V. Cassill. Well-regarded satirical novel about a professor.
Original 1982 a novel by Lori Carson
Sybille: Life, Love & Art in the Face of Absolute Power by Marion Meade.
Algorithm will See you Now: a Novel by JL Lycette.
Paul Di Filippo story collections: Lost Among the Stars: Eleven Tales and Infinite Fantastika 12 Stories.
Orientation and other stories by Daniel Orozco
Peaceable Kingdom: Stories by Francine Prose.
One Day’s Perfect Weather: More Twice Told Tales by Daniel Stern.
Circling the Drain: Stories by Amanda Davis (W). Davis died at 32 in 2003 in a plane crash, but she wrote a story collection and a novel. Michael Chabon wrote this tribute here. Another tribute here.
Referred Pain: Stories by Lynne Sharon Schwartz
Latin Love Lessons: Put a Little Ovid in Your Life by Charlotte Higgins (W).
Writers in America: Four Seasons of Success by Budd Schulberg. (W) Hollywood scriptwriter writes about authors who worked for Hollywood. Probably a minor work, but Schulberg was around during the McCarthy Red Scare, so probably has a unique perspective.
Personal Effects a Novel by Francesco Durante. 1993 novel about an Italian woman abandoned by her husband and goes to E. Europe to interview an author.
Dream of Wolves a Novel by Michael C. White.
Songs of the Fluteplayer: Seasons of Life in the Southwest by Sharman Apt Russell.
Edisto Revisited by Padgett Powell. Sequel to a quirky first novel. Also a Woman Named Drown Novel.
Savage Girl by Alex Shakar. (W, author website) “… an incredible (somewhat Pynchon-esqe) trip into a slightly alternate world – to a city just strange enough to separate it from any real city on earth, with high-rises on a volcano called the Black Tower, with a museum of Post-moden Art, and neighborhoods like Hipsterville. ” Shakar’s later novel Luminarium won a major literary prize. Here’s the author’s 2011 lookback about the publication of Savage Girl.
A Year and a day (Novel) by Leslie Pietrzyk. (W), Website, 28 min YT of her reading .) 15 year old growing up in a small town. “With impressive attention to detail, Pietrzyk successfully re-creates life in the seventies in a small Iowa town.” Wow, she has been doing short interviews with all kinds of authors. I just love browsing through this list and learning about all kinds of new authors. Her 2015 Angel on my chest won the Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Here’s a 2018 interview: Pietrzyk has written several times about losing her husband early in life. Here’s a powerful piece about when your spouse dies.
A call from Jersey: A novel by P.F. Kluge.
Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone by Stanislao G. Pugliese. Biography of the author of Bread and Wine who lived from 1900-1978,
Robert Silverberg’s Lists. I came across two wonderful essays about childhood reading by sci fi author Robert Silverberg (which are included in his must-read Reflections and Refractions essay collection). A summary can’t do justice to these essays. But he mentioned several titles from PG: The Children of Odin: The Book of Northern Myths by Padraic Colum, Silvio and Bruno by Lewis Caroll (“It was Lewis Carroll’s rigorous, orderly, and logical exploration of the utterly incomprehensible, I think, that helped me to understand what science fiction (as opposed to fantasy) is all about”). The Three Mulla-mulgars by Walter De la Mare (W). I should mention in passing another beloved but obscure De La Mare title for children, Memoir of a Midget. (W)
I run Personville Press, a small literary book press where all the ebooks cost less than $4. Prices normally appear highest on Amazon, Apple, Kobo and BN, somewhat lower on Google Play Books and lower on the two DRM-free stores which are Smashwords and Payhip. Personville Press is committed to selling DRM-free ebooks and audio files directly from the Personville Press payhip store or from Smashwords. The prices listed here are the non-discounted price on Amazon. Check the links to see if they are discounted at the moment (it happens often).
Existential Smut 2: Shameful Attractions by Hapax Legomenon. Contains stories, essays, memoirs and philosophical dialogues about art, imagination and the erotic life. 2nd volume in the series. You can buy it on Amazon US | Amazon UK | Payhip | Google | Kobo | Eden Books.
My Heart For Hostage by Robert S. Hillyer. This tender love story between a young American lieutenant and a French girl in Paris after the first World War was published by poet (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Robert Hillyer in 1942. Out of print for several decades, this novel will be re-released for the first time as a low-cost ebook. A New York Times critic called it a “superbly written book, written perhaps as only a poet with and expert in the discipline of verse could write it.” Includes a critical essay by Robert Nagle. Free download from the publisher’s site, but also available at a nominal price from ebook stores: Payhip | Smashwords | Google Play | BN | Apple | Kobo | Amazon | Amazon UK. You can also read the whole thing online!
Interview with the Sphinx. By Jack Matthews. ($1.50). Hyperintellectual Tom Stoppard-like play which reads like a novel about a strange interview with the ancient Sphinx character. Freud and Florence Nightingale show up too. I loved this play and even produced an audio version of it which you can buy for $2 on payhip (mp3/m4a) but the script reads well too. The audio book is available from most audiobook streaming services like |Audible $6 | Apple $3 | Google Play $3 |
A Worker’s Writebookby Jack Matthews . $2.25 Matthews distributed a photocopied version of this writing guide to his Ohio U. creative writing students over the decades.
Three Times Time Story Sampler by Jack Matthews (Always Free!) US Amazon customers can sometimes get it for free, but to make things easier, you can down these files directly without having to register: Epub,
Abbreviations: KU means Kindle Unlimited, and APUB means it was published under an Amazon imprint.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.
Wow, I just realized that this is my 48th column! I’ve can’t believe how many I’ve done — I’ll have to do something fancy when I do #50.
I’ve been buying a ton of fiction titles over the last three months ever since I discovered the secret of locating discounted ebooks from the Major 5 publishers. Frankly, though, I’m switching gears and now focused more on job stuff; finding additional books is the last thing I should be spending my time and money on!
Awesomeness Score =3 X (SUM OF PRIMARY QUALITIES) + (SUM OF BONUS QUALITIES) – (SUM OF UNDESIRABLE QUALITIES)
Indie Author Spotlight
Jake Seliger (1983_2024). If there ever was a Pulitzer Prize for blogging, then certainly Jake Seliger would have won it hands down for this year’s blogging. I wrote a literary tribute to Jake’s blog and his writing. Jake got a fast-acting form of cancer and died with his wife Bess at his side. Seliger published two novels (one of which I read and enjoyed), but he’s remarkable first because of his steady litblogging for 17 years and the fact that he blogged in depth about his disease and dying in general over the past year.
I have already blogged about some of Jake’s more notable blogposts. But frankly that only scratched the surface, and I’m preparing a post or two about some of his more interesting blog posts. Stay tuned!
Texas Author Indie Book Fair
A week ago I had the delight of walking through the Author Indie Book Fair which took place a few miles from where I live in Katy, Texas. Before going, I didn’t really know what to expect, but I enjoyed meeting and greeting lots of writers in genres I haven’t read much in. I was frankly surprised that I didn’t recognize a single author on the list (which is here). All writers live in obscurity to some extent, and it is nice to find book people hiding out in your own neighborhood.
I spent about 5 hours at the event, but I eventually had to leave because my jaws were too tired from talking and I was afraid of getting on the nerves of the captive authors. I visited only about 1/3 of the tables there.
Tarif Youssef Agha (author page) is a Syrian-American poet based in Houston who writes poetry, kids books and political books about his home country. (here’s a 3 part lecture he gaveabout Syria and a 25 minute author interview. I look forward to reading his Hearts, Tears & the Journey of Life: Loving, Lamenting and Meditation, Middle Eastern Style. He’s lived in USA for several decades, so his English is practically flawless, and his books are available in translation.
E.M. Rensing (author website) has written several sci fi books. She’s a former Air Force Academy grad with a background in cyber operations/security. She has 2 series: Heliosphere Trilogy (space opera) and the Abiota Series (AI, military, aliens). Here’s an author interview.
Carl Reinelt (author website) is an affable raconteur who grew up in Michigan (and now lives in McKinney, Texas). In addition to writing poetry . His ebooks aren’t on Amazon, but you can find them on Google, Apple, etc. His recent book Charlie’s Ladder was described in Book Life as “A gripping tale of survival, Charlie’s Ladder delves into the darkest recesses of the human mind, while touching readers with glimmers of hope and restoration.“
Ynes Freeman (author/publisher website) runs Memento Vivere Press and recently published Beautiful Serpent, which is the first book in a series about a woman with special empathic powers. We had a fun little chat about editing and publishing stuff. Also, looks like she has been publishing with several anthologies and writing websites — sometimes pseudonymously.
Jeff Folschinsky (author website) writes comedy/horror with some fun/outlandish book covers. Looks like he has some solid credentials in comedy writing too. About one book Hell, Incorporated, reviewer Ben Haskett calls it an accessible read that successfully oscillates between absurdist comedy, terror, and detective procedural. Fans of Seth McFarlane, or really, any reader looking for a slim, standalone adventure with a humorous punch will find a lot to love.
Under the Radar
When Eve Was Naked: Stories of a Life’s Journey by Josef Skvorecky. Autobiographical short stories by Czech writer who has witnessed a lot of history.
Retribution: Stories by John Fulton
High Roads by Edna O’Brien.
Universe.exe: New Insights, Evidence and Implications of Simulation Theory by Matt Charles.
Love Crisis: Hit and Run Lovers, Jugglers, Sexual Stingies, Unreliables, Kinkies and other typical men by Carol Botwin. Sex therapist book. Mostly anecdotes. Written in 1979
You will Never be Forgotten Stories by Mary South.
Stories We Keep by Shawna Holly
Big Sheep Novel by Robert Kroese. Sci fi writer whom I like.
Tenants by Bernard Malamud
Man Alive! by Mary Kay Zuravleff
When You Had Power (Nothing is Promised 1) by Susan Kaye Quinn.
Rules for Saying Goodbye Novel by Katherine Taylor.
Invisible Love by Eric-Emmanual Schmitt. Existential political postmodern novel about the life of physicist Werner Heisenberg.
XZARDAK: When The World Ends by Scott Cato.
Before this is Over by Amanda Hickie. (Author website, interview )Australian author who writes about how an epidemic affected a family in Canada. Published in 2015.
The Principle by Jerome Ferrari
Fat Bald Jeff Novel by Leslie Stella
Made-Up Man Novel by Joseph Scapellato.
Confessions of a Spent Youth novel by Vance Bourjaily. I actually have a print copy somewhere, but can’t resist buying a digital edition because of the low price.
Peace Processes: A Novella and Stories by Bruce Jay Friedman.
Apology a Novel by Jon Pineda
Day/Night: Two Novels by Paul Auster
The Enchantment of Lily Dahl: A Novel by Siri Hustvedt. 1996 Coming of age story about a young waitress discovering sensuality and adventure. This sounds a little less cerebral than H’s usual. (PS, she’s married to Auster who died recently).
Jacob’s Folly by Rebecca Miller. Imaginative novel about reincarnation.
Untold Stories by Alan Bennett. Autobiographical essays by this British funnyman.
Falling Touch by Algis Budrys. 1959 Sci novel . Earth is conquered and humans are banished to Alpha Centauri, but want to take their planet back.
Of Silence and Song by Dan Beachy-Quick. Poetry title about an older person searching for meaning in modern life.
Interrogation Poems by Michael Bazzett.
Two books by Derek Walcott: What the Twilight Says (Essays) and Dream on Monkey Mountain and other Plays.
Manifestation Wolverine: Collected Poetry of Ray Young Bear,
Good Music: What It Is and who gets to decide by John J. Sheinbaum
And It Don’t Stop: Best American Hip-hop journalism, Edited by Raquel Cepeda.
What He’s Poised to Do: Stories by Ben Greenman Widely published author who also writes music journalism. A few years ago I bought his Emotional Rescue: Essays on Love, Loss and Life–with a soundtrack.
Collected Memoirs Vol 1 (3 books) by Doris Grumbach.
Mr. Tall: A Novella and Stories by Tony Early. Mid-career story collection by a Vanderbilt professor who writes about North Carolina.
Eat, Drink and Be from Mississippi: Novel by Nanci Kincaid (W). Also wrote the excellent Verbena which I read a few years ago.
Politics of Petulance by Alan Wolfe.
Obituary Writer by Porter Shreve.
In the Province of Saints: A Novel by Thomas O’Malley.
Castle of Whispers by Carole Martinez. French translation. 12th century tale of a 15 year old girl who refuses to marry and instead enters the convent.
For some time I’ve wanted to highlight the reviews of the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) which are featured in a weekly blogpost and email blast. Each post/blast contains two sections: reviews and interviews.
I have some complaints about NBCC which may or may not be fair. First, a lot of the review coverage focuses on Big 5 books (which aside from being a limited subset of books being covered today, tend to be the most expensive when they are first released). Second, I once recommended that a very bookish colleague apply for membership, and I was appalled to discover that NBCC rejected his application. It’s true that my friend wrote more filmcrit than litcrit, but critics rarely fall into neat categories. Third, a number of these reviews are about nonfiction or academic books. Sure, there’s a place for that — and I enjoy reading a lot of these too, but NBCC’s coverage of indie authors is less than adequate (compared to coverage of prize winners and well-known authors like Sally Rooney, Neal Stephenson, Louise Erdrich and that sort). Finally, several of the reviews/interviews are behind paywalls.
These seem to be petty complaints. Frankly, it’s difficult keeping track of interesting book reviews in this fractured media environment. The national newspapers review such a small number, and some of the book review journals aren’t that accessible. If anything, it’s really helpful having Michael Schaub and the NBCC throw together reviews from so many different places into a single post. Also, performing as a book critic these days is becoming harder and less sustainable even as the need for quality book criticism is greater than ever. The paying market for writing book reviews for periodicals seem to be fading at the same time that sponsored reviews (Kirkus, City Book Review, Publishers’ Weekly) seem to be doing relatively ok. For this reason I am going to include more links to columns from them.
Literary journalism is also an important part of writing about books. I confess that I shiver with excitement every time I discover a new article is out by Laura Miller (W) or (sigh) Michael Dirda (W). But I feel almost the same way while perusing the headlines of the always interesting Lithub or The Millions.
There’s a ton of author-run literary newsletters (mostly on substack), and I try to keep up with everything, but I can’t. Maybe no one can?
The trade journals publish a lot of distinguished book reviews online, but these tend to be more succinct and more descriptive than analytical. The problem is that the length of the review depends more on what kind of sponsored review has been purchased than on the quality of the book. I find myself reading Midwest Book Review a lot more simply to get exposed to books by authors and presses I’d never heard of.
Library Purchases/Printed books
THE LANGUAGE OF CLIMATE POLITICS: FOSSIL-FUEL PROPAGANDA AND HOW TO FIGHT IT by Genevieve Guenther. Guenther has been a guest on multiple climate podcasts, and her analysis and rhetoric is always brilliant. I will post a real review later.
Creative Commons/Freebies
Owen Johnson (W) is early 20th century American author famous for his Lawrenceville Stories (which he wrote in the 1910s). Almost all the books are free on PG.
What do you always want to talk about in interviews but never get to?
I think that over the decades the thing that’s surprised me the most is how no one ever asks about a book’s dedication. It isn’t as though this is because interviewers restrict themselves to the text, since everything else seems fair game—blurbs, jacket design, author photo, acknowledgements, disclaimer, paper stock. Yet a dedication hovers in free space, requires a page of its own, and represents a kind of thread tethering the published book, which has otherwise escaped the private sphere of its author, to the author’s life. A dedication is Poe’s proverbial purloined letter, ignored in plain sight. Why this person, how’d you decide, was it easy or hard? (Often hard. Sometimes easy.) Are you trying to apologize, or right a wrong? (There are better avenues for that.) Do you worry about fairness? (Hopeless to even begin.) Why dad, not mom? (I do love mom, but she’s gone, dad’s here. Dead-ications seem like wasted gestures.) Have you developed rules, as you go along dedicating books across the years? (The dedication should be to someone you could actually imagine enjoying the book in question.) Why this stunt play—the self-dedication, the vast collective, the ironic deflection? (Never did one of those, myself, so that’s a question for someone else.) Why are you hiding a person behind an initial? (Ditto.) Did you tell the person in advance? (Sometimes.) Has anyone ever said ‘no thanks?’ (No. But maybe they were just being polite.) Ever go to someone twice? (Dad.) Is a book “to” or “for” someone, and why? (I prefer “for.” Nations dedicate themselves “to” causes or programs, scaring the shit out of me. “For” feels more like the act of one person handing a book to another.)
Rant
(Here’s a response I made to a person on reddit about whether it’s illegal for bloggers to review books for money. )
I’m a literary blogger, author and publisher. It’s not violating a TOS to post a review on your blog. In fact, many honest bloggers do that — as does Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, MidWest Book Review etc.
Publishers who use these services have the option to repost the review on the book descriptions on the bookseller’s page. That is also allowed — in fact it’s quite common. Some bloggers write these kinds of reviews on their blogs and make sure they label it as a sponsored review.
It’s debatable about whether a reviewer can repost it on Goodreads or Librarything. I would say no, but I really haven’t looked at their TOS.
As a publisher I would gladly pay for reviews on books which are hard to describe or esoteric reading. Frankly, I’d like to think that it’s just a matter of finding a reviewer to volunteer their time to review it, but some of the people who write high quality reviews have the least amount of time to review titles. So authors are stuck between the choice of paying $400 for a Kirkus/Pub Weekly review or begging a small number of bloggers to review something for free.
Reading a book and writing a review may strike some as “fun” and “recreational” ( i do a lot of them myself), but it also is very time-consuming. Book reviewers have been paid by newspapers in the past; now that most newspapers have eliminated book reviews, we need new ways to support a community of reviewers (beyond simply providing ARCs).
I for one wish that more review bloggers were available to do sponsored reviews at a more modest price than Kirkus. MidWest Book Review seems to fulfill that role quite admirably — (Diane Donovan at MBR is one of the best reviewers out there).
Capsule Book Reviews
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Multimedia/Podcasts, Etc
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Personville Press Deals
I run Personville Press, a small literary book press where all the ebooks cost less than $4. Prices normally appear highest on Amazon, Apple, Kobo and BN, somewhat lower on Google Play Books and lower on the two DRM-free stores which are Smashwords and Payhip. Personville Press is committed to selling DRM-free ebooks and audio files directly from the Personville Press payhip store or from Smashwords. The prices listed here are the non-discounted price on Amazon. Check the links to see if they are discounted at the moment (it happens often).
My Heart For Hostage by Robert S. Hillyer. This tender love story between a young American lieutenant and a French girl in Paris after the first World War was published by poet (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Robert Hillyer in 1942. Out of print for several decades, this novel will be re-released for the first time as a low-cost ebook. A New York Times critic called it a “superbly written book, written perhaps as only a poet with and expert in the discipline of verse could write it.” Includes a critical essay by Robert Nagle. Free download from the publisher’s site, but also available at a nominal price from ebook stores: Payhip | Smashwords | Google Play | BN | Apple | Kobo | Amazon | Amazon UK. You can also read the whole thing online!
Interview with the Sphinx. By Jack Matthews. ($1.50). Hyperintellectual Tom Stoppard-like play which reads like a novel about a strange interview with the ancient Sphinx character. Freud and Florence Nightingale show up too. I loved this play and even produced an audio version of it which you can buy for $2 on payhip (mp3/m4a) but the script reads well too. The audio book is available from most audiobook streaming services like |Audible $6 | Apple $3 | Google Play $3 |
A Worker’s Writebookby Jack Matthews . $2.25 Matthews distributed a photocopied version of this writing guide to his Ohio U. creative writing students over the decades.
Three Times Time Story Sampler by Jack Matthews (Always Free!) US Amazon customers can sometimes get it for free, but to make things easier, you can down these files directly without having to register: Epub, Mobi.
Abbreviations: KU means Kindle Unlimited, and APUB means it was published under an Amazon imprint.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.
The last two months I have been buying ebooks like crazy, especially after I realized that the Big 5 are discounting their older midlist titles on a rotating basis. I’ve bought a ton of stuff under 75 cents. Even at that low price, I need to curtail my spending habits — a lot. But still I keep an eye out on a lot of things. I’ve basically stopped buying from the Smashwords store — mainly because the prices aren’t that low anymore, but I’m going to mention a few things.
Indie Author Spotlight
For a change I’d like to feature a book critic Diane Donovan who writes for Midwest Book Review and cranks out lots of quaility book reviews every month. In the world of indie authors, this woman is a legend. She reads quickly and can summarize very efficiently a book’s most interesting aspects. I find blurbs by her about many books on Amazon. You might think that such a prolific reviewer would be undependable or prone to overpraise things, but in fact I trust Donovan’s literary sensibility and –if nothing else — her summary of what the book is about and what is special about it. (Whenever I see a Donovan blurb for a book, I almost always end up buying the ebook and enjoying it too).
People not in publishing probably don’t realize how much publishers (and authors) rely on book review services to write reviews. Daily newspapers and even magazines no longer publish book reviews except for books featured in national book clubs or by very famous authors. Publishers try valiantly to find reviewers who will post a review near the start of a book’s publication, but in fact, most of them end up paying for reviews in the trades (which includes Kirkus, Publishers’ Weekly, Library Journal). You may think that these sponsored reviews tend to be more positive or less neutral because they are paid for. That is probably true (although it’s not so positive as to be unhelpful). Generally these sponsored reviews can provide publishers early reviews for a book — sometimes the only reviews to happen for a while.
You would think that an author can just wait for random people to post reviews on Amazon or Goodreads or Librarything. But these things take forever, and in fact sometimes those organic reviews never come. The truth is that many readers (even sophisticated readers) don’t allocate much time for new books by unknowns. Many hardly read new authors at all — and quite a number refuse to review ebooks or self-published titles.
It is screamingly unfair, and nowadays even accomplished award-winning authors can have difficulty getting reviews for their latest books.
These sponsored reviews ain’t cheap. Kirkus costs $450 (or $550 for an extended review). One for Publisher’s weekly costs $400. There are some other second tier review services that also do excellent reviews in the $200-300 range. That said, these reviews aren’t always great. Sometimes they can be critical or wrong-headed (and in fact, the policies ensure that reviewers can write candidly; if it’s too negative, the author can simply request that it not run publicly.
As you know, authors are naturally wealthy people, so spending $1500 on review services is no big deal. Ok, I’m kidding! Authors can barely afford to pay rent! I’m happy to report that Midwest Book Review will do reviews for $50 and repost them online in various guises. Mostly their reviews are highly professional; in particular Diane Donovan from MBR writes fantastic book reviews and can review books from many genres. She does the legwork, and she always delivers!
Frankly, earning $50 or less for a book review is less of a job than a labor of love. Clearly Donovan shows not only her reading acumen but also her commitment to spread the word about books. I just love that. I am an author — and frankly I love reviewing too, but I rarely have time to sit down and read and review books. Thank god people like Diane Donovan exist.
She posts her book reviews online — there’s a lot by people you’d never heard of on subjects you’d never heard of.
From Smashwords, various items which were discounted to $1.50 or $2 or free.
Several things by John Grant. Warm Words & Otherwise: A Blizzard of Book Reviews and Take No Prisoners story collection.
Cunning Linguists: Language, Literature and Lechery (erotic anthology). by T.C. Mill and Alex Freeman. They’ve published two other erotica anthologies.
Clockwork Phoenix: Tales of Beauty and Strangeness. Edited by Mike Allen. One of 5 volumes. I find the premise intriguing, plus like the fact that John Grant has a story there. Volume 1 is slightly discounted on SW, but the other volumes are regularly discounted to 0.99 on Amazon.
Floating World: Tales of Unrequited Love in 90s New York by Frank Pike.
Best Short Stories of Garry Kilworth. Notable is that Kilworth was a British sci fi writer who specialized in short fiction.
Angels of Life and Death by Eric Brown. 5 cyberpunk SF stories about post-human futures.
Palestine Museum by Uri Marcus Hes. New collection that tries to understand the current political situation.
Nocturnes and Other Nocturnes by Claude Lalumiere.
Girls Have Dreams Too by Pearl Elliott. Journal of a Sex Worker.
Ay, Cuba! A Socio-Erotic Journey by Andrei Codrescu. 75 cents. Full disclosure: I love everything Codrescu does, and I’ve actually read the print version of this book. The ebook version which I bought for safekeeping, isn’t as visually attractive as the incredible print version when it came out. You still have the poet’s observations and wit and several black and white photographs by David Graham.
Men in the Making: Stories by Bruce Machart. Houston connection
War by Candlelight: Stories by Daniel Alarcon.
Visiting Hours at the Color Lines: Poems by Ed Pavlic
A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World Poems by Adam Klay.
Tula: Poems by Chris Santiago.
Siege 13: Stories by Tamas Dobozy. Fictionalization of stories about Russian occupation of Russia after WW2.
Melted Cold: Collection of Short stories by Tony Ortiz.
Good Enough Daughter Memoir by Alix Kates Shulman
Diving Belles and other stories by Lucy Wood.
Fun Stuff and other Essays by James Woods. Essays by the literary polemicist.
Mother of Pearl a Novel by Edward Swift.
Alien Baggage Allowance: Collection of Micro Stories from Outta Space by James Helps. This author is also a noted artist who designs book covers.
It’s Beginning to Hurt Stories by James Lasdun.
Sometimes there is as Void: Memoirs of an OUtsider by Zakes Mda.
Legendary Mizners by Alva Johnston
Divina Trace by Robert Antoni.
Triomf by Marlene van Niekerk.
Any Day Now: Novel by Terry Bisson
Creation a Novel by Katherine Govier.
Kinkaid’s Outlaws by Judy Haskins.
Holy Moly! & Other Stories by Poornima Manco.
Loony Bin by Stan Kapuchinski.
People in Glass Houses a Novel by Shirley Hazzard.
Perilous Journey by Deependra Bhandari.
2017: A Novel by Olga Slavikova. Prize-winning Russian Political thriller written more than a decade ago. About greed and corruption, etc.
Love Artist a Novel by Jane Allison. Fictionalized account of Ovid’s encounter with an otherworldly woman.
Devil in the Valley a Novel by Castle Freeman. Light-hearted retelling of the Faust legend by Vermont author.
Herma a Novel by MacDonald Harris.
Inappropriate Behavior Stories by Murray Farish.
Sycamore Poems by Kathy Fagan
Bad Characters (Stories) by Jean Stafford
It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways and search for the Next American Music by Amanda Petrusich. Long essays on music by Pitchfork contributor.
Hunts in Dreams by Tom Drury.
Lovers for a Day: New and Collected Stories by Ivan Klima. Also The Ultimate Intimacy.
Flight of Angels by Ellen Gilchrist.
Essays by Rudolfo Anaya.
Confession of a Child of the Century by Samuel Heather a Novel by Thomas Rogers. Picaresque coming of age novel praised by John Cheever and Phillip Roth.
Glory in a Line: A Life of Foujita, the Artist caught between East and West by Phyllis Birnbaum. Fascinating bio of Japanese artist who lived in Paris during the 1920s, then later returned to his country to paint war propaganda during WW2.
Starting Over Novel by Dan Wakefield.
Remnants of the First Earth by Ray Young Bear. Native American Fiction.
Intimates a Novel by Ralph Sassone. Coming of age story.
Gentleman’s Relish Stories by Patrick Gale.
Novelties and Souvenirs: Collected Short Fiction by John Crowley.
Butterfly Burning by Yvonne Vera.
Swimming Lessons: Selected Poems by Nancy Willard.
At-Risk: Stories by Amina Gautier. Award winner.
Wing and a Prayer: My Cousin Vinny Series Book 3 by Lawrence Kelter. Continuation of the My Cousin Vinny characters.
What is Missing Novel by Michael Frank.
All the Living Novel by C.E. Morgan
Daydreams of Angels: Stories by Heather O’Neill.
Chasing Rabbits by Rodolfo Del Toro.
Nowhere by Thomas Berger.
Shear by Tim Parks.
Collected Short Fiction of Bruce Jay Friedman. “Friedman explores themes such as loneliness, aging, fear, parenthood and ethnicity, spinning tales in an expertly modulated voice that lies somewhere equidistant from those of Wilde, Salinger and Woody Allen.”
Final Demand: A Novel by Deborah Moggach. Novel by a British script writer about a bored accountant who gets herself in trouble.
Kathleen Hale is a Crazy Stalker: Six Essays by Kathleen Hale. Humorous and very personal essays.
Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity by Richard Peterson.
Farewell, My Orange by Iwake Kei
Sergio Y by Alexandre Vidal Porto.
Josephine Wins Again: Novel by Andy Futuro
Sea Summit Poems by Yi Liu.
Project Keepsake: An Anthology by Amber Lanier Nagle (no relation). Various people explain why certain keepsakes or souvenirs hold special significance to them.
Metes and Bounds a Novel by Jay Quinn
High Cost of Living a Novel by Marge Piercy
Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel by James Wood.
Collected Prose by Paul Auster
Song from Faraway Novel by Deni Ellis Bechard
Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit. by Alison Hawthorne Deming
Day Unto Day: Poems by Martha Collins.
Views from the Loft: Portable Writing Workshop by Daniel Slager Anthology of writing exercises and activities.
This is Running for Your Life Essays by Michelle Orange.
Mannequin Makers Novel by Craig Cliff
White: A novel by Deni Ellis Bechard
Elizabeth and After: a Novel by Matt Cohen.
Writing in the Dark: Essays on Literature on Literature and Politics by David Grossman.
Book of Knowledge a Novel by Doris Grumbach
Seducer a Novel by Jan Kjaerstad.
Concerto to the Memory of an Angel by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt.
Trio 3 short stories by Stevie Turner.
Save Me, Joe Louis by Madison Smartt Bell
Strike your Heart by Amelie Nothomb
Tokyo doesn’t Love Us Anymore novel by Ray Loriga. Sci/fi philosopical novel
Orion you came and you took all my marbles a novel by Kira Henehan
My Nature is Hunger: new and selected poems 1989-2004 by Luis J. Rodriguez
Owl of Minerva poems by Eric Pankey.
Welding with Children Stories by Tim Gautreaux
Blink and It’s Gone
Dawn of Everything: New History of Humanity by David Graeber. 3.99 Famous work of unconventional anthropology profiled by the NYT. (Here’s his obituary). I put this book on ereaderiq price alert when that NYT profile appeared in October 2021. Three years later, it finally came through!
100 Million Years of Food: What our Ancestors ate and why it matters day by Stephen Le
Autobiography of a Corpse by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky. Probably a pirated edition by it’s 99 cents.
Library Purchases/Printed books
Regeneration by Pat Barker. Classic first novel in a trilogy about WW1. Can’t wait to read!
TRIVIA QUESTION: What is the bestselling American book of all time? We are talking about individual books, not a series of books. (FUN FACT: According to this source, none of the top 10 are by American authors).
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Multimedia/Podcasts, Etc
Personville Press Deals
I run Personville Press, a small literary book press where all the ebooks cost less than $4. Prices normally appear highest on Amazon, Apple, Kobo and BN, somewhat lower on Google Play Books and lower on the two DRM-free stores which are Smashwords and Payhip. Personville Press is committed to selling DRM-free ebooks and audio files directly from the Personville Press payhip store or from Smashwords. The prices listed here are the non-discounted price on Amazon. Check the links to see if they are discounted at the moment (it happens often).
My Heart For Hostage by Robert S. Hillyer. This tender love story between a young American lieutenant and a French girl in Paris after the first World War was published by poet (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Robert Hillyer in 1942. Out of print for several decades, this novel will be re-released for the first time as a low-cost ebook. A New York Times critic called it a “superbly written book, written perhaps as only a poet with and expert in the discipline of verse could write it.” Includes a critical essay by Robert Nagle. Free download from the publisher’s site, but also available at a nominal price from ebook stores: Payhip | Smashwords | Google Play | BN | Apple | Kobo | Amazon | Amazon UK. You can also read the whole thing online!
Interview with the Sphinx. By Jack Matthews. ($1.50). Hyperintellectual Tom Stoppard-like play which reads like a novel about a strange interview with the ancient Sphinx character. Freud and Florence Nightingale show up too. I loved this play and even produced an audio version of it which you can buy for $2 on payhip (mp3/m4a) but the script reads well too. The audio book is available from most audiobook streaming services like |Audible $6 | Apple $3 | Google Play $3 |
A Worker’s Writebookby Jack Matthews . $2.25 Matthews distributed a photocopied version of this writing guide to his Ohio U. creative writing students over the decades.
Three Times Time Story Sampler by Jack Matthews (Always Free!) US Amazon customers can sometimes get it for free, but to make things easier, you can down these files directly without having to register: Epub, Mobi.
Abbreviations: KU means Kindle Unlimited, and APUB means it was published under an Amazon imprint.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.
Also, I’ve noticed that Amazon is allowing big publishers to discount their titles to 50 or 75 cents.
Indie Author Spotlight
the
Under the Radar
Writing on the Wall and other essays by Mary McCarthy. Also caught Collected Novels Vol 2 for a dime.
Night Hawk: Stories by Charles Johnon
River Beyond the World: A Novel by Janet Peery. National Book Award nominee. Set in the Texas/Mexico border country in the years from 1944 to the present, The River Beyond the World is the story of two women on the edge of sexual, moral, political, and spiritual divides. Luisa Cantú is a girl from a Sierra Madre mountain village. After being impregnated in a fertility ritual of ancient origin, she leaves Mexico to work in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas as a housemaid for Mrs. Eddie Hatch, a woman with a strong will and a narrow worldview. Their complex relationship—by turns mystical and pragmatic, serious and comic—reveals the many ways human beings can wound one another, the nature of love and sacrifice, and the possibility of forgiveness.
Because they Wanted to: Stories by Mary Gaitskill
Frequency of Souls by Mary Kay Zuravleff 1996) (RJN: This sounds like such a strange novel). A staid refrigerator designer’s life is changed by a quirky, spiritual female colleague who is obsessed with finding electrical evidence of life after death in this extraordinary debut novel.
In the Shape of a Boar by Lawrence Norfolk.
Wild Surge of Guilty Passion (Novel) by Ron Hansen. Also At the Jim Bridger: Stories.
Dirt Music by Tim Winton
Mutations: Novel by Jorge Comensal, Charles Whittle. Comic novel about a militant atheist and successful lawyer whose attitude on life changes after getting cancer.
Limbo and other places I have lived by Lily Tuck.
Glimpse of Scarlet: and other stories by Roxanna Robinson.
Childhood by Nathalie Sarraute
These Dreams of You by Steve Erickson
Extra Innings (Memoir) by Doris Grumbach. Also the Magician’s Girl (novel).
“Record Collecting For Girls: Unleashing Your Inner Music Nerd, One Album at a Time” ($0.50) by Courtney E. Smith is a fun look at chick music, music culture and how nerdy chicks get into music (2011)
Catch as Catch Can: Collected Stories by Joseph Heller.
Triumph of Human Empire: Verne, Morris and Stevenson at the end of the World by Rosalind Williams.
Innocent and Others (Novel) by Dana Spiotta.
That Self-Forgetful Perfectly Useless Concentration by Alan Shapiro.
Reading, Writing and Leaving Home: Life on the Page by Lynn Freed. Also, I bought and am reading Curse of the Appropriate Man stories.
Gone to the Forest by Katie Kitamura
3 works by Robert Irwin: Limits of Vision, Prayer-Cushions of the Flesh, and Exquisite Corpse.
I am Mary Dunne: A Novel by Brian Moore
Error of Our Ways by David Carkeet
Little Hotel by Christina Stead.
Sukkwan Island: Novella from Legend of a Suicide by David Vann.
Enthusiast by Charlie Hass
The Stylist by Cai Emmons.
Taking Time … A Tale of Physics, Lust and Greed by Mike Murphy.
Robot World by Ray Verola
Emerald Germs of Ireland by Patrick McCabe. 2001 messy, comic and episodic novel about a social misfit and drunk. Writes one reviewer, “Each book by McCabe is a string of adjectives: brilliant, wonderful, funny, tragic, sad, moving, joyous, inventive, imaginative, amazing, heart-rending and silly. The Emerald Germs of Ireland is more of the same. It’s a bit more difficult a read than his previous works, frequently going off into the surrealistic and understandable incomprehensible delusions of the protagonist.”
Separate Kingdoms: Stories by Valerie Laken.
Disturbance in One Place (Novel) by Binnie Kirshenbaum
Thirst by Ken Kalfus.
Further Adventures by Jon Stephen Fink.
First Contact: Or it’s later than you think by Evan Mandery.
Explorers of the New Century by Magnus Mills.
Substance of Shadow: Darkening Trope in Poetic History by John Hollander. Unpublished lectures by the noted American poet.
Against the Current; Vietnamese Boat Person’s Journey by Cuong Tram. A Houston friend of mine wrote a memoir about his escape from Vietnam in the 1970s.
Viviane: A Novel by Julia Deck. French debut novel about a murder mystery and madness.
Abnormal Occurrences: Short Stories by Thomas Berger.
Take Us to a Better Place: Stories (Anthology). Stories about our ecological future.
Golk: A Novel by Richard Stern.
Urban Affair: Novel by Daniel Stern. Also After the War novel. (Too many Sterns!)
At the Shores Novel by Thomas Rogers. Very distinguished author
Glorious Ones (Novel) by Francine Prose.
Enthusiast by Charlie Hass.
2 by Patrick McCabe: Emerald Germs of Ireland (Novel).
First, Body: Stories by Melanie Rae Thon
At the Shores by Thomas Rogers.
Fay Weldon: Collected Novels in 3 volumes (containing 9 novels!) . Also Polaris (short stories).
Cuts by Malcolm Bradbury
Plumbelly: Novel: by Gary S. Maynard.
Great Kisser: Stories by David Evanier
Violated by Vance Bourjaily.
A Place with Promise: Novel by Edward Swift.
Autograph Hound by John Lahr. Fun fact. Lahr was the son of Bert Lahr of Wizard of Oz who also wrote several author bios including Prick Up Your Eyes
Various Academic Titles from U. of Chicago: Kafka’s Law: Trial and American Criminal Justice by Robert P. Burns, Walter Raleigh’s History of the World and the Historical Culture of the Late Renaissance by Nicholas Popper, Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan by C. Sarah Soh, Move On Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power by Aaron Cohen, Making of Romantic Love: Longing and Sexuality in Europe, S Asia & Japan 900-1200 CE by William M. Reddy. Palace of Books by Roger Grenier. Also two UC titles which are more creative: Folktales of Ireland edited by Sean O’Sullivan and Hack: stories from a Chicago Cab by Dmitry Samarov.
Folly by Susan Minot.
Two works by B. Traven, the German author in Mexco: Death Ship and Aslan Norval.
Daughters of the House: A Novel by Michele Roberts.
Mount Pleasant: A Novel by Patrice Nganang.
Doing Nothing: History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers and Bums in America by Tom Lutz.
City of your final destination – novel by Peter Cameron.
Devil I know – novel by Claire Kilroy.
Archilles a novel by Elizabeth Cook.
In Perfect Light a novel by Benjamin Alire Saenz
I am determined to read at least one or two works by Howard Fast (he’s very prolific, so there’s a lot to choose from). Silas Timberman, Hunger and the Trap speculative fiction. General Zapped an Angel — sf, Confession of Joe Cullen, Sally and Patrick Henry and the Frigate’s Keel: And other Stories of a Young Nation.
Bodies in Motion: Stories by Mary Anne Mohanraj — Sri Lanka family saga by former sci fi editor and erotica author. Although I haven’t bought it yet, I’m going to try to read her later work, The Stars Change, a sci fi novel with some naughty bits.
Willow Tree novel by Hubert Selby.
Reflections: The World of Paul Monette. (3 in 1 memoir which includes Becoming a Man which won a National Book Award). Gay writer who documented the 1980s AIDS fight and ultimately succumbed to AIDS himself in the 1990s.
When the War is Over a novel by Stephen Becker.
Return to Night: Mary Renault. This novel about a love affair between a female doctor and her patient won a $150,000 prize in 1948.
High Lonesome by Barry Hannah.
Tarabas: Guest on Earth by Joseph Roth, Early work.
Arrow Keeper’s Song by Kerry Newcomb.
In the Palomar Arms a novel by Hilma Wolitzer. (BTW, heard a delightful podcast interview with Wolitzer, an amazing woman). Also Tunnel of Love a novel .
Night Song novel by John Williams
Correcting the Landscape novel by Marjorie Kowalski Cole.
Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light by Ivan Klima. Czech author who wrote realistic dramas.
Dissertation: Tineblas Book Two by R.K. Koster
Late Great Creature: A novel by Brock Brower. Lost satirical-horror classic.
Hugh: Hero without a novel by David Lawrence.
Symphony of Life by Keith Kelley.
Down the Rabbit Hole: Best friends to lovers erotic fairy tale by Hannah Altagracia
Twisted Planet Book One: scifi anthology by Peter Schinkel.
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Book 1 of this interplanetary settlement trilogy has been widely praised. Can’t wait to read.
Pills and Starships novel by Lydia Millet. YA Scifi by author too good to be slumming in these genres.
Trinity Fields by Bradford Morrow.
New York 1. Tel Aviv 0: Stories: by Shelley Oria.
In Every Woman’s Life by Alix Kates Shulman.
Continent: Stories (Art of the Story) by Jim Crace.
Two by Scott Spencer (who wrote Endless Love): Preservation Hall and Waking the Dead.
Rough Strife: A novel by Lynne Sharon Schwartz. First novel (and 1980 National Book Award finalist ) about a complicated marriage.
Various Antidotes (Stories) by Joanna Scott.
Lesbian Images: Essays by Jane Rule. Literary portrait essays about noted lesbian authors from history. She is also known for her fiction about the lesbian experience.
Heart for the Gods of Mexico by Conrad Aiken. Reportedly about the infidelity in the marriage of his friend Malcolm Lowry. Aiken is best known for his poetry, and although his novels were never quite successful, they were beautifully written.
Far Country: Scenes from American Culture by Franco Moretti. Author of many books of cultural criticism. These are lectures from his days teaching at Stanford.
Two by Padgett Powell: Aliens of Affection (Stories) and
The Naked Year by Boris Pilynak
Next Step in the Dance Novel by Tim Gautreaux.
Age of the Image: Redefining Literacy in a World of Screens by Stephen Apkon. Film criticism.
Girl that he Marries Novel by Rhoda Lerman
Fish in the Water Memoir by Mario Vargas Llosa
Coming of the Night by John Rechy. Explicit gay fiction.
Hurt People Novel by Cote Smith
Beloved Son Novel by Jay Quinn. Also, Back where he started.
A Perfect Divorce Novel by Avery Corman (who wrote screenplays like Kramer vs. Kramer and Oh, God). Also Prized Possessions a novel.
Man who wrote dirty Books by Hal Dresner. A well-known comedy scriptwriter. Seems like an epistolary novel?
Welcome Home: Memoir with Selected Photographs and Letters by Lucia Berlin.
Blink and It’s Gone
The Moth Presents: All these Wonders (Oral stories).
“60 Songs That Explain the ’90s” ($2.99) is a wildly entertaining series of rants from rock critic Rob Harvilla (who does a podcast with the same name). (2023).
Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick
Dangerous Visions Edited by Harlan Ellison. 1.99 . Famous 1967 sci fi anthology now as an ebook.
Welcome Home: A Memoir with Selected Photographs and Letters by Lucia Berlin.
Library Purchases/Printed books
Lumberjanes Graphic Novel. This book about a girl’s summer camp is one I randomly started reading. Very funny and imaginative. (Giving to my 16 year old niece)
World According to Garp by John Iriving (giving to my 18 year old niece).
Metamorphosis by Ovid. Charles Martin translation in verse. I’ve been eying this for a very long time and finally succumbed.
Yale Review has published several essays about being a literary critic: Christina Smallwood writes about the material constraints of writing criticism today : After lamenting the abyssmal compensation for critics, she notes:
IF THE CRITICISM I write is always limited by the fact that it is I who am writing it, bounded as I am by material constraints, it is also true that within that limit a profound freedom of thought persists. Sometimes when I read, I do have the sensation of blocking out the immediate physical world, journeying to an entirely different place, losing the sense of my body. It’s not just leaving myself behind that is freeing; it’s discovering myself. Writing a review is the best, maybe the only, way I can discover what I think. I don’t come to reviewing with my ideas already formed; I have to build them, sentence by sentence. For me, writing a review is a way of getting closer to an object, taking it apart to understand how it works. I get closer to and farther away from myself in the process, even as I know that I will inevitably ask questions that betray myself and my interests. The question I am most aware of asking has to do with point of view: I want to understand an object’s way of looking at the world. What would I have to believe about the world in order for this book to be true? This is the kind of question I get most excited about asking.
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Really psyched to discover a kickass podcast about storytelling, Why is this Good? hosted by Kristine Gill and J.C. Bronsted of the Naples Writers’ Workshop. I am really enjoying the random episodes I listened to — each episode is about a single short story. One great thing about the podcast is that all episodes are about 25 minutes each… Not too long and not too focused on interpretation and background.
I run Personville Press, a small literary book press where all the ebooks cost less than $4. Prices normally appear highest on Amazon, Apple, Kobo and BN, somewhat lower on Google Play Books and lower on the two DRM-free stores which are Smashwords and Payhip. Personville Press is committed to selling DRM-free ebooks and audio files directly from the Personville Press payhip store or from Smashwords. The prices listed here are the non-discounted price on Amazon. Check the links to see if they are discounted at the moment (it happens often).
My Heart For Hostage by Robert S. Hillyer. This tender love story between a young American lieutenant and a French girl in Paris after the first World War was published by poet (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Robert Hillyer in 1942. Out of print for several decades, this novel will be re-released for the first time as a low-cost ebook. A New York Times critic called it a “superbly written book, written perhaps as only a poet with and expert in the discipline of verse could write it.” Includes a critical essay by Robert Nagle. Free download from the publisher’s site, but also available at a nominal price from ebook stores: Payhip | Smashwords | Google Play | BN | Apple | Kobo | Amazon | Amazon UK. You can also read the whole thing online!
Interview with the Sphinx. By Jack Matthews. ($1.50). Hyperintellectual Tom Stoppard-like play which reads like a novel about a strange interview with the ancient Sphinx character. Freud and Florence Nightingale show up too. I loved this play and even produced an audio version of it which you can buy for $2 on payhip (mp3/m4a) but the script reads well too. The audio book is available from most audiobook streaming services like |Audible $6 | Apple $3 | Google Play $3 |
A Worker’s Writebookby Jack Matthews . $2.25 Matthews distributed a photocopied version of this writing guide to his Ohio U. creative writing students over the decades.
Three Times Time Story Sampler by Jack Matthews (Always Free!) US Amazon customers can sometimes get it for free, but to make things easier, you can down these files directly without having to register: Epub, Mobi.
Abbreviations: KU means Kindle Unlimited, and APUB means it was published under an Amazon imprint.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.
The Draft2Digital sale came and went, and I downloaded lots of free stuff and cheap stuff.
Indie Author Spotlight
hello
Under the Radar
Downpour by Christopher Hawkins. 99 cents.
Solitude: A Return to the Self. By Anthony Storr.
The Loop by Joe Coomer. Coomer is a Dallas-based novelist who includes animals in his books.
Dog Flight and other short horror stories by D.T. Adams.
Cultural LIfe of Whales and Dolphins by Hal Whitehead and Luke Rendell.
Indentations and other stories by Joe Schall
Ethel Mae’s Last Ride by Jenny Marie Bee
Legends of the Ferengi (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) by Ira Steven Behr and Robert Hewitt Wolfe. Here’s the first paragraph from this $0.99 STAR TREK novel about Ferengi Culture. ABOUT FERENGI CULTURE): “Let’s get one thing clear. My esteemed publisher paid me to write a book. Which I did. Okay, okay. Actually I didn’t write a word of it. I jobbed it out to a couple of fathead hew-mons named Behr and Wolfe…. But no one got paid to write an introduction. THAT my publisher wants for free. And now Wolfe and Behr have scurried off, back to their dens or lairs or wherever they live, and I have to write this myself. Life is so unfair.” (BTW, Ira Behr wrote and produced Deep Space 9).
Far to Go by Alison Pick.
Personal Fable by Ander Louis.
Shelter Cycle by Peter Rock.
That Said: New and Selected Poems by Jane Shore.
Love of Impossible Sums by Panayotis Cacoyannis. Cyprus-born British writer who writes often satirical novels.
Life Before her eyes by Laura Kasische
I’d Walk with My Friends if I could Find them By Jesse Goolsby
Natural Flights of the Human Mind by Clare Morrrall
Our Kind of People by Uzodinma Iweala
Crossroads by Mary Morris
Waterline: Novel by Ross Raisin
Pushkin’s Children: Writings on Russia and Russians by Tatyana Tolstaya
Lucky Girl : Stories by Nell Freudenberger
Two volumes by Mavis Gallant: Pegnitz Junction and From the 15th District
Glass of Water by Jimmy Santiago Baca
Chinese Cooking for Diamond Thieves by Dave Lowry.
Charisma: A novel by Barbara Hall
Following the Feeling: literary odyssey for the troubled and middle aged by D. David Croot
Raw Silk by Janet Burroway
Presidio by Randy Kennedy
Poison by Jade West
Borderlands: Short Fictions by James Carlos Blake. Historical author praised by Clay Reynolds.
Meantime by Katharine Noel
Spencer’s Risk by Andy Greenhalgh.
New York Stories: Best of city section of NYT,
Above Dark Waters by Eric Kay.
Peeksill USA: Inside the infamous 1949 riots by Howard Fast. Minor journalistic account by an author I plan to get into.
Traplines: Stories by Eden Robinson
Starfish (Mermaids) by Patty Dann. Made into a movie.
Black Veil: Memoir with Digressions by Rick Moody.
Exiles in the Garden by Ward Just.
Bliss by Elizabeth Gundy.
Mothertime: A Novel by Gillian White
Standing Fast: Novel by Harvey Swados. Political/socialist/proletarian novel.
Strong is Your Hold: Poems by Galway Kinnell. Oops I already own his collected poems!
Other Side: A Novel by Mary Gordon.
Sound of Heaven: Novel by Joseph Olshan.
Becoming Nora by Margaret Farrell Kirby.
Melting Pot: Stories by Lynne Sharon Schwartz
Inner Tube by Hob Broun. (Very strange sounding novel).
Collected Novels: Chamber Music/The Ladies by Doris Grumbach.
Wakefulness: Poems by John Ashbery
Virgin: Poems by Sotelo Analicia. Houston poet whose poem “I’m Trying to Write a Poem About a Virgin and It’s Awful” was widely anthologized.
Vanishing and Other Stories by Deborah Willis.
A slot machine ate my midlife crisis by Irene Woodbury.
Lifelines: A Novel by Heidi Diehl.
Names on a Map: A Novel by Benjamin Alire Saenz
Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile by Ariel Dorfman
Edge of Discontent: A Novel by T. Atkins
Accustomed to the Dark by Thomas DeConna
House Under Snow: A Novel by Jill Bialosky
Love of Impossible Sums by Panayotis Cacoyannis
Commissariat of Enlightenment: A Novel by Ken Kalfus.
A Slot Machine Ate my Midlife Crisis by Irene Woodbury.
Earth: A Novel by David Brin. Sci fi novel about a man-made black hole that threatens to destroy Earth. The guy has a Phd in astrophysics, so at least he’ll get the physics right (not that I’d notice).
Blink and it’s Gone
Last Witchfinder by James Morrow (0.25 cents). Morrow is a prolific sci fi writer who writes fantasies with a sometimes religious or spiritual dimension. Also: Cat’s Pajamas and Other Stories
Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks at our Political Crisis by Martha C. Nussbaum
Complete Stories (The Schocken Kafka Library) by Franz Kafka, with introduction by John Updike. 1.99 for this Random House edition is a steal. I first bought this book in 1983. I’ve also read about half the stories in their original German, but my German is really rusty by now.
Brooklyn by Colm Toibin. Adapted into a great movie, this book tells about a young Irish immigrant who falls in love.
You made me love you: Selected Stories 1981-2018 by John Edgar Wideman
Best of Antrobus: Tales of Diplomatic Misadventure
Great Circle — a Novel by Conrad Aiken
50: A Novel by Avery Corman
Secret Anniversaries by Scott Spencer. Have always wanted to get into his very introspective fiction.
Riding the Yellow Trolley Car: Selected Nonfiction by William Kennedy
Philosopher’s Apprentice by James Morrow.
Library Purchases/Printed Books
Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong.
Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter. (Finally I found it for cheap!)
Great Perhaps by Joe Meno.
Glorious Cause — American Revolution (1763-1789) by Robert MIddlekauf.
Only What’s Necessary: Charles Schultz and the art of Peanuts. By Chip Kidd (the famous book designer). He collected lots of classic Peanuts art in a coffee table/hard back book. It’s great to thumb through.
Creative Commons/Freebies
NYU Press offers a number of free academic titles on Amazon.
I’ve been flipping through two wonderful poetry anthologies (books, not ebooks). I mentioned in my last column that I was enjoying David Lehman‘s Oxford Book of American Poetry a lot. Despite some omissions, the poetry there is eclectic, grounded in tradition and always interesting.
A decade ago I bought Andre Codrescu‘s American Poetry Since 1970 (2nd edition) and was delighted by the stuff I found there. Codrescu taps into the countercultural spirit and lots of free verse/beat poetry. Highly recommended.
Multimedia/Podcasts, etc
hello
Personville Ebook Deals
I run Personville Press, a small literary book press where all the ebooks cost less than $4. Prices normally appear highest on Amazon, Apple, Kobo and BN, somewhat lower on Google Play Books and lower on the two DRM-free stores which are Smashwords and Payhip. Personville Press is committed to selling DRM-free ebooks and audio files directly from the Personville Press payhip store or from Smashwords. The prices listed here are the non-discounted price on Amazon. Check the links to see if they are discounted at the moment (it happens often).
My Heart For Hostage by Robert S. Hillyer. This tender love story between a young American lieutenant and a French girl in Paris after the first World War was published by poet (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Robert Hillyer in 1942. Out of print for several decades, this novel will be re-released for the first time as a low-cost ebook. A New York Times critic called it a “superbly written book, written perhaps as only a poet with and expert in the discipline of verse could write it.” Includes a critical essay by Robert Nagle. Free download from the publisher’s site, but also available at a nominal price from ebook stores: Payhip | Smashwords | Google Play | BN | Apple | Kobo | Amazon | Amazon UK. You can also read the whole thing online!
Interview with the Sphinx. By Jack Matthews. ($1.50). Hyperintellectual Tom Stoppard-like play which reads like a novel about a strange interview with the ancient Sphinx character. Freud and Florence Nightingale show up too. I loved this play and even produced an audio version of it which you can buy for $2 on payhip (mp3/m4a) but the script reads well too. The audio book is available from most audiobook streaming services like |Audible $6 | Apple $3 | Google Play $3 |
A Worker’s Writebookby Jack Matthews . $2.25 Matthews distributed a photocopied version of this writing guide to his Ohio U. creative writing students over the decades.
Three Times Time Story Sampler by Jack Matthews (Always Free!) US Amazon customers can sometimes get it for free, but to make things easier, you can down these files directly without having to register: Epub, Mobi.
Abbreviations: KU means Kindle Unlimited, and APUB means it was published under an Amazon imprint.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.
My Personville Press has published two ebooks in the past 2 weeks: Boxes of Time by Jack Matthews andPre-Pulitzer Poetry by Robert Hillyer. Yes, I’ve been working like a dog on those two ebooks for the last 3 months. For both books, I had to do a lot of editing and material selection. For both ebooks, the author’s had been doing lots of amazing things before their contributions were really recognized. I wrote a nice introduction to the Matthews book noting that Matthew’s trademark wit and satirical edge were missing in stories he wrote during this period of life. His stories were more earnest and melodramatic.
Perspicacious readers might notice that I rarely italicize book titles. This is just laziness, not a deliberate stylistic choice. I usually end italicizing everything in one fell swoop, but only after the month is over.
Also James the wonderful artist from GoOnWrite (who produced the cover for the Hillyer title and a future ebook of mine) designed a logo for Personville Press. Here it is:
Indie Author Spotlight
the hello
Under the Radar
Trotsky’s Sink: 98 Short Essays about Literature by Peter Nash and George Ovitt. 4.99 These are random and bloggy essay-reviews — not too formal, but the selection of books is amazing. Most of these originally appeared in a short-lived blog called Talented Reader.
Delighted to rediscover Rudolph Kerkhoven, a prolific Canadian who wrote several maze stories, one of which I had already read and finished (and enjoyed). I enjoyed/recommend Adventures of Whatley Tupper but never got around to reading the rest of the series and didn’t even know that he had written several others to boot. Apparently he’s gotten a sizable response to Most Boring Book Ever Written . He has written several conventional sci fi stories and today published The Sacrificed . which is on sale for 99 cents. Here’s his website, Amusingly he’s a high school math teacher and you can watch his trig and algebra tutorials on Youtube.
Light of Joy by Julie Morton.
Meet Me in Montana by Liz Gordon. Second chance romance.
21st century Prose (a series of prose fiction released by U of Michigan Press.
Blink and It’s Gone
Trust Exercise by Susan Choi. National Book winner about high school students at a performing arts school. Interestingly it takes place in Houston (modeled after HSPVA?) where Choi grew up.
Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking by Mehdi Hasan.
MIND Diet by Maggie Moon. Diet book which spends more time talking about dementia than about the actual diet.
DASH Diet for Dummies by Sarah Samaan, Rosanne Rust and Cindy Kleckner. I normally don’t go for the Dummies series, but this book is pretty great and written by doctors. Recommended.
On Animals by Susan Orlean. New Yorkeresque long form essays about everyday animals. Wow, I thought I had already bought another essay collection by Orlean, but I was wrong.
A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C. Clarke.
Glad News of the Natural World by T.R. Pearson. This is a sequel to his widely beloved A Short History of a Small Place. Pearson is a North Carolina based author who also dabbles in mysteries and crime fiction under the name Rick Gavin. Here’s his Wiki page and a TV profile of the author
Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty. (National Book Award winner).
Thinking: The New Science of Decision-Making, Problem-Solving, and Prediction in Life and Markets (Best of Edge Series). Edited by John Brockman. I enjoy the Edge discussion series. Here are some highlights from social scientists who gave a talk at one such conference.
His Name Is George Floyd (Pulitzer Prize Winner): One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa. $1.99 This terrific book looks not so much at the tragedy of his death — but the totality of his life — how he grew up, his family, etc. Two prize-winning journalists try to tell Floyd’s personal story, and what it reveals about our society.
Never Pay the First Bill and other ways to fight the health care system and win by Marshall Allen. Longtime ProPublica reporter dispenses practical advice about how to deal with the mess that is the US health care system.
Silent Earth: Averting the Insect Apocalypse by David Goulson. I care immensely about the biodiversity problem, and this reports on how it’s affecting the insect world.
How to Stand Up to a Dictator by Maria A. Ressa (Nobel Prize winner from the Philippines). Fun fact: Ressa was born in the Philippines, but grew up in NJ and even attended Princeton!
Library Purchases/Printed books
Oxford Book of American Poetry, Edited by David Lehman. I browsed through this enormous book at the library and realized that I really liked it despite its heft. Not cheap, but used print copies are available.
Ten Years in the Tub by Nick Hornby. I don’t think I had ever read one of Hornby’s novels, but this longish reading diary (available only in printed edition) was fun to read. I call it “free association book talk” rather than genuine literary criticism.
Fortitude: D-Day Deception Campaign by Roger Hesketh. Apparently this book is the definitive source for all things about the campaign to deceive the Nazis about when D-Day was coming.
Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics. Edited by Bill Blackbeard. 1977 collection of really really old comics in an oversized book. Only contains a few examples of each strip, mostly dailies, but the earliest seem to be for magazines.
Paul March-Russell wrote a listicle about the best books by Arthur C. Clarke with lots of titles I haven’t heard of. (I ended up buying A Fall of Moondust which was on sale).
Rant
Here’s what I wrote in response to a request for how to read good criticism.
One of the problems is that mainstream outlets that do publish decent criticism (Slate, New Yorker, New Republic, NYROB, Salon, the Nation, etc) end up publishing it about mainstream books by the Big 5 or academic books (something NYROB seems to do a lot of). NPR books is better than most of them though in covering some forgotten works, especially poetry.
I love Midwest Book Review if only because what it covers is so wide. Also, there’s a ton of people on blogs and substack. I think probably the most interesting crit is coming from the essays on the annotated book lists on fivebooks.com . Social media can have a high level of discussion as long as you find the right conversation to drop into.
Aha, here’s a great link. Critical Notes contains links to book reviews by members of the National Book Critics Circle. (Silly me, I totally forgot to keep up with them). There’s even a mailing list which I presume will email the latest blogpost.
Finally, I think lithub.com goes for the latest flavor of the month from the Big 5 (I think it’s run by the Atlantic) , but the comment section is great and polite. Speaking of which, NYT book coverage is what it is, but their comment section is phenomenal — probably more interesting than the essays themselves.
I run Personville Press, a small literary book press where all the ebooks cost less than $4. Prices normally appear highest on Amazon, Apple, Kobo and BN, somewhat lower on Google Play Books and lower on the two DRM-free stores which are Smashwords and Payhip. Personville Press is committed to selling DRM-free ebooks and audio files directly from the Personville Press payhip store or from Smashwords. The prices listed here are the non-discounted price on Amazon. Check the links to see if they are discounted at the moment (it happens often).
My Heart For Hostage by Robert S. Hillyer. This tender love story between a young American lieutenant and a French girl in Paris after the first World War was published by poet (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Robert Hillyer in 1942. Out of print for several decades, this novel will be re-released for the first time as a low-cost ebook. A New York Times critic called it a “superbly written book, written perhaps as only a poet with and expert in the discipline of verse could write it.” Includes a critical essay by Robert Nagle. Free download from the publisher’s site, but also available at a nominal price from ebook stores: Payhip | Smashwords | Google Play | BN | Apple | Kobo | Amazon | Amazon UK. You can also read the whole thing online!
Interview with the Sphinx. By Jack Matthews. ($1.50). Hyperintellectual Tom Stoppard-like play which reads like a novel about a strange interview with the ancient Sphinx character. Freud and Florence Nightingale show up too. I loved this play and even produced an audio version of it which you can buy for $2 on payhip (mp3/m4a) but the script reads well too. The audio book is available from most audiobook streaming services like |Audible $6 | Apple $3 | Google Play $3 |
A Worker’s Writebookby Jack Matthews . $2.25 Matthews distributed a photocopied version of this writing guide to his Ohio U. creative writing students over the decades.
Three Times Time Story Sampler by Jack Matthews (Always Free!) US Amazon customers can sometimes get it for free, but to make things easier, you can down these files directly without having to register: Epub, Mobi.
Abbreviations: KU means Kindle Unlimited, and APUB means it was published under an Amazon imprint.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.
I’ve finished formatting the 4th and final Jack Matthews Story Collection, Boxes of Time, so I can relax a little. Up to now I haven’t had time to work on reading or other books, but I think I have more bandwidth for that.
It’s funny. I’ve been on vacation from book buying, but in 5 minutes I bought 3 Random House ebooks on sale. That’s how it happens. The Big 5 discount their titles for only a day (or less), while indie publishers keep it on a sale price for several days.
They announced the Indie Author Project awards. Lots of nice indie titles, all very interesting. Even though the type of books they choose are conventional, they usually are good quality. (I entered once, but didn’t win).
US READING HABITS: In 2022, 40% of US adult males and 56.6% of females said that they read a book for pleasure during the previous year. (SOURCE: NEA ARTS PARTICIPATION SURVEY, 2022). In totally unrelated news, in the 2020 election, 45% of US male voters and 57% of US female voters voted for Biden. I just happened to notice the political connection; I was far more concerned about the 4.2% decline in the percent of people who said they had read a book for pleasure from 2017 to 2022.
I’ve been poring over Jake Seliger’s blog archives and finding all sorts of great essays. I’ll be posting (i.e., stealing) them from his blog).
How could the ever-expanding popularity of Harry Potter take place during such an unprecedented decline in the number of Americans reading fiction?
Perhaps submerging the world in an orgy of marketing hysteria doesn’t encourage the kind of contemplation, independence and solitude that real engagement with books demands — and rewards. Consider that, with the release of each new volume, Rowling’s readers have been driven not only into greater fits of enthusiasm but into more precise synchronization with one another. Through a marvel of modern publishing, advertising and distribution, millions of people will receive or buy “The Deathly Hallows” on a single day. There’s something thrilling about that sort of unity, except that it has almost nothing to do with the unique pleasures of reading a novel: that increasingly rare opportunity to step out of sync with the world, to experience something intimate and private, the sense that you and an author are conspiring for a few hours to experience a place by yourselves — without a movie version or a set of action figures. Through no fault of Rowling’s, Potter mania nonetheless trains children and adults to expect the roar of the coliseum, a mass-media experience that no other novel can possibly provide.
The schools often don’t help, either. As I look back on my dozen years of teaching English, I wish I’d spent less time dragging my students through the classics and more time showing them how to strike out on their own and track down new books they might enjoy. Without some sense of where to look and how to look, is it any wonder that most people who want to read fiction glom onto a few bestsellers that everybody’s talking about?
Invisible Hand in Popular Culture: Liberty vs. Authority in American Film and TV by Paul A. Cantor. Cantor is a critic who has published pieces in right-leaning publications about high culture and pop culture. I read an essay he wrote about Casablanca which I thought was great, so I was eager to get my hands on one of his ebooks (which was discounted to $3)
View from Half Dome by Jill Caugherty (FREE!) Historical novel about a San Francisco woman in 1934 who runs off to Yosemite while working with the CCC. This won Indie Author Project award for North Carolina. (Youtube interview about book) Other interviews.
Fragile By ALEXA WEIK VON MOSSNER (Cli-fi novel). a film and media professor (Website, ). Promising — though I’m a little behind on my cli-fi fiction. ” At the heart of this thought-provoking novel are two damaged people trying to build a relationship while working at cross purposes to help society amid dealing with a broken system’s inequities. ” (KIRKUS) Related: Zoom panel about ecological warnings in film and documentaries. She’s published 2 academic books about environmental studies from the literary side. Yes, I dig that kind of shit.
Blink and It’s Gone
Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. John E. Woods translation. Believe it or not I have been reading and loving the printed version of this book, but it’s a pain to read printed books with my glasses. When the ebook became available for 1.99 I was right on it.
1619 Project by Nicole Hannah-Jones. Famous African-American rewriting of US history. I read some of Ms. Hannah Jones’ essays originally in the NYT, so it’s nice to have them in an ebook. Surprisingly, several people contributed to the book. Can’t wait to read.
Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms around us by Ed Yong. This science book got a lot of buzz when it came out, and I’ve always been fascinated by animal consciousness
Angela Carter’s Book Of Fairy Tales. Angela Carter was an uncategorizable English author who wrote feminist/fantasy/horror stuff. She died too early. She wrote a nice intro to this hand-selected collection. BTW, Michael Dirda recommends Carter’s Nights at the Circus which apparently is hard to find.
Library Purchases/Printed books
Taming the Beast : A Novel by Emily Maguire.
Why I Like this Story, Edited by Jackson Bryer. Anthology where authors rave about a single short story.
The Hero of a Hundred Fights : Collected Stories from the Dime Novel King, from Buffalo Bill to Wild Bill Hickock. Edited by Clay Reynolds. Stories by 19th century Western writer Edward Zane Carroll Judson who wrote under the pseudonym Ned Buntline. I interviewed Texas author/scholar Clay Reynolds in his last year of life which I still have not published. (Here’s a Clay Reynolds reader’s guide I prepared about his writings).
Fiction by Maureen Howard: Natural History, Before my Time and Big as Life: Three Tales for Spring.
Satchel : The Life and Times of an American Legend by Larry Tye. I’ve heard lots of good things about this baseball biography about a larger-than-life athlete who played only in the Negro baseball leagues.
In the Cut by Susanna Moore. (Erotic murder mystery recommended by Katherine Angel in her Tomorrow Sex will be good again nonfiction title).
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. Lesbian coming of age graphic novel which I read before but am gifting to a family member. Other gifts: Childhood’s End by Arthur Clarke, Liars’ Club by Mary Karr and The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury by Bill Watterson.
Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy. NYROB edition of a widely praised comic novel about a woman who “heads overseas to conquer Paris in the 1950s.”
Seventeen by Booth Tarkington. I have raved about the comic 1914 bestselling novel Penrod which was about the misadventures of an 11 year old boy. Apparently a year later he wrote this bestseller lampooning teenage romance . Neither is considered his best works (try Alice Adams or Magnificent Ambersons), but they are intriguing enough to read. Tarkington is forgotten, and I suspect his works deserve a second look.
Literary Articles and Essays
Happy to learn about Oksana Lutsyshyna, a Ukrainian writer, translator and poet who lives and teaches in Austin. She has published a few things at Deep Vellum Publishing which can be checked out on Overdrive. (I currently checked out Ivan and Phoebe). Here’s a great 2021 interview where she talks about being a scholar and poet. Highlights: ON READING DURING SOVIET TIMES: “The truth is, Soviet intelligentsia read a lot, and I always tell my students that this is because there was nothing else to do – no cars to drive, no trips abroad to take, not even any good TV to watch.” Here’s her take on George Floyd in Eastern Europe:
When the events of the George Floyd murder were unfolding, we witnessed a lot of rather racist discourses coming from the countries of the former Soviet Union. I tried to make sense of it all and wrote an article about it. The problem of racial oppression in the US was spoken about a-historically in the former Soviet Union. It was generally perceived as a done deal, everybody liberated and free. The only books widely available on the subject would be things like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which African Americans do not consider all that great in terms of resistance strategies, actually quite the opposite. Only two of Toni Morrison’s novels were translated into Ukrainian, and that happened already after independence. I compiled a list of readings for one Ukrainian online journal on the topic of racial oppression and violence in the United States and found that regrettably little was available in Ukrainian. No Baldwin, no Harlem Renaissance, no bell hooks – not even Frantz Fanon, who is a classic. The narrative that dominated the post-Soviet terrain as a response to the murder of George Floyd was along the lines of “What do these people want, haven’t they been freed?” Nobody seems to have understood what Jim Crow laws were about, what or the Civil Rights Movement fought for. Looking at the reasons, I think it is hard for a post-totalitarian country to fully understand somebody else’s trauma if it has not yet fully voiced and analyzed its own. Empathy is a resource that needs to be built up, and survivors often don’t have this luxury. I am, of course, not talking about specific people who may feel empathy just fine, but collectively. In feminist theory we talk about standpoint epistemology – the look from the bottom up versus the look from top-down, that is, thwarting the hierarchy. In this sense, it may seem that for the oppressed it is easy to empathize and understand simply because they share the condition with all the oppressed groups in the world. But the matter is infinitely more complex.
A nice list of 2023 climate change books. Includes quite a few graphic novels (a very good pairing of subject and genre) and Michael Mann‘s Our Fragile Moment, which I’m sure is elucidating. There’s a lot of interesting novels on the subject,
Talented Reader is a nice litblog that later formed the material for an essay collection Trotsky’s Sink by two distinguished authors George Ovitt and Peter Adam Nash. As it happens, I had picked up fiction and poetry titles during the Great Fomite Ebook sale of 2018. I really need to read more of these people.
Suddenly I find that I really needed the Shere Hite Reader. It’s a weighty and indispensable tome consisting of a lifetime of articles and essays. It was published in the 2000s. I was on the fence about buying a used copy for $6, and when I checked a day later, I see that it was out of stock. (It has remained out of stock since that time). Apparently someone did a really cool documentary about Shere Hite, leading to renewed interest in her books. But the print book sells for $25 with no cheap books available. The ebook sells for $18, which is perfectly ridiculous. I checked it out of the library and expect to be renewing it over and over.
I had to do an Interlibrary Loan for Anne Carson’s Eros the Bittersweet (Princeton U. Press). Carson is a classicist and highly regarded poet and essayist, and this is her first series of essays about love according to how ancient Greeks saw it. Book is $15 with no used books available. The ebook sells for $10 which I guess is not outrageous, but Carson has lived a long and distinguished life as an academic and poet; it hardly seems fair that starving writers and poets should have to pay this much for a slim volume published in the 1980s. I probably will end up buying the book, (I need it! and can’t do an ILL again). But I’d much rather spend the money on 3 or 4 volumes by young poets than hand it over to prestige university presses.
Capsule Book Reviews
the
Multimedia/Podcasts, Etc
Personville Press Deals
I run Personville Press, a small literary book press where all the ebooks cost less than $4. Prices normally appear highest on Amazon, Apple, Kobo and BN, somewhat lower on Google Play Books and lower on the two DRM-free stores which are Smashwords and Payhip. Personville Press is committed to selling DRM-free ebooks and audio files directly from the Personville Press payhip store or from Smashwords. The prices listed here are the non-discounted price on Amazon. Check the links to see if they are discounted at the moment (it happens often).
My Heart For Hostage by Robert S. Hillyer. This tender love story between a young American lieutenant and a French girl in Paris after the first World War was published by poet (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Robert Hillyer in 1942. Out of print for several decades, this novel will be re-released for the first time as a low-cost ebook. A New York Times critic called it a “superbly written book, written perhaps as only a poet with and expert in the discipline of verse could write it.” Includes a critical essay by Robert Nagle. Free download from the publisher’s site, but also available at a nominal price from ebook stores: Payhip | Smashwords | Google Play | BN | Apple | Kobo | Amazon | Amazon UK. You can also read the whole thing online!
Interview with the Sphinx. By Jack Matthews. ($1.50). Hyperintellectual Tom Stoppard-like play which reads like a novel about a strange interview with the ancient Sphinx character. Freud and Florence Nightingale show up too. I loved this play and even produced an audio version of it which you can buy for $2 on payhip (mp3/m4a) but the script reads well too. The audio book is available from most audiobook streaming services like |Audible $6 | Apple $3 | Google Play $3 |
A Worker’s Writebookby Jack Matthews . $2.25 Matthews distributed a photocopied version of this writing guide to his Ohio U. creative writing students over the decades.
Three Times Time Story Sampler by Jack Matthews (Always Free!) US Amazon customers can sometimes get it for free, but to make things easier, you can down these files directly without having to register: Epub, Mobi.
Abbreviations: KU means Kindle Unlimited, and APUB means it was published under an Amazon imprint.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.
I’ve been falling behind on this column. I barely got started on #41 and skipped August. But in fact I have been very busy on the literary front and have a backlog of ebooks to blog about. First, I wish to announce that a new story collection by Jack Matthews Boxes of Time will be ready by January 2024. This is his 11th story collection and consists of stories published between 1965 and 1980; they feature characters who are troubled or unsure of themselves trying to deal with life’s usual disappointments. Stylistically these stories are polished and carefully written, but they deal with messy emotions, troubled families and damaged personalities. The characters may not be as educated or self-assured as the people in Second Death of E.A. Poe (2021) or Crazy Women (1985), but they still manage to figure out interesting things about themselves and the people around them. Stories from this period focus especially on the emotional stresses that separate parents from their children. Matthews picked “Boxes of Time” as the title for this collection because each story reveals the drama of worlds long since gone but whose dreams and fears and anxieties still resonate today.
Indie Author Spotlight
the
Under the Radar
Flash Gardens, and Other Short Fiction: (Volume 1 and 2) by Louis Gallo. (Faculty page). Prolific author and poet whom no one seems to have noticed.
Guilty Pleasures by Kitty Thomas. Erotic thriller trash.
Blink and It’s Gone
The Questions That Matter Most: Reading, Writing, and the Exercise of Freedom by Jane Smiley. Literary and personal essays about books.
Asking Anna and the Hook by Jake Seliger. Cerebral love story by an incredible young blogger who is blogging a storm while suffering from a life threatening cancer. (This is a case of truth almost being more interesting than fiction). I reviewed The Hook (see below).
The Pisces: A Novel by Melissa Broder.
Annie Dillard Reader.
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World by David W. Anthony. This book has been talked about in many places. Would like to actually read it.
Tackling the Team by Marco Vassi. Erotic fiction by a writer I’ve studied at great length. This is one of his minor works, but I’m glad I finally I added it to my collection.
Best of Philip K. Dick. Discounted story collection. Incredible that Dick’s story collections should be so expensive and hard to collect.
Library Purchases/Printed books
My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Sequel to the award-winning Ishmael novel about the philosophical talking lake. Probably a little didactic, but worth a read.
Ballet of Comedians: A Novel based on the life of Moliere by Peter Arnott. Obscure biopic novel of Moliere from the 1970s.
Bonney’s Place by Leon Hale. Personal essays by Texas columnist Leon Hale.
Place to Come to by Robert Penn Warren.
Harmful to Minors by Judith Levine. Controversial book by psychologist advocating more sexual education for young people.
Realm of Hungry Spirits by Lorraine Lopez. Modern story of a young women seeking Enlightenment. PEN Faulkner award finalist. Other Books. Video Interview (start at 19:30). Just listened to it. Reads an excerpt from this novel, and it’s delightful.
Train Dreams by Denis Johnson. (Novella).
This Thing we call Sex by David Steinberg. (Bio, Essays about sex and the erotic self. Highly recommended. (Other books).
Our Story Begins (New and selected stories) by Tobias Wolff.
Pisan Cantos by Ezra Pound. This controversial author won a major poetry award.
Best of Ogden Nash. Great anthology.
Collected Stories of John McGahren. Irish author.
Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Marriages by Katie Roiphe. Fascinating story of British marriages in the early 20th century.
Collected Stories by Shirley Hazzard. I still have not read Transit of Venus.
Tomas Riviera: Complete Works. Migrant fiction published by Texas’ Arte Publico Press. Contains poetry, literary essays and a novel.
Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories by Edith Pearlman.
Naked Lunch: Restored Text by William Burroughs. Determined to read this wild erotic work.
House of Glass by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Already read this from the Buru Quartet in the 1990s. This Indonesian author writes about Indonesian society and politics. Reminds me of Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy.
Creative Commons/Freebies
the
Literary Articles and Essays
the
Rant
the
Capsule Book Reviews
The Hook by Jake Seliger is an exploration of the love life and career of high school English teacher Scott Sole. Told in a series of short chapters which change from character to character — including a girlfriend who was a former student. Scott takes his job very seriously and is passionate about teaching, yet his private life becomes a topic of interest, especially because of his free-spirited ruminations on his blog and he becomes caught in a false accusation by a student. Reminiscient of Tom Perotta’s Election (both in terms of narrative structure and subject matter), this novel is both realistically told and probably an accurate representation of the unrealistic demands made upon teachers. Under this hypercritical (and hypocritical) eye, it’s hard for single adults (and particularly men) to survive. The novel is a scathing indictment of public morality, but also an interesting look at single life from the man’s perspective.
Multimedia/Podcasts, Etc
Personville Press Deals
I run Personville Press, a small literary book press where all the ebooks cost less than $4. Prices normally appear highest on Amazon, Apple, Kobo and BN, somewhat lower on Google Play Books and lower on the two DRM-free stores which are Smashwords and Payhip. Personville Press is committed to selling DRM-free ebooks and audio files directly from the Personville Press payhip store or from Smashwords. The prices listed here are the non-discounted price on Amazon. Check the links to see if they are discounted at the moment (it happens often).
My Heart For Hostage by Robert S. Hillyer. This tender love story between a young American lieutenant and a French girl in Paris after the first World War was published by poet (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Robert Hillyer in 1942. Out of print for several decades, this novel will be re-released for the first time as a low-cost ebook. A New York Times critic called it a “superbly written book, written perhaps as only a poet with and expert in the discipline of verse could write it.” Includes a critical essay by Robert Nagle. Free download from the publisher’s site, but also available at a nominal price from ebook stores: Payhip | Smashwords | Google Play | BN | Apple | Kobo | Amazon | Amazon UK. You can also read the whole thing online!
Interview with the Sphinx. By Jack Matthews. ($1.50). Hyperintellectual Tom Stoppard-like play which reads like a novel about a strange interview with the ancient Sphinx character. Freud and Florence Nightingale show up too. I loved this play and even produced an audio version of it which you can buy for $2 on payhip (mp3/m4a) but the script reads well too. The audio book is available from most audiobook streaming services like |Audible $6 | Apple $3 | Google Play $3 |
A Worker’s Writebookby Jack Matthews . $2.25 Matthews distributed a photocopied version of this writing guide to his Ohio U. creative writing students over the decades.
Three Times Time Story Sampler by Jack Matthews (Always Free!) US Amazon customers can sometimes get it for free, but to make things easier, you can down these files directly without having to register: Epub, Mobi.
Abbreviations: KU means Kindle Unlimited, and APUB means it was published under an Amazon imprint.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.
I’ve been not buying much recently but have been discovering a lot of titles via review services. I’ll be posting about them soon.
Very Secret Sex Lives of Medieval Women by Rosalie Gilbert. (Author website). Here’s a 25 minute interview and a blog. The blog is very entertaining too. I’ve thumbed through the book’s sample and was pleasantly surprised to learn about historical facts and details of private life during that time period. My god, the book’s title will sell the book to most people, but it also happens to be a fascinating book. Also with nice illustrations.
The Hook: A Novel by Jake Seliger. Blog about a high school teacher caught in a sex scandal he didn’t actually do.
Blink and It’s Gone
T.C. Boyle Stories II: The Collected Stories of T. Coraghessan Boyle, Volume II
The Bow and the Lyre: The Poem, The Poetic Revelation, Poetry and History (Texas Pan American Series) by Octavio Paz, Ruth L. C. Simms
How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We’re Going by Vaclav Smil. Nice analysis of the world’s leading problems (climate change, etc) which is aimed at the general reader.
Confronting Climate Gridlock: How Diplomacy, Technology, and Policy Can Unlock a Clean Energy Future by Daniel Cohan. Cohan is a Rice U professor who frequently writes for the Houston Chronicle.
Asa Nisi Masa by Jaret Co. Sci fi novel about how “smart contact lenses” allow people where you can switch identities just by blinking. Philipino author who dabbles in lots of things.
Last Karankawas by Kimberly Garza. Novel taking place in Galveston during Hurricane Ike. Written by an author who teaches at UT San Antonio.
Library Purchases/Printed books
the
Creative Commons/Freebies
the
Literary Articles and Essays
the
Rant
the
Capsule Book Reviews
the
Multimedia/Podcasts, Etc
Personville Press Deals
I run Personville Press, a small literary book press where all the ebooks cost less than $4. Prices normally appear highest on Amazon, Apple, Kobo and BN, somewhat lower on Google Play Books and lower on the two DRM-free stores which are Smashwords and Payhip. Personville Press is committed to selling DRM-free ebooks and audio files directly from the Personville Press payhip store or from Smashwords. The prices listed here are the non-discounted price on Amazon. Check the links to see if they are discounted at the moment (it happens often).
My Heart For Hostage by Robert S. Hillyer. This tender love story between a young American lieutenant and a French girl in Paris after the first World War was published by poet (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Robert Hillyer in 1942. Out of print for several decades, this novel will be re-released for the first time as a low-cost ebook. A New York Times critic called it a “superbly written book, written perhaps as only a poet with and expert in the discipline of verse could write it.” Includes a critical essay by Robert Nagle. Free download from the publisher’s site, but also available at a nominal price from ebook stores: Payhip | Smashwords | Google Play | BN | Apple | Kobo | Amazon | Amazon UK. You can also read the whole thing online!
Interview with the Sphinx. By Jack Matthews. ($1.50). Hyperintellectual Tom Stoppard-like play which reads like a novel about a strange interview with the ancient Sphinx character. Freud and Florence Nightingale show up too. I loved this play and even produced an audio version of it which you can buy for $2 on payhip (mp3/m4a) but the script reads well too. The audio book is available from most audiobook streaming services like |Audible $6 | Apple $3 | Google Play $3 |
A Worker’s Writebookby Jack Matthews . $2.25 Matthews distributed a photocopied version of this writing guide to his Ohio U. creative writing students over the decades.
Three Times Time Story Sampler by Jack Matthews (Always Free!) US Amazon customers can sometimes get it for free, but to make things easier, you can down these files directly without having to register: Epub, Mobi.
