The Income Tax-Minded Weekend Update
The header should be a dead giveaway as to how I spent much of this week. The rest of the time, a bunch of deadlines came to fruition and so there’s an unusual amount of BSP to kick this update off.
At NYMag.com’s Vulture blog, I followed up on the strange writing mashup of Tim Kring and Dale Peck with some more odd dynamic duos, namely Bill Fitzhugh and Brooks & Dunn. And earlier on Friday I hatched an alternative 75th birthday celebration of Philip Roth to the real one. And at the LA Times, the new “Dark Passages” column has a distinctly African theme.
NYTBR: Oddly enough, Marilyn Stasio seems to be sharing my brain as she also reviews new African-set crime novels by Michael Stanley, Alexander McCall Smith and Deon Meyer, along with Jesse Kellerman and Nevada Barr’s new thrillers; Pete Hamill is entertained by Colin Harrison’s New York thriller; Stephen Koch probes Noel Coward’s secret espionage life; and Joseph Wambaugh reveals how Truman Capote helped him to write THE ONION FIELD.
WaPo Book World: Jennifer Howard evaluates Dee Dee Myers’ stance that women should rule the world; A new biography reveals the woman who brought lynchings to national attention; Ron Charles effuses over Elizabeth Hay’s radio-centric novel; and Michael Dirda is amazed at Cynthia Ozick’s literary spryness as she nears 80.
LA Times: Richard Eder finds lots to like in Keith Gessen’s debut; Kristina Lindgren bends along the unclassifiable lines of A. Lee Martinez’s thriller; and Carolyn Kellogg travels back to the Silent Age with Nina Revoyr.
G&M: Kevin Chong examines Tobias Wolff’s way with fiction and the truth; Martin Levin has baseball on his mind; and Margaret Cannon reviews new crime fiction by Peter Temple, Dan Fesperman, Jonathan Kellerman, Lisa Lutz, Christopher Rice, A. Lee Martinez, Dan Vyleta, April Lindgren and Terry Carroll.
Guardian Review: Ian Rankin treats Kate Summerscale’s true crime book like a fictional whodunit; Angus McQueen is suitably gripped by CHILD 44; Arabic Literature gets noticed in a big way prior to the London Book Fair; Theo Tait chats with Booker winner James Kelman; and Clare Morrall delves into the relationship between writing and music.
Observer: Hilary Spurling is impressed by Patrick French’s V.S. Naipaul-flavored scholarship; Stephanie Merritt admires and is critical of Will Self’s new direction; and film and literary luminaries alike pay tribute to Observer film critic Philip French.
The Times: The impetus for the Beatles song “Paperback Writer,” revealed; Alice Fordham talks up the Roman Empire with Robert Harris; and Keith Gessen gets a rave review on the opposite side of the Atlantic, too.
The Scotsman: Stuart Kelly admires James Kelman’s anti-sentimental new novel; Vanessa Curtis is entranced by Isabel Allende’s new memoir; and is it me, or did the Scotsman really cut back on its book coverage recently?
The Rest:
Oline Cogdill is suitably pleased with Laura Lippman’s ANOTHER THING TO FALL.
The Seattle Times’ Adam Woog reviews new crime fiction by Nevada Barr, Colin Harrison, Alexander McCall Smith and Richard Stark, while also lamenting Candace Robb’s lack of an American book contract presently.
Susanna Yager reviews recent crime offerings from Jamie Malinowski and Anne Cleeves.
The Independent investigates how Jennifer Lee Carrell became a huge phenomenon in the UK. I suspect something similar could happen in the US if the title – INTERRED WITH THEIR BONES – was dropped in favor of the UK one (THE SHAKESPEARE SECRET).
The South African Times catches up with local thriller writer Richard Kunzmann.
Nicola Upson discusses her new mystery series starring Josephine Tey with Suffolk & Essex Online.
The Ledger-Inquirer seems to take some issue with Ace Atkins using Phenix City’s troubled past as backdrop for his new crime novel WICKED CITY.
Like Ed and Levi, I attended Thursday’s NYPL talk with Nicholson Baker, Heidi Julavits and Lee Siegel, who seemed to think that just because he had a book out on the subject of the Internet that it should be all about him. A very strange experience to see a walking ad hominem in the flesh, I tell you.
How did Penguin get so good at breaking out authors in paperback? AP’s Hillel Italie finds out.
The Bookseller’s Alison Flood looks at past years’ hot LBF properties and how they fared once they were actually published in the UK.
The WSJ’s Jeff Trachtenberg talks with Jennifer Weiner about chick lit, getting published and that Jane Smiley review.
The Lima News discovers the intersection between Tuckerization and fiction in William Kent Krueger’s most recent crime novel.
The Marin Independent Journal catches up with Gillian Flynn, now working on a novel set on a Kansas Farm in the 1980s.
Trash-talking donuts on both sides of the US/Canada border.
And finally, somehow I am not surprised at how this turned out.