Like many of the books I choose to read, most if not all are matters of associations and recommendations among writers themselves. Reed Farrel Coleman has been a name in the crime genre that’s become familiar by accolades among his peers, but it wasn’t until I actually spied him among the ardent admirers of Megan …
Cloud Atlas was the most highly and often-recommended book of 2004. It was a ricercare of characters far-flung across time, space and sensibility, all connected inevitably and with impassioned, inspired prose. Awe-struck, I since then have read all of David Mitchell‘s work except for a recent volume inspired by the author’s autistic son. Ghostwritten (1999), …
Continuing my OCDevotional traversal of Madison Smartt Bell‘s complete works (thanks to Stona Fitch and Concord Free Press for introducing me to his work via their printing of MSB’s ZigZag Wanderer, his latest collection of short stories), I just finished his novelized biography of military auto-didact, the famous Confederate leader, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Devil’s Dream. …
Connecting with Ann and Stona Fitch is always an occasion for fine food, film and fiction. As the executors of Concord Free Press, they are tireless in their championing many of the brightest, unsung lights of American literature. It was through their advocacy that I came to devote myself to reading the complete work of …
I first came to know of Jeremy Robert Johnson‘s work through the generous and encouraging daisy-chain of recommendations/collaborations/consanguine-writer’s blog-nexes which began for me with Chuck Pahlaniuk and continued through OCDevotional binge-readings of the work of Stephen Graham Jones and Carlton Mellick III, among others. It’s been awhile since we’ve had a novel from JRJ, and …
I think for some reason I have more dear friends in Tucson, where I’ve never lived (but played a lot over the years), than I do anywhere else in the country. At least, I can tell by the fact of my requisite 10 comps per concert, Tucson’s the only place I’ve run out! Played this …