Declan Spring of New Directions, Scott Esposito, and the Economy
Scott Esposito of Conversational Reading is starting a series on how the economic downturn/recession/late-capitalist implosion is impacting smaller, independent presses. As he writes, all the coverage has been focused on Random Reorganizing, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Hijinks, etc., but not much on what’s going on at ...
>
Hermano Cerdo's Books of the Year
I first found out from Scott Esposito of Conversational Reading that Hermano Cerdo — the fantastic Spanish-language blog about literature and martial arts — is running an incredible Books of 2008 series of posts. They’ve asked a wide range of authors and editors (mostly Spanish, although not entirely) to ...
>
Sebald on Stage
Thanks to Conversational Reading (and Vertigo before that) for bringing “i-witness” to our attention. From Wales Online Like most of us, Paul Davies and Fern Smith enjoy immersing themselves in a good book. [Ed. Note: That use of “like most of us” signals that we’re not reading a U.S. ...
>
J.J. Long's W.G. Sebald
Over at Conversational Reading, Scott Esposito has a great review of J.J. Long’s recent book, W.G. Sebald: Image, Archive, Modernity: A partial list of major topics will bring more detail if not more cohesion: (post-)colonialism, photography, the gaze, maps, archives, police/nanny states, the Holocaust, ...
>
Africa Reading Challenge
Thanks to Scott Esposito for bringing our attention to the Africa Reading Challenge starting up at Siphoning Off a Few Thoughts. In recent years I’ve become increasingly interested in reading books dealing with Africa, and so I present the Africa Reading Challenge. Participants commit to read – in the ...
>
Quarterly Conversation #11
The new issue of Quarterly Conversation is now available, and full of interesting pieces including reviews of Lydie Salvayre’s The Power of Flies, Dorothea Dieckmann’s Guantanamo (which won our inaugural Best Translation of 2007 award), and Yousef Al-Mohaimeed’s Wolves of the Crescent Moon. There’s ...
>
I Think Today Is All About Esposito and Barcelona
Following on the Monzo review, Conversational Reading has an interesting Friday Column by Barcelona author Neus Arques called “On Translations or the Pursuit of the Domino Effect.” Arques recently published her first novel, and discussing the long, winding road to trying to get her book published in ...
>