I Am a Sore Loser [Some April Translations]
Back when I was in junior high, my best friend and I would spend hours and hours playing Double Dribble on his Nintendo. (Fun fact! This game was called “Exciting Basket” in Japan.) I might be 100% wrong, but I’m pretty sure this was the first basketball game for the Nintendo. And man, was it ever low rent. ...
>
The Best to Come
James Crossley is a bookseller at Island Books. He writes regularly for the store’s Message in a Bottle blog and for the website of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association. By now you may be asking which BTBA-eligible books I’m most looking forward to reading. Probably not, but let’s pretend. ...
>
Shiki Nagaoka: A Nose for Fiction
“I am honored to have ushered Mario Bellatin’s biography of the great Shiki Nagaoka, a writer and artist almost entirely unknown to English-language readers, into English for the first time, and it is my hope that this new translation begins to redress his under-acknowledgement as a major influence on contemporary ...
>
Latest Review: "Shiki Nagaoka: A Nose For Fiction" by Mario Bellatin
The latest addition to our Reviews section is by Christopher Iacono on Shiki Nagaoka: A Nose for Fiction by Mario Bellatin, translated by David Shook, and out from Phoneme Media. Most people can appreciate high-quality writing with a good (literary) prank, and most people can appreciate a finely cultivated mustache. And ...
>
Flowers & Mishima’s Illustrated Biography
Despite cries that literature is dead, dying, and self-replicating in the worst way, once in a while a book comes along to remind readers that there’s still a lot of surprise to be found on the printed page. To be sure, writers such as Cesar Aria and Medbh McGuckian are doing their part to keep literature interesting and ...
>
Latest Review: "Flowers & Mishima’s Illustrated Biography" by Mario Bellatin
The latest addition to our Reviews section is by Vincent Francone on Flower & Mishima’s Illustrated Biography by Mario Bellatin, translated by Kolin Jordan, and out from 7Vientos. Since the site is about a week behind in posting reviews, I thought we’d start back in with a short and sweet one by Vince. We were ...
>
The City Lights No Contest
Just received this message from City Lights about a contest they’re running to tie-in with the release of Mario Bellatin’s wonderful Beauty Salon: In a recent interview with PRI’s World Books, Beauty Salon author Mario Bellatin described a writing technique called the “No Method”: “For ...
>