GBO Giveaway: Hans Fallada's Every Man Dies Alone
One of the biggest books this spring—at least in terms of general coverage and growing hype—has to be Hans Fallada’s rediscovered masterpiece, Every Man Dies Alone. It’s based on a true story of a working class couple living in Berlin during WWII who launch a “simple, clandestine resistance ...
>
Harvard Crimson on Three — Yes, Three — Open Letter Titles
Last Thursday was “Open Letter Day” at the Harvard Crimson, as the university daily newspaper covered three new Open Letter books: The Mighty Angel by Jerzy Pilch, Death in Spring by Merce Rodoreda, and Landscape in Concrete by Jakov Lind. (Typically, these links would be to our Indie Bookstore of the Month, but ...
>
The $9.99 E-Book Boycott
This piece at GalleyCat about the “informal boycott” going on at Amazon for e-books costing more than $10 is very curious. Readers are tagging $10+ e-books with a 9 99 boycott tag and making rational arguments as to why the price should be under $10: “Kindle books are kinda like movie tickets. While you ...
>
Stop Smiling and Bolano
It’s not available online, but the new issue of Stop Smiling — the third annual 20 interviews issue — contains the last ever interview given by Roberto Bolano. And interviews with some other interesting people as well, like Enrique Vila-Matas, Jonathan Lethem, Paul Auster, and Stephen Malkmus, although ...
>
Another Anniversary
As stated in the opening editorial of the new issue, Pratilipi is celebrating its first anniversary. A bilingual quarterly, Pratilipi is one of the best online magazines featuring contemporary Indian authors. They cram a lot into each issue (see this issue’s table of contents and staggering list of contributors), ...
>
Happy Birthday to the Complete Review
Back on April 5, 1999, the Complete Review published its first review, giving Nicholson Baker’s The Everlasting Story of Nory a “C” for being “too cute for its own good.” Well, 2,250 reviews and ten years later and CR is still going strong. Michael Orthofer has a nice write up about his first ...
>
The Halfway House
The first of Cuban author Guillermo Rosales’s novels to be translated into English, The Halfway House is not a story that we’re accustomed to. This is the anti-success story, one in which hope is choked out by failure and abandonment; this is the greater, sicker part of the immigration narrative. The Halfway House is ...
>