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People say the strangest things! Here are a few real customer quotes overhead by British booksellers ....
With thanks to the folks at Independent Booksellers Week
I recently joined the ranks of suspense novelists and while I didn't give the word suspense much thought as I was writing, I've since given it quite a bit of brain time. I suppose seeing your book called "A Novel of Suspense" on the cover will do that.
While suspense is a literary category that can embrace many different types of stories, it is also one of the most natural of elements in the real world. The broad definition I've come to these days is that suspense is simply a recognition of the fact that we don't really, on a moment to moment basis, know what the hell's going to happen next. Of course our natural defenses, the same ones that limit what noises come into our ears or what sights come into our eyes, keep the lid on this what's-coming anxiety and allow us to function. But then there are the moments, the ones most often exploited by writers, in which we can't deny that we are in the dark about the future, that we don't know what's around the corner.
The "what-ifs" that kick off so much of our mystery/thriller/suspense fiction are often rooted in our anxieties about life itself. What if I woke up in a strange land? What if I opened my freezer and found a severed hand there? What if an airplane dropped out of the sky and wiped out my back yard? The beauty of finding these oddities between covers is that we have some assurance the author does know what's going to happen next and will lead us through the suspense to the safety of knowledge.
The New Yorker has chosen its "20 Under 40" list of fiction writers worth watching. The last list was published in 1999 and included future literary stars such as Jhumpa Lahiri, Nathan Englander and Junot Díaz; plus the likes of Michael Chabon, Jeffrey Eugenides, and David Foster Wallace, who were already relatively well known - so the new list has been much anticipated.
The list will be published in the double fiction issue of The New Yorker that arrives on newsstands June 7.
As it happens, BookBrowse has been following these authors too. Below are links to bios of all 20, plus links to many of their books (at least one for each author) and, where available, links to their websites:
Is it just me, or does there seem to be a wave of "intersecting lives" novels lately? I'm talking about novels which are structured around characters and place and which move forward episodically, rather than via a driving, suspenseful plot, a genre which is also sometimes called "a novel in stories." Two of the most decorated books of recent years fall into this category: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout and Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. Other recent entries include A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert, Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon, and the forthcoming The Madonnas of Echo Park by Brando Skyhorse.
In my oral history book The Last Leaf: Voices of History's Last-Known Survivors, I interviewed over three dozen final eyewitnesses to, or last participants in, historically important events. All of the "Last Leaves" were octogenarians, nonagenarians or even centenarians. Their longevity is remarkable considering the average lifespan of an American born in 1900 was less than fifty. The Last Leaves have defied great actuarial odds. Readers often ask me, "What is the secret to their longevity?" The answer is simple – activity, both physical and mental.
For example, the famous entertainer Kitty Carlisle Hart, the final lead performer in a Marx Brothers movie, told me, "I gave a concert on my 94th birthday, and am already booked for my 95th...I've been singing all over the country recently...Soon, I go to Palm Beach for a two week engagement." Colonel Norman Vaughan was the last man to travel to Antarctica with Admiral Richard Byrd in 1929.
He participated in the grueling Iditarod dog sled race until he was 87. For his 89th birthday, he climbed the 10,302 foot Mount Vaughan (named for him by Byrd) in Antarctica, and was planning for a return visit on his 100th birthday when he died. "I'm proving that centenarians can still do great things," he noted. The 104 year old Hal Prieste, the world's oldest Olympian (he won a diving bronze at the 1920 Games), continued his daily exercise routine. In 2000, he flew twenty hours to Australia for the Sydney Olympics. Frank Buckles, America's last World War I soldier, recently turned 109. He kept a bucket of dumbbells by his chair and refused all assistance when walking. "I'll do it myself," he told me. "I gave up driving tractors and cars when I turned 102."
In her poem "The Miser," Ruth Padel describes a young Charles Darwin's predilection for collecting and classifying objects as a way to make "like Orpheus, a system against loss." One could say the same for the biography/memoir-in-verse, a dynamic form that allows poets to revisit the lives of their subjects through imagery, rhythm, and metaphor instead of the more rigid bounds of chronology that biographers must follow. Considering that biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs usually make a strong showing on bestseller lists, the poetic analogues to these forms deserve a wider audience and also provide an ideal introduction to newcomers wishing to dip a tentative toe into the rushing waters of poetry.
Books and documentaries about the Lewis and Clark Expedition have proven popular in recent years, but Campbell McGrath opens a new window onto this famous duo in Shannon: A Poem of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, by focusing on one of its lesser-known figures: George Shannon, an 18-year-old expedition member who became lost from the group for sixteen days. Shannon himself kept no record of what happened during his accidental sojourn on the prairie (present-day Nebraska and South Dakota), so McGrath has free reign to re-create the young explorer's shifting emotions when confronted by the immensity of the wilderness. Implementing the perfect blend of high and low diction, McGrath captures Shannon's voice without strain or pretension in a series of free verse poems, one for each day spent wandering.
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