Tag Archives: James Frey

Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie

Posted by Kate W in Non-fiction and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s rare that book news breaks into mainstream media headlines. Help me out readers – what comes to mind? For me there’s only a handful over the last twenty-odd years – the James Frey fiasco; the year no Pulitzer was awarded; the controversial publication of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman; Doris Lessing’s fabulous doorstep interview when she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007 (and the lack of agreement about whether Bob Dylan should have won the prize in 2017) and maybe, Margaret Atwood’s publication of The Testaments (because Americans were living a real-life Handmaid’s Tale in Trump’s first presidential term). But I think the most recent one was the shocking attempt on Salman Rushdie’s life at an author talk in 2022.

In Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, Rushdie reflects on the event and the aftermath. Continue reading →

Can You Ever Forgive Me? by Lee Israel

Posted by Kate W in Non-fiction and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Who isn’t intrigued by a literary scandal? As I type, a few pop to mind – Helen Demidenko, James Frey, and whether Harper Lee ever wanted Go Set a Watchman to be published. But I’d never heard of Lee Israel – best-selling author and ‘literary forger’. She fesses up to her criminal activity in her memoir, Can You Ever Forgive Me? (and yes, let’s park the fact that she profited from writing a memoir about her crime).

I had never known anything but ‘up’ in my career, had never received even one of those formatted no-thank-you slips that successful writers look back upon with triumphant jocularity. Continue reading →

Educated by Tara Westover

Posted by Kate W in Non-fiction and tagged with , , , , , , ,

Educated by Tara Westover is a memoir about domestic violence (the story about a Mormon girl getting an education is secondary).

I’m unapologetic about that spoiler and feel cranky that publicists and reviewers have failed to mention, or have simply skimmed over, the horrific physical, psychological and financial abuse that dominates Westover’s memoir.

According to the blurb, the book focuses on Westover’s childhood and early adulthood, and her experiences growing up with survivalist Mormon parents in the mountains of Idaho.

I am only seven, but I understand that it is this fact, more than any other, that makes my family different: we don’t go to school. Continue reading →

Six Degrees of Separation – from Perfume to The Paying Guests

Posted by Kate W in Stuff and Nonsense and tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

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It’s time for #6Degrees – join in! Link up!

We begin this month with a book that topped international best-seller lists – Patrick Süskind’s Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. I read Perfume many years ago – it was lent to me by a friend, who also gave me Neil Schaeffer’s The Marquis De Sade (clearly we were on an 18th-century French jaunt). Continue reading →

Top Ten Tuesday – Books I HAD To Buy…But Are Still Sitting On My Shelf Unread

Posted by Kate W in Fiction and tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

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I need a ‘pause’ button.

I read great reviews (thanks fellow bloggers) and then hit Amazon and moments later I have the book on my Kindle. Such is the joy (and the agony in terms of my wallet) of online shopping.

I have tempered my impulse buying somewhat. Somewhat…

I use ‘wishlists’, Kindle samples and the ‘Want to Read’ feature on Goodreads as a way of reminding me of books that look like my kind of thing. But still, sometimes the need is too great. And I wish I could hit ‘pause’ instead of ‘Add to Shopping Cart’.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish is the Top Ten Books I HAD To Buy…But Are Still Sitting On My Shelf Unread. Here are the books that bypassed my wishlists, samples and want-to-read lists and instead were bought immediately. Because I couldn’t wait. And yet, they haven’t even been opened…. Continue reading →