I am really, really trying to finish the Mount TBR reading challenge this year. I generally hit a road block in March as I read the Stella Prize lists, and again in August when the Melbourne Writers Festival provides a lovely distraction and lots of new books. At my current rate, I’ll need to read five books per month from my TBR stack in order to hit the target. It’s doable…
So, three old-school Twitter* reviews of Mount TBR books I’ve read over the last month – Continue reading
Curtis Sittenfeld’s You Think It, I’ll Say It is a tough act to follow on the short-story front but nonetheless, I figured Jeffrey Eugenides’s first collection, Fresh Complaint, would be a reasonable bet.
The collection opens with Complainers, a gentle story about the decades-long friendship between two women, and how their relationship changes when one is diagnosed with dementia. I feel like I’m reading about dementia at every turn at the moment, but Eugenides’s take on it from the perspective of a friend was refreshingly different.
Dementia isn’t a nice word. It sounds violent, invasive, like having a demon scooping out pieces of your brain which in fact is just what it is. Continue reading
Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye.
This week, all three samples came from the 2016 list of lists.
Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down by Anne Valente Continue reading
I recently came across an interesting article in the New York Times about why, or why not, authors tweet.
I unashamedly love Twitter. It’s my only foray into social media and I enjoy the pithiness, punchiness and bite-sized style of information. I follow a handful of authors – Jonathan Tropper, Judy Blume, Bret Easton Ellis, children’s author Oliver Jeffers, Jennifer Weiner, Maggie Alderson and a few more.
What do I expect out of following authors? Honestly, not that much! I like their insights and commentary on everyday and topical stuff – Maggie Alderson’s thoughts on ‘denim on denim’, Jennifer Weiner’s blow-by-blow descriptions of The Bachelor, Easton Ellis’s bizarre rantings and Judy Blume’s little snippets about life in Key West.
So I was interested to read why Jeffrey Eugenides, author of the recently released The Marriage Plot, was not a fan of social media –
“In “A Note From Jeffrey Eugenides to Readers,” he described his joy at meeting them, but concluded by saying he doesn’t know when or if he’ll post on the (Facebook) page again: “It’s better, I think, for readers not to communicate too directly with an author because the author is, strangely enough, beside the point.””
In contrast, author Mat Johnson’s take on Twitter is this –
“Twitter lets me hijack the promotion plane, sidestep the literary establishment and connect directly to my current and potential audience. . . . It’s a meritocracy; if you’re interesting, you get followed.”
Nice. I ought to start following you Mr Johnson.
Looking for authors to follow? Find lists of Twitter handles here, here and here.
People are certainly getting their knickers in a twist about The Marriage Plot. I had both Middlesex and The Marriage Plot sitting on my Kindle, waiting like treats to be savoured (fellow readers, whose opinions I trust, had talked up Eugenides and although I have read The Virgin Suicides, it was many years ago). As a week at the beach stretched before me, I decided it was the perfect opportunity to start on Eugenides – should I have opened Middlesex first? Perhaps.
The Marriage Plot was fine (‘fine’ in a satisfactory way, as opposed to ‘fine’ in remarkable way). There were bits I thoroughly enjoyed. I liked the Austen layer – the whole ‘Pride and Prejudice-on-a-collage-campus’ theme made for good reading. I also loved the fact that the main character, Madeleine, loved books and reading.
“She wanted a book to take her places she couldn’t get to herself. She thought a writer should work harder writing a book than she did reading it.” Continue reading