Some authors I don’t want to critique.  I just want to enjoy their use of language and their innovative stories and characters.  I revel in the pages and shut the critical part of my brain off.  Jhumpa Lahiri is one of those authors for me.  Her two short story collections, Interpreter of Maladies and Unaccustomed [...]

You should read Ann Patchett.  Bel Canto is one of the best books I’ve read in many years.  The story of a hostage situation in an unnamed South American country, this novel is immersive and beautiful and completely original.  Another of Patchett’s novels, Run, is a less unique tale, focusing on a Boston family and [...]

There are a couple of things that I always do before reading a book.  Before buying it, actually.  First, I check out the Acknowledgments.  I’m always curious who writers thank.  And particularly who their agents are and if recognition was in order.  Next I’ll usually flip to the last page.  My wife is convinced that [...]

On the surface, these two books don’t seem to have a lot in common.  Then We Came To The End is a postmodern romp through today’s office cubicle culture told with Ferris’ tongue firmly lodged in his cheek.  Barrett’s book, The Air We Breathe, is a historical novel set at a tuberculosis sanitorium in the [...]

Paul Auster and I have a history together.  It’s not much of a history and I’m sure that memories of it are essentially only archived by me, but nonetheless I thought I should let you know as I write this post, particularly when I mention that I’m not sure that I liked his book. From [...]

I like to write in first person.  There is an immediacy to it that I enjoy, that need to get deeply into the head of a single character.  I also appreciate the limitations of it — being forced to only report on what a specific person can sense works for me as a writer.  It [...]

Nothing says good fun to me like a brutal post-apocalyptic dystopia.  Or maybe not.  Seriously, dissolving the very fabric of society, then tossing some unfortunate and more-or-less noble characters into the mix can make for a compelling read as you become a voyeur watching these people suffer and hopefully survive.  But the whole experience can [...]

I read Life of Pi about eight years ago when it first came out. When I pulled it back off the shelf to write this post, my first thought was where the heck has Yann Martel been. Of course, there are many stories of authors turning out a masterpiece then disappearing. But still. So I [...]

Published years apart, these two books seem like companion pieces to me, sharing a literary landscape of life and death, memory and impermance. But, then again, lots of books occupy that crowded plot of land. What is intriguing to me about these two books (and also clearly to Vintage, which published both of them) is the surprisingly similar style in which both stories are told.