Intern, book coveter, intermittent writer
Holly Goddard Jones, whose slowburning, but ultimately staggering story collection Girl Trouble I recently read, has an excerpt from her novel-in-progress in the latest issue of Guernica. Go HERE to read.
The stories in Girl Trouble were already quite novelish in their exposition, fleshing out of characters and unhurried pacing, so I’m sure she’ll take to the form in style.
Yes yes, cigarettes are bad. But the design of the neat, stackable cigarette pack is something that smokers and non-smokers can all appreciate. To quote Bebe Glazer: “I like the way a fresh firm pack feels in my hand. I like peeling away that little piece of cellophane and seeing it twinkle in the light!”
So, I can’t help but love these works of classic literature, repackaged in miniature form and presented in a cigarette box, from Tank Books. You can buy works by Conrad, Hemingway, Kafka, Kipling, Stevenson and Tolstoy individually, or you can get them all in a similarly sleek, pretty tin.
For those of us who fear the advent of ebooks – this would be an acceptable alternative future of books, would it not? (Also, cigarettes – like alcohol, coffee and elbow patches – do have a certain literary cache. This is another way for non-smokers to work the tortured/alternative look. Or have I been in Brooklyn too long?)
Tanks (LOL) to DmcG for alerting me to these gorgeous little products.
There’s a new story by Kevin Barry in the new New Yorker called ‘The Fjord of Killary’ – go Kevin!
For those of us who loved his debut collection There Are Little Kingdoms (chock-full of dark, funny tales from modren Oirland, and also one of my fave book titles ever) there’s plenty of Kevin goodness coming soon. As the Stinging Fly blog reported, his debut novel City of Bohane – about a “small and murderous west of Ireland city” – will be published in April 2011 by Jonathan Cape. JC will also publish a new story collection by him in 2012.
Read my interview with Kevin – from way back in ‘08 – here.
The weird and wonderful Small Beer Press has an extensive Creative Commons area on its website, where you can download free ebooks. I recommend Kelly Link’s story collections Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners – she’s my latest quirky female writer fave.
They also publish a twice-yearly zine called Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet – I would kind of love to be able to say I was published there.
I really want one of these. The trouble is picking one. (Actually, the second one looks the most laptop-friendly, so maybe that one.)
