What are you currently reading?

[wease]

Started The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy. The first of his LA Quartet and a part of an overarching story that includes this Quartet, another Trilogy and a second LA Quartet. Some of the characters were introduced in a previously released book, but I’m trying to read them as chronologically as I can.

[Mickey]

That’s awesome. Any good insights to how she got her first publishing deal? Not asking for details, just curious if you’ve had that conversation with her.

It was a lot of factors. She finished her MFA in writing at the New School a few years ago. That put her in excellent networking position, obviously. Then there were two writer's retreats/conferences she attended where she met her agent and one of her editors. Then she finished the book, submitted to the agent, and the agent shopped it. Viking picked it up and here we are.

She's deep into her first draft of the next book now -- it's a ghost story of sorts, apparently. We're actually having drinks with her and her husband on Monday night. It'll be the first time we've hung out since my wife and I both finished the book. Can't wait to chat more specifics with her.

Gonna wager it was the conferences (I'm guessing Bread Loaf or Suwanee was one of them?) and not really the MFA. Tons of folks have MFAs and The New School isn't especially well regarded (IWW would be a different situation). It might help open a door by credentialing, maybe even a professor takes a shine to you, but those conferences are the real career makers. Which is a shame because they're also ludicrously expensive.

[blueviper]

I didn't want to lead with this because I thought it would discredit my opinion somehow or make people less interested in checking it out... but Erin is my friend and neighbor. We've lived two doors down from each other for about 10 years. So, I heard about it from her.

I'd read a short she'd published a few years ago but I had no idea what to expect from this book. I was thrilled that it was so good but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't also super jealous and deflated by it, too. It's one thing when a stranger writes something great. It's entirely different when it's a peer and a friend. But this isn't about me and my bullshit. This is about Erin and her fantastic debut novel that I really, truly love and want everyone to read and enjoy!

So cool!

[Simple Torture]

Next two in the pile:

[Malloy]

in 15 years of posting in this thread, i've never see a poster rep a debut novel (that lacks sweeping marketing efforts) and two other posters immediately read it

[Mickey]

This is not a comment on Joey's friend's book but if there's one phrase in publishing copy that's a big nope for me, it's:

A sweeping family epic, told over X generations

[dad]

i'll read your book, Malloy. point me to it.

[epilogue]

This is not a comment on Joey's friend's book but if there's one phrase in publishing copy that's a big nope for me, it's:

A sweeping family epic, told over X generations

I get that. The worst part is that it isn't even really all that accurate in Walk the Vanished Earth's case. I mean *technically* it's true, I guess. But that's not really how I'd describe the book.

[epilogue]

in 15 years of posting in this thread, i've never see a poster rep a debut novel (that lacks sweeping marketing efforts) and two other posters immediately read it

I just as surprised as you are!

[BurtReynolds]

Time for a re-read I think. I have to re-center myself.

[dad]

i finally read an entire book this year. i picked this up at a local book shop the other day. love the cover.

[Mickey]

I read Norwood a few years back and didn't care for it. Love the adaptations of TG though.

[BurtReynolds]

Peloponnesian war from the perspective of the losers, and boy do they lose!

Ends with a whimper, but pretty good.

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

[dad]

i finally read an entire book this year. i picked this up at a local book shop the other day. love the cover.

This collection was my intro to Portis. Highly recommended.

love that cover. will check it out.

[dad]

Just turned in a dissertation chapter so I'm toying with the idea of diving into Gravity's Rainbow before I start the next one.

did you ever dip your toes in this one?

seems daunting af.

[Mickey]

Just turned in a dissertation chapter so I'm toying with the idea of diving into Gravity's Rainbow before I start the next one.

did you ever dip your toes in this one?

seems daunting af.

I read Part I, which is about 170 pages or so. I was loving it--though it's definitely a trip and you have to be willing to give up a certain sense of control or understanding. Much of the book (at least in Part I) bounces between dream sequences that various characters are having and the putative real world of byzantine post-war bureaucracy in which they live, and there are occasional stretches where it's not clear which of those worlds you're in. But it's very funny, filled with penis jokes, and also very smart, and if you can just go with the flow it's not nearly as hard to follow as it is often made out to be.

I was planning to finish the whole thing by the end of January but then my wife and I were told, unexpectedly, that we had less than a five percent chance of ever having a biological child and I thought about killing myself for a few weeks (not too seriously!) and then about a month later my wife got pregnant and between all the prenatal monitoring and finishing my dissertation I never got around to picking it up again.

[dad]

Just turned in a dissertation chapter so I'm toying with the idea of diving into Gravity's Rainbow before I start the next one.

did you ever dip your toes in this one?

seems daunting af.

I read Part I, which is about 170 pages or so. I was loving it--though it's definitely a trip and you have to be willing to give up a certain sense of control or understanding. Much of the book (at least in Part I) bounces between dream sequences that various characters are having and the putative real world of byzantine post-war bureaucracy in which they live, and there are occasional stretches where it's not clear which of those worlds you're in. But it's very funny, filled with penis jokes, and also very smart, and if you can just go with the flow it's not nearly as hard to follow as it is often made out to be.

I was planning to finish the whole thing by the end of January but then my wife and I were told, unexpectedly, that we had less than a five percent chance of ever having a biological child and I thought about killing myself for a few weeks (not too seriously!) and then about a month later my wife got pregnant and between all the prenatal monitoring and finishing my dissertation I never got around to picking it up again.

that sounds hard. i'm glad you chose to stick around.

i'm giving Gravity's Rainbow a shot, and just going with it.

[Mickey]

I said not too seriously!

[Mickey]

Under normal circumstances I finish books that I start. Even bad ones.