Akopos

Bit of serendipity with this weeks pointer.

via Six Questions For…:

Six Questions for Rae Bryant, Editor, Moon Milk Review

SQF: What are the top three things you look for in a story and why?

RB: Voice. Memorable Character(s). Mastery of language. There is no specific or expected style or content. Each writer creates his or her own, and I’m always delighted when a writer manages to create something new and gripping. Basically, I know it when I see it. This doesn’t help much, does it? Generally I want a close-in voice. I don’t like to be held at arm’s length when reading, but then again, there are instances when a global PoV works well.

I noted the genius of this book in an earlier post. Now comes the book trailer which, shockingly, does not suck. In fact, it’s actually pretty damn good, especially if you’ve been to a lot of Trek conventions (or, you know, so I’ve heard).

via io9:

First heard of this novel in an excellent article at NPR. Just downloaded from Amazon, decided to peek at the first few pages. Fifteen minutes later, I had to force myself to stop reading so I could get some work done. Riveting stuff.

Reviews:

The Boston Globe
“Room,’’ a riveting, powerful novel from Irish writer Emma Donoghue, tells the story of a 26-year-old woman who has been held captive in a locked room for seven years. The book is told from the point of view of her son, 5-year-old Jack, who calls this home “Room’’ and knows nothing of the world outside its soundproof walls. Jack sleeps in a wardrobe at night and entertains himself with various imaginary games that, while perfectly normal to him, are dismal to the reader.

One of the most highly anticipated books of autumn, “Room’’ deserves all the praise it’s received ahead of its release, including recently being shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. An emotionally draining read, yet at the same time impossible to put down, it has all the makings of a modern classic.

The Guardian
Much hyped on acquisition and by its publisher since (and longlisted for the Booker prize last week), Room is set to be one of the big literary hits of the year. Certainly it is Emma Donoghue’s breakout novel, but, seemingly “inspired” by Josef Fritzl’s incarceration of his daughter Elisabeth, and the cases of Natascha Kampusch and Sabine Dardenne, it’s hard not to feel wary: what is such potentially lurid and voyeuristic material doing in the hands of a novelist known for quirky, stylish literary fiction?

It is a brave act for a writer, but happily one that Donoghue, still only 40 but on her seventh novel, has the talent to pull off. For Room is in many ways what its publisher claims it to be: a novel like no other.

Excerpt, interviews, and Book trailer at the author’s website

*This is a modified version of an email I will be sending to magazines as my subscriptions expire.

I recently received a notice that my subscription to a certain magazine was about to expire. This notice prompted me to re-evaluate my reading habits, particularly with periodicals.

My “Unread” pile:

Piles of paper proliferate precipitously

Am I reading less? No, I’m actually reading at my usual pace. What’s changed is the medium I use:

Electric Literature on my iPad

A page from Electric Literature

The advantages of digital text are significant:

1. Instant delivery online.
2. Storage– 1 issue of Electric Literature = 1/2 a megabyte, while Project Gutenberg’s plaintext Moby Dick weighs in at 1 megabyte. Kindle can store up to 4 gigabytes, the iPad up to 64GB.
3. Access– files can be stored and retrieved from hard drive or online.
4. Accessibility– text can be enlarged or even read aloud.
5. Cost– paper copy of Virginia Quarterly Review = $15, digital copy = $4.
6. Lower environmental impact (debatable)– see Slate‘s article.
7. No need to haul heavy loads to the recycling bin.
8. No risk of Librarian’s Lung.

For these reasons, I’ve decided not to renew my subscription to any print magazine. Online implementations won’t suffice, either– they run counter to notions of ownership and, since most employ Flash, generally suck. Instead, I’ll request that publishers provide subscribers an option to download digital copies in lieu of print; it seems a logical progression and publications like Electric Literature, GUD, and Porchlight have already proven that digital magazines can be beautiful as well as functional. When such an option is made available, I will happily resubscribe.

* Online lit mags are publishing some of the most intriguing writing available today. Every Monday, I post a pointer to a site that offers fiction and/or poetry either as free content or as samples from subscriber issues. Today’s pointer is to Moon Milk Review.

from MMR’s About page:

Moon Milk Review is a nonprofit literary and arts magazine that takes its title from Italo Calvino’s short story, “The Distance of the Moon.” Our aesthetic veers toward the same ”otherlands” or “slipstream” in literary style, including an appreciation for magical realist, surrealist, metarealist and realist works with an offbeat spin.

Currently, MMR runs monthly issues of free fiction and a multi-media gallery with artwork and music. We are planning an annual anthology that will feature new fiction and a few pieces chosen from that year’s monthlies as well as artwork. More information soon to come.

When you want a quick, on the slip, culture fix, stop by Moon Milk Review, where you can always find free fiction, artwork and music, all in one place.

fiction excerpt from “Zero Dark Thirty” by John Emerson:

It is the silken hour of morningtide as a fat, polka-dot spider crawls along the edge of a dust and plaster-encrusted windowsill.  Briefly, it pauses to examine a vertical, paint-smeared iron bar: one of three that obstruct an easterly view out of a small, broken glass window, above a narrow, rectangular bed, where a short, thin man lays sleeping, sleeping still.  Then, forward-march, and the spider moves from light into shadow, from shadow into a thin, tapered crack of crumbling mortar that flakes and falls in a spatter of powdery ash upon the twisted countenance of the sleeping man.

Thinking about putting in a bid for the world’s most expensive book? Or maybe pre-ordering Jimmy Page’s “leather-bound, silk-wrapped and autographed 512-page memoir” for £445?

Yeah, me neither.

A better investment in literature can be found at eBay.

via The Los Angeles Times:

Cancer care auction features literary prizes

When Christine Lee Zilka’s friend Jennifer Derilo was diagnosed with Hodgin’s Lymphoma, she decided she was going to do something to help. The two became friends when getting their MFA degrees in creative  writing at Mills College in Northern California, and are now editors at the Kartika Review; Zilka knew her friend Derilo, 32, had no health insurance.

So Zilka called on friends, and some friends of friends, and a few strangers, and put together a literary auction, which is going on now on EBay. As you’d expect, there are some signed books to be had.

But the auction is geared for writers as well as for readers. There are several offers of manuscript critiques  by established authors, including Lac Su, Randa Jarrar, Yiyun Li and Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum. Bynum, a SoCal resident, was named one of the New Yorker’s 20 under 40 fiction writers to watch earlier this year.

First thing I read by JCO was “Zombie“. This new short story collection sounds like a keeper.

via Chicago Tribune:

Review: ‘Sourland’ By Joyce Carol Oates

What’s obsession got to do with it, with the making of powerful and perhaps even lasting art? If you read Sourland, Joyce Carol Oates’ stunning new collection of short fiction, you have to answer: everything.

Fifteen new stories and the title novella make up nearly four hundred pages of obsessive focus on the plight of naïve young female adolescents and newly bereaved women in a world of pain, suffering, loss, and dangerous affections.

Huffington Post has a terrific post by Kazuo Ishiguro and a short video with the author, cast, and director.

Ever since I first saw the film of Never Let Me Go a couple of months ago, I’ve been telling people how I’ve learnt so much more about my own novel. Friends think I’m being modest, or they think it weird, but actually it makes a lot of sense.

Theatrical trailer:

A classmate’s work inspired me to try writing a humorous short story. “How hard can it be?” I thought.

Lesson learned.

Maybe I should have read Disquiet Please: More Humor Writing from The New Yorker before making the attempt.

Jessica Hagedorn’s, Charlie Chan is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction, remains a seminal collection of Asian American writing. Professor Yunte Huang’s new book examines the real-life story behind cinema’s most inscrutable detective.

via NPR:

Investigating The Real Detective Charlie Chan

Huang set out to give that honorable policeman, Chang Apana, the recognition he deserves. Apana “was a 5-foot-tall Cantonese cop in Honolulu in the early 20th century,” Huang explains. Originally, Apana had worked as a paniolo, or Hawaiian cowboy. In 1898 — the same year that the United States officially annexed Hawaii — he joined the police force.

“As a police officer, he worked almost the most dangerous beats in Chinatown, carrying a bullwhip in hand,” says Huang. “He never used a gun, and he was a master of disguise. One time, he single-handedly arrested 40 people without firing a shot” — apprehending a large group of Chinese gamblers using only his bullwhip.