The TMO Litblog
The TMO litblog is a collection of short posts, reviews, and tweets dedicated to literary fiction and book news.
Friday, September 26th, 2008
Over at the Guardian book blog there’s a debate blowing after a post dealing with Jim Crace’s plans to retire. The post has provoked all sorts of reactions regarding the merits of a writer’s age/youth, many largely missing the point made by Crace. Perhaps the most worrying thing, though, regarding the post is the implication […]
Posted in Literary News | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008
Some posts ago we took up the ‘who’ll be literature’s radiohead’ argument up, suggesting that there are already a number of established authors who have been giving away their work a la In Rainbows – for example the Wu Ming foundation or Mega-bestseller Neil Gaiman. Word comes through (via Lizzy’s Literary Life) of a new […]
Tags: Neil Gaiman
Posted in Literary News | No Comments »
Thursday, September 18th, 2008
Sarah Loud,head of digital publishing at Pan Macmillan, has published a much talked about Publisher’s manifesto for the 21st Century over at The Digatilist. It’s a long piece, and well worth reading. It starts with a fairly common position, that in this social-media/internet/mobile entertainment world the days of the book are numbered. “More and […]
Posted in Literary News, short stories | No Comments »
Monday, September 15th, 2008
Sad news was reported on Friday, that American writer David Foster Wallace has apparently comitted suicide, at the age of 46. TMO’s very own Shane Barry wrote two perceptive pieces on DFW back in January 2006 (link), approaching the American writer’s work with caution through his collection of stories Oblivion. We reprint the second piece […]
Tags: american authors, david foster wallace
Posted in Literary News, Novels, short stories | No Comments »
Saturday, September 13th, 2008
Orhan Pamuk is interviewed in the latest edition of Venerdi di Repubblica magazine, here in Italy, and discusses the lengthy writing process he undertook for his new novel The Museum of Innocence, which will be published later this year (the Turkish version coming first, will be unveiled at this year’s Frankfurt book fair, where Turkey […]
Posted in Literary News, Novels | No Comments »
Sunday, September 7th, 2008
“This book makes no secret of the fact that it is aimed at specialists, containing as it does only four pages that are not structured as a list.” This is the encouraging opening of a review of Seamus Heaney: A Bibliography, by Rand Brandes and Michael A. Durkan which appeared in the ever-gripping Irish Times […]
Posted in Literary News | No Comments »
Friday, August 29th, 2008
Never judge a book by its cover. Sage advice, but what about its title? I approached Jonathan Lethem’s slim short-story collection Men and Cartoons less than enthusiastically, resigned to reading it because it was a) a gift, and b) short. The problem? The title, plus the promise that more than one story would concern itself with superherose, […]
Tags: american authors, short stories
Posted in short stories | No Comments »
Sunday, August 24th, 2008
I can sympathise, to an extent, with DoveGreyReader who approached Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland with trepidation given the tag ‘post 9-11 masterpiece’ (the Observer) that has been widely used by enthusiastic reviewers. It’s a problematic tag for any novel, but particularly so in this case given that the novel scarcely concerns itself with the attacks or their aftermath. That’s […]
Tags: narrative voices
Posted in Novels | No Comments »
Monday, August 18th, 2008
Back in December, mediabistro’s GalleyCat posed the question ‘Where will we find Literature’s Radiohead?‘. Not a question of matching literary style up to the Oxford band’s musical approach (although over at the Valve they see a similarity between Yeats and the band), but rather the starting point for a discussion on distribution methods – on […]
Tags: european novels, Neil Gaiman
Posted in Literary News, Novels | No Comments »
Friday, August 8th, 2008
Mr Monkey’s recent post on possible book-film tie-ins made me dig out Guatam Malkani’s novel Londonstani. I approached the novel with a certain amount of scepticism, not particularly grabbed by the plot line of a young geek from Hounslow who seeks to develop his identity through designer clothes, body building, and hanging out with the […]
Posted in Novels | No Comments »