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Short story master Alice Munro won the Man Booker Prize yesterday. The judges stated, “To read Alice Munro is to learn something every time that you never thought of before.”

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HTML Giant recently had a nice post from a former student of Barry Hannah’s that details the master’s rules for stories. Definitely check it out because the poster even featured a copy of Hannah’s handwritten notes, which sometimes frustrated me for hours as I tried to decipher the script. Although, Hannah’s handwriting made it difficult [...]

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In the New York Times, Motoko Rich examines the problems surrounding pricing e-books in an article entitled “Steal this Book (for $9.99). It’s an interesting look at how the publishing industry needs to balance the consumer’s perception that digital literature needs to be dirt cheap with the economic realities of the costs involved in making [...]

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Here’s an interesting question and answer session with Warren St. John, New York Times reporter and author of the recently released Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town. Since we’re all bookish types around here, St. John’s name may be familiar because he was a key figure in the unmasking of J.T. Leroy three [...]

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Here’s an article in the UK’s Daily Mail about an abandoned celebrity memoir from Jerry Hall. These things happen so in and of itself, this article isn’t that remarkable. However, I found this statement from one of Hall’s friends amusing: “They seemed OK with her writing style but she couldn’t keep it up and it [...]

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Galley Cat had a nice recounting of Chuck Palahniuk’s recent reading at Webster Hall in New York City. Palahniuk’s appearances have been far from “standard” for years now. And, thankfully, more and more authors are taking similar approaches to their readings. We’re seeing the old boring event with a monotone reading, a few questions, and [...]

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I’m working on a story and have a question that I would have thought would be easy to answer. But I’ve run into dead ends (maybe I’m just being stupid this morning) so maybe you can help answer my question. If you were drafted into the military during World War II, how long were you [...]

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Most of the co-authors I know work with celebrities on their high profile memoirs. But bestselling author James Patterson has a stable of co-authors who churn out his chart topping books. In yesterday’s New York Times, Charles McGrath had an interesting profile of Peter de Jonge, a Patterson collaborator who is now promoting his own [...]

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I spent a good deal of time wrapped up in Tony Bacon’s Million Dollar Les Paul: In Search of the Most Valuable Guitar in the World this past weekend. It’s an engaging read that is an exhaustive look into the roots of a collecting craze involving 1958 to 1960 Gibson Les Paul guitars. Bacon points [...]

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