Sound good to you?

Do...

Cancer
Dementia
Hospital visits
deaths
funerals
marital infidelity
sexual promiscuity

...all sound good to you? Well, if so -- then I've got a book for you! Antonya Nelson's latest story collection features all of the above. Nelson interests me because she is compared to writers like Lorrie Moore and Ann Beattie -- two of my favorite writers working today. Also, who can beat a collection of stories written about the most dysfunctional of families - the American white middle-class family?

PEN/Faulkner award goes to...

E.L. Doctorow has won the PEN/Faulkner award for his latest novel, The March. Published in 2005, Doctorow's novel is a fictionalized account of Sherman's tumultuous "March to the Sea" during the Civil War, when General William Tecumseh Sherman pillaged and plowed a destructive path through the south, destroying and cutting off the Confederate army's supplies. Doctorow is a celebrated master of historical fiction; his superb novel Ragtime is an account of America at the turn-of-the century that follows real-life historical characters who changed and impacted this country.

remote book signing?

Writer Margaret Atwood claims she is ignorant of technology. However, the Booker prize-winning author has invented a "remote pen" to sign fans' books virtually -- much like the electronic gizmos UPS or FedEx employs for package deliveries. Possibilities await...

Octavia Butler, science fiction writer

It seems as though I am only writing posts about writers dying. I just found out from a librarian friend today that Octavia Butler, science fiction writer extraordinaire, has died at age 58. Writer of novels such as Kindred, Parable of the Sower, and its sequel, Parable of the Talents, Butler was an amazing writer. Her novels have a social conscience, not just pure science fiction, but novels of social commentary, intelligence, spirituality, and meaning. Bob tells me that Wild Seed is on his Top Ten, so I will have to read it as soon as I can.

Reds

My latest foray into nonfiction is a huge, 614 page tome on American anti-communism and the roots of McCarthyism in 1950s America: Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America, by Ted Morgan. It is hefty and dense, but it is also a fascinating dissection of the history of the Communist party in America and the fallout from the Bolshevik Revolution and Soviet espionage before, during, and after World War II. One does get the feeling throughout the book that Morgan may be trying a bit too hard to convince the reader of how dangerous the Soviet threat was during the 1930s and 1940s -- his tone and language convey the idea that Soviet spies surrounded us everywhere. Still, since the release of the code-breaking Venona transcripts and the de-classified McCarthy hearings, it is an important examination of one of the most fearsome times in American history.

Larry Brown, writer, 1951-2004

I was looking for some information on one of my favorite authors recently and found out he passed away in November of 2004. Larry Brown wrote some of the best Southern gritty fiction around and was a self-taught writer who didn't start writing until he was well into his thirties. His novel, Fay, is on my top ten list of all-time favorite novels. Listen to an audio tribute from NPR...