Category Archives: reading

December 22, 2009   DG&B   controversy, opinion, Rachel, reading  
8

Reading forbidden material

by Rachel

With the recent release of Vladimir Nabokov’s never-before-published and not-quite-finished novel, The Original of Laura, I thought it might be interesting to touch on the debate that was brought about because of its publication.

After having written the incredible Lolita, and some of my all-time favorite short stories, Nabokov was working on The Original of Laura at the time of his death, in 1977. With strict instructions for his yet-to-be-finished novel to be burned upon his death, the manuscript was not burned, but rather placed in his wife’s hands, and then, upon her death, passed on to his son, Dimitri.
A great article on the matter was written by Ron Rosenbaum for the New York Observer back in 2005, pleading for Dimitri Nabokov to allow the manuscript to either be published or gather dust, but to never let it burn. I suggest you read the article to see just how passionate some people are in the literary world–the poor guy is at the point of panic towards the end of his article. So, I’m gathering he’s pleased now that Nabokov’s unfinished, semi-unauthorized work has finally been released.

Message boards have been filled with comments regarding the publication, and the topic was touched upon in morning news shows as well as in blogs and newspaper columns. Rosenbaum stated that Nabokov’s son, Dimitri, had a “responsibility to the literary world” to publish the “last fragments of his father’s genius.”

Many questions arise from this debate: Did Dimitri really have a responsibility to publish his father’s work, despite being told not to? In Leland de la Durantaye’s Boston Review article, “Last Wishes,” he writes that Vladimir Nabokov’s wife had to stop her husband from burning a draft of Lolita. Lolita! Was his son, then, afraid of a possible new masterpiece being overlooked, never to be appreciated?

With all these thoughts filling my head, I tend to get a little philosophical and start to wonder about the ethics of the situation. It’s certainly sad to think that another masterpiece could have stayed locked up in a safety-deposit box forever, but was it ok to go against Nabokov’s final request?

How much say or ownership can an author really have upon their death? And, do you think it’s ok to go against an author’s wishes for the sake of art?

December 21, 2009   DG&B   fun, Jim, lists, reading  
3

Stephen King’s favorite books

by Jim

Consistently my favorite listmaker in pop culture, Stephen King has names his ten favorite books of 2009.  What I love about Mr. King is that he never seems to care about convention or what others will make of his choices. He’ll include popular commercial fiction (hey, John Sandford), dense literary fiction (hi there, Roberto Bolano), and even books that came out decades ago (isn’t Richard Yates dead?).

I’ve only read two of the books on the list—the weighty Drood and the weightier 2666—and disliked both. But he’s Stephen King! I’d still take the rest of his recommendations seriously.

December 18, 2009   DG&B   fun, Lauren, music, reading  
9

Oasis, Alanis, Anne Rice, and Gilbert Grape

by Lauren

What do those four things have in common, other than being convenient markers of my adolescence?  I used to be unable to hear Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill or Oasis’s (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? without being transported to Anne Rice’s Lousiana or the Iowa of Peter Hedges. This GalleyCat post on music to write by made me think about the ways in which I experience music and reading together.  As a person who tends to listen to the same album incessantly, not switching up till I never want to hear it ever again, there have sometimes been albums intrinsically tied to a novel I was reading–though apparently the effect lessens over time, because I now can’t recall which CD above went with which book.  Every time I hear Brandi Carlile, it calls to mind a novel by a client that I devoured in a couple sittings with The Story on repeat in the background.  (I also experience this with apartments:  Coldplay’s A Rush of Blood to the Head = my senior year in Ditmas/Flatbush; John Mayer’s Room for Squares is two apartments later, on the Upper East Side.  My musical taste = ever so slightly embarassing.)

I’ve always loved the power that music has to do this–feeling reinserted into the world of a beloved novel can sometimes be like coming home.

I recently discovered a new version of this phenomenon: my client, Michael Gavaghen had been having a bit of trouble diving back into his novel to do the edits he and I had discussed.  When he’d first worked on the novel, he’d been listening to a lot of blues music, and since then had shifted his listening habits.  In fact, he’d been working on another novel as well.  When it came time to revisit the first novel, he had trouble re-immersing himself in that world.  But as soon as he put back on the blues, he recaptured the rhythm and voice of the novel.  Handy trick!

Does anyone else experience this, either as a writer or a reader?  And does anyone actually have a strong sense memory from simply reading about music rather than hearing it?

December 07, 2009   DG&B   fun, Jim, lists, reading  
1

List of lists

by Jim

I’ve made it clear over the past few years that I’m a sucker for a good list. And here’s a list of lists. One blogger compiled every Best of ’09 list he has found so far. Stupidly addictive. I’m going to stop looking in one…more…second….

December 04, 2009   DG&B   about us, book club, Chasya, favorites, fun, great books, Jane, Jessica, Jim, Lauren, Michael, Miriam, Rachel, reading, Stacey  
3

Book Clubbing at DGLM

by Rachel

 
This week, the DGLM office talked more books, as another book club meeting was held around the all-purposes back office table.

The book club is a little different to any I’ve been involved with before because, for starters, we don’t all read the same book. The DGLM book club usually involves all of us reading a different book–this time we chose novels from the great books lists that were compiled over the summer by staff and interns. Another thing that makes this book club different is that we’re not only evaluating books as readers, but as people in the publishing industry. The reports we give involve ways we would pitch the book, offering our real opinions (some in praise, some…not so much in praise), and then talking about how they performed and whether we’d have picked them out of slush.

This time around, here is what we read:

  • Jane read The Giant’s House by Elizabeth McCracken
  • Miriam read Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
  • Chasya read The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
  • Jessica read What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
  • Jim read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
  • Lauren read The Secret History by Donna Tartt
  • Stacey read Ordinary People by Judith Guest
  • I read After All These Years by Susan Isaacs

Following the DGLM book club this week, a few of us were eager to get our hands on books others had reported on, so the idea of a book club where everyone reads a different book is especially great because it allows us to hear about books we might not have heard of or seen in bookstores, and it also introduces us to amazing new authors. I really like this concept because bookstores can sometimes be overwhelming with all those titles on display, and it can be difficult to know what or who to start reading.

  

And, believe it or not, we’ve already chosen books to read for our next book club meeting next month. This time we’ll be reading books from the New York Times Notable Books of 2009, which Jim wrote about recently. I’m excited about this because I’ll be reading from an author I’ve never heard of, and discovering new writers is a passion of mine. Have you discovered amazing authors from book clubs? 

December 02, 2009   DG&B   Chasya, DGLM Recommends, favorites, fun, Jane, Jessica, Jim, Lauren, lists, Michael, Miriam, our website, Rachel, reading, Stacey  
0

DGLM Recommends

by DGLM

Just in time for the holidays, new staff recommendations from us here at DGLM to add to your shopping or wish lists!  Check ’em out!

December 02, 2009   DG&B   fun, holidays, lists, Miriam, reading  
2

Bookish holiday shopping

by Miriam

When I was a kid, the best thing I could imagine getting for my birthday or Christmas was a book. My family was, shall we say, “economically challenged,” and there wasn’t a lot of money for expensive presents, so books were the perfect gift. As far as I’m concerned, they still are. What else will keep you occupied for hours and days after the unwrapping frenzy has passed? After all, you can only use the Pedi Egg so often. And that chopping device your aunt gave you has “regifting” written all over it. But, open a book, wrap yourself in a blanket (or the Snuggie your cousin, Marge, gave you) and pour yourself a glass of wine or cup of cocoa and you’re set for a delightful time. Here are some book lists to shop from:

Michiko Kakutani’s Top 10 Books of 2009
NPR’s These Aren’t Your Geek’s Graphic Novels
The Guardian’s Top 10s
PW’s Best Children’s Books of 2009

November 30, 2009   DG&B   fun, Jim, lists, reading  
6

Even more to read

by Jim

Oh, jeez. The New York Times has released their list of 100 Notable Books of 2009.  As is always the case when this comes out, I feel a touch overwhelmed. It’s exciting to know that there are always more great books out there to be read, but at times it gets a bit daunting that you can never even hope to catch up. Or is that just me?

I already have Let the Great World Spin and The Year of the Flood set aside for my holiday break reading. And I want to read Half-Broke Horses and Wolf Hall. And Follow Me sounds fascinating. Ack!

Anyone else excited or frustrated by year end lists? See any titles that for sure should be skipped?

November 20, 2009   DG&B   favorites, Rachel, reading, short stories  
9

For the love of short stories

by Rachel

In an interview in today’s Wall Street Journal, Alice Munro talks about why she’s attracted to writing short fiction. “I used to write novels and I didn’t get anywhere,” she says. She then goes on to say that she’s now writing “some halfway in between sort of thing.”

Well, I love those halfway in between sort of things Munro writes. I’ve always been enthusiastic about reading short fiction because the author has to get down to business right away in developing the story, there’s no time to waffle on about unnecessary things and spend pages setting up elaborate scenes. I remember taking a short story class in college and finishing the course being amazed at how much effort actually goes into writing short fiction. So, short story writers are kind of like heroes to me. I always like to keep a collection of short stories on the side while I’m reading a novel–I have to keep my reading options open!

So, having said that, any suggestions for Thanksgiving short story reading?

November 19, 2009   DG&B   favorites, fun, Jessica, reading  
10

Roark and Baggins

by Jessica

Two recently published biographies of Ayn Rand have been getting a good deal of attention recently. It’s unusual that two so similar books have been published more or less simultaneously, and the net effect is to make it seem as if we are in the middle of a Rand resurgence. Thomas Mallon writes in the New Yorker that “most readers make their first and last pilgrimage to Galt’s Gulch….sometime between leaving for Middle Earth and packing for college.” Another reviewer (who it was, and the precise words he used, I can not now remember) said that Rand’s books have made it on to the mysteriously constituted but broadly understood unofficial reading list of adolescence. Both observations made me laugh, in large part because they seemed spot on. I read both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in early high school; who recommended them to me, I can’t, for the life of me, recall. Certainly not my parents, though they noted my choice of reading with some bemusement. I wasn’t in search of a political philosophy, and I emerged from my sojourn in Galt Gulch with no die-hard allegiance to Objectivism or snappy habit of wearing a cape. Ditto Middle Earth. I do, now wonder, where this unofficial reading list came from: for me in addition to Rand and Tolkien, it included generous helpings of Daphne DuMaurier (where is the gothic novel today, I ask?); Gone With the Wind; The Hitchhiker’s Guide; The Princess Bride; Down and Out in Paris and in London; Look Homeward, Angel; Lost Horizon. Note that I’m leaving off the books that were part of the official curriculum, such as Hiroshima, Death be Not Proud, A Separate Peace and assorted other death-related tales that I now suspect compose the reading-list-approach to undermining the adolescent sense of invincibility.

But I wonder what made it on to your unofficial list of adolescence? Did you read Rand? And what do Howard Roark and Bilbo Baggins have in common? Also, if anyone can tell me what article I’m paraphrasing, I’d be grateful.

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