Gary Garth McCann, Author at Late Last Night Books - Page 3 of 3

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Book Review: Aquarius Falling by Michael Tucker, reviewed by Gary Garth McCann

8/20/14 REVIEW OF THE NOVEL AQUARIUS FALLING BY MICHAEL TUCKER

“It’s easy to see how to do away with what we call crime…It can be done by giving the people a chance to live, by destroying special privileges…Nobody would steal if he could get something of his own some easier way…Jail is an evidence of the lack of charity of the people on the outside who make the jails and fill them with the victims of their greed.” The Essential Words and Writings of Clarence Darrow, Larson and Marshall, Eds., Modern Library, 2007.

The transition from childhood to adulthood is difficult.

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The Subjectivity of Reading: How Do Your Favorite Books Fare on Amazon?

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF READING: HOW DO YOUR FAVORITE BOOKS FARE ON AMAZON?

I noticed recently that one of my favorite books, Anita Brookner’s Booker Prize-winning Hotel Du Lac, averages only 3.7 stars with 82 Amazon reviewers. Not a terrible rating, but surprisingly low to me since I love the book. Amazon features this sentence, quoted from one of the reviews: “The main character was dull and not very likeable, but that may have been the point.” Amazon adds, “10 reviewers made similar comments.”

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Garry Craig Powell, author of Stoning the Devil, guest blogger

6/29/14 OUR GUEST BLOGGER ON JULY 1 WILL BE GARRY CRAIG POWELL, AUTHOR OF STONING THE DEVIL

Garry Craig Powell was educated at the universities of Cambridge, Durham, and Arizona. Living in the Persian Gulf and teaching on the women’s campus of the national university inspired him to write his novel-in-stories, Stoning the Devil (Skylight Press, 2012), set in the UAE. His short fiction has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2009, McSweeney’s, Nimrod, New Orleans Review, and other literary magazines. He has been awarded fellowships by the Arkansas Arts Council and the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow.

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Re-reading Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Afraid my Kindle might run out of juice, I wanted a small book for backup for a recent flight and, because I wanted something light to carry, grabbed off my bookshelves the novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I’d read it at least three times over the years and thought I might be bored. Think again. Capote amazed me.

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Interview: Johanna Garth, author of Losing Beauty

5/20/14 INTERVIEW WITH JOHANNA GARTH, AUTHOR OF LOSING BEAUTY AND LOSING HOPE, THE PERSEPHONE CAMPBELL URBAN FANTASIES

Q: After an Amazon bestseller in urban fantasy, you’re changing directions with your fiction, right? Tell me as much as you want to share about THE FAMILY WARR, the novel you’re working on now.

A:My favorite kinds of books encapsulate the twists and turns of human experience. Whether they accomplish that through an urban fantasy with paranormal elements or the tale of a damaged family, such as the one portrayed in THE FAMILY WARR, is almost irrelevant.

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Dave Barry, The Complete Guide to Guys

A HUMOROUS EXCERPT FROM DAVE BARRY’S THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO GUYS

At Three Editors Journal I read the excerpt below from Dave Barry’s The Complete Guide to Guys, immediately went to Amazon, read more, and bought the book. Here’s the excerpt from the Journal:

Let’s say a guy named Fred is attracted to a woman named Martha. He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves. They continue to see each other regularly, and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.

And then, one evening when they’re driving home, a thought occurs to Martha, and, without really thinking, she says it aloud: “Do you realize that, as of tonight, we’ve been seeing each other for exactly six months?”

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Author interview: John O’Hern, Sweetspot, Confessions of a Golfaholic

4/20/14 INTERVIEW WITH JOHN O’HERN, COMEDIAN, PLAYWRIGHT, AND AUTHOR OF THE LAUGH-OUT-LOUD FUNNY NOVEL SWEETSPOT, CONFESSIONS OF A GOLFAHOLIC

The International Network of Golf named Sweetspot its 2013 Outstanding Achiever, and the New England Golf Monthly said, “If you’re crazy about golf or you’re a golf widow, then you have to put the book Sweetspot, Confessions of a Golfaholic by John O’Hern on your must-read list.” Or if you just plain like to laugh, I say.

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New Hope, PA, Farley’s Bookshop, Interview

3/20/14 INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM HASTINGS, FARLEY’S BOOKSHOP, NEW HOPE, PA

Last Thanksgiving I was in New Hope, PA and happened by Farley’s Bookshop, on Main Street, full of after-dinner shoppers. I was struck by the store, by its bustling prosperity and by the fact that I found one of my recent favorite books, Ron Cooper’s Purple Jesus, displayed there. I also saw displays arranged by small presses.

Q: Tell me about three or four of your favorite current novels from small presses. What percentage of your novel sales do small presses represent? Do you find small press novels any more or less reliable in quality than novels from mainstream presses? Do you find them any more or less to your taste?

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Stoning the Devil, Garry Craig Powell, book review and interview

2/20/14 STONING THE DEVIL, GARRY CRAIG POWELL, BOOK REVIEW AND INTERVIEW

Time and fortune happen to everyone. Before my other half, Todd, read Garry Craig Powell’s Stoning the Devil, I told Todd that when he finished I would want him to tell me if he could see any difference between Stoning the Devil and the novels on the New York Times notable books lists over the years. Because I can’t see any difference, in quality of writing or in the relevance and significance of topic.

Todd couldn’t see any difference, either.

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Interview with author, publisher Eva Kapitan, A Few Good Books Publishing

1/20/13 INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR, PUBLISHER EVA KAPITAN, A FEW GOOD BOOKS PUBLISHING

Q: I’ve read and enjoyed two of your cozy mysteries, Lovers, Grapes and Crimes and the forthcoming Murder at the Wine Cask Inn. Plots and characters are madcap, like a ’30s movie—I think of Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby. Where do the ideas for your books and the people in them come from?

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PREVIEWING OUR 12/1/13 GUEST BLOGGER JOHN BECKMAN, WHOSE FIRST NOVEL THE WINTER ZOO WAS A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2002

11/29/13 PREVIEWING OUR 12/1/13 GUEST BLOGGER JOHN BECKMAN, WHOSE FIRST NOVEL THE WINTER ZOO WAS A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2002 AND WHOSE FORTHCOMING AMERICAN FUN: FOUR CENTURIES OF JOYOUS REVOLT IS ALREADY HIGHLY PRAISED

Kirkus Reviews said The Winter Zoo was “potent and deeply disturbing…the work of a most ambitious and unquestionably gifted writer.”

The New York Times said: “The hero of this first novel, a young man newly arrived in Poland from Iowa, trades his naivety for lessons in youthfulness; Beckman captures the rush of freshly liberated desires in post-Communist Europe.” Beckman taught literature in Poland and France before becoming a professor of English at the United States Naval Academy.

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Interview with Ron Cooper, author of the novels Purple Jesus and Hume’s Fork

11/20/13 AN INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR RON COOPER. (SEE ALSO HIS GUEST BLOGGER POST ON NOVEMBER 1, BELOW, AND MY REVIEW OF HIS ACCLAIMED NOVEL PURPLE JESUS ON OCTOBER 20.)

Q: Your novels, Hume’s Fork and Purple Jesus, take us into the lives of the rural underprivileged. In The World Republic of Letters, Pascale Casanova says: “…the birth of the American novel may be said to coincide with the use of the oral language in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn… insisting upon a specific idiom freed from the constraints of the written language…” Purple Jesus is in the tradition Twain started, its characters far free of constraints, language-wise. What are you writing now, who’s at the focus, where’s it set? Will idiom be as much a part of the characters, or are you venturing otherwise?

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GUEST BLOGGER RON COOPER

10/29/13, INTRODUCING 11/1/13 GUEST BLOGGER, RON COOPER, AUTHOR OF PURPLE JESUS, PROCLAIMED “SO PERFECTLY WRITTEN, IT’S EXHILARATING TO READ” IN A WASHINGTON POST REVIEW

“You just don’t know. She’s just that. Everything about her. She looks at me—a look that could worm a dog. And her mouth. Lips like corn.”–from Purple Jesus

A look that could worm a dog? Lips like corn? Did I read that right?

Who puts words like these in their characters’ minds and mouths? A philosophy professor and novelist named Ron Cooper, raised in South Carolina and noted in the French magazine Transfuge as one of a group of writers who focus on poor people living desperate lives. B.A., College of Charleston, M.A., University of South Carolina, Ph.D.

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Review of Ron Cooper’s Purple Jesus

10/20/13 “Purple Jesus is so perfectly written, it’s exhilarating to read,” wrote Eric Miles Williamson in The Washington Post. “The publication of Purple Jesus is a literary event of the first magnitude.”

Ron Cooper’s Purple Jesus is the heartbreaking tale of a hapless, not always well-intentioned young man—Purvis—being led around by his penis and his penchant for fantasy by a young woman determined to escape the backwoods rural poverty that asthmatic Purvis lacks the self-esteem to ever really imagine himself escaping. The book is also the best explanation—illumination—I’ve seen of how some modern-life tragedies come into being, the kinds of fatal tragedies that leave all of us gawking at the TV news and saying, “Why would anyone do that?

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Carolyn Sienkiewicz, Washington Independent Review of Books, guest blogs

Carolyn Sienkiewicz does the extraordinary. Last night I heard the Peabody-trained oboist play with the American Balalaika Symphony. I’ve read her articles in Cruising World, Living Aboard, Chesapeake Bay Magazine and SpinSheet about living with her husband, Mark, aboard a sailboat for eight years—although from talking with her I know that she and Mark both got seasick the first time they sailed. When you next visit the “Charm City” of Baltimore, if you treat yourself to a visit aboard the sailing ambassador, the Pride of Baltimore II, know that Carolyn was among the volunteers who worked over a recent winter to keep the swift clipper shipshape. And she is a reviewer, editor, and member of the editorial board of the Washington Independent Review of Books.

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Fantasy novel Juggler’s Blade, Rob Ross, review

9/20/13 – BOOK REVIEW OF ROB ROSS’s FANTASY NOVEL, JUGGLER’S BLADE

I usually don’t read fantasy but watched for Juggler’s Blade to be published because I knew it had won the fantasy silver prize in the Maryland Writers’ Association novel contest. Not only does the book jump off fast, but the beginning is worthy of literary fiction. The plight of Ian, the young protagonist, brings to mind Oliver Twist, Dickens’ lad born into a life of crime.

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Fantasy novel Juggler’s Blade, author Rob Ross interviewed

9/1/13 –INTERVIEW WITH ROB ROSS, AUTHOR OF JUGGLER’S BLADE

Rob Ross’s fantasy novel, Juggler’s Blade, was published during summer. I’ll review it on the 20^th of the month on this site. Meantime I met the author for coffee in downtown Washington to ask him about his writing roots and about his reading taste. I find one of the best ways to discover good books to read is to ask authors of books I like what they recommend.

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