Late Last Night Books - Page 29 of 32 - because so much reading, writing, and living happens after-hours

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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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Remembering the Holocaust

4/17/2014

On My Own: Decoding the Conspiracy of Silence, by Erika Schulhof Rybeck and published last year by Summit Crossroads Press, is just one of the increasing number of Holocaust memoirs from survivors who want to tell their stories.

Rybeck escaped the Holocaust by traveling via the Kinder Transport train to Scotland in 1938. She grew up there in a Catholic boarding school, protected from the horrors of the war and the fate of her parents by a “conspiracy of silence.” As an adult, she spent years seeking the truth of the Holocaust and how it claimed her family.

That is just one story. On my desk are two recent memoirs from Gihon River Press,

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Losing the Label

4/13/14 – LOSING THE LABEL

“She’s an old maid! She never married … She’s just about to close up the library!”

Recognize that line? It’s from the film It’s A Wonderful Life and illustrates the sad fate of Mary Hatch had her husband George Bailey never been born. That’s right; the poor thing would have lived her life repressed, bespectacled, alone. In short, she’d have been … *gasp* … a librarian!

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SO MANY BOOKS, SO LITTLE TIME

4/10/2014. SO MANY BOOKS, SO LITTLE TIME

Every few days I receive an email suggesting new novels I might like to read. I hear from Kirkus Reviews, Oprah’s Book Club, the Washington Independent Review of Books, Goodreads, and more. Granted, I asked to be on these mailing lists, but occasionally I find so much information overwhelming. And that doesn’t even count the bestseller lists and reviews. So many good novels are coming out every day that I’ll never be able to read them all. Priorities must be set, but how?

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Book Review: Dislocation by Margaret Meyers

4/7/14 – BOOK REVIEW: DISLOCATION BY MARGARET MEYERS

With more than a million books published each year in the United States alone, it’s all too easy to overlook a wonderful author. Don’t do that to Margaret Meyers, whose new story collection, Dislocation, has just been published by Entasis Press.

Meyers’s multilayered stories are charming, insightful, and significant, with writing that’s filled with wit and humor. There’s no better way to capture the power of her prose than to quote it. Consider the opening of Doing Good:

“As the young black woman climbs into the front passenger seat of the VW Bug, Delia, crosslegged in the back, notes that her mother’s ears are still ripe-tomato red. Her mother speaks to the young woman in her calm, warm, Sunday-morning voice but those ears, generally very pale with tiny gold freckles, tell Delia that her mother is very far from calm.”

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IN PRAISE OF THE LONG NOVEL

4/4/14 – IN PRAISE OF THE LONG NOVEL

Pundits have it that the age of the long, rambling novel is over. Having just read two super long books with book clubs that couldn’t get enough of them, I beg to differ.

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4/1/2014. GUEST BLOGGER PEGGY PAYNE ON NOVELS OF THE SUPERNATURAL AND EXTREMELY NATURAL

4/1/2014. GUEST BLOGGER PEGGY PAYNE ON NOVELS OF THE SUPERNATURAL AND EXTREMELY NATURAL

The question most writers are asked second (after the universal “What do you do?”) is “What do you write?”

Not such an easy question to answer for novelists whose books deal with both spirituality and the raw details of physical and emotional life.

More important, what if you’re a reader and want to read such a book: where do you look? Again, not so easy.

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AUTHOR PEGGY PAYNE IS GUEST BLOGGER ON APRIL 1

3/29/14. AUTHOR PEGGY PAYNE IS GUEST BLOGGER ON APRIL 1

Author Peggy Payne has chosen to craft her novels around the intersection of spirituality and physical/emotional life. Or, as she explained in an interview here earlier this month, the subject chose her. The results include Revelation, Cobalt Blue, and Sister India, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

Despite her novels’ success, Peggy says she has difficulty explaining their nature and an even bigger challenge categorizing them so readers know where to find them. She’s come up with possible, somewhat whimsical, solutions to the labeling dilemma, which she shares along with actual sources for books of “expanded realism” on a guest blog post here April 1.

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What Are You Reading?

3-23-14 WHAT ARE YOU READING?

On Late Last Night Books we’re always writing about books and authors, but what are people reading? I took my questionnaire to people I know and people I don’t know, asking: What are you reading late at night? Why? What do you do by day? The answers might surprise you.

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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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Deadline: Istanbul

3/17/2014 -DEADLINE: ISTANBUL

Mystery as travel guide? That’s how I read Deadline: Istanbul, Peggy Hanson’s novel featuring a journalist named Elizabeth Darcy as amateur detective. Of course, Darcy carries Jane Austin with her wherever she goes.

Peggy spoke last week at a meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter meeting of Mystery Writers of America, an organization for mystery and crime writers. She wore an Egyptian dress in memory of Elizabeth Peters, pseudonym of mystery author Barbara Mertz, who died last year.

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THE SCARY AUTHOR PHOTO

3/13/14 THE SCARY AUTHOR PHOTO

Confession: that little thumbnail photo of me up in the left-hand corner of my posts is over ten years old. It was taken right before my first book was published, although it never ventured much farther than my publisher’s website. I am famously photo-phobic. I didn’t even want to be in my own wedding pictures. But even I know that a ten-year-old picture is pushing the boundaries of both usefulness and credibility. Do I still look like that? Sure, if you squint or stand real far away.

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INTERVIEW WITH PEGGY PAYNE, AUTHOR OF COBALT BLUE

3/10/14 INTERVIEW WITH PEGGY PAYNE, AUTHOR OF COBALT BLUE

Throughout her career as a novelist, Peggy Payne has explored aspects of spiritual and supernatural phenomena. Her first novel, Revelation, deals with a Christian minister who hears God speak to him out loud. Her second, Sister India, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, follows an American woman as she seeks sanctuary in Varanasi (Benares), India, destination of the holiest Hindu pilgrimage. Payne’s latest novel, Cobalt Blue, as I said in my review last month, describes the turbulent experience of kundalini rising. Cobalt Blue earned the rare distinction of having been the book of the month on a Playboy Radio Network program and in the top 100 spiritual books for Kindle.

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Should only positive book reviews be published?

3/7/14 – IS THERE STILL A ROLE FOR THE NEGATIVE BOOK REVIEW?

The world of the book review is getting mighty hard to navigate. With more and more publications tightening their belts, eliminating book supplements, and pink slipping reviewers, serious literary criticism (think James Wood in the New Yorker or Dwight Garner in The New York Times) has become a very rare commodity. At the same time, online book review sites of widely varying quality are proliferating, with new ones popping up every day.

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REVIEW: THE DEATH LOTTERY BY GERALD M. WEINBERG

3/4/14 – REVIEW: THE DEATH LOTTERY BY GERALD M. WEINBERG

Full disclosure: I love books about serial killers. So I was destined to love The Death Lottery, Gerald M. Weinberg’s new novel about a serial killer randomly terrorizing Manhattan and a team of math geniuses determined to find a method to the madness.

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GUEST BLOGGER BARBARA WESTWOOD DIEHL ON THE ENDURING APPEAL OF THE SHORT STORY

3/1/14 – GUEST BLOGGER BARBARA WESTWOOD DIEHL ON THE SHORT STORY’S ENDURING APPEAL

Yes, I complain about the volume of submissions. (502 in the last 22 days, and 256 of those are short stories.) I complain about the time away from my own writing. I complain about all the administrative tasks of running a literary journal—I won’t put you to sleep with that laundry list—but all those tasks have nothing to do with the intoxicating work of reading hundreds of short stories each submission period. Yes, all of them, not only the stories that we finally publish. I’m humbled , stunned really, to have all those stories entrusted to me.

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Preview of March 1 Guest Blogger Barbara Westwood Diehl

2/28/14 – PREVIEW OF MARCH 1 GUEST BLOGGER BARBARA WESTWOOD DIEHL

When short-story writer Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in Literature, she said it was a “wonderful thing” for the short story, which she hoped “would come to the fore.”

No one would agree more than Barbara Westwood Diehl, who, as managing editor of The Baltimore Review, reads more short stories in a month than most people read in a lifetime. Find out what that’s like–and how she explains the enduring allure of the short story–when her guest blog appears in this space tomorrow.

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A Review – The Gates of Babylon

02/26/2014 THE GATES OF BABYLON BY MICHAEL WALLACE – A REVIEW

We know what we like and we like what we know. That simple logic is what draws readers to books that are part of a series. We like the consistency of knowing what we’ll get when we throw down our hard earned dollars for some reading entertainment. If we like the storyline and the characters in one book, we hope the author will be consistent and bring us the same great storytelling in the next and the next.

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S. Linebaugh interviews author Bill Lambrecht

2/23/14 Linebaugh interviews author Bill Lambrecht

“I’m a black- hearted dog,” author Bill Lambrecht confesses in Big Muddy Blues. “Th muddy_author1 e contempt American Indians feel towards me at the moment might even rival the store they reserve for the Army Corps of Engineers.” Lambrecht’s nonfiction is like this, telling a big story in personal terms, sweeping the reader with him on a journey of discovery.

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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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