Late Last Night Books - Page 3 of 29 - because so much reading, writing, and living happens after-hours

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A Book for Now: Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue

Imbolo Mbue’s novel Behold the Dreamers has been on my mind as I’ve read about the thousands of migrants from Central America walking the long miles toward the United States. The fictional story about Jenda Jonga, an immigrant from Cameroon, could be the story of so many people who see America as the promised land. One of America’s central myths is that of the poor immigrant who amasses riches. Mbue’s take on it is powerful and original.

Mbue herself is the embodiment of the immigrant success story. In 1998, an aunt sponsored her to come from her native Cameroon to study at Rutgers University. She went on to get a master’s degree from Columbia University. Behold the Dreamers, her debut novel, landed a million-dollar advance.

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THE POWER OF AN HOUR: WRITING ROUTINES

For decades I’ve been preaching it to myself and others: writing routines don’t have to be long. Devote just an hour every day to writing, even if you cannot get beyond a few words, or you’re writing nonsense. If you can’t write a word, at least read or think about your writing.

Don’t underestimate the power of an hour.

Just do it. It works. I wish I practiced what I preached more regularly. But I fully believe it nonetheless.

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Cast a Spell Over Chaos With Your Writing

One of my novels in progress is an attempt to cope with fear and chaos in our current political climate. Without revealing too much, it envisions a near future when a certain political figure and that person’s supporters have been effectively (but non-violently!) neutralized by virtue of magical spell. The stakes and conflict of the story derive from the threat that this enchantment will come undone.

It’s a kind of absurd story, by design. It may be a little silly, a little satirical, and a lot wish fulfillment. Sadly, I’ve been working on it for about a year, now, and am only half way through the first draft. I’m not a full-time writer, alas. When I am discouraged in my progress, or distracted by my day job, I have to find ways to motivate myself.

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A Reader and Writer’s New Year’s Resolutions

Confession: The last resolution I made that I stuck to was about seven or eight years ago, when I resolved to stop buying clothes that needed dry cleaning. I’ve been very happy with the way that turned out, as all the clothes in my closet are now hand or machine washable—which saves time, money, and is better for the environment. Usually though I don’t make New Year’s resolutions because I believe if you want to change something, change it now. Research shows the resolutions you make on New Year’s Eve usually don’t last.

Yet this year I’m ready to make a New Year’s resolution, even though I’m two months early. My first New Year’s resolution is to buy books only by small and university presses, and my second resolution to buy books through my local bookstore Starline Books or directly from the publisher.

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Are Men Finished in Fiction?

Speaking in a BBC interview recently, Fay Weldon described the current publishing market, emphasizing that it was dominated by women readers, who demanded women protagonists—and, increasingly in the #OwnVoices era, women authors. Ms. Weldon’s advice for male writers: use a feminine pseudonym.

As far as I could tell, this wasn’t a joke. It’s somewhat ironic, surely, after the prejudice against women writers prevalent in the nineteenth century—consider Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Charlotte Bronte, who all published anonymously or with masculine pseudonyms—that the exact same prejudice has returned, apparently, in reverse. (In spite of the much-vaunted inclusivity and diversity that we all value nowadays: maybe it doesn’t include men?) In case you think that Ms. Weldon is exaggerating the difficulty faced by men getting their fiction published, or even read, consider this: one of my male writer friends has told me that he intends to adopt a feminine pseudonym (independently of me bringing up the subject) and another is considering submitting his next novel with a woman as co-author.

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Thriller, Mystery or Ghost Story: How Should We Label Elizabeth Brundage’s All Things Cease to Appear?

When Stephen King writes a blurb for a novel, readers take notice. When a book is reviewed in the New York Times Book Review section, readers take notice. Let’s look at how Elizabeth Brundage’s fourth novel, All Things Cease to Appear, which was published in 2016, is being received by the reading public.

All Things has earned over 7,000 ratings and 1,000 reviews on Goodreads. That is very good, yet the book scores only 3.72 (out of 5)––not what one might expect. On Amazon, it does a little better with a 4.1 score, but from only 300 reviews.

What are the chief objections to the novel among Amazon and Goodreads reviewers? First, and least important in my opinion, is that she does away with quotation marks.

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GUEST BLOGGER DAVID LEDDICK: I’M NOT FOR EVERYONE. NEITHER ARE YOU.

“This is a work of genius, a metaphor-studded treasure chest filled with wisdom for anyone willing to go look,” says author and entrepreneur Seth Godin of David Leddick’s little gem I’m Not for Everyone. Neither Are You. A few chapter-ette titles will give you the idea. “There is no lasting comfort in a safe landing. Better to stay in flight…and embrace impermanence.” “In confrontation, never answer the way people expect you to.” “He was a man and I like that in a person.” (Leddick is gay, remember.) “He doesn’t want to give up everybody for somebody.” This chapter-ette begins by saying, “This applies more to men than to women. And not just gay men.” “A child says nothing matters, but it takes an adult to say it doesn’t matter that nothing matters.” And consider this quote from one chapter-ette: “The language you speak has much to do with your personality.

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Historical Research: Mining for Gold

I am sometimes asked to speak on historical research for writers because of my two historical novels, Shadow of the Rock and In Rembrandt’s Shadow. I visited libraries and special collections, traveled to sites in Florida, St. Thomas, Morocco, and Gibraltar, consulted maps and long out-of-print books, and interviewed historians and others to collect the information I needed. It was quite an adventure.

So I pay attention to the resources used in offbeat research and not necessarily by academics. Recently, a slim book called Finding the Little Klondyke Gold Mine: Grandpa’s Last Nugget by John Cox Williams crossed my desk. It’s the author’s story of searching for and finding his grandfather’s gold mine. He started with a vague memory of his mother showing him a nugget from the mine.

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Welcome to Gasoline Lake: An Interview with Steve Davenport

Steve Davenport is the Associate Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Illinois. He’s the author of two books of poetry: Uncontainable Noise (2006) and Overpass (2012). His “Murder on Gasoline Lake,” published first in Black Warrior Review and later packaged as a New American Press chapbook, is listed as Notable in Best American Essays 2007. His chapbook Nine Poems and Three Fictions won one of The Literary Review’s 2007-2008 Charles Angoff Awards for Outstanding Contributions in a Volume Year. Steve’s literary criticism includes work on Jack Kerouac and Richard Hugo.

Ron Cooper: Nice to see you again, Steve. Tell us a bit about where you grew up, were educated, etc.

Steve Davenport: Glad to be here, Ron.

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A Reader’ Evolution: How Annie Oakley & Wonder Woman taught me to read!

girl-flying-on-book-2970038_1920 As a pre-TV child (television arrived in Calgary in the early 50s, about ten years after it appeared in the U.S.), radio dramas fed my imagination: Boston Blackie; Suspense Theatre; and The Green Hornetcome immediately to mind. Though they provided the plot and dialogue, I was able to supply the images myself, far more dramatic than what any TV director could create. In my young mind, Boston Blackie was the white knight in spite of a name that implied otherwise. Evenings spent shivering in front of a radio, shivering from glorious fear and not cold. The room crackling with drama—suspense. And I was an important participant: the program needed myimagination to give it life.

At some point in those early years, someone sold my parents a set of the Books of Knowledge.

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McEwan’s The Children Act: The Novel or the Movie?

I’ve never been eager to see movies based on books, mostly because they never live up to the original, but I’m willing to make an exception when Emma Thompson is the star. That’s how I found myself at a showing this week of The Children Act, an almost-excellent film based on the novel of that name by Ian McEwan.

The film and the book both come to life in the opening scenes. We meet Fiona, a British High Court judge in the Family Division, wrestling with multiple cases that defy easily solutions, even as she’s confronted with a crisis in her marriage. Her husband of 35 years, frustrated by Fiona’s lack of interest in sex, has just demanded that she let him have an affair with a younger woman.

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THE ATLANTIC JOINS THE INTERNET ERA

In the movie The Wife, a jaded middle-aged female novelist takes aside a talented young writer at a Smith College reading and says to her: “Don’t do it.” The aspiring student writer stands her ground, insisting that “a writer needs to write.” The older woman sighs. “A writer needs to be read,” she says.

I understand both sentiments. A writer does need to write. But, oh, how often it feels pointless, when publishing is so hard, when all-too-soon even the published book feels as impactful as a rock settling to the bottom of the sea!

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Book Review: A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr

I finished reading JL Carr’s novella (or novel, depending on your definition: it’s about 100 pages, probably 35,000 words) about two weeks ago, and have found myself thinking about it daily since. It’s not that usual for me to be so haunted by a book, so it’s prompted me to consider why. Some of you might not have read it but may be familiar with the 1987 film, which starred a very young Colin Firth and Kenneth Branagh, as well as Natasha Richardson—an unusually sensitive, faithful adaptation, of considerable power, too.

Let’s start with a synopsis and statement of theme. It’s set in the summer of 1920, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, an area I know quite well, having spent a year there in my youth, when I was unemployed and forced to live with my mother.

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Destiny’s Rider: RIchard Russo on Writing, a Review of The Destiny Thief (2018)

Richard Russo is a star . . . in Bulgaria––to wit, a few years ago he was invited to their annual writers’ conference and when his flights got scrambled, he thought about saying sorry . . . until they told him he was the headliner. That’s what happens when you win a Pulitzer Prize. It also means publishers want books and are even willing to publish nine essays that barely hang together. Oh, by the way, Russo participated in the conference during which he meditated on the life of writers in a country where not long ago you had to remain silent lest you be imprisoned or worse for writing the wrong thing about the country’s rulers.

The Destiny Thief should be read by fiction writers, as well as by devoted Russo fans.

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Book Review: Waiting for Eden

Within the first few sentences of Waiting for Eden, readers realize they are in for something out of the ordinary when the first-person narrator says matter-of-factly, “I was sitting next to Eden and luckier than him when our Humvee hit a pressure plate, killing me and everybody else, him barely surviving.”

But out-of-the-ordinary has become the rule for the novels of Elliot Ackerman, author of the critically acclaimed debut Green on Blue, National Book Award finalist Dark at the Crossing, and now his latest, Eden, being released on September 25.

As a journalist, Ackerman was based for a number of years in Istanbul, starting in 2013, where he covered the Syrian Civil War. Among other publications, his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and The New York Times Magazine, and his stories have been included in The Best American Short Stories.

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Rejection – Where Is Thy Sting?

Writers face an inordinate amount of rejection as they pursue their craft. I’ve often thought there ought to be workshops at writers’ conferences on how to handle rejection letters. If we’ve been sending out queries frequently, we must have developed a thick skin or sense of humor. As my friend, a realtor says, the best response to rejection is to say, “Next?” Here are some truths about rejection.

My friend Robby managed her family restaurant in Fort Lauderdale. When they needed another server, she interviewed several and was particularly impressed by a woman named Sue. Sue was hired, but after several weeks, Robby noticed Sue wasn’t earning the tips she should. After a discussion, Sue turned in her notice and left.

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HOW TO BE A GOOD BOOK CLUB MEMBER

Although I’ve been an avid reader most of my life, I have never joined a book club. Until now.

In years past, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the reading pace of a club or the selections wouldn’t appeal to me and I would miss out on reading books I really wanted to read. But then I uprooted my life, moved to a new state, and decided to be open to whatever reasonable opportunities came my way. One of the first opportunities I saw was a book club in my new community, so I plunged right in.

Now here I am, trying to understand the workings of my particular book club and how to be a good contributor.

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What’s On Your Bucket List of Books?

What book is top on your bucket list of books? What book have you always wanted to read but somehow never have? And what book would you feel incomplete without reading?

Bucket List

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Moving Beyond Auto-fiction to the Epic: Three Novel Recommendations

The English publication of the volumes of Karl Ove Knausgard’s My Struggle coincides with a renewed interest in “auto-fiction,” also known as the autobiographical novel. While I have read and enjoyed several of these works of auto-fiction, my favorite is Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, which seemed to draw on some auto-fiction elements, but also used other literary devices such as image patterning and developing character arcs, while incorporating motifs of class, politics, art, motherhood, friendship, and feminism.

Since finishing the Neapolitan series I’ve found myself wanting to read more novels that span generations, placing themselves in historical context, in which history itself (just as Ferrante’s working class post-war Italy) becomes a character. Three recent novels fit this bill, and I recommend them to anyone desiring epic historical novels that educate as well as entertain.

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On V.S. Naipaul–Do Novelists Need to be Nice?

Sir Vidia, the great Trinidad-born, British novelist and travel writer is dead. You know he won the Nobel Prize, and the Booker, and I assume you’ve read his work. I admired it without loving it, but its importance is unquestionable: he’s one of the most influential of post-colonial writers. Paul Theroux, Sir Salman Rushdie and Martin Amis all owe him debts. I don’t know his entire oeuvre, so I’ll mention only his books that I do: A House for Mr. Biswas, A Bend in the River, and The Enigma of Arrival. More knowledgeable critics than I have eulogised his work, so I needn’t do so here. What I want to talk about is what you’ve also heard: that he was a cad and a rotter, to use the sort of quaint Edwardian terms his father might have used.

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