posted Feb 21, 2010 12:00 PM by Little Professor
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updated Jul 15, 2010 8:28 AM by Sara Glassman
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There is a new Tana French novel, and it is good. I'll try to keep what I know about it under wraps until it's release in July, but here's part of the email I wrote to her publisher rep after reading it:
The most astonishing thing to me is Tana french in general. Three books in, and she's batting 1.000. That just doesn't happen. Joe Hill over at Harper's at about .800, David Mitchell and Adrian McKinty are at about .750, and even guys running phenomenal series - John Burdett, Stiegg Larssen, god rest him, Martin Cruz Smith - average out at about .650, .700. Your own David Benioff kind of shot himself in the foot with Wen the Nines Roll Over, and by being a kind of crummy screenwriter (yes, it still counts). I can completely understand an author only having one great book in them (one of the reasons I'm terrified for Nick Harkaway's sophmore effort), and two is a deeply lucky coincidence, but you don't get three five star, knocked-out-of-the-park-with-the-bases-loaded home runs from one author, and you certainly don't get them all in one go. It just doesn't happen. The last author I was this excited about their continuing work was Jonathan Lethem after Motherless Brooklyn, and let's face it: a couple of the sci-fi novels between Gun With Occassional Music and Motherless were middling, at best. (Also, Lethem's writing swan-dived into a septic tank with Fortress of Solitude, failing miserably at exactly the sort of time-and-place evocation that Ms French succeeds beautifully with).
Even forgetting the whole 'in a row' thing, who has three all-star, perfect novels that's still breathing? I don't mean good, I mean truly phenomonal, best-book-of-the-year perfect? Some would argue Ian McEwan, maybe Michael Chabon, or pick your nearly-dead American literary lion breathlessly chronicling the fairly boring travails of the baby boomers. And all of them have grade-a stinkers, as well. Walter Mosley's probably got three, but he's also got his 'sexistential' novel; Stephen King may actually have four or five, but the man's a freak of nature (said lovingly) who's penned something along the lines of fifty novels - that's one great novel out of every ten, with more than his share of outright failures as well. Nobody does three perfect in a row. Hell, Murakami's basically been rewriting the same three books his entire career, working towards a perfection he hit once, maybe twice. Three in a row, with not a dud on either side, just doesn't happen. My fairly long-winded point being, if three doesn't, four really, really doesn't. But at this point, I'm not sure she can write anything mediocre.
-so, yeah. I'ts good. |
posted Jul 5, 2009 12:45 PM by Little Professor
That's all I know. That is absolutely all the information I have. No title, no synopsis, no nothing. And you know what? That's all that matters. Come February 2010, Joe Hill will finally follow up the brilliant debut of Heart Shaped Box. New Joe Hill!!!!!!!!!! |
posted Jun 28, 2009 1:00 PM by Little Professor
Hey, did you see where Sara got her own page? And she updates it more often than I do mine, too! No fair. Anyway, just wanted to announce that I've got a new review for Ron Currie Jr.'s Everything Matters! up on the review page. Enjoy! |
posted Apr 26, 2009 2:12 PM by Little Professor
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updated Apr 26, 2009 2:25 PM
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So I'm going through my catalogs for the upcoming season, just looking to see what's up, what's on the way, what I need to get excited about, and I run across the new Stephen King title, Under the Dome. So far, so much like normal; King usually releases a novel in the fall (last year's Duma Key was exceptional, by the way). Then I paid a bit closer amount of attention to some of the fine print: Simon & Schuster's tentative page count is 1,136 pages. Let's spell that out, draw out the impact a little: one thousand, one hundred and thirty six. How about a little comparison? Roberto Bolano's 2666, for example: 867 pages. David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest - in paperback, which traditionally makes books longer? 1079, including bibliography, appenices, etc. Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & M. Norrell, a book so big they had to split it into two volumes upon paperback release: 846. Only the great doorstop of 20th century literature - Atlas Shrugged - beats out King's proposed page count, and that just barely, at 1168. No, one more: in paperback, King's own The Stand creeps ahead, at 1,141. |
posted Apr 26, 2009 2:06 PM by Little Professor
He's baaaaaaaaaaack. Random House announced last week that Dan Brown is almost ready for the third book in the Robert Langdon series, tentatively titled The Lost Symbol, with a release date of Sept. 15th of this year. In case you were living in a lovely series of caves a couple years back (and who can blame you; I hear underground architecture's all the rage these days), Dan Brown wrote The Da Vinci Code, displeased the Vatican some and made boatloads and boatloads of money. I've been poking my Random House sources with a stick ever since I heard that Ron Howard & co. were already planning a third Langdon film, and, yup, here we are. MONEY! |
posted Mar 5, 2009 3:15 PM by Drew Williams
Or literary death, at least. If you've bought crime fiction from me over the years, chances are I might have mentioned Adrian McKinty, one of my favorite hardboiled crime writers. Or at least, I might have mentioned him, until his publisher cancelled his contract, stopped publishing his books, and pretty much left him out in the cold, shivering and alone. Out of print seemed where he was destined to reside until Henry Holt swooped in and signed him to a new contract. No word yet as to whether they'll wrangle the rights to his older works, but we can hope. |
posted Mar 4, 2009 8:10 AM by Drew Williams
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updated Mar 4, 2009 8:14 AM
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And not just on this site! A few weeks ago I wrote a ranting, raving email to my publisher's rep from Penguin Putnam on a book called 'The Magicians' - he replied and asked me to edit it a bit, and they'd post it on the author's website. So I took out some of the not-nice things I'd said (but I left in a fair bit), and - voila! I won't post my full review until a bit closer to when the book comes out, but this is one that I'm definitely keeping an eye on. |
posted Mar 4, 2009 8:02 AM by Drew Williams
Welcome to Drew's page. If you have stumbled this deep into the Little Prof website, you may be wondering: why does Drew get his own page? Where did Drew's page come from? Who is this guy who calls himself Drew? Well, the answers to these questions, and more, can be found.... ummm... in this post. That you're reading right now. So read on! The guy who calls himself Drew is, well, me - I'm Drew - and this page comes from the deepest, darkest recesses of my brain. And also any information I recieve from my network of informants about the goings on in the publishing world. As to why I get my own page - I wanted one, and I begged Sara until she gave me one. So there. |
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