Between Jill Abramson’s indecorous firing and Amazon’s ongoing vendetta against Hachette, the publishing world gave me a lot of potential topics for the Ploughshares Round-Down this week, which I’m covering for Tasha Golden while she takes some well-earned time off. And yet there’s another, completely non-publishing-related story that I feel compelled to discuss instead, about which…
It’s the time of year when I always seem to find myself saying: we’ve got big things in store. Last year it was our announcement that the Ploughshares blog was “becoming its own, separate creature.” This year, if you’ll permit a slightly hokey extension of that metaphor, that creature is shedding its first skin. Contrary to…
How to Shake the Other Man Derek Palacio Nouvella Books, May 2013 63 pages $11.00 In his memoir Townie, the young Andre Dubus III describes his early years in northern Massachusetts, where as a young man he turned to boxing as a form of escape. Not just escape, actually; salvation. A way to cope with…
The Why of Things Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop Simon & Schuster, June 2013 320 pages $24.99 I can’t decide whether to be furious with Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop’s new novel, The Why of Things, or to admire it. In some ways, it’s one of the most frustrating, unsatisfying books I’ve read this year—one giant red herring from…
The World’s Strongest Librarian Josh Hanagarne Gotham Books, May 2013 304 pages $26.00 Josh Hanagarne’s first book, The World’s Strongest Librarian, has so many different hooks it’s enough to make a publisher weep with joy. A 6’7”, weightlifting librarian? Sold. A librarian who suffers from Tourette’s? Sold. A part-Navajo, all-Mormon, Stephen-King-fanboy librarian, who lifts weights…
The Story of My Purity Francesco Pacifico Farrar, Straus and Giroux, March 2013 304 pages $26.00 I don’t know much about providence, but it seems extraordinarily lucky that Francisco Pacifico’s first novel to make it into English translation—a ribald picaresque of Catholicism, breasts, and a conspiracy theory wherein Pope John Paul II was a Jewish…
In general, I dislike curmudgeonly fiats contra adverb—in fact, I’ve complained about them here before. However, there are a couple of cases where I think specific adverbs ought to be banned outright. One of those is the book review phrase “deeply felt.” My problem with the phrase, I will confess, is that most of the…
The Ploughshares blog has changed a lot since we first launched it in 2009. Back then, it was mostly a supplement to the magazine—a clearinghouse for announcements, extra contributors’ notes, and all the other little tidbits that wouldn’t fit elsewhere. Over the years we added more original material, too, inviting our print contributors to sign…
Santa’s not the only one who makes lists in December: come the end of the year, anyone who’s ever expressed a passing literary opinion has their own rundown of the year’s best books. But book reviewers rarely use these lists as an opportunity to promote the year’s objectively “best” books. Rather, they use them the…
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