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From Stephen Elliott
November’s Book Club selection is Love and Shame and Love (Little, Brown), a novel by Peter Orner (whose column you can follow here on the Rumpus). Orner traverses three generations of the Popper family, through which he considers the intricate realities of the American family. The esteemed and hilarious Daniel Handler called it “epic like Gilgamesh and epic like a guitar solo,” which is both apt and all-encompassing praise.
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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The Rumpus Book Club is closing out summer and welcoming the fall with advanced copies of Show Up, Look Good, our highly-anticipated September selection.
Written by Mark Wisniewski and published by Gival Press, this novel has been reaping in a ton of laudatory blurbs from veteran writers like Jonathan Lethem (who calls Wisniewski’s book, “riotously original”).
...moreMelville House Publishing (the indie publishers behind last month’s Rumpus Book Club selection) are getting technologically innovative with their releases.
They’re launching HybridBooks, a program that dabbles in e-book trendiness as a compliment to printed publications. Readers have access to supplemental electronic material (called “illuminations”) when they scan the barcode on their books.
...moreAre you a part of the Rumpus book club? Remember last month’s book, Christopher Boucher’s debut novel How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive?
Well, it‘s starting to get great reviews out there. This post on The Millions has referred to the novel as “a surrealist’s guide” full of strange, dazzling, yet heartwarming prose that seems to pleasantly surprise many readers who were initially skeptical of the novel’s surrealist bent.
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August is upon us. This new month brings with it an exciting Rumpus Book Club selection—Alex Shakar’s Luminarium, published by Soho Press.
The synopsis is as intriguing as the praise it’s been garnering. Dave Eggers offered his praise, calling it “funny, and soulful, and very sad, but so intellectually invigorating you’ll want to read it twice.” The novel follows the story of two brothers—Fred and George, CEOs living in New York.
...moreOnce Upon a River, The Rumpus Book Club’s June selection, is reviewed in the NY Times. Bonnie Jo Campbell tells the story of Margo Crane, the mother in her first book, Q Road. Along the way she meanders around the themes of human nature, American culture and sexual aggression, keeping the subtlety intact without explicitly lending the book to one overarching theme.
...moreThe Millions came out with the “Great Second-Half of 2011 Book Preview,” which includes 66 titles and tons of accompanying words describing them (most books are forthcoming, some came out this month).
First on the list is last month’s Rumpus Book Club selection, Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell.
...moreNext month’s Rumpus Book Club selection will indeed satisfy your summer fiction cravings. How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive is Christopher Bouchet’s debut novel, published by Melville House Publishing.
The story involves death and road trips, a 1971 VW Bug and is modeled off of a 1969 hippie handbook with which it shares a title.
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Chelsea Cain’s introduction to Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Chronology of Water, which is the Rumpus Book Club’s March selection:
Lidia and I are in therapy together.
That’s what she calls it. Technically it is more of a writing workshop, at least that’s what the rest of us would like to think.
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The Rumpus Book Club talks with Roy Kesey about Pacazo, Faulkner, historiography, and cheap cab rides.
This is an edited transcript of the book club discussion. Every month The Rumpus Book Club hosts a discussion online with the book club members and the author and we post an edited version online as an interview.
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The Rumpus Book Club talks with Andrew Foster Altschul about Deus Ex Machina, Reality TV, the loss of truth, and what it’s like to visit a porn set in the name of research.
Rumpus Book Club member Joseph M. Owens responds to this month’s book club selection, Deus Ex Machina by Andrew Foster Altschul.
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I always like to get my overall impressions of a book out of the way at the beginning in case someone is too impatient to read my entire review. With that said, I really liked Andrew Foster Altschul’s Deus Ex Machina.
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The Rumpus Poetry Book Club talks with Shane Book about his poetry collection, Ceiling of Sticks.
Rumpus Poetry Book Club Advisory Board member Camille T. Dungy on why she chose Shane Book’s Ceiling of Sticks to be the group’s first selection.
If anyone were to accuse contemporary American poetry of being insular, self-involved and provincial, these complaints would be silenced by Shane Book’s Ceiling of Sticks
...moreI leaped out of bed and ran to the front door. With a rush of urgency, I pulled the door open and saw nothing. Not a single thing. I could still hear them though; the shrill cries of small children screaming at the very top of their little lungs.
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Hey, if you haven’t had the chance to take a look at all the stuff Rumpus Books has been up to lately, you should probably do that now.