Tao Lin gets mentioned in a Guardian article about the challenges of naming characters. “I chose names that would not cause the reader to feel like there was hidden meaning in them, or that the characters were symbolic or the story was an allegory,” he says, though with a novel out whose protagonist is called Richard Yates, it’s hard to understand what he means exactly.
Don’t miss author Lydia Yuknavitch‘s wonderful essay, “About a Boob,” about how she created the image for the front of her book, The Chronology of Water, which is our March book club selection.
Book Club member Josh Anastasia reviews Jim Shepard‘s You Think That’s Bad.
Our Book Club interviews Roy Kesey, author of Pacazo, about Faulkner, historiography, and cheap cab rides.
Our April selection is The Convert, by Deborah Baker, a novel about a Jewish girl from New York who rejected the western way of life and found herself in Islam.
