Posts by author
Ian MacAllen
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Edan Lepucki Gives ‘Colbert Bump’ to Sweetness #9
Edan Lepucki‘s debut novel California has been the poster child for the conflict between Amazon and Hachette ever since Sherman Alexie plugged the book on The Colbert Report. Since receiving the Colbert bump, California has hit the #3 spot on the…
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Books Grow Longer
Several recent high profile books, like Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries or Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, are hefty tomes. As it turns out, these outliers are part of a larger trend toward longer books. Jeremy Anderberg, writing at BookRiot, researched popular…
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Delving Head-First into Wonder
Often times readers dismiss graphic novels as too unrealistic to posses literary merit. That would be a mistake, argues Stefan A. Slater at The Airship, because reality isn’t inherently part of good story telling. Plenty of other fictional forms flaunt…
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Libraries Are Essential
Libraries are not “Netflix for books,” Kelly Jensen argues over at BookRiot, but serve as centers of their communities. Corporations like Netflix are driven by profits, while libraries, at least in North America, are free for their users. The real…
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Notable NYC: 7/19–7/25
Saturday 7/19: Sean H. Doyle, Faith Lyla, Lucy K Shaw, Natalie Eilbert, and Mike Bushnell read for the OHSO Book Release party. Mellow Pages, 8 p.m., free. Sunday 7/20: Helena Duncan, Bo Fisher, Oona Robertson, Cara Dempsey, and David Miller…
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Subway Zines
Thirteen writers and artists boarded NYC’s subway system with laptops and notebooks for the two-day MTA Zine Residency. On the first day, the zinesters traveled along the F train from Queens through Manhattan to the end of the line in Coney…
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Sex, Drugs, Rock ‘n Roll, and Bondage
NOFX bassist Fat Mike spoke with Noisey about his S&M lifestyle, a choice often viewed as socially unacceptable. He sees BDSM individuals as facing many of the same challenges as the LGBTQIA community, though without the support of a community:…
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Rumpus Round-Up: The Fight to Unionize a Bookstore
Late last month, employees of Book Culture, an independent New York City bookstore, voted to unionize. Five employees were promptly fired. Punitively firing employees who participate in labor unions violates federal labor law. On July 2, the remaining workers went…
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Typewriters Are Latest High Tech Spy Tool
In the wake of American spies tapping into every form of electronic communication, Germany is considering typewriters for highly sensitive documents. The Russians have already instituted such measures. Typewriters aren’t foolproof though. In 1984, the Soviets listened to the keystrokes…
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Living Life Improves Writing
Good writing comes not just from learning craft and reading books, but from accumulated life experiences, argues Rachel Jelinek aver at the The Missouri Review. The quality of those experiences aren’t necessarily defined by how exotic they are, either. Learning…
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Publishers Are Rich
Writers have been getting poorer, and it turns out publishers are partly to blame. The Guardian reports that while authors are expected to do more when it comes to marketing and promotion, and though electronic books have lowered costs for publishers,…
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Revelations of a First-time Novelist
Ted Thompson recently published his debut novel, The Land of Steady Habits. Like many first-time novelists, he had quite a few expectations about what publishing a novel meant. Over at Salon, he discusses how reality diverged from those expectations. For instance,…