About Contemporary Literature

And Then There's This by Bill Wasik

2009-07-13T10:41:40Z

Harper's editor Bill Wasik recounts his 2003 experimenation with flash mobs and later with Internet-based viral culture in And Then There's This, an examination of how nanostories live and die in the blink of an eye. Read more.

_{Photo credit: Penguin Books}

Blogging 60 Years of The National Book Award

2009-07-09T08:00:20Z

The National Book Foundation is celebrating the 60th year of the National Book Awards by blogging one National Book Award winning Fiction winner each day at www.nbafictionblog.org

The blog began on July 7 with 1950 NBA winner, Nelson Algren's The Man With the Golden Arm and will finish on September 21 with Peter Matthiessen's Shadow Country, winner of the 2008 Award.

The blog will last 77 days, honoring each of the 77 winners of the fiction award until September 21, when members of the public will have the opportunity to help select The Best of the National Book Awards Fiction and win two tickets to the 2009 National Book Awards. Read more.

Free for FREE on Scribd

2009-07-07T20:18:26Z

Today, Wired editor Chris Anderson put his money where his mouth is by sharing his new book Free: The Past and Future of a Radical Price, in which he posits the value of free content in the 21st Century business model, on the document sharing website Scribd.com.

This from the Scribd.com blog: Scribd Lanches �Liberate the Written Word� Month � Chris Anderson�s new book �FREE� available (for free and in full) exclusively on Scribd!

Red and Me by Bill Russell, Alan Steinberg

2009-07-06T10:39:50Z

Red and Me is the story of Celtic's all-star Bill Russell and his close relationship with the Celtic's legendary coach Red Auerbach. Could there have been two more unlikely friends, a short, abrasive Jew from Brooklyn and a tall, gangly black man from the South? These were two different "tribes," to use Russell's term, which would seem to be on a collision course. Read more.

_{Photo credit: HarperCollins}

Oprah's 25 Books of Summer

2009-07-03T12:22:45Z

Unsurprisingly, Oprah has a few book picks for Summer - 25 to be exact and a nice assortment. Here are three I will likely pick up:

A Meaningful Life by L.J. Davis
A reissue of L.J. Davis's 1971 comic novel in which a plumbing magazine editor and frustrated novelist takes on the renovation of a run-down mansion in a Brooklyn slum.

Plan Bee by Susan Brackney
There is some cause for alarm at the rate at which bees are disappearing around the world. Brackney, a beekeeper, illuminates the nature of this hero of the food chain.

Farm City by Novella Carpenter
A food writer's memoir of her squatter's garden in an Oakland, California ghetto is an inspiration to anyone who wishes to pursue the agricultural dream while remaining in the city limits.

Oprah's 25 Summer Book Picks

Whale Book takes BBC Samuel Johnson Prize

2009-07-01T12:20:34Z

The BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction was yesterday awarded to Leviathan, Or The Whale, Philip Hoare's memoir of his life-long obsession and humanity's own fascination with whales.

The BBC Samuel Johnson Prize is the UK's most prestigious prize for nonfiction, a £20,000 award sponsored by the BBC and open to all nonfiction work in the realms of current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts.

The other books shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize were:

Lords of Finance by Liaquat Ahamed (William Heinemann)
Bad Science by Ben Goldacre (Fourth Estate)
The Lost City of Z by David Grann(Simon and Schuster)
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes (HarperPress)
Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality by Manjit Kumar (Icon Books)

Little Bee by Chris Cleave

2009-06-29T10:35:30Z

Critics loved Cleave's previous book, Incendiary. He also has a website, where he posts the columns he writes for The Guardian. They're funny, full of gentle, sarcastic humor about his family life - well written and fun to read, but not stunning. Little Bee, however, is stunning. Read more.

_{Photo credit: Simon and Schuster}

Friday's Endpapers

2009-06-26T13:22:01Z

Ignore Everybody : And 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod

2009-06-26T11:03:29Z

Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity is the reincarnation of a piece Hugh MacLeod published years ago on his website entitled "How to Be Creative," which has been downloaded over a million times. It's a small book with large type and lots of pictures, but MacLeod squeezes a lot of meaning into this small package, as with his business card drawings. Read more.

_{Photo credit: Portfolio}

Read Infinite Jest With a Few Thousand of Your Closest Friends

2009-06-23T11:27:24Z

What are you reading this Summer? You may want to join thousands of readers (including me) in a group "endurance reading event" by tackling David Foster Wallace's massive novel, Infinite Jest. Organized by writer Mathew Balden, Infinite Summer begins June 21 and runs the duration of the Summer (or whenever you finish the novel). Not only will Infinite Jest guides be blogging about it at the website, there are a whole host of online collaboration resources including a discussion forum, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account (you can also follow #infsum hashtag on Twitter).

Infinite Jest (1996) is widely considered David Foster Wallace's masterwork, a nearly-1,000 page tome followed by another 100 pages of endnotes (of the not-to-be-skipped variety). The novel also sports the lexicological complexities and and stylistic experimentation that have cemented Wallace's reputation as one of the greatest writers of our time. It's a big read.

Like many others, the mere heft of Infinite Jest has been enough to keep me from reading it for some number of years. I don't know when I bought my copy, but I do know that I had to brush a considerable layer of dust off the cover for this endeavor. The momentum of a massive, global, online book club is exactly the sort of kick in the pants I needed to overcome my inertia.

Everything I've ever read leads me to believe that you either love Infinite Jest or you hate it. I've a feeling I'll be one of the former, but there is no better way to find out than by reading it with a few thousand of my closest friends right now. Will you join us?

Visit www.infinitesummer.org, and get started!