Showing posts with label New Orleans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Orleans. Show all posts

Friday, January 14, 2011

The case of the green parrot

As soon as I heard of this book the other day, I knew I had to read it as soon as possible: I sent several emails, and due to the kindness of the author and her in-house publicist, I received an ARC several days later.

The book is Sara Gran's Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead; it is at once rather divinely good and also exactly the sort of book I most like! Let's call it metaphysical noir and group it with two other favorites of mine, Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist and Victor LaValle's Big Machine. Oh, it was so good...

(The only trouble with books is that they take years to write and only a few hours to read, so that I know I won't be getting the next installment any time soon! But I can re-read this one when it comes out, there's a thought...)

Friday, January 07, 2011

Linkage

Not literary in any particular sense, but do read this piece by Michael Ogg on what it means to depend on home health care aides when sidelined by a permanent disability (via Jane Gross).

A. L. Kennedy on why the worst part of writing is waiting.

Phil Nugent on the trials and tribulations of Winter Wipeout!

Finally, I got a nice piece of news the other day from my friend Helen Hill's mother Becky. Helen's last film, "The Florestine Dresses," has been completed by her husband Paul, and will premiere at the Indie Grits Film Festival at the Nickleodeon Theatre in Columbia, South Carolina on April 13-17, 2011. I will definitely be there for the premiere, and will do what I can to help gather a large group of Helen's friends for the occasion.

(There was an exhibit of the dresses themselves a few years ago; alas, I missed it, though I remember seeing the dresses not long after Helen had first found them - there were more than a hundred of them! - in trash bags on the street and rescued them and begun to investigate the story of their creation.)