Back by popular demand, Australia’s second annual Books Alive promotion — a two-week, federally-funded, book-buying bonanza — kicked off last month as Australian Minister for the Arts and Sport Rod Kemp officially pronounced the campaign’s motto: “lose yourself in a book and find yourself in a bookstore.” During the two week period ending August 15,…Continue Reading
Ashcan Memories Mauvignier Talks Trash in France, Celery Stalks Italy, and Holland Peeps at Lost Souls The dustbin has popped open in France this month and rendered up Laurent Mauvignier’s elegiac second novel, Learning to Finish, which details the plight of a trash collector who announces he is leaving his wife — only to maim…Continue Reading
Crime and Punishment King Bites the Bullet, Crime Pays in New Zealand, and Carvalho’s on the Case in Spain In a somewhat bizarre development, Stephen King’s hotly downloaded e-novella Riding the Bullet has shot around the globe — in a bricks-and-mortar edition. Though hard-copy versions of the work were originally ruled out by the K-man,…Continue Reading
