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New Books

Interesting New Books — 2010


New Books

What I've Read So Far in 2010


New Books

The Greatest Fiction from Argentina


New Books

Great Books of Austria-Hungary


Recent Posts

RSS New at The Constant Conversation

  • If you can’t sell books, sell teddy bears September 3, 2010
    Or that seems to be Borders’ solution to its constant financial problems, at least for the time being until the next quarter with lower than expected sales.  Really, the problem with Borders is that it lost its identity about eight or so years ago when it decided to become a shadow of Barnes & Noble.   [...] […]
    Soo Jin Oh
  • Reflections on Rockwell September 3, 2010
    In recent years, fans of Norman Rockwell, with the assistance of some art historians, have attempted to lift him into the canon of high art. As a fan of midcentury American illustration, I don’t really care how he is assessed on that scale: like the recurring fantasy that underlies so much of our politics of [...] […]
    Levi Stahl
  • A Taste of Cherry in a Heat Wave September 3, 2010
    I’ve been thinking a lot about heat waves. The thick summer weather has felt like a wall of fire that must be bravely pushed through to order to exit from an air conditioned office building and make my way to the corner to board a bus crowded with sweaty citizens. So perhaps it’s no surprise that [...] […]
    Carrie Olivia Adams
  • The Ballad of David Markson September 3, 2010
    "What’s not so up for dispute is that Markson accomplished what, by all rights, should be a literary impossibility." (Colin Marshall for The Millions) […]
    Jeff Waxman
  • Gass-X September 3, 2010
    "Ich liebe dich. No sentence pronounced by a judge could be more threatening. It means that you are about to receive a gift you may not want." Via Dylan Suher, Greg Gerke's sort-of review of William H. Gass's Reading Rilke in BIG OTHER. […]
    Jeff Waxman

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Group Reads

Last Samurai

Fall Read: The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt

Starting Sept 19, read one of the '00s most-lauded postmodern novels. Info here. Buy the book here and support this site.
Tale of Genji

The Summer of Genji

Two great online lit magazines team up to read a mammoth court drama, the world's first novel.
Your Face Tomorrow

Your Face This Spring

A 3-month read of Javier Marias' mammoth book Your Face Tomorrow

RSS New Articles

  • In Homer’s Head: Ransom by David Malouf
    In Ransom, Malouf satisfyingly gives us a meeting between Priam and Achilles that builds from the interiority of Priam. The novel seems to want to teach the importance of doing something human to those who might never get around to picking up Homer or who, if they do, might wish they could get into the character's heads. […]
  • How Jeanette Winterson Makes Fiction
    Winterson has always told and retold the same fictions: of parents and children; of origins, and adoptions; of differences, of margins; of love; of passion; she has always manipulated rhythm and language as an excavation of sources. Much of her fiction mirrors what we know of Winterson's own story, but she agitates against the idea that her work has to […]
  • Inveterate and Unrepentant Book Collecting: A Guide to My Favorite Contact Sport
    It's difficult to pin down exactly why books as objects mean so much to me. I wasn't alive when William Goyen's excellent Come, The Restorer was published, but owning an original printing with the dust jacket—as it would have been purchased at the time of its release—makes the book more special to me than some beat-up paperback rei […]
  • The Master of the Not Quite: The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief by James Wood
    Wood can be harsh, yes, but he is seldom unfair. Wyatt Mason was wrong to accuse him of having suggested, by dint of a string of negative reviews, that no good contemporary literature exists. (He has written favorably of McEwan, Bolaño, Robinson, Ozick, Kirsch, Sebald, Roth, Saramago, Swift, Carey.) He never simply dismisses a writer (in the manor of, s […]

Reader Picks

About Conversational Reading and Scott Esposito

About Conversational Reading and Scott Esposito

Contact: scott_esposito [AT] yahoo.com

Scott Esposito is a critic, writer, and editor. Some of his publications and clients include:

  • The San Francisco Chronicle
  • The Philadelphia Inquirer
  • The Los Angeles Times
  • The Barnes and Noble Review
  • The Los Angeles Daily News
  • The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
  • Publishers Weekly
  • The Chattahoochee Review
  • The Review of Contemporary Fiction
  • Dalkey Archive Press
  • The Rain Taxi Review of Books
  • eMusic
  • Publishers Group West
  • Houghton-Mifflin/Harcourt
  • The National Book Critics Circle
  • University of Texas Press

Scott created his literary weblog, Conversational Reading, in August 2004. Since its inception, the site has been discussed in and linked to from various publications and websites, including:

  • The New Yorker
  • The New York Times
  • AndrewSullivan.com
  • The Boston Globe
  • The Village Voice
  • Variety magazine

Conversational Reading has featured contributions by and interviews with various authors and publishers. In Early 2009, the site ran a popular interview series on publishing in an economic recession, which included editors from New Directions and Chelsea Green Publishing.

In the Fall of 2005, The Quarterly Conversation was created as an adjunct to Conversational Reading. Since then, it has grown into a stand-alone publication.

The Quarterly Conversation is a quarterly web magazine of book reviews and essays. It is dedicated to covering new and innovative works of literature and often features titles from independent presses and works in translation. The site draws from a pool of roughly 40 contributors who regularly contribute to literary journals, have authored novels, and have edited and been published in anthologies. Pieces that first appeared in The Quarterly Conversation have been reprinted in newspapers and books, including in the yearly anthology Best of the Web.

Most issues of The Quarterly Conversation feature 20 book reviews, several essays, and interviews. The site also publishes material in between issues.