Lady Chatterley’s Brother

The first ebook in the new TQC Long Essays series, Life Pereccalled “an exciting new project” by Chad Post of Open Letter and Three Percent. Why can't Nicholson Baker write about sex? And why can Javier Marias? We investigate why porn is a dead end, and why seduction paves the way for the sex writing of the future.

Available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and direct from this site:


Translate This Book!

Ever wonder what English is missing? Called "a fascinating Life Perecread" by The New Yorker, Translate This Book! brings together over 40 of the top translators, publishers, and authors to tell us what books need to be published in English. Get it on Kindle for 99 cents.

Spring 2011 Group Read

Life Perec

Spring Read: Life A User's Manual by Georges Perec

Starting March 2011, read the greatest novel from an experimental master. Info here. Buy the book here and support this site.

For low prices on Las Vegas shows visit ShowTickets.com

You Say

Shop though these links = Support this site

Interviews from Conversational Reading

New Books
See this page for interviews with leading authors, translators, publishers, and more.


Group Reads

Last Samurai

Fall Read: The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt

A group read of 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

  • In Red by Magdalena Tulli December 5, 2011
    In Red is Tulli's most conventional novel—which is not to say it could finally be described as a conventional work of fiction. Still, to the extent it does offer individuated characters, some degree of plot "movement," and a strongly delineated setting, readers hesitant to commit to one of the novels that seems formidably experimental might fi […]
  • Show Up, Look Good by Mark Wisniewski December 5, 2011
    Early in Show Up, Look Good, Mark Wisniewski’s second novel, newly single Michelle meets up with an old friend, Barb, from the Midwest. Michelle has already been portrayed as a woman who attracts all variations of awkwardness and bad luck: she’s awakened to find her ex, Thom, “having his way, well, with a marital aid,” agreed to bathe an old woman as part of […]
  • An Ermine in Czernopol by Gregor von Rezzori December 5, 2011
    Gregor von Rezzori’s fictitious city Czernopol exists at the edge of civilization, on the border of memory and invention, lying “somewhere in the godforsaken southeastern part of Europe.” In reality it is Czernowitz, in the region known as the Bukovina, ceded by the Ottoman Empire to the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1775, then after World War I part of Romania […]
  • 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami December 4, 2011
    The publication of 1Q84, Haruki Murakami’s biggest, most ambitious novel to date, seems to have brought his career full-circle. This is not simply because the book has widely been posited as Murakami’s Brothers Karamazov—that is, an attempt to write a meganovel summing up his life’s writing—but even more because of the trajectory Murakami has taken as a writ […]
  • Ordinary Sun by Matthew Henriksen December 4, 2011
    Ordinary Sun at times feels like listening to confession in a parallel universe, a world with all the guts displayed on the outside, and the underworld on top. Make no mistake though: there is no otherworld. Henriksen’s world is this world. Who doesn’t recognize her own kind in lines like these, from “Corolla in the Midden”: “I do not dream. I just watch / f […]
  • Selected Poems by Jaan Kaplinski December 4, 2011
    Though sometimes referred to as a Modernist, Kaplinski’s poetry often has the feel of a classical, and older, poetics. The poems have a gravitas; they do not mock, toy, or play with the reader. They invite the reader to eavesdrop on the thoughts, remembrances, and philosophy of a person as they flicker and flow. This contemplative, philosophic strain is pres […]
  • Joseph Brodsky: A Literary Life by Lev Loseff December 4, 2011
    A martyr is not necessarily a saint, in any case, and those who knew him didn’t turn to him for saintliness. He was spellbinding, an electrical jolt for the psyche. An encounter with him, as a colleague or as a mentor, could be life-changing and endlessly rewarding. Warts and all, the real man carries far more interest than the photoshopped one Loseff gives […]
  • From Fiona and Ferdinand by Josef Haslinger December 4, 2011
    On the day of Bachmaier’s funeral there were two messages from my mother waiting for me on the answering machine. In the first one she asked me to call her back, in the second she said that the village was in an uproar: I was to come at once. Calls from my mother were rare. […]
  • Self-Portrait of an Other by Cees Nooteboom and Max Neumann December 4, 2011
    As hard as you look at it, Max Neumann’s paintings don’t reveal much about his method, but two recent English-language publications imply that he must enjoy collaborating with luminaries of world literature. AnimalInside, reviewed in The Quarterly Conversation's issue 25 by Christiane Craig, brought Neumann together with László Krasznahorkai, the presti […]
  • Learning to Pray in the Age of Technique by Gonçalo M. Tavares December 4, 2011
    Someone once noted that it’s easy to have virtue when facing adversity but the real test of character comes when one is given power. To test this aphorism, one need look no further than Gonçalo M. Tavares’ novel Learning to Pray in the Age of Technique for evidence of how power corrupts and attracts the corrupt. Tavares is a prolific writer from Portugal who […]

Shoddy eBooks

Looks like publishers are getting dinged for outsourcing ebooks to third-parties who do shoddy jobs:

Needless to say, poor quality e-books are becoming something of an embarrassment for publishers trying to convince readers to pay a premium for downloads (as Kassia Kroszer recently pointed out in Publishing Perspectives: it is hard to justify higher e-book prices when the product simply isn’t up to scratch), and clearly it’s an issue publishers need to address sooner rather than later if they want win this argument.

The problem of substandard e-books partially stems from the fact that many publishers currently lack . . . continue reading, and add your comments

You Really Want to Be an eBook-Only Author?

You try telling Jonathan Franzen his next novel isn’t actually being printed:

What also gets squeezed, or I should say what gets squeezed the most, is the ability of publishers to continue printing books on paper. As Crain says, “It may not be possible for a single company to publish e-books at that price and also retain the infrastructure necessary to publish ink-on-paper books.” I added the emphasis, but I think it’s pretty obvious that it has to be there: as I noted above, one of the forms of control at stake in this haggling over price points . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Seven Stories: Blurring the Lines Between Electronic and Print Publishing

(This post is from John Thornton of Seven Stories Press. Seven Stories has just published The Old Garden, by Korean author Hwang Sok-yong (which I discussed here). Hwang has engaged in some interesting online experiments in writing novels, and this is what Thornton discusses in this post.)

Seven Stories Press is currently serializing our English translation of The Old Garden, the 2000 novel by Korean author Hwang Sok-yong. There are a number of reasons why we’re doing this—not least of which is our personal belief in the book and in our translation of it, despite . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Books Erased from Kindles by Amazon

Yesterday, Amazon remotely erased hundreds of copies of 1984 and Animal Farm from users' Kindles, according to the NY Times. The books in question were deemed unlicensed copies, and Amazon erased them without permission and credited users' accounts.

These actions appear to break Amazon's own terms of use, according to the Times. The terms "grant customers the right to keep a 'permanent copy of the applicable digital content.'" The Times also reports that this is not the first time Amazon has stripped Kindles.

Beyond the obvious concerns here, this dramatizes why readers should not consider ebooks . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Amazon Applies for Patent to Advertise in Your Kindle

The patents are here and here.

Speculation thereof here:

Before everyone gets in a huff, let’s consider Amazon’s intentions with these patent applications. Surely they would never allow advertisements to be placed in books which you have purchased legitimately at full price, so let’s put that out of our heads. But what if you could take a few bucks off the cover price at the cost of a few contextual ads relating (if possible) to the book’s content? Personally, I wouldn’t mind — partially because I don’t use a Kindle or intend to any . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Google Gives Libraries Price Oversight

NYT:

In a move that could blunt some of the criticism of Google for its settlement of a lawsuit over its book-scanning project, the company signed an agreement with the University of Michigan that would give some libraries a degree of oversight over the prices Google could charge for its vast digital library. . . .

Under Google’s plan for the collection, public libraries will get free access to the full texts for their patrons at one computer, and universities will be able to buy subscriptions to make the service generally available, with rates based on their . . . continue reading, and add your comments

A Crime Novelist Experiments With The Kindle

Bryan Gilmer generated some instant publicity for his novel Felonious Jazz by radically discounting the Kindle edition:

My Kindle edition went live last Monday at $7.99, so I announced it on a couple of Kindle message boards online. By Wednesday, I'd sold one copy. One! Message board replies said, "If you want us to try a new author, give us a really low price. It'll generate sales and reviews." So I marked it down to $1.99 Thursday morning and posted the price change on the same boards. What happened next was remarkable:

As of 5 p.m. . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Amazon Is Losing Money on Each $9.99 Ebook

Publishers Weekly confirms something I've long suspected:

Currently, publishers make as much money on Kindle editions as print editions, since Amazon, the largest e-book retailer, pays the same discount for e-book editions as it does for print—off the same list price, whether bound book or e-book. (An Amazon spokesperson would not comment on the discount issue, but a number of publishers confirmed that Amazon pays the standard discount—which is, with some fluctuation among houses, about 50% off list price—for Kindle editions.)

Amazon, which sets the price for everything it sells, is, as many people . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Newspapers Making a Kindle-Killer?

It's no secret that newspapes have hastened their own downfall with poor decisions and some ridiculous, even illegal ideas (like massive price collusion).

But, they might now be getting into the act. The Wall Street Journal reports that they're exploring a Kindle knock-off designed to read newspapers and magazines:

Hearst Corp., which publishes the San Francisco Chronicle and Houston Chronicle as well as magazines including Cosmopolitan, is backing a venture with FirstPaper LLC to create a software platform that will support digital downloads of newspapers and magazines. The startup venture . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Digital Catalogs: Gateway Drugs?

Ellen at the UNC Press blog is worried that digital-only catalogs are just the first step:

The tough (and painful) budget crunching happening throughout the publishing industry right now coincides with new technologies that can allow us to do more online and less in print. Here at UNCP, we are not quite at the point of getting rid of our print catalog and going all online, as HarperCollins has done, but who knows what we’ll be doing next time around. Personally, I wonder, if I can’t hold it, will it still feel like a completed project? I’m talking . . . continue reading, and add your comments