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Interesting New Books — 2010


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What I've Read So Far in 2010


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The Greatest Fiction from Argentina


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Great Books of Austria-Hungary


Recent Posts

RSS New at The Constant Conversation

  • Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, well, he may go ahead and write poetry anyway. September 8, 2010
    If there’s one thing that surely hasn’t changed much over the centuries, it’s the response of parents to the first poetic stirrings in their child. “Perhaps you could be a doctor, and write poetry on the side?” they might gently suggest. “Like Keats?” “Um, yes, but perhaps you could actually practice medicine. […]
    Levi Stahl
  • Another County Heard From September 8, 2010
    Another editorial/blog about the need for independent bookstores from Somerset Books. Nothing new, but maybe you hadn't heard: "There are many reasons why we still (and always will) need independent bookstores, but it really boils down to two basic reasons: economic and social." […]
    Jeff Waxman
  • Ron Charles’ Hip Franzen Review September 8, 2010
    This much-linked video review of “Freedom” shows Ron Charles in fine form, being about as level-headed as one can be about Franzen, a talented author with boundless ego. Charles’ text review, which begins with a look at Franzen’s use of poo in fiction, is also very good. And for those who haven’t yet seen Charles’ […]
    Matt Jakubowski
  • If you can’t sell books, sell teddy bears September 8, 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 8, 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

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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

  • Broken Glass Park by Alina Bronsky
    In some ways, Alina Bronsky's Broken Glass Park is exactly what one might expect from a debut novel whose narrator and heroine is a seventeen-year-old girl. The book is fast-paced, engaging, and not exactly challenging in terms of form or style. What makes the book worth reading, however, is the fact that the story is a unique one, and one which is told […]
  • A Life on Paper by Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud
    The man on the cover of A Life on Paper is Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, not his double Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Châteaureynaud—who has written nine novels and scores of stories in French, won major literary prizes, and been translated into a dozen other languages—now comes to English-language readers for the first time thanks to translator […]
  • The King of Trees by Ah Cheng
    The stories collected in The King of Trees are all concerned with the zhiqing who have been sent down to a remote corner of Yunnan province. Ah Cheng himself spent much of the Cultural Revolution doing farm work in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, and this border area is clearly the inspiration and basis for the setting of these three tales. All of the stories were wr […]
  • The Three Fates by Linda Lê
    A well-known figure on the French literary scene, Linda Lê has had very little exposure to readers in the United States. A new translation of her 1997 novel The Three Fates may begin to change that situation. The novel is the first of three that Lê wrote following the death of her Vietnamese father, and like many of her works, it portrays individua […]

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New Critical Flame

New Critical Flame

Issue 8 of The Critical Flame is online now, including a review of Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou:

This passage is indicative of the novel’s irreverent style and reveals Mabanckou as the rare kind of writer who can incorporate high literary allusions as well as bawdy humor. Mabanckou draws heavily on his predecessors as he pursues this project, and it is perhaps one of the most notable characteristics of Broken Glass that it is absolutely littered with literary allusions. French writers from Rimbaud to Chateaubriand find good representation in the pages of Broken Glass. These references, which also encompass a full range of world literature, are rarely more than passing allusions, as demonstrated in a particularly loaded passage that brings to light the sheer diversity of writers referenced in Mabanckou’s work:

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July 27th, 2010 | Category: Uncategorized

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