January 11
It's the book that predicted Trump, altered the course of speculative fiction, and helped to inspire Beyoncé's Lemonade. It's also a masterpiece in its own right. I'm talking about Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, which was published twenty-five years ago this week. To commemorate the date, you can read the first three chapters of the book here. And if you don't want to give your money to Amazon, you can buy the book direct from Seven Stories, at 25% off, with free shipping within the U.S. Enjoy!
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January 05
Today we mourn the passing of the masterful and elusive novelist Aharon Appelfeld.
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December 14
Entrapment had made the day’s events, and my own life, seem like legitimate literary subjects. The characters in its pages were called Frank Mears, and Blackie Cavanaugh, and Little Lester, but when I read about them I felt I was reading about old friends. They were the kids I had played with in the abandoned lot behind my apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as a child; men I knocked around with on street corners, gyms, and bars; my old friend Bones, an alcoholic who looked after me when I became a bicycle messenger at seventeen, and then hung himself from a pipe running along the ceiling of his basement apartment.
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