When you’re a world away from home and those you love, any contact is better than none. If you’re in the military, contact’s a lifeline, especially when it helps you keep up emotionally. That’s the plan for the March 2011 launch of the British-based Reading Force Project created by Kingston University lecturer and army wife Alison Baverstock.

Baverstock created Reading Force so deployed military personnel and their at-home families could read the same book as a way to bridge the life gaps she and her husband felt during phone calls. “This project arose from my own situation,” Baverstock said. “I am a great believer in the power of books to prompt conversation and discussion, and found this particularly powerful when my husband was away.”

During those times, it got hard just talking about daily life because of the inherent conversation restrictions. And when a question like how’s the weather’s a location-buster, what’s left? “When they ring up from a tour [of duty], the time seems very precious, and yet often you cannot think how best to use it. You cannot ask what they are doing, and your own life seems humdrum by comparison,” Baverstock said. “Books are a good common ground, and I quite... more »

Aren’t we all, Buddy?

Okay, maybe not everyone is looking for romance, but some of us are and it’s not easy. I mean, it’s not like scores of available, big-hearted, and agreeable lords and ladies are moving into the neighborhood and hosting balls.* Diners, drive-ins, and dives are all great places to meet and mingle, but any romantic comedy will tell you that they’re just breeding grounds for shenanigans and hijinks.

Then where? The Internet, of course! There is no shortage of dating sites to help out: eHarmony, OKCupid, the Gaga-approved Plenty of Fish, andthelistgoeson. Each has set up scores of dates and begun many relationships, each with its own method.

Alikewise.com is the new kid on the block. matching people up based on the books that they share. The idea, as the About Us page conveniently states, is ‘to find an area of passionate interest, and let you take it from there.’ Before you’ve even met, you’ll have something to talk about that extends beyond the color of the walls in the café or how much good a little rain would do your geraniums.

The site is the brainchild of Matt Sherman, who came up with idea after ‘wishing I could meet a woman... more »

When walking to the cinema to enjoy what was to be one of the last films a girl would watch with her roommate before said roommate was off to Poland for a year, there’s only one logical topic of conversation: children’s fiction. So, we talked about Harriet the Spy (which she’d never read) and The Fantastic Four series (which I’d never read).

About halfway to our destination, we noticed that the books we had both read focused on children working their way through bleak futures. As kids, we didn’t want the science fiction World of Tomorrow that our parents would have loved, despite its promise of hover cars and robot dogs. Instead, we craved bleak futures which hardened kids, broke them, had them making impossible choices by the time they were learning long division. Our school book fairs were full of titles and authors—Lois Lowry and Margaret Peterson Haddix, I’m looking at you—which seemed to specialize in horrifying children with the world’s potential for cruelty. We wondered, then, if that’s what the sick little puppies born in the nineties enjoyed, what were the children of this millennium reading?

Much the same thing, it seems. The kids of today love stories about young people... more »

Once upon a time, way back in the early ‘aughts, film lovers, foodies, and lovers of literature looking to hedge their bets on the latest Hollywood release, micro-brew bistro, or DeLillo novel turned to the professional reviewers of venerated institutions such as the New York Times or The Boston Globe. Like much of the pre-Web 2.0 way of life, those days are gone.

The proliferation of user-review websites such as Amazon, Goodreads, Rotten Tomatoes, and Yelp! have reconfigured the landscape and possibly created a new endangered species: the professional critic.

As if user-review sites were not enough to sound the death-knell for the New York Times book critic, the explosion of the blogosphere circa-2004 birthed a new genre of literary criticism: the literary blog (litblog, for short). Written by both professional and “amateur” critics, litblogs embody all of the gravy and liability of the blogosphere, adding a multitude of new voices to the mix, democratizing the conversation, and expanding content servicing the ultra-specific (e.g. poetry, or graphic novels), while simultaneously overwhelming the reader with content, choices, and links, blurring the role between professional critic and amateur, and reducing the market for paid professionals.

For literature aficionados, litblogs provide a way of connecting to the like-minded. Rain Taxi,... more »

This week The New Yorker had an interesting blurb about marginalia–specifically the marginalia in the New York Public Library’s rare books collection by famous writers such as Jack Kerouac and William Coleridge. Marginalia, a fancy term for the notes and underlinings scrawled in books, can take many forms. The column got me thinking about how the way we read is such a subjective and personal experience–everyone processes what they read in different ways. I know people who consider it a form of vandalism to make any mark at all in the books they own, while others underline with abandon.

I don’t tend to mark up my books too much, but I like to be able to underline memorable passages, preferably in pencil, but I rarely make notes or comments. It just makes the experience of reading more personalized. Joe writes page numbers on the last page of the book with a couple of words from the passage he wants to remember. I find the process a little cryptic, but it doesn’t interrupt the flow of text as you’re reading. I find it’s like a delightful game when I borrow a book from him and then flip to the last page to go... more »

I’ve always looked forward to the act of travel–that is, bus rides, train trips, and plane flights. That appreciation has been slightly less lately, as I’ve been traveling more (especially on the bus–ugh), but there’s still a part of me that appreciates the few hours of quiet time afforded to you by travel. It’s something of a small break from the daily grind–albeit one bookended by the stress of schedules, packing, buying tickets, and jostling for space with other passengers. It’s a chance to sit back and relax, to put on your headphones and stare out the window or take a nap.

In the past, I always used this travel time to read and write (ok, and stare out the window and take naps). However, thanks to modern technology, I find I am reading less and less on these trips, and instead either using the wireless connection on the Bolt Bus trips from Boston to NYC or flipping through the channels on the personalized tv screens on JetBlue flights.

Does this summarize our ADD-afflicted culture? If I, an avid lifelong reader, am finding myself reading less, what does this mean for the rest of the general public?

Things aren’t hopeless–I still carefully select... more »

A recent article in the Guardian’s Book Blog (I’m addicted) debated whether it’s necessary to date a reader if you yourself are a reader. The writer, clearly also the reader in this scenario, says that reading is not only an intensely personal ritual, but also an incredibly social one. Think about the success of book clubs–most people find they can relate better to what they’ve read if they discuss it with others. This is something I have definitely found true, though my own book club is still in its fledgling days. I love talking about books and writers, getting recommendations and different perspectives from fellow readers. I am incredibly lucky in that I work in a field (publishing) chock full of voracious readers, and many of my friends are also readers (comes with the territory when you attend a graduate program in writing and publishing).

Okay, so if you love to read, you can chat about books around the water cooler, or around a few bottles of wine at a book club. Isn’t that outlet enough? Do we really need our romantic partners to love reading as well?

According to the Guardian, no. The writer says that his wife of eight years has read... more »

Every June, tucked sneakily into envelopes containing final report cards, the dreaded Summer Reading List lies in wait to dampen any student’s end-of-year jubilation. Before they’ve even had a chance to start enjoying their summer vacations, that single sheet of paper gives kids yet another reason to dread returning in the fall.

When I read statistics like: “80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year,” or “nearly half of all Americans ages 18-24 read no books for pleasure,” or “from 1984 to 2004, the percentage of 13-year-olds who reported that they “read for fun” on a daily basis declined from 35% to 30%, and for 17-year-olds the decline was from 31% to 22%” , I get it. The truth of the matter is, unless it was required for school, most kids would go the entire summer without ever picking up a book.

But, to what degree does the SR list actually help in this matter? All my life, I’ve been an avid reader; and even I balked at mandatory SR. By the time I got to high school, I don’t think I read a single book on SR lists(thank you, Sparks Notes).

I read dozens of books of... more »

I have a friend who thinks it odd to read a book you’ve read before, but has no problem re-watching film fare.  I have no such qualms.  I’m greedy, and if something was thrilling the first time around, I’ll be back to get a second fix after a suitable amount of time has passed, like a criminal returning to a particularly tasty crime scene.  Or like someone who read a good book a few years ago and fancied dipping in again.

At the moment, I’m re-reading a book I’d bought whilst travelling, and it’s perhaps not strange that the book has absorbed some precious moments from it’s first outing.  I turn to the first page and instantly am drawn back to a park bench in Olsztyn, where I opened that same page almost a year ago. I guess it’s the same thing as imprinting some good times onto (or perhaps into) a song, but I like to think of anything book based as a more meandersome breed of nostalgia.  Not only does the experience last longer, but you also get to revisit a host of those long lost places you’d once seen and wandered.

Not that it’s purely about the places.  On... more »

If Kindle has you boycotting Amazon and your local book store is a disappointment, you’re in for a treat. BookMooch.com allows users to give books in exchange for books – quite the novel idea. The worldwide service is free, with the exception of postage, and works on a point system that requires users to give away at least one book for every three received. If you’re feeling exceptionally giving you can donate your points to a charity, like a library or a prison. There’s just something about virtual bookstores (and mooching) that tickle my fancy. Let the wish list begin!

Image courtesy of Pedro Figueiredo (some rights reserved)

Gosh, I knew charities were all about noble causes, but I didn’t realise they had a dark side reminiscent of those evil corporate empire style outfits you see villainised in film fare.  According to the British broadsheets at least, Oxfam is having its (possibly) devious moment.

Lots of people love books, and lots of people love bargains.  Secondhand bookshops have been onto this fact for some time now, and what glorious places they are.  I remember the first time I set foot into one of the infamous shops on Charing Cross road: super high bookcases (complete with ladders) ensures that you are immediately encased within all sorts of exciting book-based goodness.  Then you venture into the basement, where the shop seemingly doubles in size as you become blissfully submerged in a labyrinth of books – turn a corner and find yet another lovely alcove.  And the smell; we’re talking proper old books, oddities, wondrous topics and titles abound.

Oxfam have been peddling books for some time themselves, but of late they’ve expanded into shops that specialise in just the books.  Fair enough, we think, books are great, 50p books are fantastic, and it’s all for a... more »

Here’s the conclusion of our interview with Chamber Four:

Aside debates about the value of ereaders, and clips of other sources discussing the value of ereaders, what type of content are you trying to publish?

Sean: We’re really trying to promote the book reviews as a source of book information for readers by readers. The database is growing steadily, and our ambitions for it are big; we’ll be importing it to a searchable, cross-referencing database at some point, hopefully soon. We’re also planning to launch a digital magazine soon.

Nico: I’ve always been frustrated with the way book reviews are done. Music and movie reviews are geared toward telling people if the music/movie is good or not, why aren’t book reviews the same way? On the blog side, we also post about literature and reading, as well as ebook issues. I think our best posts are the more sprawling, big-picture pieces, because we’re all in the midst of figuring out this tectonic shift in a medium that’s been stable for almost 600 years, so I find pieces that can encompass the magnitude of that shift to be the most compelling. And while we do repost some big news items, we filter a lot... more »

Fringe has been collaborating with Chamber Four on an interview swap to exchange information about digital literature. It’s been an interesting dialogue–the interview with Fringe’s Editor-in-Chief Lizzie Stark can be found here. Now it’s Chamber Four’s turn to answer some questions! Lizzie sat down with Chamber Four founders Sean Clark and Nico Vreeland (Eric Markowsky wasn’t available, due to a little thing called his thesis) to talk about writing and reading in the digital revolution.

Part I now, Part II will be published tomorrow.

Why did you decide to start this site? How did you come up with the name? Who are its founding members and how long did it take you to get the site up?

Sean: The three of us (Eric, Nico, and Sean–all from Emerson College’s MFA program) came up with the idea while discussing books and Nico’s new Sony e-reader. We actually got the first build put together after a long week of work, but some of our planned improvements are still being worked on. I think an enormous disconnect seems to exist between readers (and to an extent writers) and publishing as a business. Since finishing school, I’ve longed for a better way to discuss and share... more »

The Fringe blog will be running an interview with Fringe EIC Lizzie Stark and the founders of Chamber Four, a new blog “for readers of books and ebooks,” in the coming weeks. In the meantime, Fringe Assistant Fiction Editor David Duhr fills us in on the backstory:

Halfway between Harvard and MIT, a new website devoted to readers is developing an underground following that grows by the day. Chamber Four—created by Nico Vreeland, Sean Clark, and Eric Markowsky—provides daily news and analysis about the world of publishing, literature, and e-reading technology, always advocating for book readers stymied by an industry that often puts them second (or third, or fourth). These guys aren’t afraid to let their opinions loose, and their content is presented in a manner that is both informative and entertaining.

The C4 team scours the Internet to bring users only the most interesting and relevant reader-related news, while also sharing their own hopes and concerns about the future of e-readers, paper books, and the publishing industry as a whole. Book reviews are posted at a near-daily pace, with easy-to-follow ratings designed to help readers find good books quickly. The e-reader comparison will help those interested in e-reading technology but unsure of... more »

I’ve long been a fan of Lorrie Moore’s short stories. If you haven’t had the opportunity to read her work, I’d recommend it. She’s funny, smart and cynical, which are my three favorite adjectives. Also, she often writes stories about interesting female protagonists of the funny, smart, and cynical variety.

If you’re interested in podcasts and the like, you can listen to Louise Erdrich and New Yorker fiction editor, Deborah Treisman read and discuss a Lorrie Moore story here.

So, I was greatly disappointed when I read her novella, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?, which I found largely whiny and flat. Lorrie Moore is an author whose voice I identify with so strongly and whose characters I often wish were real people so I could befriend/think I’m already friends with. Because of this (unhealthy) relationship I have to her work, I felt strangely betrayed by this novella.

Readers, have you had this experience with an author? Please share!

In three short weeks I’ll be getting married to a physicist. Needless to say, our tastes in books are wildly different.

As an MFA, I’m required to at least say that I prefer experimental literature, the less comprehensible, the better, with added points going to literature that references french existentialists, incorporates snatches of Urdu poetry or contains sentences which require footnotes.

The fiance prefers genre fiction — anything with aliens, gadgets, supernatural phenomena or Nero Wolfe.

Lately, we’ve found a peculiar middle ground: the Southern Vampire Series by Charlaine Harris, which stars Sookie Stackhouse, a young cocktail waitress cum telepath who has grit, brains and beauty. Recently, the series was made into an HBO show called True Blood. The books combine vampires, mystery and a little romance novel sensibility.

Rather than watch TV after dinner, we’ve been reading these novels aloud to each other, and it’s proven a wonderful way to spend time together. I find it soothing to listen to his voice, or to talk myself. The act recalls many dinners of my childhood — my mother used to read to me all the time. We talk all the time about whether Sookie will end up with Bill or Eric (both vampires) and who... more »

I recently read a book, that challenged me as a journalist, and as a human being. This graphic and intriguing account vividly documents the lives of four South African photojournalists who cover the conflict of the Apartheid years and other war correspondence during the 1990’s. The self-told account follows their lives as they encounter the horrific violence of the township feuds, and as they battle the ethical dilemma of when to shoot pictures and when to intervene. Greg Marinovich relives the tales of war, the killings, the shootings. Both he and another colleague were shot in a township battle. He survived but sadly Ken Oosterbroek was killed.

Through the journey, you begin to get a taste for the depression that slowly invaded their minds, the nightmares that plagued their sleep, the emotional toll of their chosen career. As a photographer, I have begun to see pictures from a fresh perspective. I now understand how difficult it can be to get a good shot. I know what it is like to work with people, to get the right expression, the movement, to capture a moment, to stand steps away from the action. When I view pictures now, I think about the photographer,... more »

Just thinking about the reading this Sunday is getting my dirndl in a twist! If you’ve somehow missed the buzz, consider yourself invited. Fringe is teaming up with other local presses as The Dirty Water Reading Series, to present “Beer Steins and Frauleins: A Dirty Water Readingtoberfest“, an Octoberfest-themed reading at the Grub Street Headquarters on Sunday, September 21. The reading will feature authors Rauan Klassnik, Amy L. Clark, Aimee Pokwatka, and Fringe contributor Francine Rubin, whose work appears in the current issue of Fringe.

For this particular reading, Fringe is in charge of decorations. How fun is that? Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas of how we can decorate the Grub Street space? Anyone have a dirndl or some lederhosen, maybe a few beer steins lying around, waiting for a chance to shine?

EVENT DETAILS
Beer Steins and Frauleins: A Dirty Water Readingtoberfest
FREE ADMISSION (free beer and free food too!)
Sunday, September 21
7:00 p.m.
Grub Street, 160 Boylston, Boston

My favorite comedian, the late Mitch Hedberg, once cracked: “Every book is a children’s book as long as the kid can read!”

Clearly, this statement is little more than an uninformed generalization with the singular goal of eliciting a chuckle. But, I must admit, as a card-carrying member of the “Make ‘em laugh any way you can” brigade, the silly one-liner actually gave me pause. Because, more and more, Young Adult Literature that I see as a middle school teacher is taking on content and themes that, often, is more “adult” than “young.” The ensuing internal debate has become a sort of “Chicken or The Egg” conundrum that I’ve yet to resolve.

Then, upon being invited to write for Fringe, I was referred to another column in a popular blog on YAL. And, I totally dug the snarky, “I love the 80’s”-style reviews of books from our collective childhood, having consequently been inspired to unearth lots of dusty paperbacks in my basement. And, while it’s most certainly been quite a trip to revisit these characters and stories through grown up eyes, as I read, something strikes me. Though I feel very close to these books out of nostalgia, I can’t remember ever... more »

I’d like to introduce you all to an amazing and little known poet, Talvikki Ansel. And yes, I did just interview her for my thesis, so perhaps I’m biased. Nevertheless, she is a poet whose work is worth knowing. Her first book, My Shining Archipelago, was published as winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets in 1996. And her second book, Jetty, came out in 2003. Jetty is out of print but can—and should be—found used.

Almost all of Talvikki Ansel’s poems are in some way connected to the natural world—she has spent a significant amount of time working in gardens and cataloging birds for conservation efforts. This influence comes across in her work, which is laced with botanical terms and filled with experiences from the field.

Although her poetry stands strongly on it’s own, Ansel has often been compared to Elizabeth Bishop. They inhabit similar natural landscapes; have an affinity for odd and quirky images, and employ precision description. In one of Ansel’s more recent poems, “Valentine’s,” published in Poetry Magazine 2003, she writes, “I identified that weird / seed pod”… “Magenta capsule and four orange seeds”… “ ‘heart’s a-bustin’ with love’ it’s called” (12-13, 15, 16). This image seems an apt... more »