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About This Blog
Michael Merschel: Michael Merschel edits books coverage for The Dallas Morning News. November 2010
Recent Posts
George W. Bush to sign Decision Points in Dallas Late-breaking author event: Lori Ann Stephens at SMU B&N Bookstore Brandon Sanderson visits Dallas on Thursday Want to write for a literary journal? "The First Line" wants you Going to the World Series with Dave Eggers Rick Riordan's lastest novels take on new myths Audio review: Ian Frazier's "Travels in Siberia" Jimmy Carter to visit Grapevine on Friday Next week in books: Noteworthy new releases Local writers in the news: From Maud Hart Lovelace to "extreme" space Categories
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First was Nami Mun (who scored a double by winning mention at the aforementioned Buzz panel), who read from Miles From Nowhere. She's not a dynamic reader -- she apologized ahead of time becuase her voice does tend to sound as if she's about to cry -- but her prose was powerful as she painted vivid scenes of a young woman living on some extremely hard streets. Her editor had gone out of her way to point out that this was NOT a memoir, so I asked Nami afterward just how much of her actual life was in the novel. "About 1 percent is based on real-life experience," she said. But she did run away from home and had a lot of "strange, obscure jobs" including selling Avon and working as a court-appointed criminal investigator. "Writing was the only job that allows me to use everything I have learned in every one of those jobs. Next up on the panel was Rachel Kushner, whose novel Telex From Cuba is set in pre-revolutionary Cuba. I had read that she did extensive research for this one, so I asked her what that entailed. "I read a ton of Caribbean history," she said. "I also spent a lot of time in Cuba going through archives." In fact, in Preston, Cuba, she came across an old building with a leaky roof that "was like this totally cinematic time capsule of all the old papers" of the United Fruit Company. She also drew from her grandparents' meticulously kept archives. The research and writing process took her six years. Andrew Davidson kind of stole the show with his presentation about Gargoyle. Let me try to quote part of his description of it: "Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, girl kills the boy, 700 years later they meet again, but this time the boy kills the girl." After that, there is something involving "a homosexual viking who pines with unrequited love," and after that things get weird. This book has been sold worldwide, so somebody is excited about it. Mark Sarvas, a popular blogger (who has contributed to The Dallas Morning News in the past) gave an entertaining reading from his new novel Harry, Revised wherein I learned if you are going to pick a fight with a doctor, it should never be a proctologist. In her reading from Dorothy on the Rocks, Barbara Suter managed to mix laughs and an ache for a long-lost friend with a concept for "fairy godmother" that will never allow you to look at Barbie the same way again. Rivka Galchen wrapped things up with a reading from Atmospheric Disturbances, which you'll be reading about in these pages soon. |
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