New England Review

Magic for Beginners eBook

Link at Powell's

Kelly Link’s decision to give away free eBooks of her acclaimed story collection Magic for Beginners represents an innovative approach to digital publishing as a complement to book culture. Small Beer Press clarifies the intentions:

We love books. We want to keep on publishing good books. Weird books. Interesting books. We are curious about the future. If everyone downloads books straight to the Kindlenub in their head, we might be in trouble. But if there are still people who like to read books on paper, maybe some of them will read some of these downloads and then decide they would like the actual books.

Reading a story as powerful as Link’s “Stone Animals” for free should incline readers to buy the book. After 60,000 downloads (nearly 12,000 of the PDF version, which imports nicely from email directly into the iBooks PDF Bookshelf), Magic for Beginners has entered its sixth printing.

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Sims on Markson

Markson at Powell's

Laura Sims investigates David Markson’s conception of the novel:

In Markson’s Reader’s Block (Dalkey Archive, 1996), the narrator asks early on:

What is a novel in any case? (13)

To which he adds, musing on the work he anticipates writing, which bears a striking resemblance to Reader’s Block itself:

Nonlinear? Discontinuous? Collage-like?

An assemblage? (14)

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Sydney Lea on Ruth Stone

The Burlington Free Press published Sydney Lea’s tribute to the late Ruth Stone:

Editor’s Note: This column was written before former Vermont State Poet Ruth Stone died Nov. 19. Current state poet laureate Sydney Lea writes about how Stone, in a few words, evokes life while writing about loss.

I want to pay a brief and inadequate tribute to Ruth Stone, my predecessor as Vermont Poet Laureate. Ms. Stone is remarkable in every way: 96 years old and all but completely blind, the woman still generates some of America’s most compelling poetry.

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