Archive for April, 2007

A book I want to read

Laila Lalami, who’ll be in town this week for three PEN events, was admiring Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist before she left Morocco.

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Apologies from the corrections department

Meet Rindia Bruce, my mom’s paternal grandmother and a woman to whom I owe an apology. I mistakenly believed she was the ancestor who killed her last baby by beating its head against the doorstep. My mother recently clarified: You are mixed up with my grandmothers. Gran Rindia was a Pentecostal holy roller!!  It was Rebecca Johnston (“Mammy” Johnston), Zone’s . . .

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Change comes to Tula Springs, LA

I once picked up Heavenly Days at Balk’s suggestion, but ultimately found it a little broad. Writing persuasively for the NYTBR, Mark Sarvas makes me want to give Wilcox another shot.

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American Youth, on Maaza Mengiste’s recommendation

My friend Maaza Mengiste extols the virtues of Phil LaMarche’s first novel so passionately that I asked her to jot down some quick impressions in advance of the Debut Lit reading she’s hosting on Saturday night at KGB. Here’s what she sent.   The title of Phil LaMarche’s American Youth is as spare, and ultimately as loaded, as his prose. . . .

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The typeface film

Three takes on the Helvetica documentary: Our little secret. When Helvetica freezes over. A whole movie about a typeface?

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