featured posts
May. 9, 2011
Why are we attracted to crime stories?
What does our attraction to crime stories tell us about ourselves?
Tags: crime novels · featured posts
Feb. 21, 2011
Copyright Run Amok
A futile effort to secure reprint rights for an epigram from H.G. Wells has me steaming about the excesses of copyright law.
Tags: copyright · Defending Jacob · featured posts · H.G. Wells · Lawrence Lessig
Feb. 8, 2011
“Madame Bovary” translated by Lydia Davis
Lydia Davis’s wonderful new translation of Flaubert’s masterpiece feels quite modern.
Tags: featured posts · Flaubert · realism
Oct. 13, 2010
“Next”
James Hynes’s *Next* is the best novel I’ve read in a very long time.
Tags: featured posts · James Hynes
Oct. 5, 2010
Drawing Circles
Lessons for creatives from two famous circles, Giotto’s O and the enso of Japanese calligraphy.
Tags: enso · featured posts · Giotto · On Writing · painting · writing tips
Jun. 30, 2010
Man Out of Time: “The Disenchanted” by Budd Schulberg
In “The Disenchanted,” Budd Schulberg wrote the final act in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tragedy.
Tags: Budd Schulberg · F. Scott Fitzgerald · featured posts · The Disenchanted
Apr. 6, 2010
Will e-novels be shorter?
Will e-novels be shorter than p-novels — you know, books, the things made with paper and ink?
Tags: Charles Dickens · Defending Jacob · ebooks · Ephraim Rubenstein · featured posts
Mar. 23, 2010
“Wolf Hall”
Hilary Mantel’s Booker Prize-winning “Wolf Hall” re-imagines Henry VIII’s chief minister and henchman Thomas Cromwell as the true modern man and the sainted Thomas More as a mad, hair-shirted religious zealot.
Tags: featured posts · Hilary Mantel · Wolf Hall
Mar. 18, 2010
Baseball’s Yankee Problem
In baseball, the deck is stacked. It’s worse than unfair; it’s boring.
Tags: baseball · featured posts · Red Sox · Yankees
Mar. 9, 2010
Done!
My new novel, Defending Jacob, explores our eternal fascination with crime and crime stories.
Tags: Defending Jacob · featured posts
Feb. 2, 2010
The Street Photography of Jules Aarons
An under-appreciated photographer of Boston street life has an exhibit at the Boston Public Library
Tags: Boston Public Library · featured posts · Jules Aarons · The Strangler
Jan. 26, 2010
“Little Dorrit”: Dickens’ Teeming World
Why modern realism just doesn’t feel like reality.
Tags: Charles Dickens · featured posts · Little Dorrit
Dec. 20, 2009
The View from Below: A midlist author watches the ebook wars
The publishing industry is a futures market – a Silicon Valley for books, with every publisher a venture capitalist searching for the Next Big Thing.
Tags: Amazon · ebooks · featured posts
Dec. 16, 2009
Dickens vs. the Snarks
To a reader, Dickens absorbs, the web distracts.
Tags: blogging · Charles Dickens · featured posts · Little Dorrit
Dec. 4, 2009
“Tamburlaine Must Die”
Louise Welsh’s “Tamburlaine Must Die” recounts the final days of the Elizabethan poet Christopher Marlowe, whose murder in 1593 is one of the great unsolved historical mysteries beloved by conspiracy theorists.
Tags: featured posts · Louise Welsh
Oct. 15, 2009
How to Make a Movie About a Writer
Jane Campion’s “Bright Star” isn’t simply about the poet John Keats; it is about the poetry itself.
Tags: featured posts · Jane Campion · John Keats
Sep. 18, 2009
Biocriminology
A burgeoning science suggests that crime is caused in part by biological factors, that is, by traits inherited through DNA or by the brain malfunctioning in very specific ways.
Tags: behavioral genetics · Defending Jacob · featured posts · law · science · video
Jul. 27, 2009
“Free” and the Future of Publishing
An internet entrepreneur suggests book publishers take a lesson from web start-ups.
Tags: featured posts · Fred Wilson · free · Seth Godin
Jul. 16, 2009
Best Boston Movie Ever: “The Friends of Eddie Coyle”
A forgotten classic from 1973 is the best movie about Boston ever.
Tags: featured posts · George V. Higgins · Robert Mitchum · The Friends of Eddie Coyle · video