Our blowout summer sale is still on. Book groupings discounted 40%, individual books discounted 25%.
You know what books are part of that sale? The two John Williams books we publish: Everybody's favorite story about a depressed academic, Stoner, along with Sam Mendes's favorite Western, Butcher's Crossing. At The Quarterly Conversation, Scott Bryan Wilson explains why the books are "impossible to put down." And, as part of the National Book Foundation's countdown of the 77 fiction winners of the National Book Award, Harold Augenbraum discusses Williams's Augustus.
Morte D'Urban won the National Book Award in 1963, and both Joshua Ferris and Fiona Maazel discuss it at that very same NBA Fiction blog.
All right, we have no real idea if Butcher's Crossing is Sam Mendes's favorite Western or not, but we do know that he'll be producing a film adaptation of it as part of a new deal he's made with Focus Features.
Other recent books you can pick up on the cheap for a bit longer: Sylvia Townsend Warner's romantic, beautiful, enthralling lesbian love story set during the French revolution of 1848, Summer Will Show, and our two Elaine Dundy novels, including her roman-à-clef follow-up to The Dud Avocado, The Old Man and Me.
A High Wind in Jamaica is not part of the sale, but Andrew Sean Greer thinks you must read it anyway, listen to the story on NPR here.
According to Jesse Kornbluth (aka The Head Butler) you must also read James Thurber's 13 Clocks.
James Wood really did play the bongos in honor of Heavy Rotation: Twenty Writers on the Albums That Changed Their Lives. Peter Terzian must be a very persuasive man.
Before Esperanza Spalding was singing to Barack Obama at the White House, she was singing the praises of The Summer Book.
The Recent production of a theatrical adaptation of Vassily Grossman's Life and Fate as part of the Lincoln Center got the Post's Elisabeth Vincentelli thinking about the source material. If anyone knows if the play is traveling, please get in touch with us.
Christopher Byrd explains How Platonov Can Change Your Life (very little collectivization required) at the always-delightful BN Review.
I would highly recommend the Military History Collection http://www.nybooks.com/shop/product?usca_p=t&product_id=9296 I've read two of the three, and in honor of being able to comment once again here I'll get the one on Napoleon now.
Posted by: Matthew | August 07, 2009 at 03:27 PM