The LBC, a book blog cooperative of which I’m a member, is due to announce its Winter pick. Tune in on Monday morning for the announcement of the winner, and stick around for the rest of the week to find out which other books were considered.
This week, I’d like to give away a copy of Women on the Edge: Writing from Los Angeles. Edited by Samantha Dunn and Juliana Ortale, and with an introduction by Janet Fitch, the anthology features short fiction by Aimee Bender, Carol Muske Dukes, Lisa Glatt, Dylan Landis, Lisa Teasley, and Rachel Resnick, among others.
The first person to correctly answer this question wins the book: What is the title of Lisa Glatt’s acclaimed first novel? Please use the subject line “Women on the Edge” in your email, and please also include your mailing address. Previous winners excluded.
Update: Kimberly L. from San Carlos gets the book.
Over at Poets and Writers, Joe Woodward goes in search of David Foster Wallace, and finds that:
Everything I know about DFW (even his wanton use of acronyms in place of proper nouns) I know secondhand—through his books, a few printed interviews, reviews, and critical studies. It’s not that I haven’t tried to pose some questions directly to the writer himself, to ferret out a few insights from the man Sven Birkerts—in a review of Infinite Jest for the Atlantic Monthly in 1996—called “a wild-card savant.” No, my search to find the real DFW has been impeded by agent and publicist alike: I’ve been stonewalled. Whether he is “publicity shy,” as his publicist contends, or whether he’s weaving a web of literary mystique about himself, I do not know. And, it seems more and more likely, I never will.
You can read the full article here.
According to Jeune Afrique, a young Moroccan entrepreneur named Nabil Alami (no relation) has started an online site where the faithful can purchase live lambs for the sacrificial rites of Eid. Compare weights, sizes, and colors, without having to trek to the souk and deal with the smells and sounds of hundreds of bleating sheep. Plus, you can choose your delivery date, which means you don’t have to keep, feed, and clean after the animal for the days leading up to the feast. Demand was so high that the farm he had contracted with sold out. Now he wants to expand his business to include celebrations for weddings and births, etc.
Or, you know, you can just donate the Eid money to charity.
The Guardian has put together a handy guide to the work of Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, who is currently awaiting trial for “insulting Turkishness.”