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60' 6" has moved. 

old posts will stay here for now, 

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[photo of Joseph O'Neill by Adam Nadel for The Telegraph]

The last book I read in 2008 was Netherland, by Joseph O'Neill. It joins the first book I read in '08, Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, at the top of my favorite reads of the year. In today's Financial Times, O'Neill answers short questions with short answers. Here's a sampling:

When did you know you were going to be a writer?

I’ve never known it. My sense of myself as a professional writer has been somewhat frail, particularly over these past few years.

Who is your perfect reader?

I’ll take any reader.

What is the hardest thing to write about?

It’s all very hard, sadly.

What are you most proud of writing?

In my novels, certain sentences. . . .

What do you do to celebrate finishing a book?

Disown what I’ve just written.

What book do you wish you’d written?

My next one.

Stop and Give Me Twenty

Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother, is "a co-parenting new father who writes at least a book per year, half-a-dozen columns a month, ten or more blog posts a day, plus assorted novellas and stories and speeches." In this piece for Locus Magazine, he explains how he stays productive in the "age of distraction":

- Short, regular work schedule

- Leave yourself a rough edge

- Don't research

- Don't be ceremonious

- Kill your word-processor

- Realtime communications tools are deadly

More detail in the article.

I've been on a bit of an obsessive Andre Dubus jag the past week. I read his essay collection Broken Vessels, reread his Selected Stories, and found a bunch of essays about his work and life. Today I discovered that a documentary film was made in 2007 about his life. It doesn't seem to be available on DVD yet, but I found this clip, which focuses on the accident that crippled him ["cripple" is the word he used for his condition], and his recovery. I wish there was more footage available, especially pertaining to his writing life, but for now at least, it's all I can find.


From "The Times Were Never So Bad" from Edward Delaney on Vimeo.

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eReading is here to stay, and Maud's okay with that.  Me too, especially after reading The Gift and watching the changes the music industry is going through. The nimble will survive, the behemoths will struggle. The future is what we make it, and I think we're on the cusp of an exciting evolution in the ways writers reach audiences.

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Read it and weep
The economic news couldn't be worse for the book industry.
Now insiders are asking how literature will survive. [Salon.com]

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Daily Routines
How writers, artists, and other interesting people organize their days.










[via largehearted boy]

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.