Some links for a Friday night

Paul Madonna's GAB postcard

We don't often post series of links on the Green Apple Core, but I don't often work Friday nights and right now I'm covering a co-worker's break in the Annex (to clarify: the Annex is home to both new and used fiction, science fiction, and mysteries; new and used graphic novels; a display of literature in translation; a new-ish display of Staff Picks; books (new and used) on music, theater, film (including television), magazines; and CDs, LPs, and DVDs) and want to share with you a few bookish things around the internet and elsewhere that have caught my attention.

• Do you recognize the name Gordon Lish? Lish was a(n in)famous editor at Knopf during the 1970s and 80s, the man responsible, some say, for creating (by severe and creative editing) Raymond Carver's signature style. Besides introducing to the American reading public such writers as Cynthia Ozick, Amy Hempel, and Barry Hannah, Lish also wrote fiction himself, the shorter pieces of which are included in O/R Books recent Collected Fictions (which despite not being on our website is on our shelves). The first installment of Carla Blumenkranz's profile of Lish is included in the latest issue of N+1.
• Also of note from the new N+1 is Richard Beck's appraisal of indie music website/cultural taste-maker/love-to-hate-'em Pitchfork.
• Writer Ted Gioia (who's got a mustache to die for) just launched a new website dedicated to what he calls The Postmodern Mystery Reading List. Included on the list are such GAB favorites Thomas Bernhard, Jonathan Lethem, and Patricia Highsmith. Worth a glance, an argument, an addendum.
  
• And finally, because it's just about time for me to head on back to the main store, please read Charles Simic's essay on the Lost Art of Postcard Writing and remember: we sell postcards.

Literary links

That page doesn't exist!

1. HBO is set to adapt Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex into a series. (via)

2. The Observer has come up with a sure-to-be-contentious list of the "50 Best Summer Reads Ever". Argue amongst yourselves. (via)

3. It's a couple of weeks old already, but this piece on Salon about Alice Hoffman's immediately infamous Twitter attack on a critic is too good to pass up. See also: Gawker.

4. Also a bit old, but not to be missed: this year's Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (a.k.a. the Bad Writing Contest) has a winner. The culprit: David McKenzie, whose awful, awful losing winning sentence reads:

"Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests."

(In McKenzie's defense, the sentence is a parody.)

5. Yet another list, this one from The Second Pass offering opinions on which classics are best avoided. Hm.

6. From the Significant Objects Project (explained here), comes an experiment in the power of literary persuasion. Would you bid on someone's "Significant Object"?

7. Have an iPhone? Want to shop indie? (Of course you do.) Check out IndieBound's iPhone App. You'll get customized recommendations delivered right to your pocket. It's the next best thing to having a bookseller delivered to your pocket. And less bulky.

Green Apple miscellany, part 3

1. Liao Yiwu's sobering (and at times hilarious) collection of interviews with the outcasts, dissidents and criminals at the bottom of Chinese society, The Corpse Walker, is just out in paperback. Local writer Yiyun Li reviewed the hardcover last year in the SF Chronicle, praising its evocation of the "history that lives only in people's memories".

I can't put the book down.

2. There is a growing movement to turn May into National Short Story Month. Follow at the Emerging Writers Network blog, where reviews of collections and stories are offered.

3. Marc Fitten is turning the book tour for his new novel, Valeria's Last Stand, into an excuse to visit 100 independent bookstore. He just left East Sandwich, MA, but we're confident we'll see him within the next few months. (via Maude Newton)

4. Poets are ranked by beard weight at A Journey Round My Skull.

5. And is A Lion Called Christian the first book to be based on a "Youtube Sensation"? (Sure, I'm as cynical as the next guy, but the clip really gets me! Here come the waterworks!)