Author/Editor Series: Ron Currie, author of Everything Matters! (Viking), in conversation with Viking Editorial Director Molly Stern
Ron Currie Jr. received the prestigious New York Public Library Young Lion’s Award for debut fiction for his previous book God Is Dead. In his new novel, an ordinary boy from Maine receives a horrific prophecy that a comet will destroy all human life on the planet, and grows up forever wondering, “Does anything I do matter?” Currie discusses his book with his editor Molly Stern, Executive Editor for Viking Penguin, whose authors include Geraldine Brooks, David Benioff, Susan Choi, Garrison Keillor, and Sue Monk Kidd.
News of Note
Staff Picks
Tales from Outer Suburbia
Written by Jessica
by Shaun Tan (Scholastic, $19.99)
Shaun Tan's wordless comic, The Arrival, is already a cult classic, recreating the immigrant experience with gorgeous art and a hint of surrealism to unsettle things. His new book is wordier, but no less original. If you let him, he'll help you see the bleak streets of suburbia with new eyes for the strange and moving and beautiful, and refresh your store of secret memories.
Sag Harbor
Written by Jessica
by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday, $24.95)
Yeah yeah, he's a Young Lion and a MacArthur genius, but have you forgotten how funny Colson Whitehead is? This summer-in-the-life novel is worth the price of admission for the passage on the correct usage of "dag" alone. Under the surface of these set pieces there's an almost bitter nostalgia for who we were and where we came from, but that doesn't keep it from being a trip as relaxed and satisfying as the first day of vacation.
Paintings in Proust
Written by David
by Eric Karpeles (Thames and Hudson, $45.00)
If I had to vote for my favorite book of 2008, I think this might be it. It's a gorgeous, beautiful, genius, and exceptionally well-made book, that I can't believe hasn't been done until now (I guess that's how it usually goes with the simple, yet brilliant ideas.) Eric Karpeles has identified and collected the 200+ paintings referenced in Proust's masterpiece and has included them here in beautiful color plates along with the novel's corresponding text. If you've never read In Search of Lost Time this should be sufficient inspiration to finally get around to it, and if you've already read it once, I guess there's nothing for you to do but read it again. It's a truly perfect book.
Ron Currie Jr. received the prestigious New York Public Library Young Lion’s Award for debut fiction for his previous book God Is Dead. In his new novel, an ordinary boy from Maine receives a horrific prophecy that a comet will destroy all human life on the planet, and grows up forever wondering, “Does anything I do matter?” Currie discusses his book with his editor Molly Stern, Executive Editor for Viking Penguin, whose authors include Geraldine Brooks, David Benioff, Susan Choi, Garrison Keillor, and Sue Monk Kidd.
Shaun Tan's wordless comic, The Arrival, is already a cult classic, recreating the immigrant experience with gorgeous art and a hint of surrealism to unsettle things. His new book is wordier, but no less original. If you let him, he'll help you see the bleak streets of suburbia with new eyes for the strange and moving and beautiful, and refresh your store of secret memories.
Yeah yeah, he's a Young Lion and a MacArthur genius, but have you forgotten how funny Colson Whitehead is? This summer-in-the-life novel is worth the price of admission for the passage on the correct usage of "dag" alone. Under the surface of these set pieces there's an almost bitter nostalgia for who we were and where we came from, but that doesn't keep it from being a trip as relaxed and satisfying as the first day of vacation.
If I had to vote for my favorite book of 2008, I think this might be it. It's a gorgeous, beautiful, genius, and exceptionally well-made book, that I can't believe hasn't been done until now (I guess that's how it usually goes with the simple, yet brilliant ideas.) Eric Karpeles has identified and collected the 200+ paintings referenced in Proust's masterpiece and has included them here in beautiful color plates along with the novel's corresponding text. If you've never read In Search of Lost Time this should be sufficient inspiration to finally get around to it, and if you've already read it once, I guess there's nothing for you to do but read it again. It's a truly perfect book.