Articles by Emily St. John Mandel
October 28, 2010
Melville House withdraws from Amazon’s Best Translated Book Awards 1
Citing Amazon’s “predatory and thuggish practices,” Melville House has withdrawn from future participation in the Best Translated Book Awards.
October 25, 2010
Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing To Our Brains 15
I began to realize that after all this time on the Internet, I’d trained my brain to expect a new stimulation every few minutes. After a short period of concentration on a given task, my brain would do what I’d trained it to do: it would turn its attention to something else.
October 24, 2010
Interview with David Bajo 0
An interview with the author David Bajo, on his new novel Panopticon: “I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of privacy, especially how our society constantly seeks ways to invade it technologically, how we consistently undermine it by happily participating in digital omniscience, yet how we are outraged by the pain that technology and that [...]
October 11, 2010
Carla F. Cohen 0
Carla F. Cohen, co-owner and founder of legendary Washington, D.C. bookstore Politics & Prose, died this morning.
October 8, 2010
In Praise of Unlikable Characters 23
Authors are too timid, it seems to me sometimes, in the face of the demand for conventionally sympathetic characters. “I didn’t like any of the characters” is a common Amazon reviewer’s refrain—or, I don’t know, maybe that’s just what they say about the books that I write. They say it like it’s a bad thing.
September 28, 2010
The working mother’s guide to writing a novel 0
Over at the Los Angeles Times, novelist and critic Mary McNamara offers a working mother’s guide to writing a novel. A glimpse into the life of someone who’s way better at managing her time than I am.