What follow is a post, verbatim, from the Valancourt Books Blog, posted on Saturday, October 27, 2018 and reprinted here simply to help them get the word out. Between print books, Kindle e-books, and Audible audiobooks, these days Amazon accounts for at least 90% of our sales. Although our books are available on plenty of …
These days I'm re-reading Raymond Chandler's masterpiece, The Long Good-bye. I do this as I'm nearing the completion of my own book; I don't avoid fiction as some writer's do to avoid being overly influenced but knowingly read books I want to be influenced by. In this case it's mostly four books I read and …
Sometimes you come across passages that remind you again of what good writing is. I just started the classic Wuthering Heights last night (yes, you need to read the classics) and was taken aback by a passage not just because of the quality of the prose but also by the tone. It was like the …
Continue reading The Best Writing of the Week – Wuthering Heights
Graphic novels, comic books and kids' books with too many pictures are given a bad rap. But a surprising new study shows that we are wrong to worry. (Not that I was worried). Parents are often in a rush to get their kids away from comics and over to "proper" books. But now, thanks to …
Continue reading I Just Realized Why Books With Pictures Are So Great for Kids
In my edition of The Hobbit, cheap mass-market paperback, there is an introduction by Peter S Beagle from 1973 that contains not one but two passages that are amazingly political and powerful. A Quote For Today, From 1973 The Sixties were no fouler a decade than the Fifties - they mere reaped the Fifties' foul …
Continue reading Two Awesome Quotes From The Hobbit’s 1973 Introduction
One of my favorite books of the last few years is John Langan's incredible The Fisherman, the 2016 Stoker Award winner. The Fisherman tells the story of two grieving men who become friends because of their shared passion for fishing (as a means to take their minds off the grief). The hear of a mysterious …
You know that thing, when you finally read a book you've heard about again and again but, for whatever reason, haven't gotten around to yet? And then you do and it's awesome. That? Yeah, I just had that with Ben H. Winter's excellent pre-apocalyptic mystery The Last Policeman. The Last Policeman is a book I …
Elephants shouldn't glow. Humans shouldn't be careless with radioactive waste. But good writers should tell good stories, and that brings us to Brooke Bolander's The Only Harmless Great Thing. This tells the story of a woman and an elephant. The way the book is written may make the book slightly less appealing to readers, and …
Continue reading Elephants Aglow – A Few Words About THE ONLY HARMLESS GREAT THING
Raymond Chandler is the author I'm obsessing most over these days, and here's just a few of the reasons why: 1 - His prose Here are examples just from the start of The Little Sister, which I am now reading. The pebbled glass door panel is lettered in flaked black paint: 'Philip Marlowe... Investigations'. It …
Here are amazon's top 10 bestselling books for the past week.
