Dec 14, 2019 | Current Ned Note, Horror, On Books, On Writing, Past Notes
The holiday season sees a million variations on Charles Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol, yet this marvelous supernatural tale all too often overshadows the ghostly echoes that permeate Dickens’s entire oeuvre. Here’s a brief overview. In John Irving’s book of...
Nov 11, 2019 | Bookstores, Current Ned Note, On Books, Past Notes
Read my books at Shakespeare & Co. Read more BOOKSTORE POSTS One year ago, I had the distinct pleasure of visiting perhaps the most famous independent bookstore in the world with my daughter. Shakespeare and Company is the marvelous English-language bookshop in...
Sep 11, 2019 | Current Ned Note, On Books, Past Notes
“The Testaments” by Margaret Atwood feels both more prescient and more hopeful than “The Handmaid’s Tale“. In 1985, women’s rights seemed assured and the world described in Gilead was a strange dystopia. Sadly, Gilead seems like a real possibility...
Jul 22, 2019 | Current Ned Note, On Books, On Writing, Past Notes
I had the pleasure of getting a preview of Katie Grindeland’s debut novel The Gifts We Keep, published by the student cooperative at Ooligan Press. Grindeland’s book was the winner of the 2016 Multnomah County Library Writers Project, and richly deserved...
Jan 9, 2019 | Current Ned Note, On Books, Past Notes
The wonderful fantasy writer V.S. Schwab recently asked for recommendations on books from her readers. I was surprised to see a new book I’d never heard of mentioned by many — If We Were Villains, by M.L. Rio. I promptly purchased the book and it’s...
Nov 18, 2018 | Current Ned Note, Past Notes, Reviews
A new commemorative limited hardcover edition of the bestselling novel The Eagle Tree by Ned Hayes has just been published. The new edition has a spectacular cover by Pacific Northwest author and artist Hal Schrieve, which was selected for the National Book Award Long...