Posts From Author: la times

Curtain Call: In Case of Emergency

A state of emergency is declared. You fly tonight. What do you take with you? Clothes? Thermos? Hatchet? Naaah: books, of course. Fortunately you know of a safehouse nearby. A safehouse by the name of SpeakEasy. That’s right, comrades, there’s a Seriously Entertaining way out of this crisis. Between our six guests next week, we have everything you need to survive In Case of Emergency. Don’t have your ticket yet? Fear not, there’s still a few left here. Your checklist: 1. Amor Towles. Author of the marvellous Manhattan merry-go-round Rules of Civility, which we reviewed a few weeks back, and its ebook follow-up Eve in Hollywood. Here’s Towles talking about the great American photographer Walker Evans and the genesis of his debut novel: 2. Evie Wyld‘s new book, All the Birds, Singing, was just published in the US. When it came out in the UK last year, the Guardian said that it “should enhance her reputation as one of our most gifted novelists”. We took a look at her debut, After the Fire, a Still Small Voice, earlier this week. In this clip, Wyld reads the opening to All the Birds, Singing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bn4sDbm3k8 3. J.D. McClatchy‘s new collection Plundered Hearts just came out to ecstatic reviews — the […]
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Blog Post of a Wimpy Kid

6 March marked this year’s World Book Day in the UK, so time once again for Professor Keith Topping of the University of Dundee to publish his annual “What Kids Are Reading” report (downloadable here). It’s a fascinating atomisation of the reading habits of nearly half a million British children aged five to sixteen, one which is traditionally dominated by that great Pied Piper of children’s literature, Roald Dahl. But not this year, for it appears that the children of the UK have joined their American cousins on the spectacularly successful Diary of a Wimpy Kid bandwagon. Or should I say tour bus… To mark the publication of the eighth book in Jeff Kinney‘s terrific Wimpy Kid series, Hard Luck, the author embarked on a grand tour of the United States and Europe on this bus. It’s a big one, but after all, Greg Heffley, the middle-school hero of the series, is something of a superstar. According to the Wall Street Journal, Hard Luck sold upwards of a million copies the week it was published, from a staggering 5.5 million-book print run. In Topping’s study, the first seven volumes of the series occupied the top seven spots in the list of books most read by pupils in Year 6 […]
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