Washington Post Best Books 2009

Angels of Destruction is on the Washington Post's list of Best Books of 2009! Scroll down to Fantasy & Science Fiction, though of course, the novel is neither, but who's complaining?

Just in time for the holidays, and Amazon is offering a threefor special. You can get Angels, Stolen Child, and Audrey Niffenegger's new novel Her Fearful Symmetry for around $35.

Resurrection

So the Washington Post reviewed Angels the other day, and thanks be for Liz Hand, a perfect stranger, who did the right thing.

Back from Pittsburgh and the reading at Joseph-Beth where a few of the clan showed up. I heard for the first time, the story of my grandfather's Irish wake, back in 1936, when they still laid out the body at home. Seems a couple of the lads had a bit much to drink and wanted to raise a glass to Doc, so they took him out of the casket and sat him up in a chair, and properly toasted him. Now, I can't vouch for the story, but the aunties insist it true, so be it.

Vanishing worlds

This Sunday I went to fetch first thing, as always, the Book World section from the Washington Post, but it was not there. I knew the newspaper had ended the section as a stand-alone, and I even had a review in the final edition, but old habits die hard. In the Outlook section, a spate of non-fiction books were reviewed, as promised, and in the weekday issues, novels fall under scrutiny. But it just isn't the same.

I had heard earlier in the week of the loss of another cherished institution: the International Poetry Forum in Pittsburgh. Since 1966, it has been bringing world renowned poets to my old home town -- from Seamus Heaney to Richard Wilbur to every one, and for an aspiring writer, it was a heady experience to sit in the dark and listen to these great poets say their poems and have the words settle on the audience like warm snow. The Forum, like Book World, is a victim of the damn recession and the vanishing reader.

We miss you.