Elizabeth Benedict on Books & What Not

Must Read: The Oriental Wife

2011-09-28T06:47:00.001-07:00

My mash note to Evelyn Toynton's magnificent novel, The Oriental Wife, was published today on Jesse Kornbluth's site, Head Butler.

Novelists and the College Application Essay

2011-09-23T08:08:00.001-07:00

In case you've been wondering what a novelist might offer a student who's writing his/her college application essay, here's the answer.

Don't Sweat the Essay

2011-09-21T11:04:00.000-07:00

Books and What Not these days includes my business, Don't Sweat the Essay, a coaching service for high school students applying to college and anyone applying to grad school. My 25 years of teaching writing at colleges and universities, and a lifetime of writing and editing books, articles, and everything else has come together in this enterprise. Please visit the website, where you can find out how to email or call me ~~~ Thanks.

Not Your Grandmother's Miami

2011-01-25T06:48:00.000-08:00

I went for the warm weather and got a big surprise. Miami Vice? What about Miami Nice?

Sarah Palin and the Tiger Mom

2011-01-19T10:07:00.001-08:00

I couldn't resist and I've added another voice to the Amy Chau onslaught, but I view her through a psychological rather than a cultural framework. Thanks for taking a look, and please share your thoughts.

One Last Sweet Summer Read

2010-08-21T13:21:00.000-07:00

All books published posthumously come to us shrink-wrapped in heartache, from a voice we know has already been extinguished. There is more sadness still in a subgroup of this category: books that come from manuscripts abandoned during wartime or hidden for safekeeping and discovered when the fighting is over, when the text is all that's left of the author.

A brief list of such books: The Diary of Anne Frank, Irene Nemirovsky Suite Francaise, Charlotte Salomon's autobiographical notebook-size gouaches with text, 769 individual pages, that she called Life? Or Theater? The last is not a book in the old-fashioned sense -- its pages are exhibited in museums and Salomon arranged them as acts in a play -- but I'm comfortable thinking of it as an early graphic novel. It tells the story of a gifted young artist in Berlin whose Jewish parents sent her to live with relatives in France before the Occupation, certain she would be safe there. It was only when they went to find her in 1947 that they learned she had died at Auschwitz -- and left a carton containing an illustrated account of her life, including her harrowing final years in a world gone mad. "Keep this safe," she had told a friend. "It is my whole life." To read more....

"Only Disconnect..." with Hemingway's Notebook

2010-08-11T21:04:00.000-07:00

Earlier this summer, I went to a house in the Maine woods with no Internet or cell phone service to make some headway on a novel. When I discovered that my laptop didn't work either, I was forced to take drastic measures: paper and pen. Read all about it.

William Nicholson's Secret Intensity of Everyday Life

2010-08-08T06:10:00.001-07:00

I was asked to blurb this novel earlier this year and liked it so much I wanted to review it instead. Here's my review in today's Boston Globe. In addition to being a fabulous novelist and screenwriter, Nicholson has a very classy pedigree: his wife, Virginia, was named after her great aunt, Virginia Woolf, and her grandmother was Vanessa Bell. I hope the review brings Nicholson many new American readers.

Opening Night-Virginia Festival of the Book

2010-03-06T16:50:00.000-08:00

Mentors, Muses & Monsters writers John Casey and Maud Casey will join me and author Alice Randall (The Wind Done Gone, Rebel Yell) on Thursday, March 18, at 8pm, for a panel on writers and their influences, on the opening night of this wonderful book festival held every year at UVa, in Charlottesville. John Casey is a professor in the graduate creative writing program and Maud Casey grew up in Charlottesville. Here's information on our event (tickets required) at the Festival.

"If I Could Speak Chinese"

2010-02-15T11:35:00.000-08:00

Narrative Magazine has just published my first short story in quite some time - "If I Could Speak Chinese." I'm honored to be in this wonderful publication, with so many terrific writers and editors Tom Jenks and Carol Edgarian. Thank you.

Win a Free Copy of 3Ms

2009-12-23T10:14:00.001-08:00

Write a story - fiction or nonfiction - set around Christmas time, though it doesn't have to be pro-Xmas, or even involving anyone who is Christian. For details, see my latest Huff Po piece, "Don't Get an MFA-Write a Story, Win a Prize."

Memoirs are the New Novel: Here's to "Life with Sudden Death"

2009-12-15T08:48:00.000-08:00

I've finally gotten a chance to write more fully about Michael Downing's remarkable memoir on Huffington Post.

Life with Sudden Death - A Must Read

2009-10-18T08:15:00.000-07:00

The world is full of memoirs and many of them are wonderful. One that's just out and needs your attention is Michael Downing's brilliant, harrowing Life with Sudden Death: A Tale of Moral Hazard and Medical Misadventure. Downing was the last of 9 children in a happy family in Western, MA, where everything changed when he was 3 and his father died suddenly. Part I is about Downing's childhood; Part II is about what happens when the same thing befalls one of his brothers: sudden death in the midst of a very full life. Turns out Downing has the same gene lying in wait for him too, which is where the "medical misadventure" comes in. If A Year of Magical Thinking is more your taste than Running with Scissors, I'll go out on the limb and say you'd like Life with Sudden Death, maybe as much as I did.

Raves For Mentors, Muses & Monsters

2009-10-18T07:37:00.000-07:00

The book is available Oct. 27. The reviews are coming in from Oprah Magazine, Elle, AARP Magazine, Booklist, and many far-flung blogs: They like us, they really like us.

Check the blog for updates: www.mentorsmusesmonsters.blogspot.com.

And thanks for your interest.

Me, Talking About Sex & Writing on ABC Radio Australia

2009-08-20T13:08:00.000-07:00

ABC is the NPR-like national radio in Australia. Somehow they caught wind of The Joy of Writing Sex: A Guide for Fiction Writers in August 2009. Take a look, take a listen: www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2009/2646676.htm

Mentors, Muses & Monsters

2009-08-20T05:16:00.000-07:00

PLEASE VISIT www.mentorsmusesmonsters.blogspot.com

YouTube Symphony @ Carnegie Hall

2009-04-18T06:40:00.000-07:00

I've not been much of a blogger for the last 1000 months - too busy writing, reading, and starting a new business (www.globaleditingusauk.com).

I do have a book coming out in the fall (more on that when the cover art is finalized) but in the meantime, I'm branching out and here is my first music-ish review, on the very wonderful new site, The Rumpus (www.therumpus.net).

http://therumpus.net/2009/04/a-classical-music-summit-with-an-element-of-speed-dating-thrown-in-the-youtube-symphony-orchestra-at-carnegie-hall/

Thanks for checking in.

Liz

"Murder One: Mad Dog Taborsky & Me"

2008-07-29T06:03:00.000-07:00

Two months before my parents married in 1950, my mother's brother was murdered in a hold-up in the liquor store he owned in West Hartford, Connecticut. The murder and its aftermath shaped their wedding (no music, because they were in mourning), their marriage (fraught with misery), and my life (one good time after another...). In recent years, after my parents died, I returned to the scene of the crime and spent a year learning and writing about the murder and its effects. My essay, "Murder One: Mad Dog Taborsky and Me," appears in the summer issue of Daedalus, a journal published by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

For a free copy of the essay, please email me at info@elizabethbenedict.com, and I will email you the essay - or buy the issue and/or the article on-line ($13 for the journal itself; $10 for the essay): http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/daed

I also have an essay, "Why Not Say What Happened?" about my recollections of Elizabeth Hardwick, in the summer issue of Tin House, available in bookstores or for purchase on-line: www.tinhouse.com.

Thanks.
-EB

Read Any Good Books Lately?

2008-05-17T10:37:00.000-07:00

I've just started what I hope will be a monthly column on Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com/media/) called "Read Any Good Books Lately?" I'll interview 3-4 people in the know and in the news and post their reading lists and comments on them.

Please join the conversation and add your own booklists in the comment section of Huff Po AND please write me if you are curious about what someone in the news is reading - but not Bush, Cheney, or that crowd, even as a joke. Let's be forward thinking and imagine a day (will that day ever come?) when they are no longer in charge. Anyway, write to me at: info@elizabethbenedict.com I'll do my best to track down your selections.

Thanks.

-EB

Everyone, Read The Film Club

2008-05-10T11:18:00.000-07:00

My recommended book for the week is The Film Club by David Gilmour, published by Twelve Books. I wrote about its charms and wonders on Huffington Post. Check out: www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-benedict/. It's by a Canadian novelist and film lover who had a popular TV show on film for many years. His son was flunking out of high school, and Gilmour's eventual solution was to let him drop out at 15, stay home and watch three movies a week with Dad. There was plenty of film education, and much conversation, communication, and maturity that happened. It's a smart, touching, and beautifully written piece of work - and it includes a list of films they watched, and there are quite a few I haven't seen yet. Reading The Film Club also makes me want to read Gilmour's novels. His website is very intriguing.
http://www.calypsoconsulting.com/davidgilmour.html

The Book of Ebenezer LePage

2008-04-08T08:59:00.000-07:00

I was very excited to see the first comment on my blog from someone who also loved The Book of Ebenezer LePage, which I wrote about in the current issue of Tin House (www.tinhouse.com - though the piece is not on-line; this is just to introduce you to the magazine). Much to my delight, a literary friend read the piece in Tin House, went out and bought the book -- and said it was one of the best books he had ever read! This from a widely read writer and editor. It turns out that the poet and translator Michael Hofman has also reviewed the reissued Ebenezer LePage for the London Review of Books, but I have not seen it yet.

Yes, this is a remarkable book, and the reissue by New York Review of Books books should bring it new life. Thanks for commenting.

I will be starting a column on Huffington Post soon books, and will let you know when it launches.

The Commission

2008-03-07T18:23:00.000-08:00

I highly recommend the new book by Philip Shenon called The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation. I reviewed and interviewed Shenon on Huffington Post, which you can read here - just do a search for my name on Huff Po and it will come up- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-benedict/philip-shenons-commi_b_90481.html

Welcome

2008-02-28T17:13:00.000-08:00

I decided to post this blog to keep my website up-to-date, rather than bug my webmaster whenever there's something new to add. Along the way, I'll say a few words about books I'm reading - and maybe even the book I'm writing.

In the meantime, if you're looking for my latest articles on Huffington Post, where I write frequently, here's a url that should get you to the full list:
http://search.huffingtonpost.com/search/?sp_a=sp100395aa&sp_k=&sp_p=all&sp_f=ISO-8859-1&sp_q=elizabeth+benedict

In the March 2008 issue of Allure, I've got an essay called "Relative Beauty," about having a sister everyone always tells me is pretty. Yes, my sister has seen it, and she's happy enough about it to have bought 15 copies to give to her friends.

I also have an essay in the upcoming Tin House that should go on sale in March, on a wonderful novel called The Book of Ebenezer LePage by GB Edwards. It's for Tin House's Lost and Found column, whose aim is to introduce us to little known books, an effort recently given a great boost by the New York Review of Books Press - which published the new edition of Ebenezer LePage.

Thanks for checking in. I'll be back here before long - once I find my "blogging" voice. Or maybe I'll discover it the more I do this. That's what I'd tell my writing students. No reason it shouldn't apply to me too.