Benjamin Roesch

Category: Things You Should Be Reading

  • Post #81: Pride and…?

    This week marks the bi-centennial (that’s 200 years to you and me, Russ) of the publication of Jane Austen’s celebrated masterwork Pride and Prejudice. P & P is an acknowledged classic, beloved by generation after generation of readers enraptured by Austen’s memorable portrayal of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy’s complicated…

  • Post #78: New Acquisitions

    I need more books in my house like I need a hole in the head, but somehow or another I found my way to the bookstore yesterday and picked up a couple new acquisitions. There’s just nothing like a new book, is there? The smell. The crisp, unbroken spine. The…

  • Post #71: My Ideal Bookshelf

    Of her website and small business, My Ideal Bookshelf, painter Jane Mount says “I paint portraits of people through the spines of their favorite books: the ones that changed your life, that defined who you are, that you read again and again.” It’s a very cool concept that started (and still…

  • Post #57: Stocking Up

    Excited to have grabbed some new books from Phoenix Books in Burlington yesterday.  I went in to buy one and ended up brining home three.  Oh well.  It’s hard to feel bad about money spent on books.  I’ll let you know how they are.   I’ve long wanted to read…

  • Post #54: The Path to Publication, Part 2

    THE GREAT FREELANCE EDITOR ROUND-UP (guest post by author Ron Dionne) So I had accepted the offer from Delabarre Publishing to publish my novel SAD JINGO as an ebook, and had withdrawn it from consideration at Akashic Books. I had chosen the Wild West that book publishing had suddenly become,…

  • Post #51: The Collagist

    A couple of excellent writers I know, Alan Stewart Carl and Lyz Wyckoff, have short stories up this month at The Collagist.  They’re short, digestible nuggets of fabulous fiction for you to feed your brain with.  Enjoy. I met both Alan and Liz at last summer’s Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.…

  • Post #49: Sad Jingo

    Good news.  My friend Ron Dionne’s novel Sad Jingo is finally available as an ebook from Delabarre publishing.  Ron and I met at the NY Pitch and Shop a few years ago and since I first heard the premise for Sad Jingo, I’ve been dying to get my hands on…

  • Post #48: Review Static

    The question up for debate today is: Can you read or hear strong opinions (positive or negative) about a piece of art without your own judgments and ideas being warped and affected?  A corollary question is: does the volume and passion of said opinions have a relationship to said (potential)…

  • Post #45: The Greatest Book Series You Aren’t Reading (and maybe haven’t heard of)

    I’d like to put in a major plug here for Bloomsbury Academic’s 331/3, a book series with a brilliantly simple premise.  Get the best music writers on the planet to write single volumes dedicated to single albums.  Each book, there are currently 86 and counting, the most recent of which…

  • Post #44: Cheryl Strayed’s new memoir Wild

    Cheryl Strayed’s new memoir Wild is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time.  Engrossing.  Exciting.  Enriching.  Deeply emotional.  True in the best sense of the word.  There were passages in it of such honesty, of such naked emotional truth, that I shuddered as I read.  As…