"101 Things I Learned in Film School," Neil Landau follows the same fun formula of the other "Things I Learned" series of books created by Matthew Frederick, who illustrated them.
Shelf Life
"101 Things I Learned in Film School," Neil Landau follows the same fun formula of the other "Things I Learned" series of books created by Matthew Frederick, who illustrated them.
Griping over ‘20 under 40’
The griping started as soon as The New Yorker rolled out its list of “20 Under 40” fiction writers worth watching last week. Why include a writer as well established as Jonathan Safran Foer, some groused. Others ridiculed the very notion of a list that ranks writers by age. And yet that the venerable magazine anointed 20 writers accomplished something that every fiction lover can get behind: It initiated passionate conversations about writing and prompted the curious to buy books.While more “20 Under 40” writers live in Brooklyn, N.Y., than anywhere else, Massachusetts has ties to the list, too. Chris Adrian, author of “The Children’s Hospital” and a pediatrician who worked at Children’s Hospital while a student at Harvard Divinity School, counts Boston and San Francisco as home.
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum lives in Los Angeles but her years in Brookline and Jamaica Plain deeply influenced her first two novels. “I spent a lot of time at the [Isabella Stewart] Gardner Museum as a child and a teenager, and I think maybe it shows in my first book, ‘Madeleine Is Sleeping’ — I loved how all of these different periods and styles were brought together in this one beautiful house and made cohesive through the sheer force of Mrs. Gardner’s particular taste and sensibility,” she wrote in an e-mail.
Her second book, ”Ms. Hempel Chronicles,” owes a lot to the Boston music scene in the ’80s. Shun-lien Bynum’s e-mail continued, “Ms. Hempel’s stories about her adolescence as a punk rocker manqué were inspired by my own memories: buying pointy English shoes at Allston Beat, going to all-ages shows at T.T. the Bear’s, tentatively hanging out at the Pit in Harvard Square, listening to WHRB and WMBR and WERS.”
Also on The New Yorker’s list is Provincetown resident Salvatore Scibona, who received a $50,000 grant last year for making the Whiting Foundation’s list of emerging writers. Scibona’s debut novel “The End,” about a community of Italian immigrants in Cleveland, was a finalist for a National Book Award in 2008.
Scibona, reached by phone, preferred to talk about his writing process rather than the novel that is percolating out of his unconscious. “People have different yardsticks for how they measure their progress,” he said. Mark Twain used to count the number of words he wrote. Scibona, who worked on “The End” for 10 years, counts the number of hours he spends in his studio, noting that he might spend an entire morning on a sentence — or less.
Formerly a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, he now is the center’s writing coordinator. Scibona makes his debut in The New Yorker with the story “The Kid” in the current issue.
Lessons learned
Cambridge architect Matthew Frederick has launched a series of books inspired by his 2007 hit, “101 Things I Learned in Architecture School.” Frederick collaborated on four “101 Things I Learned” books about business, culinary, fashion, and film school. The formula is fun, pithy lessons applicable to a wide variety of pursuits. As “101 Things I Learned in Film School” suggests, “After the climax, get out fast.”Coming out
■“The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing” by Tarquin Hall (Simon & Schuster)■“Last Words of the Executed” by Robert K. Elder (University of Chicago)
■“Spider Silk” by Leslie Brunetta and Catherine L. Craig (Yale University)
Pick of the week
Brian Woodbury of the Toadstool Bookshop in Milford, N.H., recommends “Junkyard Dogs” by Craig Johnson (Viking): “All of Johnson’s trademarks are present in his sixth mystery featuring Sheriff Walt Longmire — great characters, witty banter, serious sleuthing, and a love of Wyoming bigger than a stack of derelict cars.”
Jan Gardner can be reached at JanLGardner@yahoo.com.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Because of a copy editing error, an earlier version of this story gave the wrong name for the creator of the "Things I Learned'' books. Matthew Frederick launched the series and collaborated with Neil Landau on the recently published "101 Things I Learned in Film School.''
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