"[A] THOUGHTFUL AND HEARTFELT BOOK...A literary cri de coeur--a lament for literature and everything implicit in it."--The Washington PostIn our zeal to embrace the wonders of the electronic age, are we sacrificing our literary culture? Renowned critic Sven Birkerts believes the answer is an alarming yes. In The Gutenberg Elegies, he explores the impact of technology on the experience of reading. Drawing on his own passionate, lifelong love of books, Birkerts examines how literature intimately shapes and nourishes the inner life. What does it mean to "hear" a book on audiotape, decipher its words on a screen, or interact with it on CD-ROM? Are books as we know them dead?At once a celebration of the complex pleasures of reading and a boldly original challenge to the new information technologies, The Gutenberg Elegies is an essential volume for anyone who cares about the past and future of books."[A] wise and humane book....He is telling us, in short, nothing less than what reading means and why it matters."--The Boston Sunday Globe"Warmly elegiac...A candid and engaging autobiographical account sketches his own almost obsessive trajectory through avid childhood reading....This profoundly reflexive process is skillfully described."--The New York Times Book Review"Provocative...Compelling...Powerfully conveys why reading matters, why it is both a delight and a necessity."--The Harvard Review

SHORTLISTED FOR DUNDEE INTERNATIONAL BOOK PRIZE 2012

Fin McPhail is in deep trouble and Amsterdam isn’t helping.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The city had promised an escape from all of his problems back in Scotland. It was the perfect fresh start – well-paid job, luxury apartment in the canal district, sobriety and celibacy.

But everything changed when he went on a blind date with an unhinged sexologist, and now the city’s dark side is closing in on him.

To make matters more complicated, his old life is hurtling back towards him in the shape of a stag party – four nutters from his hometown in Scotland, including his future brother-in-law and the former school bully – will arrive in the city within hours.

Over the course of one chaotic weekend, Fin McPhail will come face-to-face with all of his demons.

Vividly cinematic, Amsterdam Rampant draws on a potent blend of modern culture (Pulp Fiction, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and the work of Donna Tartt and Iain Banks). A riotously entertaining novel exploring the neon shadows of Europe’s sin city, this 21st Century tale of sex, friendship, and coming to terms with the past will leave readers wanting more from Scotland’s newest literary star.

ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2019

From the New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins, the first collection of short fiction from Jess Walter—a suite of diverse and searching stories about personal struggle and diminished dreams, all of them marked by the wry wit, keen eye, and generosity of spirit that has made him a bookseller and reader favorite

These twelve stories—published over the last five years in Harper’s, The Best American Short Stories, McSweeney’s, Playboy, and other publications—veer from comic tales of love to social satire to suspenseful crime fiction, from hip Portland to once-hip Seattle to never-hip Spokane, from a condemned casino in Las Vegas to a bottomless lake in the dark woods of Idaho. This is a world of lost fathers and redemptive conmen, of meth tweakers on desperate odysseys and men committing suicide by fishing.

We Live in Water is a darkly comic, heartfelt collection of stories from a “ridiculously talented writer” (New York Times), “one of the freshest voices in American literature” (Dallas Morning News).

Michel Faber's short stories are markedly diverse-the voice of each is so distinct that the book reads like an anthology of different writers. But Faber's radically inventive style fastens all fifteen stories into a compelling collection deserving of the high praise it garnered in the United Kingdom. One surreal story, "Fish," projects a futuristic world populated with fish swimming in the air. As sharks hover in abandoned corners and human zealots of the Church of the Armageddon loose their fanaticism on the innocent, it's a mother's full-time job to protect her young daughter. The title story, "

Some Rain Must Fall,

" tells of a substitute schoolteacher called on in a crisis, and as she encourages her pupils to express their feelings, we learn the source of the class's trouble: a devastating act that resonates with contemporary America. As Garth Morris wrote in the Mail on Sunday (London), "these are well-crafted pieces of quiet forlorn intensity in a very real world."