New Fiction Blog

Literary Fiction boosts your mind – Pop fiction didn’t do as much.

Free Audio Books - Free audiobooks — Tue, 26 Nov 2013 04:31:54 +0000

Brain scientists conducted 5 experiments and determined that folks who consumed literary fiction did much better on emotion tests than those who read excerpts of non-fiction and popular fiction. For the purposes of this study, literary fiction is determined to be not as focused on plot and requires the reader to interpret thoughts and feelings of the subjects.

Fox

Technorati Tags: audiobooks, fiction, new fiction

There’s no doubt that New Fiction makes us a better person.

Free Audio Books - Free audiobooks — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 16:17:16 +0000

Free ebooks from New Fiction

Is there a direct link that shows literature makes a hopeful difference in people’s life. Does it affect how people end up? It’s important as schools cut back on this type of education and moving towards math and science. Or is it a badge of honor to show that you are able to read fancy books. But I think everyone can agree that works of new fiction is good for us. There’s more to life than just clicking hyperlinks and reading tweets. Here’s a good article that backs up this claim. New York Times

Recipe for a Bestselling Book

Free Audio Books - Free audiobooks — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 17:05:51 +0000

One writer says he’s figured out 12 basic ingredients for a blockbusting title. Can the puzzle really be that easy?

James Hall’s new book, “Hit Lit: Cracking the Code of the 20th Century’s Biggest Bestsellers,” is the latest attempt to nail down the essential qualities of extremely popular books. Hall, a creative-writing professor and crime novelist, teaches a course on “megabestsellers,” books that have sold in the “multiple millions” and that have gone on selling for decades after they were originally published. He considers a list of 12: “Gone With the Wind,” “Peyton Place,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Valley of the Dolls,” “The Godfather,” “The Exorcist,” “Jaws,” “The Dead Zone,” “The Hunt for Red October,” “The Firm,” “The Bridges of Madison County” and “The Da Vinci Code.”

Though the list seems fairly diverse, Hall insists that they all share 12 common elements — to such a degree, in fact, that they are all “permutations of one book, written again and again for each new generation of readers.”

Delightful History of Fiction

Free Audio Books - Free audiobooks — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 15:53:42 +0000

British critic John Sutherland has written a delightful history of fiction. He begins with John Bunyan, who was born in 1628 and wrote “Pilgrims Progress” and ends with Alice Sebold, who was born in 1963 and wrote “The Lovely Bones.” The book is more than 800 pages and covers the biographies of 294 English language authors.

Sutherland talks about the expected literary greats including Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe, Anthony Trollope, the Brontes, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, William Faulkner, Henry James and George Orwell.

The book contains lots of personal details: husbands, lovers, parents, and examples of overwrought prose. Edwin Bulwer-Lytton earns a spot thanks to his, “It was a dark and stormy night.” Read more….

LATimes

Technorati Tags: Free online books

“Fifty Shades” Tops 10 Million in Sales

Free Audio Books - Free audiobooks — Tue, 22 May 2012 23:06:17 +0000

Vintage Books, an imprint of publisher Knopf Doubleday, said Tuesday that the erotic trilogy Fifty Shades has hit 10 million in sales, just six weeks after arriving in stores. Publisher Vintage says “astonishing” sales account for as much as 25 percent of adult fiction sales.

Knopf has had to go back to press for 60 printings to meet demand. Meanwhile, Universal and Focus Features won a multimillion-dollar bidding war for movie rights.

Amazon announced this month that Fifty Shades of Grey, the first book in the trilogy by E.L. James, had supplanted The Hunger Games as its best-selling book of 2012. The three books in the series also top The New York Times, USA Today and Publisher’s Weekly best-seller lists.

“This is an astonishing number,” said Anthony Chirico, president of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

HollywoodReporter

Technorati Tags: Free online books

Respect? Ireland issues coin to commerate Joyce – get it wrong.

Free Audio Books - Free audiobooks — Wed, 16 May 2012 04:34:34 +0000

The Central Bank of Ireland issued a coin commemorating James Joyce. It’s a ten euro coin that contains a quote from Joye’s “Ulysses”. However, they misquoted the 3rd chapter. To save face, the Bank claims they took their own interpretation. Hey at least they tried.

Salon

Technorati Tags: free audiobooks

Some Libraries are Pulling “Shades of Grey”

Free Audio Books - Free audiobooks — Sun, 13 May 2012 16:31:57 +0000

The steamy novel , “50 Shades of Grey, has become wildly popular with many women, and currently tops the Amazon.com Best Seller List.

But not everyone’s a fan of the book. Because of negative reviews, some Florida libraries pulled the first of the popular trilogy saying reviews considered the book to be pornographic in nature, and they don’t collect porn.

Library patrons disagree with the decision. Patricia McCarron says, “We deserve to have access to these books whether other people like them or not.” Doreen Sley says, “I think that’s a shame because that’s why we live here. You know, freedom of speech and there’s nothing horrible about this book.”

KLTV

Technorati Tags: Free online books

Author of “Where the Wild Things Are” died at 83.

Free Audio Books - Free audiobooks — Tue, 08 May 2012 17:48:42 +0000

Maurice Sendak, widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century, who wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly beautiful recesses of the human psyche, died on Tuesday in Danbury, Conn. He was 83 and lived in Ridgefield, Conn.

In September, a new picture book by Mr. Sendak, “Bumble-Ardy” — the first in 30 years for which he produced both text and illustrations — was issued by HarperCollins Publishers. The book, which spent five weeks on the New York Times children’s best-seller list, tells the not-altogether-lighthearted story of an orphaned pig (his parents are eaten) who gives himself a riotous birthday party.

Want to see more creatures? Read more…..

NYTimes

Technorati Tags: Free online books

The Ten Grumpiest Living Authors

Free Audio Books - Free audiobooks — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 01:28:57 +0000

In the last five years, Jonathan Franzen has become increasingly grumpy, griping about things like Twitter and eBooks, and building a reputation as an unrepentantly prickly author with a constant bone to pick. To celebrate the release of another book filled with Franzen’s complaints, we’ve put together a list of the ten grumpiest, crankiest and most cantankerous authors still living today.

And then there’s Maurice Sendak, author of highbrow kids’ book standbys such as Where the Wild Things Are. He outlined his stance on children in an interview on the Colbert Report: “I didn’t set out to make children happy, or make life better for them, or easier for them… I like them as few and far between as I do adults.”

Who are some other grumpy authors? Read more…….

Flavorwire

Technorati Tags: free audio books

Millions of Books will be Donated Tonight for World Book Night

Free Audio Books - Free audiobooks — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:34:39 +0000

You won’t need to visit a store or library tonight to see a book change hands or receive a free copy yourself.

Thousands of towns and cities around the country and beyond are participating in the second annual World Book Night, when some 2.5 million free books are expected to be donated, whether at a children’s shelter in Texas or a crisis center in Tampa, Fla. Among the works being given are Suzanne Collins’ ”The Hunger Games,” Sherman Alexie’s “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” Michael Connelly’s “Blood Work” and Leif Enger’s “Peace Like a River.”

Stores from Oswego, N.Y., to Hilo, Hawaii, will be helping out, but World Book Night will reach well beyond traditional channels, into military bases, prisons, ballparks and ferries. A church in Denver will give copies of Ann Patchett’s “Bel Canto” to a nearby magnet school for refugees and immigrants. Vernon Legakis, a surfer in Santa Cruz, Calif., will seal copies of Patti Smith’s “Just Kids” inside Ziplocs and hand them out at Monterey Bay. Attendees of a “Hunger Games” screening at Windsor Theater in Hampton, Iowa, will receive editions of Collins’ million-selling novel.

Who is organizing this? Read more…….

WashingtonPost

Technorati Tags: Free online books