Here are some recent book- and writing-related links of interest…
From The Wall Street Journal, an article in which 11 popular authors (including Junot Diaz, Margaret Atwood, Kate Christensen, and Colum McCann (discussed yesterday on EDWITB)) talk about the process of writing and all of the challenges that go along with it. Lots of good tidbits in here.
From The New York Times, an entertaining essay from Colson Whitehead (author of Sag Harbor, discussed here on EDIWTB) about how authors decide which genre to write next.
I heard most of this NPR interview with Zadie Smith, author of White Teeth, on my way home from work yesterday. She was being interviewed about the writing process, and why she hasn't written fiction in a while. One of the most interesting things I heard: "She spends 80 percent of her efforts on the first 50 or 60 pages of a book — and the rest comes 'pretty quickly.' She says she does that to get the tone — the perspective — the way she wants it."
Finally, I liked this New Yorker review of a new book called Cassette From My Ex, by Jason Bitner, a collection of "more than sixty remembrances from a generation of mix-tape masters, anyone born, roughly, between 1968 and 1985 who created a statement of love and taste with a vinyl-to-tape recording apparatus or dual-cassette boom box". The book is actually an outgrowth from the Cassette From My Ex website, where you can write in with your own story of mixtape heartbreak.