Vox is a 1992 novel by Nicholson Baker. Unusually for a literary novel, Vox enjoyed several weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. [1]
Vox is a 1992 novel by Nicholson Baker. Unusually for a literary novel, Vox enjoyed several weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. [1]
On the release of Vox, Publishers Weekly declared it was "unaccountably self-indulgent" and that "Baker's inestimable gift, evinced in the other books, for describing the indescribable with absolutely spot-on flourishes are nowhere to be found in Vox." [2] For The Village Voice , it "simply ushers us into the back pages of a glossy magazine", whereas The New York Times Book Review found it "a compelling and irresistible take, a tour-de-force illustration of the fantasy inherent in eroticism." [3] For James Kaplan, writing in Vanity Fair , "the book achieves between its two geographically distanced protagonists the kind of intimacy that all of us, from Bible-thumpers to leather fanciers yearn for. Vox is that rarest of rarities: a warm turn on". [4]
Writing in The New York Times in 2011, Charles McGrath declared Vox to be a "phone-sex novel so steamy that Monica Lewinsky gave it as a gift to Bill Clinton." [5] Baker's editor in the 1990s, David Rosenthal commented that "when Vox came in, I thought it was both hilarious and horny [...] I kept thinking, 'Where on earth did this come from?'" [5]
The New York Times Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. Since October 12, 1931, The New York Times Book Review has published the list weekly. In the 21st century, it has evolved into multiple lists, grouped by genre and format, including fiction and nonfiction, hardcover, paperback and electronic.
Nicholson Baker is an American novelist and essayist. His fiction generally de-emphasizes narrative in favor of careful description and characterization. His early novels such as The Mezzanine and Room Temperature were distinguished by their minute inspection of his characters' and narrators' stream of consciousness. Out of a total of ten novels, three are erotica: Vox, The Fermata and House of Holes.
David Lipsky is an American author. His works have been New York Times bestsellers, New York Times Notable Books, Time, Amazon, The New Yorker, Publishers Weekly, and NPR Best Books of the Year, and have been included in The Best American Magazine Writing and The Best American Short Stories collections.
Donna Louise Tartt is an American novelist and essayist. Her novels are The Secret History (1992), The Little Friend (2002), and The Goldfinch (2013), which has been adapted into a 2019 film of the same name She was included in Time magazine's 2014 "100 Most Influential People" list.
A bestseller is a book or other media noted for its top selling status, with bestseller lists published by newspapers, magazines, and book store chains. Some lists are broken down into classifications and specialties. An author may also be referred to as a bestseller if their work often appears in a list. Well-known bestseller lists in the U.S. are published by Publishers Weekly, USA Today, The New York Times, and IndieBound. The New York Times tracks book sales from national and independent bookstores, as well as sales from major internet retailers such as Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.
The Hunter's Blades Trilogy is a fantasy trilogy by American writer R.A. Salvatore. It follows the Paths of Darkness series and is composed of three books: The Thousand Orcs, The Lone Drow, and The Two Swords. The Two Swords was Salvatore's 17th work concerning one of his most famous characters, Drizzt Do'Urden. In this series, Drizzt tries to stop an orc king from spreading chaos and war. The series reached the New York Times bestseller list and is followed by the installments of the Transitions series.
The Italian Secretary is mystery fiction by Caleb Carr featuring Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. This literary pastiche had the approval of the Doyle estate having originally been commissioned as a short story for the collection Ghosts of Baker Street which then expanded into a novel.
Stephenie Meyer is an American novelist and film producer. She is best known for writing the vampire romance series Twilight, which has sold over 160 million copies, with translations into 37 different languages. Meyer was the bestselling author of 2008 and 2009 in the U.S., having sold over 29 million books in 2008 and 26.5 million in 2009. Meyer received the 2009 Children's Book of the Year award from the British Book Awards for Breaking Dawn, the Twilight series finale.
Vanity Fair has been the title of at least five magazines, including an 1859–1863 American publication, an unrelated 1868–1914 British publication, an unrelated 1902–1904 New York magazine, and a 1913–1936 American publication edited by Condé Nast, which was revived in 1983.
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The Fermata is a 1994 erotic novel by Nicholson Baker. It is about a man named Arno Strine who can stop time, and uses this ability to embark on a series of sexual adventures. Like Baker's previous novel Vox, The Fermata was controversial amongst critics yet was also a bestseller.
Leslie Sierra Jamison is an American novelist and essayist. She is the author of the 2010 novel The Gin Closet and the 2014 essay collection The Empathy Exams. Jamison also directs the nonfiction concentration in writing at Columbia University's School of the Arts.
Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace is a 2010 memoir by David Lipsky, about a five-day road trip with the author David Foster Wallace. It is based upon a Rolling Stone magazine story that received the National Magazine Award.
The Wolves of Midwinter is a 2013 novel written by gothic fiction novelist Anne Rice and is the second book in her series The Wolf Gift Chronicles. It debuted at number 14 on The New York Times Best Seller list for print and E-book fiction and number 9 on the Hardcover Fiction list.
Dee Henderson is an author of Christian fiction novels within the inspirational romantic suspense genre; she has won various awards for her writing and been on The New York Times Best Seller list.
House of Holes is a 2011 novel by American writer Nicholson Baker. It consists of a series of chapters that are more or less connected which tell of the sexual and emotional experiences of a variety of characters in a kind of sexual fantasy land, the titular "House of Holes". The third "dirty novel" by Baker after Vox and The Fermata, it is praised by many reviewers for the inventiveness of its language.
City on Fire is a 2015 novel by Garth Risk Hallberg, published by Alfred A. Knopf. The novel takes place in New York City in the 1970s. It is Hallberg's first published novel. Hallberg received an advance of $2 million for the novel, which was rumored at the time to be the highest ever for a debut novel. However, other debut novels acquired around the same time also received seven-figure advances.
Casey McQuiston is an American author of romance novels in the new adult fiction genre, best known for their New York Times best-selling debut novel Red, White & Royal Blue, in which the son of America's first female president falls in love with a prince of England, and sophomore book One Last Stop. McQuiston made their debut in the young adult fiction genre with their book I Kissed Shara Wheeler which was released on May 3, 2022. They were included in Time magazine's 2022 Time 100 Next list.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is the debut novel by Vietnamese-American poet Ocean Vuong, published by Penguin Press on June 4, 2019. An epistolary novel, it is written in the form of a letter from a Vietnamese American son to his illiterate mother. It was a finalist for the 2020 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and was longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction.
A Certain Hunger is a debut novel by writer Chelsea G. Summers. It tells the story of serial killer Dorothy Daniels, a successful food writer who also eats men. Published in print by Unnamed Press on December 1, 2020, A Certain Hunger was widely praised, drawing comparisons to Raymond Chandler and Bret Easton Ellis.