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. The New York Times Book Review has published the list weekly since October 12, 1931. 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. She wrote the novels 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.
Lives of the Mayfair Witches is a trilogy of supernatural horror/fantasy novels by American novelist Anne Rice. It centers on a family of witches whose fortunes have been guided for generations by a spirit named Lasher. The series began in 1990 with The Witching Hour, which was followed by the sequels Lasher (1993) and Taltos (1994). All three novels debuted at No. 2 on The New York Times Best Seller 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.
Emily Fisk Giffin is an American author of several novels, including Something Borrowed, Meant to Be, All We Ever Wanted, Heart of the Matter, and The One and Only.
The name Vanity Fair has been the title of at least five magazines from the 19th century to the present day, where, since 1983, it has been used by the American popular culture magazine published by Condé Nast.
Cheryl Strayed is an American writer and podcast host. She has written four books: the novel Torch (2006) and the nonfiction books Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (2012), Tiny Beautiful Things (2012) and Brave Enough (2015). Wild, the story of Strayed's 1995 hike up the Pacific Crest Trail, is an international bestseller and was adapted into the 2014 Academy Award-nominated film Wild.
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.
Mike Sacks is an American author, humor writer and magazine editor based in New York City. Sacks is currently an editor at Vanity Fair and formerly worked for The Washington Post. He contributes to the New Yorker, McSweeney's, Esquire, Salon, Vanity Fair, GQ, Believer, Vice, the New York Times and the Washington Post. As of 2022, Sacks has published a total of ten books, six of which have been under his own imprint.
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 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.
Dee Henderson is an American 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.