James Wood on 'How Fiction Works' | Newsweek Books

BOOKS
The Short of It: Five Books You Do Have Time For
Roxana Popescu 3/26/2008 12:00:00 AM
There are two ways of ending up with a short book: start with a blank page and build up, or start with a bloated manuscript and chop. Lorin Stein, a senior editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, wishes he saw more of the former. "Writers are pushing themselves to write longer than the story they have to tell," Stein says. But short reads may be making a comeback. Penguin Classics has issued three series of slim stand-alone and excerpted texts by Confucius, Marco Polo, and Vladimir Nabokov, among others. The slim volumes were created to capitalize on people's "need for speed," says Penguin Classics executive editor Elda Rotor. And editors are always on the lookout for the next small wonder. "I'm definitely open to our publishing very short novels," Stein says. Just don't call it a novella, he says. That sounds so, like, 1899.
The Getty Gets New Blood
Andrew Murr 12/8/2006 12:00:00 AM
A Gas-Guzzling, Tailfin-Sporting Masterpiece
Malcolm Jones 12/1/2006 12:00:00 AM
A LIFE IN BOOKS
Ann Patchett

Patchett landed on the best-seller list with her 2001 novel "Bel Canto," a PEN/Faulkner Award winner about a hostage crisis in South America that has sold more than 1 million copies. Her most recent work is "Run," the story of a fictional mixed-race Boston family. Her list:
The Good Life
Take A Literary Field Trip

Those keen to combine their passion for travel with a love of reading are increasingly signing up for literary tours, which can range from the laid-back to the intellectually rigorous. On the laid-back end is British Tours Ltd.'s private one-day Jane Austen trip from London ($970 for four people; britishtours.com).
A LIFE IN...
Books: Claire Messud