{"id":110346,"date":"2025-08-01T13:23:16","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T13:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/110346\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T13:23:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T13:23:16","slug":"what-amy-silverberg-is-reading-now-and-next-literary-hub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/110346\/","title":{"rendered":"What Amy Silverberg Is Reading Now, and Next \u2039 Literary Hub"},"content":{"rendered":"

Allison, a writer in her late twenties, fled small-town Nevada for Los Angeles where \u201cso many jobs were required to cobble a life together,\u201d she explains in Amy Silverberg\u2019s First Time, Long Time<\/a>. \u201cWhat would my life look like to other people? A disheveled pile, a tattered quilt.\u201d (Relatable!)<\/p>\n

Allison teaches writing in community college, runs book clubs for wealthy women who often do little more than peruse the blurbs, and avoids actually writing the fiction she intends to write. Then she randomly meets a Howard Stern-type radio personality she and her father listened to as she grew up and gives him her number.<\/p>\n

The defining features of Allison\u2019s life are given in a slow drip. \u201cIn every family you were lucky if you felt understood by even one other person,\u201d she says. That person was her brother\u2014who died two years ago. The overlaps between her own family and that of her soon-boyfriend Reid and his adult daughter make her wary, but also drawn in.<\/p>\n

At moments Reid is a stand-in father for the real one Allison holds at arm\u2019s length. Reid\u2019s daughter Emma is pursuing comedy\u2014like Allison\u2019s brother did. Emma is also hot, flirty, and has a smaller age gap from Allison. (When Allison tells Emma \u201cI\u2019m older.\u201d Emma\u2019s response: \u201cNot by that much.\u201d)<\/p>\n

While this might sound stressful or drama-heavy premise, Silverberg also accomplishes a kind of magic by threading humor throughout. \u201cWould I have been attracted to him if he was just any man my dad\u2019s age, alone at a bar?\u201d Allison asks herself at one point. \u201cBald?!\u201d<\/p>\n

First Time, Long Time interrogates notions of persona and reinvention, which of course are the other defining features of Los Angeles\u2014the big-time version of \u201cgetting out\u201d of small-town life. The scenes often slam shut in a way that makes you sit up (in a good way).<\/p>\n

Silverberg says of her to-read pile:<\/p>\n

I\u2019m currently working on projects about poker and historic Las Vegas, so I\u2019m reading both toward subject matter and style. I\u2019m not a writer that normally researches, so it\u2019s new for me (and I\u2019m doing a very minimal amount). The other books in the pile are just books that I admire stylistically and structurally\u2014I\u2019m always trying to read books that might inspire me to stretch myself, and to try something new. Most of all, I want to read sentences I admire, that I wish I\u2019d written myself.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\"9780743276665:<\/p>\n

Rebecca Lee, The City Is a Rising Tide<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Kirkus<\/a> says of Lee\u2019s first novel:<\/p>\n

Narrator Justine Laxness is herself a citizen of two cultures: China, where she spent much of her childhood as the daughter of wealthy missionary parents, and New York City, where she works (in 1993) for the nonprofit Aquinas Foundation, dedicated \u201cto promot[ing] the intersection of Eastern and Western medicine\u201d throughout the world. Aquinas\u2019s plans are threatened by a Chinese government plan to build a \u2018dam extension\u2019 on the Yangtze River, which would flood land reserved for a state-of-the-art \u201chealing center.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Headshot<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The novel was a finalist for the Booker Prize. The Booker Prizes interviewed Bullwinkel<\/a>, in which she says,<\/p>\n

I wrote this book l because I wanted to remember how I felt when I was a young woman and obsessively competed in every sport I could find\u2026.My hope is that boxers, and lovers of boxing, will find authenticity in this book, but that also anyone who has ever been gripped by an obsessive drive to accomplish something, and to be seen at a time when they felt otherwise invisible, will find themselves in these pages.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/strong><\/p>\n

Danielle Evans, The Office of Historical Corrections: A Novella and Stories<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Joseph Peschel reviewed Evans\u2019 collection for the Brooklyn Rail<\/a>, where he writes,<\/p>\n

In Evans\u2019s novella, a former history professor, Dr. Cassandra \u201cCassie\u201d Jacobs, works as a field agent for the Institute for Public History (IPH) in Washington, D.C. The department was created by the demands of an ambitious freshman congresswoman who wanted to install public historians throughout the country to correct the \u201ccontemporary crisis of truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

That crisis seems especially relevant today when we have a president who is so economical with the truth that his statements will take years to rectify. Cassie\u2019s job, though, is to \u2018protect the historical record\u2019 and make corrections without picking fights and without correcting people\u2019s opinions of current news.<\/p>\n

\"2<\/strong><\/p>\n

Marie-Helene Bertino, 2 A.M. at the Cat\u2019s Pajamas <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

At NPR<\/a>, Colin Swyer describes the protagonist of 2 A.M. Madeleine as<\/p>\n

a chain-smoking nine-year-old with the mouth of a sailor and the voice of a torch singer. Her mother died recently, her father can\u2019t get out of bed and her apartment\u2019s so infested with cockroaches, she goes from room to room announcing herself just to get them to scatter. But she also dreams of singing jazz standards onstage, and she practices relentlessly to be ready when it happens.<\/p>\n

\"Moneymaker<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris Moneymaker, Daniel Paisner, Moneymaker: How an Amateur Poker Player Turned $40 into $2.5 Million<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

A.J. Jacobs writes of Moneymaker at the New York Times<\/a>, \u201cPut it this way: After reading Moneymaker: How an Amateur Poker Player Turned $40 Into $2.5 Million at the World Series of Poker, I was half convinced that I could wangle my way to the final table of the World Series at Binion\u2019s Horseshoe Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. And I play poker at a third-grade level.\u201d<\/p>\n

He adds, \u201cThis book is two hundred and forty pages of false hope.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"More<\/strong><\/p>\n

Steve Fischer, When the Mob Ran Vegas: Stories of Money, Mayhem and Murder<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The jacket copy for this book reads:<\/p>\n

What is so captivating about Vegas? Is it how the skim worked and how millions of dollars vanished uncounted? Ever hear about the bad guys that rigged the gin rummy games at the Friars Club and took a bunch of famous people to the cleaners? Steve Fischer, an avid researcher and collector, bring us Vegas like you\u2019ve never seen, tales you\u2019ve never heard\u2014until now.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rachel Kushner, The Mars Room<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Juan Haines, an incarcerated man who reviews book for the San Quentin News<\/a>, writes,<\/p>\n

The Mars Room\u00a0is centered on everything bad that happens to a person while locked up\u2014things beyond even being stripped away from friends and family. It addressed accepting responsibility, being accountable for the harm you\u2019ve committed against innocent folks, and sitting in the fire of regret and remorse.<\/p>\n

Being in the latter myself\u2014the regretful and remorseful kind\u2014I wasn\u2019t very excited to pick up a novel about the worst and least bearable parts of prison life. Nevertheless, I kept turning the pages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Allison, a writer in her late twenties, fled small-town Nevada for Los Angeles where \u201cso many jobs were…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":110347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1022,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-110346","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114953729088652404","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}