#it is about CARTER BEATS THE DEVIL by GLEN DAVID GOLD!

[containmentbreach]

man it is actually so deeply funny to me that you can just write whatever the hell you want about people once they're dead and it's okay because they're dead. if i was someone who was famous and i died and then i learned some guy had just made up a ton of shit about my life and was getting super rich off of it i. well actually i think that'd be funny. if i ever get famous i give someone permission to do this to me after i die. as long as i still get to be a lesbian.

[umbralglade]

My mid year reading update

Tagged by: @jushiro-ukitake

Amount of books you’ve read so far: 19

Best book you’ve read so far in 2022:

I really have loved pretty much all the books I’ve read this year, but my most favorites have been these!

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Helpmeet by Naben Ruthnum

The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin

Best sequel you’ve read so far in 2022:

I haven’t read a lot of sequels this year, so I just listed them all lol (and I loved them all so!)

Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert (definitely could have gone in general faves)

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin (part of the Hainish Cycle, which is technically a series)

New release you haven’t read yet but want to:

SO many

Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield

My Evil Mother: A Short Story by Margaret Atwood

Ordinary Monsters by J.M. Miro

Book of Night by Holly Black

The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings

Thrust by Lidia Yuknavitch

A Half Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys

Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence... by R.F. Kuang

All the Seas of the World by Guy Gavriel Kay

To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

Most anticipated release for the second half of the year:  

I only find out about new books once they’re already out idk! With that in mind:

Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Biggest surprise favorite new author (debut or new to you):

S.T. Gibson

Naben Ruthnum

Newest fictional crush: 

I ggguess these would be fictional crushes??? Characters I imagined as........probably hot lol

The Golem AND the Jinni from The Golem and the Ginni by Helene Wecker

Breq and Seivarden from the Imperial Radch trilogy

This is not a crush but I just thought Baek Isak from Pachinko was so sweet and kind I was so sad about him and I think I was in love with him. uh

Book that made you cry:  

I love to cry at fictional things so honestly most of these books probably had me misty eyed at some point, but the books that made me actually cry were:

Pachinko, and

Crying in H Mart, read back to back, literal nonstop crying

Lonely Castle in the Sky had a little publisher’s note at the end about Japanese children’s low reported mental health/happiness, which really got me given the context of the story 

Book that made you happy: 

Lonely Castle in the Sky, in a surprise turnabout from the last question lol. Happy in the cathartic, inner-child-feels-seen kind of way!

Ancillary Justice and its two sequels - I was really excited to get into a trilogy that hooked me so much!

Most beautiful book you’ve bought so far this year (or received): 

Focusing on beautiful like design-wise, and on received rather than bought:

Golem and the Jinni (got for bday)

Lonely Castle in the Sky (got for Christmas)

Favorite rereads this year: 

I only re-read one book, which was:

Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell - which I really love, I KNOW

What books do you need to read by the end of the year?:

Need to finish (hard to find/read for misc reasons):

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

Almanac of the Dead of Leslie Marmon Silko

Prioritized to-reads:

The Night Watch by Holly Black

Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters (have to read one insane historical lesbian drama by this author a year)

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

The Fisherman by John Langan!! Been looking for this everywhere!!

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield!! Also this one!

Unknown Language by Huw Lemmey and uh um Hildegard von Bingen lol

Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold (book my stepdad told me to read like 15 years ago)

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us... by Ed Yong

Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake 

Phew! Tagging anyone who wants to do it lol

[saksthriftavenue]

Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: Carter Beats The Devil Glen David Gold First Ed Hardcover.

[citylightsbooks]

5 Questions with Glen David Gold, Author of I Will Be Complete

Glen David Gold’s first novel, Carter Beats the Devil, has been translated into fourteen languages. His short stories and essays have appeared in McSweeney’s, Playboy, and The New York Times Magazine. He lives in Los Angeles. His newest book is a memoir, I Will Be Complete, published by Knopf. Glen is at City Lights Bookstore on Tuesday, June 26th, 2018 discussing his new book with Oscar Villalon, managing editor at ZYZZYVA.

City Lights: If you’ve been to City Lights before, what’s your memory of the visit?  If you haven’t been here before, what are you expecting?

Glen David Gold: When I moved back to SF in 2015, I lived on Telegraph Hill, so City Lights was part of my routine. My favorite memory––pretty much of any bookstore––was the very first second i walked back in after many years away. A customer was asking for a book and the clerk was patiently saying, "No, we don't carry that. It's too popular." I HAD FOUND MY PEOPLE!  

CL: What’s the first book you read & what are you reading right now?

GDG: My parents read to me a lot, so I can't quite tell which Dr Seuss or Little Golden book was the first. But the first I asked to read was Watership Down.  I still recommend that book to students who want to know how to build characters. There are 15 major characters in the book and you can keep them straight and they're all rabbits.  

I tend to read 3-4 things at once, so right now it's Tana French's In the Woods, William Hackman's Out of Sight: The Los Angeles Art Scene of the Sixties, William Shawcross's Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia and Donald E. Westlake's The Hot Rock.

CL: Which 3 books would you never part with?

GDG: I'm a collector, so there are things, like my inscribed copy of The Man Who Loved Children, that speaks to my sad desire to turn back death by owning objects. But if you mean what books would I bring to one of those desert island situations: the Memoirs of Casanova, Masters of Atlantis by Charles Portis, and The Fantastic Four Omnibus by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. 

CL: If your book had a soundtrack, what would it be?

GDG: Oh, it has a soundtrack. My father was in the music business––he brought cassette tapes to America, and his biggest artist was Herb Alpert. So my soundtrack would be bound in the Whipped Cream & Other Delights cover, it would start with "A Taste of Honey," then (after my parents divorced and Mom moved to San Francisco in the 1970s) the Crusaders' "Put It Where You Want It" would be a good background for the adult dance parties.

When I worked at Hunter's Books in 1983, Richard and Linda Thompson's Shoot Out the Lights was always on repeat, as was Joan Armatrading's The Key and X's More Fun in the New World. Finally, there is set of deep cuts that defy explanation (they have to do with first love and the inevitability of that fading) but they're right there at the end of the book: New Order's "Your Silent Face," R.E.M.'s "Cuyahoga," The Pogue's "If I Should Fall from Grace with God," more or less whatever was at the dead center of the 1980s.

CL: If you opened a bookstore tomorrow, where would it be located, what would it be called, and what would your bestseller be?

GDG: This fits nicely with my presidential campaign. My only promise would be to find full employment for people who like to read, so it would be a nationwide chain of locally-owned indie bookstores (just go with it––we'll make it work) set up like the WPA. The current best-seller would be Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia by Peter Pomerantsev because it's currently the most important book I know about.  

[beginningspod]

It's time for Beginnings, the podcast where writer and performer Andy Beckerman talks to the comedians, writers, filmmakers and musicians he admires about their earliest creative experiences and the numerous ways in which a creative life can unfold.

On today's episode I talk to writer Glen David Gold. Glen is the author of the bestselling novels Sunnyside and Carter Beats the Devil, and his essays, memoir, journalism and short fiction have appeared in McSweeney's, Playboy, Wired, the New York Times Sunday Magazine, the Guardian UK and London Independent. He has written The Spirit for DC comics and The Escapist for Dark Horse and recently he has co-written episodes of The Thrilling Adventure Hour and Welcome to Nightvale. His three-part memoir I Will Be Complete is available now!

I'm on Twitter here and you can get the show with:

                            Permalink RSS Feed                  Facebook                           

[dccomicsnews]

In honor of Jack Kirby’s 100th birthday, acclaimed novelist Glen David Gold discusses the importance of Kirby’s work and how Kirby’s THE DEMON was the perfect comic for a child coming of age during the 1970s. Gold is the author of the novels Carter Beats the Devil and Sunnyside and has written comics for DC and Dark Horse, and for “The Thrilling Adventure Hour” and “Welcome to Night Vale.”

Head on over to DC’s website to see what Gold had to say.

#gallery-0-4 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-4 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-4 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-4 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

Acclaimed Novelist Glen David Gold Talks About The Importance Of The King, Jack Kirby In honor of Jack Kirby's 100th birthday, acclaimed novelist Glen David Gold discusses the importance of Kirby's work and how Kirby's THE DEMON was the perfect comic for a child coming of age during the 1970s.

[vigilantvignettes]

Carter the Great! Is! Everywhere!

I recently reread a book: Carter Beats the Devil. (Two bucks used from Barnes and Noble's website. Get it.) Despite the rather large number of books I plowed through as a child, this one has always had a mental "footprint" far greater than I actually thought it deserved. The first time I ran across the book was 2002, a year after it was published. I was 13 and knew everything. The local NPR station had an afternoon program called The Radio Reader. This was before Audible ruled the audiobook market, and the closest thing we had was an awful assortment of scratchy Books on Tape from the library. So instead I made it a habit of listening to the scratchy voiced old man read this fictional biography of a magician. Of course, no one can catch every session of a radio program, and so I missed huge chunks of the book. After missing the climax of the tale, I determined to track down the book and read it for myself. Thankfully the Florida Library System had a solid interlibrary loan policy, and it didn't take me long to acquire a copy of my own. Of note, I remember I saw the illusionist David Copperfield around the same time, though I'm not sure if one influenced the importance of the other, or if they were purely coincidental. Regardless, this book had always stuck in my head, in a way few other tales have. And I never knew why. It was an adventure. A life story. It followed the life of Charles Carter (Carter the Great!) growing up a spoiled rich kid in 1900s San Francisco. His love affair with magic, meeting the girl who would become his wife, the invention of television, of the tragedy and joy and sheer exuberance of life. Ultimately, it was nothing more than a light, fluffy, novel with a few codes I follow to this day (Never mistake obnoxiousness for audacity!) And yet... And yet it stuck with me. So I reread it. And I was floored. The book was so much deeper, now that I have matured. Gone was the story about how magic tricks were created and in its place, the greatest magic trick of all, was a sincere, heartbreaking story about life, loss, and overcoming depression. The devil Carter beats isn't the masked assistant that haunts the third act of his show, nor is it the spurned figure from his past who returns for revenge. Instead, the Devil is Carter himself, the fear, the self-loathing, the depression. When Carter beats the devil is when he learns to love again, both himself and others. In short, the book is an astonishing tour de force that did, in fact, deserve the sizable mental footprint my young self gave it. So thank you, Radio Reader. Thank you, Panama City Public Library, and thank you Glen David Gold, for giving me another tool to beat my own devil.

[library-paget]

Carter Beats The Devil - Glen David Gold

Now this is a historical novel about real people I can get on board with.  The tale is woven around the life and career of “Carter the Great”, as he rises to become one of the stars of the stage.  But at the height of his powers, and only shortly after appearing in one of his tricks, Warren Harding, President of the United States, lies dead.  Pursued and hounded by a dogged detective, amongst others, Carter must use all of his illusions to remain one step ahead, while also trying to come to terms that the very things he is trying to protect may one day take him and his like from the stage for good.  A great little insight into early 20th century society and entertainment, and the sometimes fickle nature of stardom.

[craighodgkins]

My Year of the Book - Day 14: Some of you may have scrolled thru the previous 13 days of this little project of mine and thought, “So, Craig, haven’t you read ANYTHING published in the current century?” Yes. Yes, I have. One of my 21st Century faves is “Carter Beats the Devil” (2001...so just barely from the current century), a magnificent tour de force that also happens to be the debut novel from Glen David Gold. The novel blends imagined and real characters (such as Warren G. Harding and others I won’t give away) and tells a fictionalized account of real magician Charles Joseph Carter, his rise to fame and fortune, and the people he meets along the way. Although I hesitate to write too much about fictional works, it is fair to say that I was engrossed in Gold’s narrative from the start, and was genuinely surprised by many of his plot twists and character reveals. I liked it so much, in fact, that I bought 2 paperback copies to lend to friends (as some of you out there can attest). And, completist that I am, I also bought a British first edition, pictured below. In an age when many popular and excellent novels follow an author’s darkening vision, I found this book uplifting and life-affirming, despite many sad and downright disastrous events. Gold takes too long between novels for my selfish taste (his second, “Sunnyside,” appeared in 2009, and I pray his third on the horizon), but like a great soufflé, sometimes you just have to wait for perfection. #mylibrary #ilovereading #bookworm #booklover #booksofinstagram #glendavidgold #carterbeatsthedevil #sunnyside #firstedition #firstbritishedition #yearofthebook #novel #booklife #bookstagram #bookish #bookgeek #bookaddict #bibliophile #reading #bookaholic #fortheloveofbooks

[padraigcolman]

Was President Harding Murdered?

Was President Harding Murdered?

  This article appeared in Ceylon Today on Thursday March 9 2017.

Rajiva Wijesinha made a kind comment on my article last week about Warren Harding and also gave me a heads-up about a novel which incorporates Harding’s death. The novel proved an entertaining read. It is Carter Beats the Devilby Glen David Gold which is about the illusionist Charles Carter, admired by Houdini himself, who…