David Foster Wallace

  • Judging a book by its author photo

    I was on a tight budget in 1989 when a book cover totally seduced me and weakened my fiscally conservative resolve. I’d already read most of the stories in Raymond Carver’s collection Where I’m Calling From when I saw the Vintage paperback at Elliott Bay Book Company. But that photo. I couldn’t walk away. That… Continue reading

  • There’s a Lobster Loose!

    Lately, walking around the library, I’ve become aware of lots of beady little eyes peering at me from the shelves, and snapping claws reaching out. For some reason the past year or so has seen a strange red tide of books with lobsters on their covers. Not cookbooks, but novels – oddball comic novels in particular.… Continue reading