Laura van den Berg | Raging Biblio-holism

Marie-Helene Bertino & Laura van den Berg at Community Bookstore

November 3, 2015 by Dani

To celebrate the paperback release of her first novel, Marie-Helene Bertino asked Laura van den Berg to join her at the adorable Community Bookstore in Park Slope for an evening of reading and conversation. I just finished 2AM at the Cat’s Pajamas and loved it. Find Me was my favorite read of 2014, and I devoured all LvdB stories I could get my hands on shortly thereafter. As I waited for the authors to take their places, I watched the bookstore’s resident cat […]

Categories: Events, Features • Tags: 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas, Books, Community Bookstore, Conversations, Dani Lencioni, Dogs, Events, Features, Find Me, Laura van den Berg, Marie-Helene Bertino, Recaps, Writing

What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us

July 1, 2015 by Drew

The Short Version: Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, mokele-mbembe – these creatures (rumored or real) are nothing quite so strange or mysterious as the women who also inhabit these stories, in this first collection from an already-inimitable writer. The Review: Sometimes, it can be kind of fun to encounter a young writer out-of-order. Laura van den Berg’s The Isle of Youth is where I began, and with that collection she won me as a reader for life. Her debut novel, Find Me, was […]

Categories: Fiction, Short Stories • Tags: Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Fantastical Realism, Fiction, Laura van den Berg, Magical Realism, Reviews, Short Stories, what the world will look like when all the water leaves us

Laura van den Berg in Conversation with Catherine Lacey at McNally Jackson

February 19, 2015 by Dani

In the past month, I’ve discovered two new favorite books. Find Me by Laura van den Berg and Nobody is Ever Missing by Catherine Lacey. Van den Berg (henceforth known here as LvdB) is getting crazy good press right now – Salon thinks she’s “the best young writer in America,” and I probably agree. Both books garnered 5+ ratings here on the blog. So I’m not alone! Much to my delight, the NYC launch of Find Me entailed a conversation between LvdB and Lacey at McNally Jackson. And it was great! Everything you […]

Categories: Events • Tags: 5+, Catherine Lacey, Dani Lencioni, Events, Find Me, FSG, Laura van den Berg, McNally Jackson, Nobody Is Ever Missing, Recaps

Find Me

February 13, 2015 by Drew

The Short Version: A virulent new disease appears in America that causes the infected to develop silver lesions and lose their memories, then rapidly lose motor control and cognitive function before death within ten days. Joy, apparently immune, is taken to a hospital in Kansas where she and several other patients wait out the epidemic. But when things take a turn at the hospital, Joy runs away and decides to head to Florida to find her birth mother, embarking on […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: 5+, Advance Review, Apocalypse, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Contagion, Disease, Dystopia, Farrar Straus and Giroux, Fiction, Find Me, FSG, Laura van den Berg, Literature, Memory, Post-Apocalyptic, Psychology, Reviews, Science, Speculative, Speculative Fiction

The Originals Series: Laura van den Berg & Steve Gunn

November 14, 2013 by Drew

I was initially going to miss this Originals Series due to band practice and send a friend in my stead – but a quick shift of the schedule meant I was free to now attend WITH my friend, for what was an interesting entry into the series. And by interesting, I mean that it felt different from the past two I’ve been to – and whether that’s a good, bad, or indifferent thing will ultimately depend on, well, how you […]

Categories: Events, Features • Tags: Books, Drinking, Flavorpill, FSG Originals, GQ, Kurt Vile, Kurt Vile & the Violators, Laura van den Berg, Music, Sloane Crosley, Steve Gunn, Studio X, Studio X NYC, The Isle of Youth, The Violators, Time Off

The Isle of Youth

November 13, 2013 by Drew

The Short Version: Stories of deceptions, mysteries, losses – and the women who endure them. A gang of teenage bank robbers, a mother/daughter magician team, twins who aren’t very much alike at all, and a newlywed who can’t quite figure out how she ended up in her marriage are just some of the sourly real leads in van den Berg’s new collection. The Review: The short story feels, anymore, like a bit of a retreat for so many young authors. […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature, Short Stories • Tags: Fiction, Florida, FSG Originals, Laura van den Berg, Literature, Short Stories, The Isle of Youth

Raging Biblio-holism

The overwhelming urge to collect, consume, and consider books

Tag: Laura van den Berg