The Papervitamins Blog

Who is Thorton Wilder

2009-11-12T18:58:00.000-08:00

Thornton Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He is the only writer to ever win Pulitzer Prize for Novel and Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Born in Madison, Wisconsin Wilder lived in China as a teenager where his father was a United States Consul-General in Hong Kong.

Although quoted with once saying, "I would love to be the poet laureate of Coney Island," Thorton Wilder taught poetry at Harvard, French at Lawrenceville School, playwriting at the University of Chicago, and was a visiting professor at the University of Hawaii.

Wilder wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt but is most noted for his 1938 work Our Town

Wilder's impressive 3 Pulitzer awards include:

Find Your Reading Friends

2009-09-24T17:16:00.001-07:00

Papervitamins now lets you find your Facebook, Google and Twitter contacts.

Now it's very simple to find your friends that are already using Papervitamins. You can either:

Search by their username
Send invites to your Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail contacts (must be logged in)
Send your friends an email (must be logged in)

Help us spread the word. Follow your friends. Get them reading again!

Fiction Author Spotlight: Jerzy Kosinski

2009-09-08T17:40:00.000-07:00

Jerzy Kosinski's largest fame in his short life of 58 years, was his 1970 story Being There which was humorously made into a feature movie starring Peter Sellers of the same name.

Jerzy Kosinski, who ultimately committed suicide in New York in 1991, began his writing career by publishing two non-fiction works under the pseudonym Joseph Novak.

Kosinski followed these works by switching to publishing fiction under his own name. The sequential fiction novels The Painted Bird in 1965 and Steps in 1968 told the story of an unnamed boy wondering around Europe during World War II who ultimately grows up incapable of dealing with social norms. The story as a man, Steps earned him the Nation Book Award for Fiction in 1968.

Although, Kosinski's full bibliography became decreasingly popular amongst the mainstrema, his four novels over the course of the 1970s:

drew wildly from Kosinski's own experiences where he ranged from anything from a cockfighting fan to an enthusiastic player of polo.

The end of Kosinski's life overshadowed his important role as author as it was filled with an acting part in Waren Beatty's film Reds and riddled with plagiarism claims by the Village Voice. Ultimately, it was the Atlantic Monthly in 1997 who squashed the Voice claim as absurd. And finally, and more appropriately, it was Kosinski who put it perfectly by saying:

"The principle of art is to pause, not bypass."

No More Registration

2009-08-07T06:59:00.000-07:00

Papervitamins is happy to announce that you no longer need to register in order to contribute to the community.

Thanks to the software from JanRain's RPX, authentication is now handled through exiting sites like: Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, AOL's Instant Messanger, and OpenID.

Now, you have no reason not to be a member.

Fiction Author Spotlight: Joyce Carol Oates

2009-07-14T19:54:00.001-07:00

Joyce Carol Oates started receiving praise for her writing at the young age of 19 when she received the "College Short Story Contest" by Mademoiselle magazine.

Like fellow American author John Updike, whose four-part series the Rabbit Series received international awards per book, Oates' four-part series The Wonderland Quartet catapulted her into fiction stardom.

Consisting of the four novels:

A Garden of Earthly Delights (1967)

Expensive People (1968)

them (1969)

Wonderland (1971)

All four received nominations for the National Book Award for Fiction but only them received the honor.

Throughout her life, Joyce Carol Oates has published 56 novels, 30 short-story collections and 8 volumes of poetry.

Papervitamins Social Updates for the Summer

2009-07-07T17:47:00.000-07:00

The summer is for reading so Papervitamins has decided to roll out big updates.

Book & Author Following Functionality

Users can easily follow and recommend books, authors, publishers and awards.

User Following and Followers Functionality

Users can follow other users. On each user page, you can now see what other users are interested in. For example: user mrpowerlunch is following a set of authors.

Papervitamins User Activity Feed

The user activity is now much more transparent to all users.
There is an all user activity page and also activity for single users like bingsby.

More complete User Pages

User pages are now very easy to edit and include features like "Books I wish I wrote."

Remember, all the activity for Papervitamins can be seen using the sitewide activity RSS feed.

Papervitamins is committed to readers.
If there is functionality you want, tell us now!

Papervitamins Plugins, Addons, and Widgets

2009-04-21T19:13:00.000-07:00

Papervitamins offers up some useful desktop options for convenience.

The Papervitamins search add-on for Firefox and Internet Explorer is a nice way to find books, authors, and awards with the convenience of searching in the web browser.

The Mac Dashboard Widget provides users with a view into the window of activity on Papervitamins.com.

Download the Mac Widget now.

Reading Award Winners, Not Best Sellers

2009-03-23T20:23:00.001-07:00

As active readers, we are always looking for new authors and books to discover. And unlike the best sellers which tend to stem from the same genre, we thankfully can rely on the award organizations of the world for some variety. Papervitamins is a source for chronological award winners.

Nobel Prize

As one of the most prestigious, The Nobel Prize for Literature awards an author for a body of work. Started in 1901 in Sweden, the Nobel Prize for Literature is a world-wide mark of excellence. (Above is a photo from 1950 showing Ernest Hemingway smiling as he receives the award in 1954)

National Book Award

Started in 1950 in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, The National Book Award has become an incredibly high honor for literature in The United States.

The award, among others, did grant John Cheever the award in 1981 for a must-read collection of short stories called The Short Stories of John Cheever (which also won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Like Cheever, American authors William Styron and John Updike have also received these two high honors in their lifetimes.

Papervitamins adds Google Book Prevew

2009-02-22T18:50:00.000-08:00

Papervitamins.com is proud to announce it has incorporated the wonderful technology of Google Books and has begun to provide book preview and full text for every book available on Papervitamins. Click the big GOOGLE PREVIEW button to take advantage.

New Books and Old Books Together

2009-02-03T19:25:00.000-08:00

Using the word *new* is not a clever way to describe anything. Someone could probably put that last statement in better terms. Like these authors:

Joshua Ferris, who wrote a real lasting short story I mentioned in my 10 year fiction roundup, has lead me to his National Book Award Finalist debut Then We Came to the End.

Cecily Parks is making writing interesting again. This is just impeccable poetry and prose and makes you thankful that a writer is willing to give that much.

Truman Capote wrote some of the finest sentences in English. And, although the book Breakfast at Tiffany's is a Papervitamins required reading, the movie is not. Capote is a musician in the English language which is why attention is being finally paid to the unpublished-but-now-published novel Capote wrote when he was 19 called Summer Crossing.

Papervitamins.com Update

2009-01-22T18:13:00.001-08:00

Papervitamins.com has undergone an update to make its core functions easier to use and find. Please let us know what you think.

In addition to making the site better looking, Papervitamins is pleased to announce the functionality recommends. This simple but powerful button will create lists of similar authors and books. All you have to do is click the "recommend this" button.

Murakami Translating Capote

2009-01-08T20:14:00.000-08:00

For those who are fluent in Japanese this may be something of interest: Haruki Murakami has translated Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's.

This is certainly not his first venture into translation (he has also translated works by Carver and Fitzgerarld) but this is particulary well done. His Japanese linguistic style of writing meshes beautifully with the story and creates light staccato like sensation while retaining the sentimentality of the novella. I am not here to declare it is the best tranlsation of the book but is probably worth a read.

5 Best Fiction Books in the Last 10 Years

2008-12-16T21:17:00.000-08:00

This is an essential reads list for fiction written in the last 10 years. The last selection is actually a short story and not quite a book as the title claims. Short stories deserve distinction just as much as the novel. But, before I take that tangent further, this list needs to apologize to JM Coetzee and Haruki Murakami among others.

Ok, I'll stop, here's the list of fiction books you must read:

Remainder
by Tom McCarthy

The Last Samurai
by Helen DeWitt

Home Land
by Sam Lipsyte

Interpreter of Maladies
by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Dinner Party
by Joshua Ferris

Debut from Author Porochista Khakpour

2008-12-07T19:52:00.000-08:00

It's always nice to find an author just at the start of their career.

This book, Sons and Other Flammable Objects by Porochista Khakpour is the debut novel from a writer we should all hope to hear more from.

The story, which mostly follows a boy named Xerces as he forges through childhood and adulthood with his comical and hardheaded Persian father Darius.

Insightfully funny, Khakpour tangles her characters inside American culture exposing its tragic and endless misunderstandings. That skill reminds me of the contagious William Saroyan.

Machievelli is Taught in Public School

2008-11-11T18:37:00.000-08:00

In light of recent political changes, I've decided to read more non-fiction. Stuck in the airport for a few hours, I decided to make it through the recent printing of Ernesto Che Guevara's Guerilla Warfare . The book is a very well-written handbook on how to succeed in, as the title spells out, guerilla warfare. Needless to say, I learned quite a bit about traveling as a guerilla, eating as a guerilla and sleeping as one too. Che doesn't speak at all about the history up until the 1960s when the book was published. I tried to highlight the key events using Papervitamins' Historical Reference information.

Che's book did remind me of Niccolo Machievelli's The Prince . Which, is a bit of a political power handbook itself. Although The Prince is better knownfor it's personal philosophy (re: it is better to be feared than loved), I imagine that Che's Guerilla Warfare will soon be also. That is, if it is read with a generalist mindset.

Paradise of Books

2008-10-16T20:52:00.000-07:00

Papervitamins is proud to host full copies of books. This ranges from the up and coming writer trying to get a break in the publishing world as well as stories that have no copyright.

Take for example, This Side of Paradise by F Scott Fitzgerald. Here's your chance to read this classic fiction for free.

This book starts with a quote from Oscar Wilde which reads: "Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes."

I wouldn't have guessed Fitzgerald a fan of Wilde. But, I suppose I could see them sharing a drink.

Anyway, enjoy your free read.

New Reads (aka New Recommendations)

2008-10-01T20:22:00.000-07:00

Although, I will try not to harp on my previous post which probably should have discussed the real limitations of print, I did have to seek out unusual methods in order to purchase Tom McCarthy's latest novel Men In Space. I haven't yet read it but, if it comes anywhere close to his first novel Remainder, I think I'll be thrilled.

Zbigniew Herbert's The Collected Poems: 1956-1998 has finally come out on paperback. As someone who doesn't read that much poetry anymore, I am noting this because it is the one poetry book you should own (sorry Bill Shakespeare). If you don't believe me, take it out at your library and drop a comment.

If you are really scared of the fact that you cannot pronounce Herbert's first name, you are suffering from the fact that you aren't a native Polish speaker. Neither am I. Here's a native speaker saying his name : (play)

I would include my voice saying "read Zbigniew and Tom McCarthy already" but, I think you all got that already.

Books should be free online.

2008-09-19T06:28:00.000-07:00

New York Magazine has most recently calimed The End of book publishing. I entirely disagree. Mostly because I see technology as a means of better distribution. People now can find what they want through more channels.

Papervitamins believes that publishers should make their books available for free online.

Let's think seriously about that. Are you still going to buy the print version of a book? Would you start to read more as a result of free books?

Because Reading Will Become Popular Again

2008-04-12T18:05:00.000-07:00

We are really looking forward to making reading popular again. This is what this project is all about. We are Papervitamins. We are all the people who cannot live without reading.