Colm Tóibín deftly combines creativity and criticism in his work — a covetable skill he gained from a life spent as a journalist, critic, travel writer, playwright, and novelist. With his new novel, Brooklyn, now available, the award-winning Irish writer chatted with our sister publication Boldtype about crossing mediums, dealing with identity labels, and why being a novelist is your parents’ worst nightmare.

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Hannah Berry’s debut graphic novel, Britten and Brülightly, is a gorgeously rendered murder mystery that comes up somewhere between The Triplets of Belleville and The Big Sleep. A graduate of Brighton University’s illustration program, Berry is all too eager to fill the twin roles of author and artist, giving her satisfyingly complex story an enthusiastic momentum. Our sister publication Boldtype caught up with Berry to talk about artistic masochism, the balance between writing and visualizing, and her love of the Coen Brothers.

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To be perfectly honest, reading on an iPhone is a little like browsing through those tiny novelty books they sell as impulse buys at the front of bookstores. It’s clumsy and hard on the eyes, but on the upside, it can fit in your front shirt pocket. And while those tiny hardback books mainly stick to funny photos of cats or poems about friendship, the offerings for the iPhone and other mobile devices are becoming nearly unlimited. These days, you can find magazines, Pride and Prejudice, or the latest hot paperback thriller, all as downloadable content. With all that in mind, our sister publication Boldtype gave three iPhone e-reader applications — the Google, Kindle, and Classics apps — a test drive. Read the results after the jump.

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[Editor's note: Sarah Weinman's away on vacation this week, so this recommendation comes to you courtesy of Boldtype, our bi-monthy sister publication covering books worth reading. Enjoy!] In 1925, Col. Percy Fawcett walked into the jungles of the Amazon in search of a forgotten empire. He was known for setting off into unmapped places, only to emerge months, or even years, later with new discoveries. Those expeditions made Fawcett one of the most famous explorers of his day — so celebrated that he became the model for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s hero in The Lost World. Read More »

Usually just one to three minutes long, the best book trailers swiftly inform potential readers of what to expect. But unlike most movie previews, these trailers are often interpretive, rather than plot-focused; they spring from the imagination of their creators, as well as from the books they represent. Search YouTube and you’ll find thousands of examples. Read More »

Julia Wertz’s I Saw You…Comics Inspired by Real Life Missed Connections is at once an anthology of work by top contemporary comics artists and an enticing overview of the voyeurism that has crawled into our everyday lives. The book features comics inspired by anonymous posts from Craigslist’s Missed Connections section, compiled into a mosaic of perverted romanticism and all-too-public heartache. Wertz recently chatted with Boldtype’s Chelsea Bauch about the gift of procrastination, online honesty, and the fine line between romance and creepiness.

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Diana Joseph’s ardent, often hilarious memoir I’m Sorry You Feel That Way comes equipped with a breathless subtitle: The Astonishing but True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother, and Friend to Man and Dog. True to her word, the author gives us the down and dirty details about the male characters in her life. She pulls no punches, from her humping dog and her son’s less-than-ideal hygiene to weekly breakfasts with her Satanist neighbor and long phone chats with her shockingly crass policeman brother. In these collected essays, some previously published in Marginalia, River Teeth, and Weber, Joseph alternates the many hats the subtitle implies. After the jump, Boldtype’s Sarah Gonzales gets in touch for a mini-lesson on writing nonfiction.

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Seven years into his involvement with short fiction, Wells Tower has finally released a book of collected stories. The young author is a regular in The Atlantic, and has had work in the Paris Review, The Believer, and McSweeney’s. The new collection’s title, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, hints at the inevitable tragedies within, but not so much at Tower’s stealthy observation and wit; in his inimitable vernacular, the writer addresses the ties that bind and the conversation between man and nature. Sabrina Jaszi at our sister publication Boldtype got his take on the debut.

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Last fall, midway through an interview with Oprah, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos claimed that his team had designed a device so much like a book that users would forget that they were reading with an expensive piece of electronics.

I didn’t believe him.

Then, late one night, I was reading on my ten-day-old Kindle while brushing my teeth. I was midway through a crucial point in a story when, just as Bezos had said, I got wrapped up in the world created on the screen. Without thinking, I sat my toothbrush on the counter and tried to turn a physical page — which didn’t exist.

I only paused for a moment to consider the significance of what had happened, but before I hit the next page button, I was a believer in this machine.

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A Mark Twain for the Baby Boom generation, T.C. Boyle is a portraitist of human folly and fantasy. A prolific writer of both short stories and novels, Boyle recently published The Women, a fictional work about Frank Lloyd Wright, as told by four of his infamous amours. While on a national tour to promote the book, Boyle chatted with our sister publication Boldtype. After the jump, he tells Chelsea Bauch about his fascination with famous egomaniacs, being a mama’s boy, and the extent to which creative writing can be taught.

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