“This gorgeously produced, wee sliver of a book packs an enormous punch” says one reviewer on Amazon, and they’re not wrong (Philip Pullman is a big fan, too).  Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman is intelligent, speculative fiction – easy enough to read a few pages on the way to work, but provocative enough to set you thinking all day long about the themes it raises.  David’s own background is unusually broad – by day, he heads the Eagleman Laboratory at Baylor College of Medicine – and by night, he writes.  Listen, and you’ll see why Brian Eno set twelve of of David’s “Sums” to music.  First part of David’s interview runs today – more tomorrow.

In today’s Write Report, Donna that Amazon is getting right up publishers’ noses again.  What are they playing at?  And Oxford University bans step ladders from their libraries – students will now have to travel to London to check out inaccessible tomes – Health and Safety gone crazy!

In Eve’s Salmagundi Club, she finds that young literary agent Nathan Bransford has blogged that authors should, to paraphrase him, get a life.  Predictably, quite a few authors are less than impressed to be compared to stamp collectors.  Peter is of the opinion that Nathan has an awful lot to learn about being a literary agent – and about authors, too.

Links: The Write Report, Writing as an Identity

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