Baby Got Books

After Nitro’s enthusiastic recommendation, I felt little choice but to run out and get a copy of Dara Horn’s The World to Come. If you’re a fan of Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Safran Foer, you need to sprint to your favorite bookseller and pick this up ASAP. Horn’s style, grace, and magical writing fits comfortably along side these literati, and she deserves to be as well known.

Nitro’s post did a great job of summarizing the general plot. If you’re wondering what the book’s “about,” it’s about: family, the loss of language and culture, art, literature, war, the immigrants’ experience, color and beauty, what happens to us when we’re gone, what happens before we’re born, genius, loneliness, love, heartbreak, and it features several “real” and fictional Russians - which is always up my alley.

I second the recommendation. Check out the first chapter, if you are so inclined (scroll on down to the bottom).

Beth (the Atlanta/Decatur one) has won our Brooklyn in Atlanta contest. You should still plan on meeting is down there this Thursday, March 1. The event starts at 7PM at the Decatur Library (215 Sycamore). It will feature authors from several Brooklyn small presses. Immediately after the reading, there will be an after-party at Twain’s (211 E. Trinity) where you can talk books with some of New York’s brightest and hippest. The Wordsmith’s blog is previewing each of the authors reading at this shindig. Come on down and hang with us - you can always choose to TiVo The Office. And like Bill Cosby always said on Fat Albert - “if you’re not careful, you might learn something before its through.” Did Fat Albert take place in Brooklyn? Discuss.

That Philip Roth guy won the PEN/Faulkner for Everyman. I don’t know anyone who has actually read that one. It’s his third time winning the award.

There is now something called the Conservapedia, you know, for people tired of the lefty bias of WikiPedia (also known as “facts”). Check out the hilarious sample entry for “cactus” at Boing Boing.

David Brooks, author and noted douche bag, leads the “hipster parent” backlash with an op-ed in the NYT. Alternadad’s Neal Pollock responds on his blog with a well considered F-U. My distaste for Brooks goes back to an episode where my former brother-in-law gave me Brooks’ book Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How they got There. (I’m not linking to the book out of principle - that’ll show him). His (former brother-in-law’s) idea was that this book was about us - him and me - and I would enjoy the re-telling of the story. Wrong. He had apparently never met me. My former brother-in-law was also the first person that I saw proudly display his copy of O’Reilly’s No Spin Zone on his book shelf. My former brother-in-law is blessedly former. Anyway, consider the target when you read Pollock’s response.

While I was on vacation last week, I apparently missed the great scrotum dust-up. If you missed it to, the fine blog post “My Scrotum Week” has a non-sensational discussion of how a non-insane fourth grade teacher approached the subject with his students (via Librarian.net).

Recording the Beatles is, apparently, the ultimate book for true Beatles obsessives. It includes fold out centerfolds of mixing board pictures for crying out loud. Self-described obsessive, Frank from TTT, says that the $100 price tag is at least making even him think twice (it’s not available on Amazon at a discount or otherwise). Frank recommends Here There & Everywhere by Beatles sound engineer Geoff Emerick as a nice alternative.

Lastly: See Nabokov reading Dennis the Menace in Guilty Pleasures of Literary Greats.

Salman Rushdie, Writer in Residence at Emory University here in Atlanta, will be lecturing this weekend at an event open to the public.  From the press release:

Salman Rushdie, Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emory University, will deliver the University’s 2007 Sheth Lecture in Indian Studies at 5 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 25 at Glenn Memorial Auditorium, 1652 N. Decatur Rd. His topic will be “The Composite Artist,” which addresses one of the crowning achievements of Indian art.  Free parking will be available at the adjacent Fishburne Parking Deck, 1672 N. Decatur Rd.

I apologize, but I’ve been sitting on this one for a while, completely contrary to the dynamic ideals that compelled the creation of its subject. I found as a present under my Christmas tree this year (from myself) the must-have coffee table book of the millenium, Wall and Piece, by the infamous (famous? not famous? should be famous?) Banksy. For the uninitiated, Banksy is a big-time graffiti artist hailing from the U.K., whose works you’ve undoubtedly seen, although you may not have placed a (masked face) with a (non-personally-identifiable) name.

You really have to own a copy of this for yourself so that you can take your time, at your leisure, to truly appreciate its greatness. I guess, in Banksy’s world, posting a whole bunch of photos from the book on this here blog wouldn’t be a big deal; nonetheless, out of respect (but no lawful obligation), I don’t think our blogmaster should do that. Maybe one or two, right here [ed: I'm not your monkey. For more see the artist's site linked above]:

Banksy is a political and philosophical idealist, and he expresses himself through graffiti. Not your standard tagging, mind you (although his tag is very recognizable), but through complex graffiti artwork that sends a message not only through its content, but also through its context. He strategically places his graffiti to exploit the hypocrisy he sees in the affairs of the government and the social fabric. I can’t possibly convey to you the messages that he conveys because doing so would be like a wannabe on American Idol trying to do a Stevie Wonder tune — I just don’t have the chops.

But let me share one tidbit from the book: On the back cover, Banksy includes the following quote:

“There’s no way you’re going to get a quote from us to use on your book cover.”

Metropolitan Police Spokesperson

Update: Try this link to see more Banksy art. It’s a little more user friendly.

It appears that we scooped even the organizers at Wordsmith’s on their Brooklyn in Decatur readings and shindig next Thursday.  That’s some hard core blogging right there.  Or something.  I return to the country tomorrow evening, so there may be some posts about something else coming soon. 

ANYWAY: I fyou haven’t already, don’t forget to enter for our “Brooklyn in the ATL” books giveaway by posting a comment here. We’ll see you on the First of March for free books, free beer, and free readings.

Have you signed up for our Brooklyn-based small press books giveaway yet?  If not, do so now. I’ll even broaden the entry criteria to all of New York.  Get crackin’.

To help you get mentally prepared for the reading on March 1 at the Decatur Library, please check out this story of real-life events overheard at a library in Brooklyn (via Librarian.net).

Better start practicing your f-bombs.

Check this out. From February 27-March 3 the Association of Writers and Writing Programs are having their annual meeting in Atlanta for the first time. (For reasons known only to them, they’ve decided to go with the acronym AWP).

The guys at Wordsmith’s are planning a literary shindig to coincide with the conference. The pahr-tay begins with “a collection of some of Brooklyn’s most groundbreaking independent publishers, as they bring their cutting-edge authors to Decatur to discuss books, writing, the ins-and-outs of small press, and to party with the locals.” The authors reading at the event will include, Kwame Dawes, Jillian Weise, Aaron Petrovich, Alex Lemon, and Keith Lee Morriss. The reading/discussion will take place at the Decatur Library at 7PM on March 1.  Afterwards, party with the Brooklyn-ese at a nearby watering hole whose location is being finalized. There is some discussion that a beer or two will be complimentary. But wait, there’s more…To help promote the event, Wordsmith’s is giving us a collection of books by selected authors who will be reading at the event. So here’s what we’re talking about:

• Free event.
• Free beer.
• Free books.
• And you can get your book signed by the author over a cold beer.

That’s a grand slam.  I hate reading about cool literary events in other cities and wondering why we hardly ever have anything worthwhile happening in Atlanta. This is an actual event with actual bleeding-edge authors. Come on out and support the scene to encourage the organizers to put more things like this together.

Here’s the totally arbitrary way we’ll go about handing out our free books. To enter our contest for a free (no pay) book by one of the authors reading on March 1, tell us about your favorite novel set in Brooklyn and/or favorite Brooklyn author in the comments section. We’ll pick three names at random using our NIST-Certified random number generator. To make sure that we can contact you, please fill in the e-mail blank on the comment form (your e-mail will not be displayed on the site). Winners can pick up their books at the event.  If you can’t make it or live out of town, I’ll get it signed for you and ship it along.  I will also drink your beer.

Patricia at the Booklust blog has two groovy posts that you should check out. The first is about In the Library, the first perfume to capture that old book smell. I for one can not get enough of ladies who smell like musty pages and dust mites.

Her second post points to a “What Book Are You” quiz. Here’s what is says about me:

Moby Dick

You are 63% Great Book

“Among the greatest adventure books ever penned, you charter the development of both deeply sophisticated characters and a genuinely artistic plot. Dynamic, thrilling and gripping, you are Moby Dick - the tale of the white whale…”

That is so spot on, it’s spooky. Actually, I have no idea what that means. 63%?  More like 110%! I haven’t actually read Moby Dick, which is my secret shame. Take the quiz and share your results in the comments.

Also: Friend of BGB, Frank from That Truncheon Thing, passed along a link to a recent Slate article about Neal Pollack’s Alternadad.  I vow not mention this book again until I’ve read it.

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai was probably not a good book choice coming right after reading What is the What. This book won the 2006 Man Booker Prize and has gotten rave reviews, but I was slightly disappointed by the book. While the subject matter was interesting and it was beautifully written, I did not enjoy reading the book. All of the characters were downtrodden and unhappy and there was no sense that there was any chance for change in the future. Even though What is the What told a horrific story, I still found it to be uplifting while this book was just depressing.

The book is set in Northeastern India at the foot of the Himalayan mountains and is filled with quirky Indian/Anglo characters. The main characters of the book are Sai, an orphaned teenager, who lives with her miserable grandfather, an upper class former judge. Sai is in love with her math tutor, Gyan, who joins up with the Nepalese revolutionary forces fighting for independence from India. Other characters include Biju, who is the son of the judge’s cook. Biju is an illegal immigrant in NYC eking out an existence and then various other Anglophiles who live in the town.

The story tells the lives of each of these characters with the dominant theme being how economically, politically and socially repressed each character is in this 21st century world. Even though the book takes place in such a remote part of the world, the people of this region can’t live together peacefully. The Nepalese hate the Indians, the Indians hate the Pakistanis, the Hindus hate the Muslims, the Sikhs hate the Hindus, and they all hate the British. All of the characters are caught up in their own form of hatred of someone or something else, and it seems that this cycle can not be broken.

My favorite character was Jemubhai, the judge. He is so wretched and pathetic that I was somewhat sympathetic to him in the end. He began his life as the son of a lower middle class Indian family. He wins a scholarship to study in England and then become a British civil servant. While living in England, he feels like he is completely invisible and non-existent in British society. He goes weeks, even months without speaking to a single person.

He grew stranger to himself than he was to those around him, found his own skin off-colored, his own accent peculiar. He forgot how to laugh, could barely manage to lift his lips in a smile, and if he ever did, he held his hand over his mouth, because he couldn’t bear anyone to see his gums, his teeth. They seemed too private…..To the end of his life, he would never be seen without socks and shoes and would prefer shadow to light, faded days to sunny, for he was suspicious that sunlight might reveal him, in his hideousness, all too clearly.

Even thought British society rejects him, when he returns to India and gets married, he ends up being repulsed by his Indian wife and the rest of the Indian community. He hates his native country, but neither does he long for England.

This theme is interwoven throughout the book as many of the characters are expatriots but find that their adopted homeland does not offer the dream life they wished for. Biju leaves India to find a better life in America but ends up without a green card, living in the basement of an Indian restaurant, being paid less than minimum wage, and having a worse existence than if he had just stayed in India. All of the characters have one sad story after another.

Perhaps if the current daily news wasn’t so bleak, I might have appreciated Desai’s prose more and not been so hung up on her pessimistic outlook. I have always loved novels set in India, but this just didn’t put a smile on my face. One of my favorite books about India is Far Pavilions by M.M.Kaye. I was hoping that Inheritance of Loss might have been an updated, 21st century version of that story, but it just didn’t do it for me.

First things first: It has returned to my attention that the 37th Annual Atlanta Open Orthographic Meet will be held this Saturday, February 17th at 7PM. This is alarming, because I leave for vacation on Saturday morning, meaning that I will miss the spelling bee (with beer and burgers) for the second year in a row. It is an amazingly fun event, and I am bummed to be missing it. I’m looking for a volunteer to attend on my behalf and file a report with us. BGB’s Weezie (also out of town this weekend) wrote this account of the 2005 meet. (This post explains her “penuts” reference.)

In other book news, I had the most unexpected literary experience of the year last week. Our city buses now have televisions on them that blare inane crap that annoys me to no end while I’m trying to read on our way to the train station (the TVs are provided by a service that touts the “captive audience” for ad space - grrr). The fare usually includes trivia (my favorite question asks “Who am I?” while showing a picture of Abraham Lincoln and facts about his life are slowly revealed), weather forecasts for out of town sporting events, cooking tips by two jackasses that dress up in different outfits and speak in different accents depending on what they’re cooking, etc. Anyway, the other day on the bus, I stopped reading for some reason and looked up to find that Mark Z. Danielewski was being interviewed about his book Only Revolutions. Flabbergasted. I challenge you to come up with a more random and WTF? (but true) unexpected literary moment.

Finally, Dave Eggers and Valentino Achak Deng will be reading from Eggers’ fictional autobiography of Deng, What is the What on March 18th at the Center for Southern Literature.  I’m there.    Make sure to reserve your spot.

Happy Valentine’s Day. We get all warm and fuzzy whenever you stop by. Some links for the occassion:

NPR’s This American Life features stories of star-crossed love on last week’s podcast. The stories include a David Sedaris tale about a chipmunk and a squirrel who can’t overcome prejudice, their families, and jazz.

Heather has a wonderful collection of songs for your Valentine. Listen or download the handy .zip file at I am Fuel.

I’ve found Richard Ford a little late in the game. I didn’t read The Sportswriter, nor did I read Independence Day. I also haven’t read any of his widely regarded short stories. I did read an excerpt of The Lay of the Land in The New Yorker though. I was hooked. A few weeks later I went to see Ford read from his book at The Center for Southern Literature (bonus: he’s actually from the South), and I was floored all over again. The book finally came up in my rotation, and I loved it.

You can imagine my surprise when BGB’s Shaft pooh-poohed Independence Day on this very blog just a couple weeks ago. We didn’t read the same book, so it is possible that we are both right. We got together to talk around the subject last Friday over fish tacos. For his part, Shaft offered this analogy, and I’m paraphrasing:

Imagine that 24 is the television show that resulted from the story of Jack Bauer, a recurrent character written into a great writer’s trilogy of well respected novels. Independence Day, then, would be called 72 and would feature Ford’s Frank Bascombe driving his car around town and thinking about stuff for three days.

I can see his point. The Lay of the Land features Frank Bascombe driving his car around coastal New Jersey. A lot.  Not much happens in The Lay of the Land that you can point to and call “plot.” The action is internal for the most part as Frank attempts to make sense of recent events in his life. The writing is fantastic, too (read the excerpt and see for yourself).

The book takes place back in 2000 in that wonderful gray period in the fall when the national election was over, and none of us knew who the next president would be. Good times. Frank Bascombe has settled into a seaside town in New Jersey where he’s making a very comfortable living selling real estate. Frank describes this point in his life as the “Permanent Period”:

… the time of life when very little you say comes in quotes, when few contrarian voices mutter doubts in your head, when the past seems more generic than specific, when life’s a destination more than a journey and when who you feel yourself to be is pretty much how people will remember you when you once you’re croaked…

…you realize that you can’t completely fuck everything up anymore, since so much of your life is on the books already. You’ve survived it.

As much as Frank would like to believe that he has reached a point with some permanence, the actual facts of the case suggest that nothing is as permanent as Frank would like to believe. The “dead” husband of Frank’s wife spends a week at his house, before she abandons Frank to be with him. He is undergoing treatment for prostate cancer. Coastal erosion will soon claim houses on Frank’s street. A cemetery in town is now empty due to some unusual circumstances. Very little in Frank’s life seems to support his stated views that life has become stable and predictable in any real way. He seems to have successfully deluded himself.

However, an explosive event late in the book (it is almost 500 pages) jars the seeming aimlessness of the preceding events in the book into sharp perspective. It drives home that the ideas of permanence and predictability in life are ridiculous. Life is not to be taken lightly. But you knew this.

Simply put, I loved the book. Frank Bascombe may be the most fully realized character I’ve come across in a novel. I liked him, too. Of course, I am likely have spoken well of the book anyway. Ford now lives in New Orleans, my home town. We talked about New Orleans and Mississippi (his home) while he signed my book. And I now have a book signed by a Pulitzer winner. And it needs to be said, that Richard Ford is good looking man.

Anyway, I’ve once again proven myself a master of timing. The National Book Critics Circle has been posting about a new book each day that is nominated for a NBCC award. As I’m writing this, the day’s post is for The Lay of the Land. Their synopsis includes the following nice assessment of Frank Bascombe “the unforeseen continues to destroy the superstructure of each new theory of his adaptation.” And Shaft, they do point out that he spends a lot of time just driving around being melancholic.

If that wasn’t enough, the KCRW Bookworm guy’s interview with Richard Ford can be found here.  I recommend giving it a listen if you’re curious about the book and how Ford views his craft.

Things that have been meaning to find their way into a post, but haven’t:

My recent interest in “northern” literature reminded me of this NYT review for Vendela Vida’s (Mrs. Eggers) new book Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name. I’d like to check it out just to determine who would win in the literary couples cage match - Veda/Eggers vs. Jonathan Safran Foer/Nicole Krauss. Coming soon to a bar in Brooklyn.

I’ve read a few reviews of the new Norman Mailer, The Castle in the Forest, (here’s one now). The book explores the “origins of evil” - starring a young Hitler. Sounds a lot like Hannibal Rising. I don’t see me reading either one soon.

Everything I read about Edinburgh makes me want to hop a plane to Scotland ASAP. Author Ian Rankin explains why the city, a UN World Heritage site for its literature, is handing out free copies of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped. Free books? Gotta call my travel agent.

On our poli-sci bookshelf: BGB’s Dr J has been highly recommending Chris Hedges’ War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning for quite a while. Hedges also has a new book out called American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. I don’t usually go in for “Why the Left/Right Sucks and the Right/Left is Always Right”-style books, but the reviews that I’ve read of Hedges’ new book sound like it is above that fray. Boing Boing recently provided the heads up on another interesting new book, Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats and Why We Believe Them. It would appear to be a timely tome after the great Aqua Teen Hunger Force terrorism fiasco in Boston.

Lastly, check out these temporary tattoos for librarians (and other book lovers). I’m a fan of the “Alas, Poor Yorick” with the grinning skull and the quill dripping blood. Bad ass.

Ragdoll (@ My Tragic Right Hip), a friend of the blog and a Canadian, hooked me up with an incredible book that is set in the northern reaches of Canada. I’m keeping the book under wraps until I’m done (post coming soon), but believe me when I tell you its fantastic. Now that I’m well steeped in flannel fiction, I was intrigued to read that this year’s Costa Award (formerly the Whitbread) was awarded to Stef Penney for her book, The Tenderness of Wolves. The book is a “murder saga set in the snowy wastes of 19th-century Canada.” The surprising thing, to me, is that Ms. Penney has never been to Canada. She researched the settings and customs in the British Library. For dialog she just added an “eh” to the end of every third sentence. No was apparently the wiser. A follow-up article explains that the reason she had to research the book exclusively in the library is that she’s agoraphobic (fear of places where escape may be difficult) — not so agoraphobic that she couldn’t put on her green party dress and get her award, just too agoraphobic to go to Canada. There’s no escape from Canada. (Actually, it says that she is now over her condition.)

Please note our new “Comix” category in the sidebar. Right over there. Since Shaft’s post yesterday now means that there are now two of us befouling the blog with graphic novels, I’ve made it easier to track them.

Get yourself some culture and check out the paintings of Kehinde Wiley. Wiley creates huge portraits of black men in a stylized version of the old master paintings of European kings and Popes. The December/January Believer Magazine came with a pack of note cards depicting reproductions of several Wiley’s paintings. I mailed one to each of our readers, but I think that they got lost.

I took a quick break today from reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius to become initiated into the graphic novel club, with Ghost World, by Daniel Clowes. I’m pretty sure DJ Cayenne has posted in the past on this genre, but I had yet to check it out. Mrs. Shaft had given me Ghost World as a Christmas present (based on advice given by Aimee Mann in a magazine article), but I hadn’t gotten to it until today.

Initial thoughts: pretty cool, definitely different, and right up the alley of a guy who has a short attention span like me. What I found most intriguing was the fact that, without even trying, I was able to read the dialogue and absorb the graphics without missing a beat. I had expected that I would need to stop after reading each caption and scan the accompanying picture, but it really happened organically and with no incremental effort (again, a huge plus for a guy who doesn’t like to try too hard when reading).

This particular work centers on two high school girls and their views on their own social lives (or lack thereof) and their ongoing critical commentary on the people around them. In the midst of this commentary, an actual plot develops (unlike in my last read, Independence Day). The cover of the book says that it was made into a major motion picture, which my research (thank you, imdb.com) tells me starred Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson as the two girls. However, my research indicates that the plot of the movie veered off from what was featured in the book. Neither here nor there, I suppose, except I think it means that if you’ve partaken in one, you probably haven’t spoiled the other.

As soon as I heard about this book, I was excited to read it. I loved Dave Eggers’ first book, A Heartbreaking Work of a Staggering Genius. I have to say, What is the What, absolutely floored me and was one of the best and most powerful books I have read in a long time. The story may be known to many of you as DJ and I have posted about it here before(1, 2, 3, 4, and 5). It is a fictional “autobiographical” account of Valentino Achak Deng who was one of the Lost Boys of Sudan and spent his childhood wandering across Sudan, living in a refugee camp for 10 years. He finally immigrated to Atlanta as part of a mass resettlement of children who lost their families in this genocide.

The book begins in Marial Bai, Deng’s childhood village in Southern Sudan, where he is a happy child with loving, “middle-class” parents. Marial Bai and most of Southern Sudan is home to the Dinkas which are an ethnic, African tribe. Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, is ruled by African Muslims who have aligned themselves with Arab muslims known as janjaweed. The Muslim rulers of Northern Sudan want control of Southern Sudan, which is still mainly ruled by tribal law, for economic (oil) and political power. Note: this is the same group that is now committing mass genocide in Darfur. In an attempt to maintain control of their land, the southern Sudanese form the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and become a “rebel” army. This post is not meant to be a Sudanese history lesson, but I thought it was important to give some context to the situation over there and to who was fighting who.

To continue with the story - Marial Bai (along with most Southern Sudanese villages) is obliterated by the Arab soldiers, and Deng manages to escape and finds a group of boys who are walking across Sudan to the “paradise” of Ethiopia. I can not do justice to the descriptions of this journey but imagine a little 7 year old boy going days without any food, walking miles on end in the hot sun, and seeing his companions drop dead from starvation, exhaustion or even eaten by lions. There is a period of time that Deng is completely blinded by an eye infection and he has to just hold on to the shirt of a boy in front of him and keep walking. When they finally reach Pinyudo, Ethiopia, it is just a barren, desert refugee camp with barely enough food to give the refugees more than a handful of grain per day.

Less than a year later, they are driven from Pinyudo by the Ethiopians who don’t want the Sudanese refugees and the SPLA in their country. Again - the descriptions of how they are forced to flee the camp are horrific. Deng witnesses the death of hundreds of people by gunfire or drowning in the Gilo river which they must cross in the exodus. The refugees that survive now begin another journey to Kenya where a new refugee camp is being established.

Deng ends up at Kakuma, a camp established in the most barren, remote area of Kenya with no natural resources, where he spends the next 10 years of his life. Eventually there are forty thousand refugees at this camp. It is amazing how even in these horrible camp conditions, not enough food, no work, no future, the people of the camp organize themselves into some form of a civilized community. Deng ends up as a leader of youth activities and does have some typical teenage experiences such as falling in love, trying to impress friends, girlfriends, etc. etc.

In the late 1990’s the US finally agreed to take in these Lost Boys of Sudan. Any boy or girl without a family in Kakuma and who had no ties to the SPLA was relocated to various American communities. Deng ends up in Atlanta and unfortunately continues to struggle with all the challenges of being an immigrant - culture shock, inability to find work and lack of emotional and financial support. He also seemed to be cursed throughout the book in that any time that he became emotionally attached to someone whether it was in the camp or in America, tragedy ensued for that person.

The story is an amazing tale of human survival. It is just unfathomable to me that Deng not only survived all of these atrocities but still has emotional wherewithal to tell his story.

How blessed are we to have each other? I am alive and you are alive so we must fill the air with our words. I will fill today, tomorrow, every day until I am taken back to God. I will tell stories to people who will listen and to people who don’t want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run.

Go buy this book and put it on top of your reading list. Tell all your friends about it. I finished the book a couple of weeks ago, and I still think about it almost every day. It is one of those books that had a permanent impact on my knowledge and outlook of the situation in Africa.

The only thing that troubles me about the book is why Dave Eggers chose to make this a novel. It is hard for me to discern what parts of the book were made up and what actually happened. It is all so vividly told that I hope that 95% of the story is Deng’s recollection and that it was the “Million Little Pieces” scandal that pushed Eggers to fictionalize the book. I would love to hear Eggers discuss why he chose this route. Does anyone have any insight into this?

[ed: Luckily the top-notch editorial staff is on the case.  Listen to Dave Eggers explain it all ("Million Little Pieces" not a factor) on KCRW's Bookworm.  Bookworm guy also explains why the book is like Huckleberry Finn and why the book made him suicidal.  A "must listen" if you have any interest in the book at all.  Eggers and Deng were also on NPR's Fresh Air.]

I had hoped to make “our favorite book stores” a regular feature here at BGB, but these things sometimes go by the wayside. Of course, you can always bring a good idea back. There’s nothing like spending way too much time in a great book store. So I’d like to revive this feature with one of my favorite rural book stores, The Bookshelf in Thomasville, Georgia (I’d link to their web site, but they don’t have one - at least not one that is easily Google-able - same thing).

The sign next to their door says, “Georgia’s Best Small Bookshop - Georgia Journal, 1997.” So they’ve been around at least that long. I stumbled across the store on one of our trips to visit friends in Coon Bottom, Florida, which is just across the state line. (The only evidence online that I can find to document that Coon Bottom is an actual place is that they have a Volunteer Fire Department).

The Bookshelf is a small shop, but I have always found something in their carefully chosen selection that I didn’t know that I needed to have. It’s uncanny. You can get a cup of coffee while you browse, and usually someone has baked fresh brownies or cookies for sale, too. It’s a great stop. The traditional southern main street in Thomasville has really come along in the last five years or so as well. If you find yourself near Thomasville, stop for The Bookshelf and take a walk around town when your done browsing.

Other posts in the “we love” series (none of these has their own web site, apparently - what year is it?):

• Sundog Books in Seaside, FL
• Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, GA
• Beaucoup Books in New Orleans, LA (mentioned in passing)

Stores that I would have their own post if I had either a blog or a camera during my visit:

• City Lights in San Francisco, CA
• The Tattered Cover in Denver, CO (LoDo)
• Book and Books - Miami Beach, FL (my local for 5 years)
• Maple Street Book Shop and Children’s Book Shop - New Orleans, LA (motto: Fight the Stupids)

Stores that will certainly get their own posts once I’ve made the pilgrimage:

• Powell’s in Portland, OR
• The Strand (18 Miles of Books) - NYC
• Square Books - Oxford, MS
• The Brown Recluse - Marfa, TX (no web site)

Pass along your favorite must visit book stores in the comments. And I’m not talkin’ ’bout no fool corporate book stores.

In February of 2006, Art Buchwald checked into a hospice in Washington, D.C. His right leg had recently been amputated to the knee and his kidneys were failing. Rather than go on dialysis, he decided that, at age 80, he’d prefer dying to endless medical care. Perhaps since he was a humorist, a funny thing happened. He didn’t die. In fact, his kidneys started functioning again, something that left the doctors scratching their heads. He spent five months in the hospice and then checked out so that he write one more book (number 30), Too Soon to Say Goodbye.

The book is a humorous look at a dreadful subject. He never discusses the process of coming to terms with death, but champions the concept of hospice and drops the names of the many famous people who come to visit, which is a considerable number because he knew a lot of famous people. Much of the book would fall under the category of memoir as he touches upon his difficult childhood (his mother was committed to a mental hospital immediately following his birth; he and his sisters were farmed out to foster homes for most of their youths), his military service in World War II, his college years, and his years as a columnist living in Paris in the ’50s. He discusses some of his sexual history, and the image of Art Buchwald cavorting with some young lady is a picture I regret having planted in my head. Mostly, it’s about the famous people he’s known.

It was an easy book to read, which is perhaps an astonishing thing to say about the chronicle of someone’s death, but there is a cheery tone to it, even through the eight eulogies written by four famous people, two not-so-famous-but-successful people, and two of his children that form the epilogue. It is fun and interesting, but as shallow as a Republican’s ethics.

Mr. Buchwald, who was given two-to-three weeks to live in February 2006, died last month–almost a year later–of kidney failure. He certainly made it seem like a good way to go.

According to this quiz, I am a “literate good citizen.” This apparently means: “You read to inform or entertain yourself, but you’re not nerdy about it. You’ve read most major classics (in school) and you have a favorite genre or two.” For emphasis, “not nerdy about it.” Take the quiz and post your results in the comments.

Based upon this article in The Guardian, it appears that London riders of public transportation may be a better read lot than those that join me on Atlanta transit. This morning, true story, there was a kid with a school book under his arm that was called The Least You Should Know About English. That’s really setting the bar pretty high. It sounds like a book that you would give a kid in Taiwan who was coming to the country for a week and needed just enough to not be completely lost, not a writing guide for native speakers. To hell in a handbasket…

The McSweeny’s gang is throwing a fund raiser for the 826 youth writing centers in NYC and L.A. There are seven 826 writing/tutoring labs in cities nationwide. Sadly, Atlanta is not one of the seven. (Something tells me that the 826 Writing Labs don’t use The Least You Should Know About English in their curriculum.)

The benefit is March 15 at the Symphony Space in Manhattan. The evening is described as “A benefit event featuring comedy, music and extreme power point presentations.” Someone please check this out and report back to us. It is a wonderful organization that could use your support.

Finally, according to this poll, stepping in dog poop and getting kicked in the nads both rate higher than our President.