Obey

The Penguin Books (UK) blog unveiled these cool new covers for Orwell’s classics 1984 and Animal Farm:

The covers are by the artist Shepard Fairey whose work I’ve always found interesting. The earliest pieces I remember coming across were mysterious stickers that were on telephone poles EVERYWHERE that featured the old-school wrestler Andre the Giant and the word “Obey”.

Fairey’s work borrows from propaganda, advertising/marketing, and popular culture. He’s a perfect fit for these two titles. I hope that these covers will make it to this side of the Atlantic. How lame is this?

Fairey’s work is often political – pointedly so. See if you can guess where the artist stands on these two politicians:

and

A collection of Shepard Fariey’s work has been published in the book Supply & Demand. I’ve been meaning to pick it up. Amazon says it is unavailable though.

Get with the Independents

Lots of fun to be had in the ATL this week with your favorite independent purveyors of awesome.  Check it out:

Tonight, indie booksellers Wordsmiths is hosting a reading by John Brandon, who will be reading from his book Arkansas.  Arkansas is published by McSweeney’s, one of our favorite independent publishers, so it’s double the indie goodness.  I saw Brandon begin to read from his book at a McSweeney’s event at Criminal Records/Aurora Coffee, but I had to leave just as he got started (you may remember this parenting highlight).  I’m glad that I have a second chance to catch him.  In true indie spirit, in addition to being a novelist Brandon is also a steel worker, and he continues to work his day job.  It’s sorta like Flash Dance. What a feeling!  The evening is free, starts at 7:30 PM, and will include free pizza (compliments of McSweeney’s) and beverages.  Cheap date.

Friday night, Herschel Walker, former University of Georgia football player, Heisman Trophy Winner, and independently crazy guy, will read from his book Breaking Free: My Life with Dissociative Disorder at the Carter Center.  They’re obviously expecting a HUGE crowd.  If you want to check it out, you’ll need to pre-order the book from indie booksellers A Capella Books.  Herschel kicks off (get it!) the event at 7PM.

All day Saturday, Criminal Records will be celebrating Record Store Day with a full day of events.  There will be free live music all day long on two stages.  Acts performing will include Anna Kramer and the Lost Cause, The Coathangers, Dead Confederate, and Hope for Agoldensummer (must see!). Many of your favorite independent labels have created Special Record Store Day-only releases for the event.  There will be a vinyl swap meet, and you are invited to bring your old records down.  Pabst Blue Ribbon is a sponsor.  It looks like I may have another opportunity for excellence in parenting at Casa Crim.  Sweet.  And it’s free.  Check out the Record Store Day goodness near you here.  And because we’re all about the books, here’s what Nick Hornby has to say about your friendly neighborhood record store and why it matters:

Yes, yes, I know. It’s easier to download music, and probably cheaper. But what’s playing on your favourite download store when you walk into it? Nothing, that’s what. Who are you going to meet in there? Nobody.

Where are the notice boards offering flatshares and vacant slots in bands destined for superstardom? Who’s going to tell you to stop listening to that and start listening to this? Go ahead and save yourself a couple of quid. The saving will cost you a career, a set of cool friends, musical taste and, eventually, your soul. Record stores can’t save your life. But they can give you a better one.

Slavery by Another Name

Atlanta author Douglas Blackmon was reviewed in the NYT by Janet Maslin yesterday.  His new book, Slavery By Another Name, tells the overlooked story of how slavery continued in some parts of the South well past Emancipation and into the 20th century through the insidious practice of convict lease programs – with criminal conviction being a relatively loose and flexible condition.

Blackmon is the Chief of the Wall Street Journal’s Atlanta Bureau, and he lives in my neighborhood.  Do your part to support local writers.  You can catch him reading from the book next Tuesday at the Decatur Library.

Then We Came to the End

I was slow to get around to Joshua Ferris’ novel Then We Came to the End. I had been reluctant to read the book at first based upon the perceived “it’s The Office, but a novel!” marketing angle. The hard cover edition featured a sticky note motif that seemed to be a direct ripoff of the movie Office Space. Somehow I ignored the growing chorus of excellent reviews that the novel was collecting. Our own previous review of the book was less than stellar.

Then the novel was named a finalist for the National Book Award. When I saw that the novel had made the brackets for the Tournament of Books, I decided that I might need to read it after all. Like magic, a copy of the new paperback edition arrived in my mailbox. It was a sign.

The novel tells the story of a hotshot ad agency that is on the decline.  Having lost most of its free-spending clients in the dot com bust, layoffs are around the corner – the titular “end.” The most striking feature of the novel is that is is told in the first person plural – the “collective we” rather than the “royal we’ – with the exception of one chapter that provides the back story of the boss, which is told in the third person.  I think it was a mistake to deviate from the first person plural account.  The novel works best when it is portraying the snowball effect of office gossip, crap morale, and insecurity on the herd at the water cooler.  Giving the boss’s back story from an omniscient vantage point dilutes that doubt to the disservice of the rest of the novel – says me.

Often described as a “comic” novel, I found the book to be a very serious look at corporate America.  Sure it has funny moments, but if this book is about anything it’s about Fear – with a capital “F”.  Fear of layoffs, fear of not being able to pay the mortgage, fear of not continuing to move upward, fear of being on the outside, fear of not belonging, fear of life in the modern world, fear of dying, fear of what the guy next to you might be capable of if pushed too far – you know – FEAR.  There’s plenty of fear to go around in this novel, and it speaks to what motivates us as a society.

This is damning satire.  It’s a Big Important Novel, because it reflects our times with incredible clarity.  Whether you like the “story” is almost beside the point. If you work somewhere, I recommend that you check this one out.

Reading to the bottom bonus:  My copy of the novel was free.  In keeping with my “share the love” philosophy, I’ll happily drop my gently used copy in the mail to a good home.  If you’d like a FREE copy of Then We Came to the End, leave us a note in the comments below.  I’ll pick a winner next week.

Steven Hall Reading Update

Author Steven Hall has posted his upcoming US Tour dates. The important date, for the purposes of this post, is the last one. See if you can tell how that date is different from the rest…

Tuesday, April 15th
Ann Arbor MI
5:30pm—Borders Original Voice Awards Ceremony
31410 Lohr Road, Ann Arbor
Ann Arbor, MI 48108
Phone: 734.997.8884

Wednesday, April 16th
Birmingham MI
7:00pm—Borders
34300 Woodward
Birmingham, MI 48009
Phone: 248.203.0005

Thursday, April 17th
Westlake OH
7:00pm—Borders
Promenade of Westlake
30121 Detroit Road
Westlake, OH 44145

Friday, April 18th
San Diego CA
7:00pm—Borders
1072 Camino Del Rio N.
San Diego, CA 92108
Phone: 619.295.2201

Saturday, April 19th
Long Beach CA
2:00pm—Borders
Los Altos Market Center
2110 Bellflower Blvd.
Long Beach, CA 90815
(562) 799-0486

Monday, April 21st
Sacramento CA
7:00pm—Borders
2339 Fair Oaks Boulevard
Sacramento, CA 95825
Phone: 916.564.0168

Tuesday, April 22nd
Portland ME
7:00pm—Borders
430 Gorham Rd.
South Portland, ME 04106
Phone: 207.775.6110

Wednesday, April 23rd
Boston MA
7:00pm— Borders
255 Grossman Drive
Braintree, MA 02184
Phone: 781-356-5111

Thursday, April 24th
Atlanta GA
8:00pm—Wordsmiths Books
545 N McDonough
Decatur, GA 30030
For more on this one, see www.babygotbooks.com

Thanks for the shout out! As you can see, the Baby Got Books Reading Series stop in Atlanta is Hall’s only visit to the Southeastern US and his only stop at an independent book store on this tour (which is fair – this tour is centered around receiving the Borders Original Voices Award)

This is an excellent excuse to post this again:

Poster by Jtrav

Run

Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto is one of my favorite novels of the last five years. Mrs. Got Books and I enjoyed that novel so much that we bought each other Patchett’s latest novel, Run, as gifts. Surprise!

Run takes place over a highly compressed time frame (a day) in which the characters lives are turned upside down as explosive revelations rock the Doyle family’s relatively staid lives. The extent of change and revelation seem to be a bit far fetched and may be part of the downfall of the novel. And then there is the premise.

Bernard Doyle, former mayor of Boston (white), finds himself a widower with three sons. Two of the boys, Tip and Teddy, are adopted African-Americans from a poor household. Whatchu talkin’ ’bout, Ann Patchett? Apparently no one on the editorial staff said, “Wait. Like Diff’rent Strokes?”

The remaining brother is a prodigal son who has just returned, unannounced, from Africa. Their dead mother is almost literally worshiped by the family – she looks just like a statue of the Virgin Mary that the boys keep in their room. Just a bunch of men getting in one another’s way in a large house, until…

One night, after seeing Jesse Jackson speak at Harvard, one of the boys is pushed out of the way of an oncoming car by a stranger who is herself hit by the SUV. The little girl (African-American) accompanying the mysterious woman seems to know an awful lot about the adopted Doyle sons. Drama!

The novel seems to hit on several themes while untangling the lives of all involved. Black children named Tip and Teddy in Boston would certainly appear to be some sort of statement about race, nature vs. nurture, liberal/democratic politics and policies, etc., but it’s hard to pull out what exactly the author is trying to say. Patchett also comments upon Catholicism, what it means to be family, economic disparity, and pride vs. belief. There’s a lot going on in this “day in the life.”

Reading back over this, it sounds like I didn’t care much for this book, which is not the case. I brought high expectations into the reading of this novel, and the author nearly met those expectations. If anything, the author tried to do too much with this novel. Sub par Patchett is still better than most.

Ahab the Moderate

Pultizer-winning author Junot Díaz in a well-timed Newsweek interview weighs in on Bush, immigration hysteria, and Moby Dick:

You know, I love that image from “Moby Dick,” because we’re like the ship. We’re the Pequod. We’re this nation on this ship, and we’re on this insane quest being directed by a madman. But what’s really interesting is that Captain Ahab wasn’t taking his foreign workers and making them walk the plank. He understood the value of diversity through his dream. We’re even crazier than Ahab. We’re chasing this white whale called terrorism, but our captain is saying, “You know what, I don’t think some of us really belong here. They should walk the plank.” I never thought there would be a day where the United States would be crazier than its metaphor, the Pequod. But we’re there. We’re there. Ahab is now a moderate.

Oscar Wao wins Pulitzer

Fresh off the heels of winning the Tournament of Books, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. At this point, Junot Díaz has to admit that Oscar’s life has been more zafa than fukú.

My review of Oscar Wao is here.

Black Postcards

Dean Wareham’s indie rock memoir, Black Postcards, was reviewed by two big-deal book review sections this past weekend.

The LA Times handed the book a mostly poor review.  The reviewer botched the lyrics to the song “IHOP”, which, of course, makes it easier to reject the entire review out of hand.  The reviewer’s assertion that Wareham seems to have written the book to settle “old scores” just seems flat out wrong to me.

The New York Times, on the other hand, had the good taste to have the book reviewed by Liz Phair.  Liz Phair!  Also a veteran on the 90′s indie rock scene, Phair’s review comes across as very knowledgeable and well written.  I didn’t notice the byline until the end of the (very positive) review, and I was stunned.  I hope that they’ll be sending more work Ms. Phair’s way soon.

You can read my review of Black Postcards at Largehearted Boy.

The Monday Roundup

The Washington Post presents a look ahead at books of note coming out this spring.

The Telegraph (UK) lists the 110 books that you need for the perfect library.

Last week, the New York Times ran an article about the pitfalls of dating literary snobs (it’s not you, it’s your book…). This week, the Telegraph offers: “If you’re trying to bed a book snob, hide the Ayn Rand…”

The literary award for the year’s oddesst title (there is one) goes to…If You Want Closure In Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs

In book business news, HarperCollins reports that they have a new division that is going to try a new business model by slashing author’s advances and disallowing returns of unsold books by bookstores.  (Thanks for the link, Frank.)

Reviews o’ Plenty

I’ve fallen way behind on actually writing reviews of the books that I’ve read this year. There are four books that are getting pretty close to past their effective review dates (read in February). None of these is particularly new, so I’ve decided to put together a round up to get myself caught up as quickly as possible. Here we go:

First up: George Saunders Pastoralia. Saunders seems to enjoy a dedicated cult following. Whenever I see his name written on a blog anywhere, praise is sure to follow. I don’t know if Pastoralia is the best entry point for the Saunders oeuvre, but it was the first of his books that I got my mitts on. It’s a short story collection that mixes “experimental” writing with relatively straightforward narratives to great effect. I enjoyed the collection, and I’ll keep an eye out for more of Saunders fiction. His new non-fiction book, The Braindead Megaphone has gotten great reviews as well.

Neil Gaiman’s collection of short works, Fragile Things, is up next. It is a collection of short stories, poems, and a novella. I’ve read one of Gaiman’s novels (Anansi Boys) and have been meaning to get more deeply into his work for some time. This collection spans Gaiman’s career, and I don’t know that there is anything brand new here. It’s a mixed collection. Some of the work collected here is excellent, in fact many of the stories have won individual awards. It’s a nice compendium to pick up if you’re interested in checking out a breadth of the author’s work in one shot.

I followed up Neil Gaiman with more Neil Gaiman. Another of my reading goals has been to tackle the comics canon in a semi-systematic fashion. Couple that with my interest in Gaiman, and it seemed only natural to delve into the author’s career-making Sandman series with Volume 1: Preludes and Nocturnes. This is as far as I’ve gotten into the series, and it’s too soon for me to tell if the series will ultimately live up to the hype. What I’ve read so far is intriguing, and I plan to read more of the series. I’ll keep you posted.

And finally: After attending the Rob Sheffield reading way back when, my neighbor handed me Hairstyles of the Damned by Joe Meno. She thought that the author’s styles of recreating the musical past were similar and that I’d enjoy the novel. Meno has put together a book that is an excellent snapshot of the end of punk that is pitch perfect in recreating 80′s high school angst. It’s an enjoyable coming of age story about finding your own identity that has the ring of truth and awkwardness.

Phew.  I wish I had time to post on each of these separately.  C’est la guerre.

300,000 reasons to blog

If you missed it (like I did), the New York Times noted this past weekend that the master minds behind the blog Stuff White People Like have just inked a $300,000 book deal.  To be clear, the authors are not talking about the NASCAR-loving Red State clowns that you might think of heckling.  Here are some samples that may or may not hit close to home:

• #16: Gifted Children
• #21: Writer’s Workshops
• #25: David Sedaris
• #81: Grad School
• #92: Book Deals

Thanks to Alice for the link that hipped me to who the NYT was talking about when I came across their article.

Our Next Big Thing

Hot off of the e-mail: I just received this sweet flyer that J Trav put together for the BGB Reading Series, Volume 3 (BGB3). J Trav is one half of the band Sealions and an excellent graphic designer. I love what he’s done here. You can’t tell at this resolution, but the text in the sharks is from a wikipedia-ish entry on sharks. That’s aweseme. Very meta. It fits in well with the book, too. Contact J Trav for all of your graphic design needs. Tell him BGB sent you.

All that you need to know about BGB 3 is on the poster, but you should also know that it will also be BGB contributor Shaft’s 40th birthday that very same night. (Appearance by Shaft not confirmed by his publicist as of press time.) Some prestigious local Book Awards are also being handed out at the Decatur Court House on the Square that wrap up just before we get started less than 50 yards away. The house may be getting a little full at the Wordsmiths is all we’re saying. Make you plans already.

Tourney of Books: The Winner

Yesterday marked the end of this year’s Tournament of Books. As always, The Morning News hosted a classy event. The winner by a landslide:

Here are how my brackets played out:

(click for larger view)

Since I had also wagered on Oscar Wao to win with actual cash, I’m actually in the running for some schwag. Schweet.

Another move in the news

Unfortunately, this one is not welcome.  The Wren’s Nest Blog reports that the Atlanta History Center has bought the Joel Chandler Harris home and is moving it to Buckhead!  Lain and Amelia, intern Eduardo, Miss Nanny, et al. are out of work.  This will not stand!

Bookstores on the move

I checked in at Wordsmiths new location on Friday – re-opening day. The new spot on the Decatur Square is excellent. The new space fits the store well. The staff was beaming when we stuck our heads in. Check out the store’s blog for news and pictures of the move and the new space, and then check it out for yourself.

(Shortly after the visit to The ‘smiths — but unrelated — I went from feeling merely subpar to being felled by some sort of flu/virus/flesh-eating bacteria. I am now able to stand again. Blogging should return to regular vim and vigor over the next day or so.)

Word on the street – or at least on their newsletter – is that The Little Shop of Stories will not be moving from their current location (almost adjacent to the new Worsmiths location) to the Brick Store side of the square until at least next week. Be sure to check out mutliple Caldecott-winner Mo Willems at LSOS on Thursday at 4PM. My Knuffle Bunny and I are all over it.

HUGE news – HUGE

We can hardly contain our excitement here at BGB HQ, we’ve just leaned th