Friday Picks

Three items with a distinct “weekend” feel for your Friday:

I. Art Spiegelman has a new book that is published by McSweeney’s.  It’s actually three books called, Be A Nose.  They describe it like this:

…it includes a triple dose of unexpurgated Spiegelman sketchbooks from years past—you get 1979, 1983, and 2007, all in actual-size hardbound editions and wrapped in a really neat ski-gogglelike strap, with Art’s own musings and specially shaped pages and a just amazing amount of wit and weirdness and giddy, brilliant draftsmanship, enough on every page to keep you tided over through several grim news cycles, at least.

Check out the odd (in a really cool way) book trailer.

II. Speaking of videos, E. Hamish Plumbrick (Patton Oswalt) makes his boozy case for being the next poet laureate.

III. And just in time for the weekend, Lauren Groff prepared Book Notes for Largehearted Boy.  The author of Delicate Edible Birds discusses songs that match up with each of the stories in the collection, as well as a suggested beer pairing.  Nice.  (See Nicole’s review of Delicate Edible Birds here.)

My Jesus Year

Benyamin Cohen, the author of My Jesus Year: A Rabbi’s Son Wanders the Bible Belt in Search of His Own Faith, recently spoke at my local JCC. I was unable to attend but the flyer for the event sparked my interest in his memoir.

Cohen is a 30 something, native Atlantan, son of an Orthodox rabbi, who is spiritually void and feels that he has spent most of his life going through the motions of Orthodox Judaism. And as described throughout this memoir – there are many, many motions. If you are a practicing Orthodox Jew, your daily life revolves around many repetitive prayers and rituals. Cohen believes that much of his religious life is spend interpreting laws down to the minutiae. For example, the Talmud (which is the basis for all Jewish law) when exploring the prohibition against cooking on the Sabbath questions:

“How long must something be on the fire before it is considered ‘cooked’? Is direct heat even needed? Is defrosting something equivalent to cooking it? Is salting vegetables equivalent to preserving them and thus too similar to cooking?”

Judaism is a religion in which actions trump faith. This type of religious conviction is completely anathema to most Christians. They merely want you to accept Christ.

Cohen is troubled that synagogue attendance is at an all-time low while church parking lots are filled to capacity. He describes how in Atlanta, there are no fewer than 15 mega churches with more than ten thousand congregants each, the most in the entire country.

Cohen decides to spend a year exploring Christianity. He hopes that whatever he finds will ignite a new found passion and enthusiasm for his faith. Every Sunday (and occasionally some days in between) he attends a different church.

The chapters in the book in which he visited mega-churches with rock concerts, consumer products and thousands and thousands of cheering Christians are what I found most fascinating and entertaining. While Cohen’s commentary can sometimes be a little snarky, I found that he did not come across as condescending but rather inspired by how many people he interacted with who had such strong convictions of faith and spirituality.

The more amusing chapters are when he attends a Christian professional wrestling match:

“Colt Derringer turned his back on God and UCW [ United Christian Wrestling], but maintained the World Heavyweight Title. What’s now in store for this tortured soul?”

The woman selling nachos tells me that more than thirty children have given themselves over to Christ in the last month after these matches.

and when he visits a Pentecostal revival. Cohen notes that in a recent study nearly 20 percent of Christians in America speak in tongues several times a year.

This book is a quick, funny read that makes you realize how religious Americans are. Living in New York which is somewhat “areligious” and filled with so many Jews, this book was an eye opener for me. Cohen’s thoughts on how to take the most popular practices of Christianity (music, hope, communal participation) and use them to increase religious Jewish participation are spot-on and something that Jewish leaders should consider.

Bokhora visits NYC

Some of the ladies from one of BGB’s favorite Swedish book blogs, Bokhora, are visiting New York and were interviewed there by Jason Boog of Galley Cat:

We get a shout out in the Galley Cat post.  Yea, us!

The Reivers

The Reivers were (sort of still are in a reconstituted form under a different name) an awesome band from Austin, Texas.  I had been a fan for at least a decade before I learned where their name came from — the title of a book by William Faulkner.  It was his last novel and his second Pulitzer Prize winner.

For those of you following my every move, you know I’m not particularly well read when it comes to the big names; I just finished my first Hemingway, and this was my first Faulkner.  And I can put this one in the “win” column of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novels I’ve read (which again, isn’t a very long list).

In terms of the “southern lit” Pulitzer Prize winners I’ve read, this was a way more difficult read than To Kill a Mockingbird, or even A Confederacy of Dunces (if that would fall in the category).  In case any of you didn’t know this, Faulkner likes colons and semicolons even more than I do; in fact, one could say he tends to abuse them.  But unlike other Pulitzer winners whose complicated writing style turned me off (hint:  it rhymes with Shycle Maybawn), Faulkner’s style, and his content, kept me pinned to the edge of my seat wanting to know what would happen next (which sometimes meant at the end of the current run-on sentence).

This story takes place just after the turn of the century (meaning the LAST century), and involves an interesting cast of characters including Boon Hogganbeck, Ned McCaslin, and our narrator, Lucius Priest, an eleven year-old boy who goes on the adventure of his life with the other two.  Boon and Lucius sneak away from their home in Jefferson, Mississippi, to go to Memphis for a couple of days in Lucius’s grandfather’s car while Lucius’s family is away for a funeral, and hilarity ensues, particularly when they realize that Ned, Lucius’s family’s black coachman, has stowed away under a tarp in the car.

Probably my favorite thing about the book was the way Ned was, from all descriptions, just a dumb old worker from the Priest family’s livery who didn’t know a thing.  But as the story progressed, you learned that Ned was smarter and wiser than anyone else in the book.  And Lucius, while just a boy, was also wise (and good) beyond his years.

I’m surprised that this book, written by such a well-known author and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, isn’t more popular.  And I’m also surprised that The Reivers didn’t name themselves Lucius Priest (or maybe Luscious Priest); that would have been a cool band name.

This is another great excuse to listen to the The Reivers (the band not the book):

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Mardi Gras Roundup

Happy Mardi Gras, everyone.  I’m not in New Orleans this year for the big day.  Instead I’ve put together this round-up of book news.  Where are my priorities?

Speaking of New Orleans, there’s a new Hurricane Katrina book out that is so nice, the New York Times reviewed it twice.  The book is Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans by Dan Baum.  I was alerted to the book when a friend send a link to this review and said, “Check out this Katrina book by Thurston Howell, III.” In Mr. Baum’s defense, New Orleans is still a place where men wear seersucker suits in the summer time and look snappy doing it.  As for the pink hat, that’s just sweet.  Especially with the tie.  The second review ran in the Sunday Book Review. 

The brackets for the 2009 Tournament of Books (.pdf) have been posted.  Any interest in joining in a bragging rights only betting pool here?

I saw Christopher Moore read from his new book Fool last evening at Wordsmiths.  Actually, he didn’t read from the book at all.  He did about a half hour of hilarious semi-book-related stand-up, fielded questions from the audience, and then signed books.  There were about a million people in the store.

Gay Talese is helping homeless dudes with their cardboard copy.

A new study purports to show that a second person narrative is more compelling to readers.  Yes, it compels them to throw the book across the room.

Nominees for The Believer Book Award have been announced.  I’m chagrined to admit that I have only heard of two of the nominees, Black Flies by Shannon Burke and The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt.  I did reviewed Flies here and Invention over here.  Also, let the record show that I nominated Invention for the award.  So it’s doomed.

Rivka Galchen’s Atmospheric Disturbances has been nominated for the Young Lions Award, which is given to authors under 35.  Click on the picture of Rivka Galchen on the side bar to see why she is a mortal lock for the award.  According to me.

OK, let’s review.  First there was news of the novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  Then came word that there is an upcoming film mash-up, Pride and Predator.  Now the New York Times reports that Jane Austen herself will be revealed to have faked her death to become a vampire who “lives quietly as a bookstore owner before finally driving a stake through the heart of everyone who has been making money off her for the last two centuries.”  Awesome!

Picture swiped from The Guardian

It’s Coraline, Not Caroline

How could I enjoy The Graveyard by Neil Gaiman as much as I did and not pick up a copy of his Coraline?  In case you haven’t seen the movie previews (or the movie at this point), Coraline is a nightmarish fairy tale about a curious young girl living in an old house somewhere in the English countryside. 

After getting to know the neighbors, interrupting her busy parents, and spending a couple weeks exploring the house and grounds, Coraline unlocks the door to the next flat and follows the passageway to another house exactly like her own…almost.  She finds all the same furniture, some toys and books that move like they’re alive, and her other mother and father who claim to love her very much.   With the bravery and confidence we can only hope our own children possess but would never have to test, Coraline spends the rest of the story trying to find her real parents and get back to her real home.

Gaiman claims in an author’s note at the back of the book that he began writing this story for his 5 year old daughter and finished it when she was 15 and his younger daughter turned 6.  He wanted something refreshingly creepy with a girl as a heroine.  I think he got it.

He says, “It was a story, I learned when people began to read it, that children experienced as an adventure, but which gives adults nightmares.  It’s the strangest book I’ve written, it took the longest time to write, and it’s the book I’m proudest of.”

It is a pretty scary story.  Though I never doubted Coraline would triumph in the end, Gaiman never let me relax along the way.  He played on every single childhood fear imagined by every single child.  Even from the start there were the simple fears – neighbors mispronouncing her name (Caroline) and ignoring her quiet corrections.  Besides being terrible cooks, Coraline’s parents have no time to talk or play with her, always having too much work to do.  It would rain for days at a time. 

Then the escalation: a locked door in the fancy room that Coraline’s mother unlocks to a brick wall one moment, but creaks open on it’s own in the middle of the night.  There are the dark shadows of scurrying rodents, the heavy mist surrounding the house, and the prediction of “terrible danger” by the old ladies next door.  When Coraline finally opens the door to find the bricks replaced by a long, dark passage  and follows it to reveal her “other” house and her “other” mother and father, the reader is fairly panicked.

Coraline, however, is an explorer and merely finds this interesting.  In this other house, the food is delicious, everyone has time to talk and play, the animals can speak, and the neighbors remember her name.  As perfect as all of this sounds (with one weird exception I won’t mention), Coraline knows this isn’t her home, says goodbye to her other parents, and returns through the passageway to find her real parents gone.  Gone.

The only thing she can do is head back to the other house and find them.   Along the way, Coraline defines what it means to be brave, “..doing something when (you’re) really scared” , reassures herself: ” I will be brave, thought Coraline. No, I am brave.”,  and stands up to the other parents: “You don’t frighten me,” said Coraline, although they did frighten her very much.”  Her greatest strength shows when she says to her “other mother,” no matter what spectacular promises were made:  ”I have no plans to love you.  No matter what.  You can’t make me love you.”

Later, Coraline confronts another childhood fear.  One of the neighbors reminds her:

Nothing’s changed.  You’ll go home.  You’ll be bored.  You’ll be ignored.  No one will listen to you, really listen to you.  You’re too clever for them to understand.  They don’t even get your name right.

The neighbor begs her to stay and describes a world with everything a child could ever dream of.  Coraline states what most parents hope their kids understand but know they will never admit:

I don’t want whatever I want.  Nobody does.  Not really.  What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted?  Just like that, and it didn’t mean anything.  What thena

By the end of this story, Coraline has faced her darkest fears and falls asleep with the windows open and a song in her dream.  I still think it’s a bad idea to let your typical second or third grader read this story alone, but maybe the way the story unfolds warrants a reading together.  Maybe all of these fears out in the open and up for discussion could end up being more reassuring to children than upsetting.

Let me know what you think.

Guest Blogger: Barbara Friend Ish

Forget the connotation of the suffix that is Barbara’s last name, she is a friend to the Atlanta book community.  There is no -ish about it.   She had the gumption to start her own independent publishing company Mercury Retrograde Press, which is based in Sandy Springs.  The press was established to publish books in the realms of “fantasy, science fiction, and the unclassifiable.”  

MRP’s second book is Zachary Steele’s Anointed, which will be having a release party at Wordsmiths Books on Saturday night.  Zach owns Wordsmiths, home of several BGB book events, and both Barbara and Zach are my friends on Facebook (and in the real world, too), so we’re throwing objectivity to the wind and having a love fest here at BGB.  Yesterday, Russ Marshalek, hot new addition to the BGB team (Welcome, Russ!), interviewed Zach in the style that can only be classified as “Russ and Zach”.   They need their own reality show.

I invited Barbara to guest post today to tell us about her love of independent publishing.  Here’s Barbara Friend Ish:

I <3 Small Press
 

It’s a bit late for Valentine’s Day, but I wanted to write a little love note to small press publishing and share it with the world. I’m sure everyone here will understand.

 

Ah, Small Press Publishing, how do I love thee? I will give you all my time and money and sweat and blood and creative energy, until I run out of all of them, because I know you will give me the ride of a lifetime. We will be together forever, you and I, and every day I thank the gods of publishing for you. 

No, really. Like most writers, I grew up with very murky ideas of what it was to actually write and publish books. I had naïve notions about writing exactly what I wanted to write (having no concept of market forces), making decisions about–if not designing–the covers for my books, and working in a welcoming environment with people who did what they did for the love of it. Later, I wrote my first novel and went out and learned about the Real World. I shall not bore you with the details. Suffice it to say the Real World of publishing is different than I imagined, books and authors are products, and publishing folk of this era are under tremendous pressure to make blockbuster margins in a business that is having a good day when it pays all its bills. 

Small press publishing isn’t necessarily different from publishing in Big New York Houses; but it can be, because each small press gets to define its own identity, vision, and (within the realities of the marketplace) rule set. I love the uniqueness of small presses: each small press is someone’s dream, or if the founder is lucky the shared dream of a team; and just as no two novels will ever be the same, even if two writers start with the same topic, no two small presses will ever do the same thing the same way. We don’t compete; there’s no need for it. In fact quite a number of my friends run small presses, and we swap stories, advice, and even resources on a regular basis. And we all love what we do. It doesn’t get much better than that. 

I founded Mercury Retrograde because the house I wanted to publish my books didn’t yet exist. Along the way I discovered running a small press was all the jobs I ever loved, rolled into one. As Mercury Retrograde’s editor-in-chief, I enjoy the privilege of coaching and editing for a variety of talented writers. It is my task and joy to designate what is and is not a Mercury Retrograde book, and to figure out (with the recently-added help of marketing virtuoso Russ Marshalek, who just seems to be everywhere these days) how to help each book Mercury Retrograde publishes find its audience. As the entertainment business shifts and technologies evolve, it is my task to come up with new ways to help readers enjoy the visions of the writers whose work I take on. And I get to mastermind the development of the published book in all its forms, including the cover. It’s a grown-up version of what I thought a writer’s life would be: in short, my dream job. 

The best thing about small press publishing is freedom, particularly the freedom to take risks bigger houses can’t afford and the freedom to champion books and writers that bigger houses couldn’t figure out how to handle. Only a small press could have afforded to take on Zachary Steele’s Anointed, which we’re launching at Wordsmiths tomorrow night (Saturday). I am unbelievably proud of that book, which is not only hilarious but touching (and Publishers Weeklythought it was pretty cool, too). And I have spent each day of the project grateful for the wonderful team with which I got to work and the genuine creativity and collaborative spirit everyone brought to the process.  

That’s what small press is about. I wouldn’t want any other job.

Anointed

In the immortal words of the beloved Irish poet Bono: Hello Hello hola hola. I’m elated to join the illustrious ranks of the bloggers no no scratch that out I mean writers no no cross that out too I mean bloggers…bliters?, no that doesn’t work…bloggers. I’ll stick with bloggers.

Take two:

I’m elated to join the illustrious ranks of the bloggers for Baby Got Books. As you may or may not know, for full disclosure’s sake, since we’re all journalists around here and value intergrity, in my former role as Marketing/PR director for Wordsmiths Books, I collaborated with the BGB folks often, so this feels like a natural fit.

This week sees the launch of Wordsmiths’ Zach Steele’s first novel, Anointed: The Passion of Timmy Christ, CEO, published by Sandy Springs, GA’s own Mercury Retrograde Press. It’s a religious satire/comedy/labeled “speculative fiction” by the publisher/labeled “sci-fi/fantasy” by the Publishers Weekly review, concerning itself with the big business of religion. If you like Terry Pratchett or Christopher Moore, Anointed is your cup of tea/coffee/rum. The book officially hits your local Hudson News airport bookstore on March 3, but Wordsmiths will be throwing a typical Wordsmiths-y book launch for Anointed this Saturday, Feb 21st. The whole shebang begins around 7/730-ish, but it’s basically going to be a “show up whenever, start drinking once the drinks show up, eat when the food shows up, and pretend to pay attention to Zach as he reads from his book and make sure you laugh in the appropriate places” sort of thing.

Oh, I should mention: in my new capacity doing freelance book PR, I’m the publicist for Anointed.

Oh, I should also mention: I’m quite good friends with the publisher. Her name’s Barbara. I hear tell she makes mean brownies.

Oh, and also: I’m serving as a sort of “project manager” for the book’s massive online marketing campaign.

Oh, and to quote Steve Jobs at the end of every MacWorld other than this last one: one last thing. I’m the one who brought Anointed to said publisher’s attention. So I kinda acted as the agent? Only, you know, without making a lot of money on the deal and saying “ciao” in that Eddie Izzard voice.

To keep the aforementioned journalistic integrity of myself and the credibility of Baby Got Books intact, I, the publicist for Anointed and former employee of Wordsmiths, did a brief interview with Zach about his book for this book blog right here. So when I say “it’s a hilarious romp through the corporate-driven world of religion and you should buy ten copies and read them all simultaneously”, you know I mean it.

A completely non-biased and properly-punctuated interview with Zachary Steele, author-type person of Anointed: The Passion of Timmy Christ, CEO

Baby Got Books: Describe in 5 words the plot of Anointed. In another 5 words, tell me why i should read it again. Then, in 5 more words, tell someone who hasn’t read it why I should read it again.

Zach Steele:Reluctant man becomes corporate Christ.
Because it’s freakin’ funny, man.
You won’t get it anyway.

BGB: Who all would you say you ripped off in writing Anointed? And by ripped off I mean in terms of both intellectual content and money.

ZS:I ripped off a lot from God, you know. He’s pretty much the author of the Bible, right? So, I have to include him. Aside from the that, it was pretty easy pickings with Terry Pratchett, Christopher Moore, Kyle Watson (though you wouldn’t have heard of him) and some finely-detailed intellectual hotness from Marisha Pessl. As far as money, that’s pretty easy. I ripped off my publisher, but she won’t figure that out for a while, and likely all of my readers (once they’ve read it and realize what dreadful crap it is).

BGB: On a scale of 9 through 10, how awesome is Anointed?

ZS:All of my scales go to 11, so that’s pretty much where I’d put it. It completely redefines “awesome”. In fact, the use of “awesome” is now outdated and has been replaced by “Anointed”. As in, “Man, that sure was an Anointed movie, wasn’t it?” I would wager that, when I am old and fading away–or perhaps even dead already–people will still be discussing how Anointed completely altered the methodology of writing and saved the publishing industry. But I’m pretty modest about it all, actually. I’d rather not discuss it any further.

BGB: If you end up on Bill O’Reilly, and he’s all screaming in your face and cutting your microphone’s signal and stuff without listening to you at all, what will you have for dinner after?

ZS:After? How about during? I’ll be sidestepping his questions while waving a fork in the air and taking my time dining while he rants about stuff I surely won’t be listening to anyway. Steak au Poivre with Dijon Cream Sauce, garlic mashed potatoes, creamed spinach, a nice Chardonnay, and a bowl of cheese to throw at him when he stops talking. No wait. I wouldn’t do that to cheese. Maybe I could get a soufflé or something instead. After, I might go for an Icee.

BGB: In terms of your writing style, what books would you say influenced your second novel? oh wait you haven’t written it yet.

ZS: Ha! Good one coming from the man who hasn’t even written his first book yet! Look out David Sedaris! This guy’s a riot!

BGB: You solicited quotes about the book, aka “blurbs”, from your Facebook friends. Are you just too lazy to actually hunt down famous people?

ZS:”Don’t underestimate the value of doing nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.” ~Winnie the Pooh~ There’s a famous quote for you. Happy?

BGB:Your press materials all begin with “Satan and the Antichrist walk into a bar”. Tell me a good joke about a pope and a rabbi. Or a pope and a rabbit.

ZS:The Pope (not ‘a’, you idiot) walks into a bookstore to look for a book about Catholicism, because he doesn’t understand any of his followers, but before he can make it to the section oddly marked “religion”, he is distracted by a sharp sound from the back of the store. When he goes to investigate, he finds a large cage with a fluffy, bouncy rabbit inside, and a sign atop the cage that reads, “Cadbury Rabbit, Bookstore Bunny”. The Pope smiles and leans to the cage and says to the rabbit, “Hello there, little rabbit. I am the Pope. How are you today?” To which, the rabbit bounds in a quick circle, stomps a foot in a loud thump, stares at the Pope, and says, “Nom, nom.” The end, joke over. A POPE AND A RABBIT? ARE YOU SERIOUS? Do you get paid to come up with these questions or did you pawn it off on an 8-year old?

BGB: How freakin’ awesome is your publicist?

ZS:Question #7 may answer that better than I can. It’s very difficult to answer this question though, now that Anointed has completely redefined what is understood to be “awesome” and taken over its use entirely. I suppose I can say that my publicist is less than Anointed, more Anointed than “awesome” (in its former form), but not as Anointed as my book minus me. Hope that helps.

Anointed: The Passion Of Timmy Christ, CEO is officially available only at the launch party on Saturday, Feb 21st at Wordsmiths Books in Decatur, GA, and will then be available at your local library for free reading on March 3rd. Ask for it by name.

Neil Gaiman at the DBF?

Lain Shakespeare has issued a call via Facebook for help bringing Neil Gaiman to the Decatur Book Festival to deliver the keynote address.  If you’d like to help go here and vote.   If you’re not from the Atlanta/Decatur area and want to help anyway, use the zip code 30030. Thanks!

The Boat

Nam Le’s The Boat may be the most widely praised collection of short stories of last year, or most any other year.  Scroll through this collection of glowing reviews by everyone from The New York Times to Oprah Magazine to get a sense of how widely critically esteemed Nam Le’s debut collection is.

The collection begins with the story Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice.  It’s a mouthful, but it reads almost like an introduction to the author’s life and work.   The main character in the story is “Nam”, a student at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop (where the author graduated). We learn how “Nam” received his name and the tremendous hardships that his father underwent in the Vietnam War and his eventual escape from th ecountry.  As the title suggests, there is a roller coaster of emotions that accompany “Nam’s” father on his to Iowa.  I don’t know how much of this story is autobiographical, but it contains the feeling of absolute truth.

You can feel the author’s discomfort when a fellow student tells “Nam” that he “…could totally exploit the Vietnamese thing.  But instead you choose to write about lesbian vampires and Colombian assassins, and Hiroshima orphans…”  I don’t about the lesbian vampires, but later stories in this collection do feature Colombian assassins and Hiroshima orphans.  Whether this story is autobiographical or not, it seems to provide the lens through which the author wants the reader to view his work.  He is not defined by ethnicity.

He begins with an “ethnic” story then shifts gears and demonstrates his virtuosity by telling all sorts of stories.  The “Colombian assassin story,” Cartegna, could be an action movie.  Meeting Elise is the story of an aging New York artist who tries to face his greatest regret.  Halflead Bay, my favorite in the collection, is an outstanding coming -of-age story set in coastal Australia.  Hiroshima is the orphan tale mentioned in the opening story. (This was my least favorite – I would have subbed the lesbian vampire story here.)  A friendship between two women that spans from Portland, Oregon to Iran centers the tense Tehran Calling.  

Having shown the reader that he can tell many stories well, Le then closes the collection with the title story, The Boat, a brutal tale of Vietnamese boat people fleeing Vietnam.   By th end of the book, it is clear that Le does not need to “ exploit the Vietnamese thing.”

This is an incredible short story collection by a masterful writer. Pick up a copy if you’re looking for weighty fiction with muscle, style, and grace.

Don’t Forget Darwin

I forgot Darwin!  Charles Darwin turned 200, coincidentally enough, on Darwin Day – Feb. 12th. I dropped the ball.  Like Abraham Lincoln who is also celebrating a bicentennial birthday, a new crop of books has arrived on shelves to mark the occasion.

The Washington Post reviewed two recent Darwin-related books, Darwin’s Sacred Cause and Why Evolution Is True.  Thomas Hayden’s reviews ran under the provacative headline: Darwin the Liberator: How evolutionary thought undermined the rationale for slavery.  Othe rrecent books include, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin by David Quammen, which is about the twenty year period between Darwin’s theory and its publication.  

One of my favorite books of the last few years was This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson.  It’s an historical fiction account of the voyage of the Beagle that blew me away.  It was on the Booker Prize long list, but it hasn’t been published in the US as far as I can tell.  It is worth stepping up to whatever a used copy on Amazon costs you.  (Check out my review from 2005.)

Other Darwin links of varying gravitas:

• The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online – fairly self explanatory
• 15 Responses to creationist arguments
• McSweeney’s Little Charles Darwin, God Bless Him
• Visit Swathmore College’s Darwin Has A Posse site – or join the Facebook group
• Olivia Judson on why we must move beyond Darwinian evolution if evolution is to survive

More Lincoln, Please

The esteemed William Safire, writing for The New York Times, recently reviewed the bumper crop of books about about Abraham Lincoln.  As we celebrate Abe’s 200th birthday, I couldn’t help but notice that Mr. Safire missed a title that may be of interest:  The Boy Who Looked Like Lincoln by Mike Reiss and David Catrow.

If you’re off today and you are a parent helper at your child’s pre-school, I recommend bringing this one with you.  I am.

Delicate Edible Birds and Other Stories

About 1 year ago, I read one of my favorite books in 2008, The Monsters of Templeton, by Lauren Groff (my review). As with any first novel, you always wonder if the author’s subsequent books will be as good. Thankfully, Groff didn’t disappoint and she is officially on my favorite author’s list. She just published, Delicate Edible Birds, a collection of 9 short stories and each one contains the same lyrical prose that I loved in her first book.  The central characters in these stories are strong women who live life to the fullest and experience great change within each story.

L. DeBard and Aliette was my personal favorite. The story is set in 1918 and Aliette is a 16 yr old girl who suffered an illness (polio perhaps?) that has rendered her legs as…

…small, wrinkled sticks…..her kneecaps like dinner rolls skewered with willow switches….

L. DeBard is a 43 yr old, former Olympic swimmer who is hired by Aliette to teach her to swim and get her legs working again. Aliette seduces DeBard and they have a passionate love affair. The story ends in tragedy, but I don’t want to give away too much because it was so gripping that I couldn’t put the book down. DeBard and Aliette and their love affair are not the only characters and plot in the story. Groff excels in her ability to so richly describe all her characters and incorporate other fascinating storylines into the main plot. During this time period – an influenza epidemic is ravaging New York and Groff uses this as a backdrop to describe the hysteria and insanity that grips Aliette’s household. Aliette’s former nurse, Rosalind who becomes her father’s lover goes nearly mad with fear of influenza.

…..she makes them wear masks inside. She forces them to carry hot coals sprinkled with sulfur. The apartment stinks like Satan…..And when Aliette comes to L. in the night, she swings her coals like a priestess swinging a censer.

Groff’s imagery completely immerses the reader in the storyline.

Majorette was another favorite of mine. In this story, we follow a girl born in the early 1950′s to a “white-trash” family who pays her little attention. When she is 10 years old, she discovers baton twirling and twirling she does.

She took the hollow ringing in her and twirled it away, ……she sent batons spinning up like whirligigs into the night sky…..”

You can feel the girl’s pain and loneliness through Groff’s description of her behavior:

And she said Yes to the boys who called for her, and Yes to the football players who jogged after her before practice to ask her to the movies, and Yes to parking in the makeout lane, and Yes to their hands under her skirts, and Yes when they pushed their jeans down their thin hips because by then she forgot what it meant to say No.

Baton twirling leads to beauty pageants which lead to a college scholarship, a stable marriage and children of her own. And in Groff’s words:

This is how a life falls into place.

My final favorite is the last story, Delicate Edible Birds. The title refers to l’ortolan, a tiny bird which is an illegal delicacy in France.  Secret societies exist in which people blindfold themselves and eat the bird whole. As an aside, my brother who is a chef wanted to name his restaurant L’Ortolan but we convinced him that this would not be appealing to many people.

Bern, the main character in this story, is the most independent and fierce of all. She is a reporter in France at the beginning of the German occupation in WWII. She is fleeing Paris with several colleagues when they are captured in the countryside by a Nazi sympathizer. Bern’s strength and ultimate decision to save her fellow travelers is riveting. I loved this character and even more so when you consider what an enigma she was during this time period.

I often forget how enjoyable a well-written collection of short stories is. Take a break from the novel or whatever you are reading and pick up this book – you won’t regret it.

A Note for My Mom

Did you see that HBO is making a series out of Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books?  It’s true.

The Lazarus Project

Shortly after I finished The Lazarus Project by Aleksandr Hemon, I saw that it had been nominated as a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award for Fiction.  The novel has also been included on this year’s list of contenders for the Mornings News’ Tournament of Books.  I don’t think that it will win the NBCC award (could be wrong), but I expect it do well in The Tourney.

The Lazarus of the title is the center of a century old mystery. In 1908 Lazarus Averbuch was allowed into the home of George Shippy, who later shot and killed Averbuck. The young Jewish immigrant was reportedly delivering a letter to Shippy, Chief of the Chicago Police, who claims that he suspected that the visitor was an anarchist with ill intent. The official story ends there, and the real events of the day remain unknown.  The historical mystery is eventually dusted off by another young immigrant in Chicago, Vladamir Brik.

Brik (from Bosnia and non-Jewish) found himself an unwitting American citizen. He was visiting the US when his country went to war, and he was unable to return to the former Yugoslovia.  Brik learned English well enough to get a job writing a weekly column for a Chicago weekly about his immigrant experience. His marriage to a neurosurgeon, complete with a no-nonsense Midwestern father-in-law, seals his fate as a US citizen.

Hemmed in by a diminishing prospects as a writer, a strained marriage, and a not too distant drinking problem, Brik is desperate for an opportunity to bring some purpose to his life.   He manages to land an arts grant from a Chicago foundation friendly to immigrant causes.   Money in hand, Brik sets out off for Eastern Europe and the Balkans, in search of the past and a little breathing room from his present.  I’m trying not to reveal too much of the story, but most of this happens fairly close to the beginning.

Over the rest of the book, Brik and his traveling companion, a Serbian photographer named Rora, search for clues to Averbach’s pre-USA life. Their travels take them to places where the memory of Jewish families and the pogroms that sent them fleeing to foreign lands are quickly being forgotten and new tragedies take their place.

While traveling, Brik’s mind often wanders, and he imagines the pieces of Lazarus’s story.  In his imaginings, characters seem to repeat in the parallel lives of Lazarus and Brik, reinforcing their connection.  How much of Lazarus’s story is true is an open question.

There are so many stories that could be told, but only some of them can be true.

The photographs presented in the book also connect the stories.  Historical photos of Lazarus are presented in the book, including one of a deceased Lazarus posed in a chair by the police as a photo-op for newspaper photographers.  The old photographs remind the reader that Lazarus is real, even if Brik’s account of him is not.  The historical pictures are interspersed with gloomy contemporary photos that remind the reader that our age is not all rainbows and unicorns.

It bears mentioning that as Brik’s life is a mirror of sorts for Lazarus’s story, so too does Brik’s life reflect that of  the author Hemon.  Hemon is Bosnian, and he was stranded in Chicago when his country went to war.  He traveled Eastern Europe to research this book with a fellow Bosnian, a photographer named Velibor Bozovic.   Hemon’s grant came from the McArthur Foundation (the “genius” grants).  Do you see a pattern?

With a name like Lazarus, it’s to be expected that themes of life, death, the soul, and re-birth are explored from all angles, literal and figurative. And they are.

Every time, you think maybe this here is a different world, but it’s all the same: they live, we die. So here it is again.

This is the kind of book that gets you thinking and keeps you thinking well after you’re done.  This review is already longer than most that I write here, and I could easily have made it twice as long.  Somehwere, a graduate student has begun writing a thesis on this book.  I’m rethinking my opening, and I’m picking The Lazarus Project as a dark horse to beat Bolano’s 2666 for the National Book Award.  It could happen.

To do: Check out Hemon’s web site.  Click around for additional quotes from the book interspersed with Bozovic’s photographs.

Slumshark

One of BGB’s all -time favorites, Steven Hall, author of The Raw Shark Texts, has a new blog.  In a recent blog post that I can’t figure out how to link to, Hall revealed that the screenwriter for the early-in-the-works movie adaptation of Raw Shark is Simon Beaufoy.  The screenwriter has had a recent bit of good fortune, having been nominated for an Oscar (and has already won a BAFTA) for his adaptation of Slumdon Millionaire.  Hall says: 

I read Simon’s Raw Shark script over Christmas and had a very productive meeting with producer Pete ‘In Bruges’ Czernin about it last week. God, I’d love to be able to say more about all this, but I really can’t/shouldn’t yet. It is exciting and frightening in equal measure. 

The film Slumdog Millionaire was based on the book Q&A by Vikas Swarup, which Shaft reviewed for BGB way back when.  The soundtrack of the movie featured Sri Lankan rapper M.I.A. who the world will never forget because of that outfit.

What rapper will bring  The Raw Shark Texts soundtrack such infamy? Difficulty: the rapper will need to be British.  The Streets?  Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip? Dizzee Rascal?

My First Hemingway

After my bad luck with Pulitzer Prize winners, one would think I might shy away from Ernest Hemingway (1953 winner for The Old Man and the Sea).  And in a way I had, although it had nothing to do with the Pulitzer.

My wife and I honeymooned in Key West back in 1996 and visited the Hemingway House while we were there.  An incredible place, with lots of six-toed cats (we contemplated trying to abscond with one).  In the gift shop, we bought a copy of The Sun Also Rises (complete with an embossed seal from Hemingway House), although neither of us had ever read Hemingway.  It seemed like a better memento from the honeymoon than a keychain from the Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum or a collector’s mug from Sloppy Joe’s.

And that copy sat on our shelf for over twelve and a half years, until I was recently rummaging around for something to read and decided to give it a go.  Suffice it to say that my record on Pulitzer winners is now up to a respectable 3-4 (even though Hemingway didn’t win for this book, I’m still giving him credit).  Maybe not good enough to make the playoffs, but trending upward.

I have to confess that I wasn’t initially blown away by Hemingway’s prose (again, wondering what the big deal was about this guy), but as the story progressed, I became absolutely captivated by the story, the settings, the characters, and his writing style.  Having been to Paris a couple years ago, I still had enough connection to the city to truly envision Jake and Brett and Robert as they moved around the town like barflies during the early stages of the story.  As the story progressed to Spain (a place I’ve never been) and my ability to see the picture Hemingway was painting was just as clear, I began to realize that it wasn’t my tenuous connection to Paris that had made the writing so vibrant to me; rather, it was Hemingway’s simple, straightforward style of prose.  As I visualized the scenery of the story, it dawned on me that I couldn’t recall ever having been able to truly picture in my mind the story unfolding the way I was able to with this book.

And the story itself was engaging.  As the characters weaved in and out of one another’s lives, and the connections between them played themselves out, it reminded me a bit of On the Road — both because alcohol was involved a lot, and because of the traveling the characters did — but I found myself, for one reason or another, relating to these people much more than I did the folks in Kerouc’s tale.  Even though I have nothing in common with any of them.

In a nutshell, I loved this book, and I wish I hadn’t waited so long to read it.  And now I’ve resigned myself to pick up a copy of William Faulkner’s The Reivers (1963 Pulitzer Prize winner); not because I know a darned thing about it, but rather because one of my favorite bands of all time named themselves after that book.  In an effort to bring my record up to .500, I figure I may as well move on to a past winner that already conjures up positive thoughts for me.

Update: Doubling down on the Faulkner references – 

The Reivers – Sound and the Fury

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Inkheart

I’ve taken a break from my YA books and even some adult books (really!) to investigate Cornelia Funke’s  Inkheart  trilogy – a member of the 9-12 year old juvie category.   Inkheart, the first book in the series, is now a MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, and has been on my list for awhile.  I figured I’d knock it out now so I can complain about how “they” wrecked the movie when I eventually see it as an Amazon Download.  The third grade class I loaned my copy to returned it after a couple chapters once they discovered a whole new book has been written based on the movie, so I can’t imagine the movie knocking my socks off.  

Inkheart is a story about booklovers, young and old.  Meggie, the 12 year old protagonist, can’t keep her hands off of books or her head out of them; her aunt has built a fortress out of rare and valuable books, preferring them to people; and her father, a bookbinder, can’t read a story aloud without the book’s characters coming to life, literally.   Some of the characters in Inkheart spend the entire story trying to return to their own lives within the book they’ve been “read out of”, and all the villains spend their time tormenting the rest of them having no interest in returning to their own stories within the same book. 

Each chapter begins with a quote from other books or fairy tales, including The Wind in the Willows, Fahrenheit 451, The Princess Bride, and Arabian Nights, and references are made to other great stories along the way.  Even Tinker Bell makes an appearance, and the characters who’ve been “read out” can’t decide if she’s from their world or this one.

Funke’s rich imagination has created some memorable characters, even if the naivety of both the good guys and the bad guys becomes somewhat annoying. As I read, I often wondered if even my third graders would have hollered out about some of the dumber plans these characters hatched. Regardless, the book was still pretty fun.  The title page acknowledges it’s translation from the German, which was news to me, so I wondered if the book would be impaired in any way.  Even now, it’s hard for me to decide if the translation was an issue, or if that’s just the way books are written for the younger crowd.  Either way, it was enjoyable, and after a couple adult reads, I will check out the rest of the trilogy.

Oscar Wao goes to Sweden

I was a big fan of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.  The book went on to win the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, the Pulitzer, the Tournament of Books, and just about every other book award large and small.  (Not everyone agreed with its prize-worthiness.)  Apparently Oscar has made his way to Sweden.  I love this cover.  Want!

Lisa Jannerling says (via poorly translated Swedish): 

Crazy colorful, wacky, fun – and Jesus, which job it must have been to translate. Put this on the must-read list!

Good point.  The translater would have to know street/slang English, Spanish, Spanglish, and Swedish.  Yikes.

Also:  If you are a fan of book cover art, check out the Covers blog and The Book Cover Archive (Thanks for the link, Lain).

Updike’s Rules

I was taken to task over the weekend for there being no mention of John Updike’s passing on BGB.  We meant no disrespect.   Updike’s Six Rules of Reviewing is a model for thoughful writing that I’ve tried to adhere to here.