Banned Books Week Jumps the Shark?

We’re in the midst of Banned Books Week 09, and there seems to be a collective yawn this year.  Librarian.net notes that most of the organizations co-sponsoring the event with the American Library Association can’t be bothered to mention it on their own web sites.  There’s no mention of it on the ALA’s home page either (unless you click through their little news thing-y to get to the sixth most important current news item). So all is well then?

The Wall Street Journal ran a contrarian view (like they do) from the head of something called the Institute for American Values, claiming that the real issue is that the ALA objects to “attempts by parents to guide their children’s education.”  I think the real problem, Mr. IAV, are parents who decide, often without reading a book first, that no children at their library or school should be “exposed” to a book that they have some problem with -  like gay penguins or boy wizards.

Another real problem may be that an American president refused to honor the most beloved children’s authors of our lifetimes, because her books promote witchcraft.

Anyway, while clicking around, I did come across this sweet poster in the ALA store:

Help a Worthy Cause

BGB is participating once again in the DonorsChoose.org Bloggers Social Media Challenge.  We’ve  chosen a project that will benefit a “high poverty” class room in the Atlanta area.  We’ve committed to helping Ms. T purchase books that teach basic skills to beginning readers.  Surely that’s something that all all BGB readers can get behind, no?  To contribute, click on the graphic below which will magically transport you to our donation page.  Many thanks!

Bored to Death

Author Jonathan Ames is the creative force behind the new HBO show Bored to Death.  I have HUGE expectations for the show.  I’m a fan of the author’s books that I’ve read so far (check out my reviews of The Alcoholic and Wake Up, Sir!).   The casting is brilliant.  I’ve loved Jason Schwartzman since Rushmore. I’ve been a fan of Zach Galifianakis ever since I saw this.  Ted Danson is Ted Danson.

If you’ve missed it so far, Schwartzman plays a down on his luck writer named Jonathan Ames.  Ames has just broken up with his girlfriend and begins reading Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely.  Inspired by the detective story, Ames takes out an ad on Craigslist offering his services as an unlicensed private investigator.  Hi-jinks ensue.

The show goes for low-key laughs.  I’m still waiting for the show to come into its own.  So far it still feels like the first few episodes of a news how.

Links out the Wazoo

Check out the sweet Where the Wild Things Ought To Be photoshop contest at We Love You So, a blog created by the film makers of the upcoming movie. (Links here, here, here, here, and here.)  Besides my favorite above, I also really like Max on Wire.  While you’re clicking around,  check out the post about why the book was so groundbreaking in the first place.

Once you’ve had your fill of Wild Things, drool over this church to bookstore conversion.  (Thanks, Lain.)

The Guardian presents a “digested read” of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.  Since this is a family show, I’ll have to quote the third funniest bit:

Who we killing now? asked the expriest.

We aint bothered. We killing everyone, the Judge spat. There is a purity in violence. War is the truest form of divination.

Dya reckon that kind of quasi-mysticism will have some critics falling for a high-brow Gnostic interpretation of all this killin? The kid spat back.

Road trip!: Seattle’s Center House Theater has adapted A Confederacy of Dunces for the Stage to at least one good review (via LHB).

At the top of my “WANT!” list.  Salon has more.

McSweeney’s? Yeah, there’s an app for that.

I don’t know anything about this book, but I can appreciate the sentiment:

Lowboy – A Second Look

I started reading Tim’s review of Lowboy by John Wray, but I stopped as soon as I realized that I wanted to read the book.  I still haven’t finished his review, because I didn’t want it to influence mine too much.  So to the extent Tim and I say similar things, blame it on the book, not on plagiarism.

“Lowboy” is the nickname of Will Heller, a sixteen year-old schizophrenic who is the basis of this story.  Will has just escaped from a mental hospital, where he was placed following an incident in which he pushed a girl onto NYC’s subway tracks.  He seems to be on a mission, perhaps to save the world, but we’re never perfectly clear on what his mission is exactly.  And that is what fascinated me about this book and Wray’s way of telling the story.

Wray tells the story from the perspective of multiple characters, including Will, Will’s mom Violet, and Detective Ali Lateef, the NYC cop charged with tracking Will down before something bad happens.  And while Wray tells the story strictly from the third person, he somehow manages to shift gears in his narrative style depending on who the focus of the particular passage is.  I am not a schizophrenic, and I don’t believe Wray is either, but somehow when Wray talks about Will and attempts to convey what’s going on in Will’s mind, I kind of get what it must be like to not be able to control or focus your thoughts on rational things.

The story winds it way through NYC’s subway tunnels and through Will’s past, and as Detective Lateef gets closer to finding Will (with help from Violet and from the girl that Will had pushed onto the subway tracks and found again while on his mission), Will’s motives and agenda become simultaneously clearer and more confusing — clearer in that you start to think you know what he’s trying to do, but more confusing in that what he’s trying to do makes no sense at all to a sane person.

As secrets about Violet and about her relationship with Will begin to reveal themselves, the reader can’t help but feel conflicted over who the true protaganist is and what you wish would happen.  I won’t reveal the ending, but I will say that while I was surprised, I also knew all along what was going to happen.  And that’s a pretty good trick to pull off for an author.

Down Grove

Wow.

When I recently visited my family in Ohio, my father somewhat casually mentioned that a book had been published that took place not only in my hometown of Lorain, Ohio, but in South Lorain, in the very neighborhood where I grew up.  My dad also said that there were characters in the book based on some of his family members and friends, although he qualified that by saying that they weren’t accurate portrayals.

Getting back to my opening comment, I couldn’t wait to track the book down.  Its title is Down Grove, and it was written by Richard Allen Kulics.

Let me start my actual review by saying that I can’t really recommend this book to anyone who didn’t grow up in my neighborhood.  The book is not particularly well written, has its fair share of typographical errors, and tells a somewhat confusing tale.  But:  Oh.  My.  God.  Kulics tells of my childhood neighborhood in a way that resonated with me to my core.

As I turned page after page, reading about characters with various Eastern European names (our main character is Officer Nicholas Budalovich, a/k/a Nukes Budash), and as Kulics talks of 31st Street, Grove Avenue, the steel mill (where my dad and his dad both worked), Norfolk Avenue (the street I grew up on), the various areas around the Black River (Abahazi’s, Eagle’s Peak), the 36th street ditch, Oakwood Park, Whittier Junior High (my junior high school), City Bar, the Eagle Cafe, the Croatian Club, and countless other real places, I was absolutely mesmerized.  I didn’t have to imagine anything; I could see every square inch as clear as day, because I knew it like the back of my hand.

Our story starts with Officer Budash being assigned to take over the case of Buddy Karamarkovich, a mentally disabled man found dead behind the Croatian Club, and evolves into a suspenseful, conspiratorial murder mystery that leads Officer Budash to question who he can trust and to believe that something much bigger and more sinister than a single homicide is at work.  What’s interesting is that I can’t tell exactly when the story takes place, although I estimate it to be sometime in the 1950′s (Officer Budash had fought in the Korean Conflict and drives an Oldsmobile 88 — the only details I could use to come up with my estimate).

I also can’t seem to find out much about Kulics or why he wrote this story, and whether any elements of it are true (although it is helpfully labelled “A Novel”).  According to my Google-based research, Kulics appears to have graduated from Lorain Admiral King High School in 1964, and from his detailed descriptions of South Lorain, I’m guessing he lived in the area.

Kulics tells much about the history of Lorain, and South Lorain in particular, and how many of the Eastern European immigrants came from a steel mill in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, when the Lorain Works opened up; that was exactly what my grandfather had done.  And my grandfather is actually referenced by name in the book, as “Toothpick Nick”, as is his son Donnie (my late Uncle Don), my cousin Hank, and my father’s best friend growing up, Dave Kordeleskie.  In fact, one of Officer Budash’s last stops in his effort to solve this mystery is at my old house (the house my dad grew up in, which we moved into when my grandfather passed away when I was nine)!  Back to dad’s statement that these weren’t accurate portrayals, I’m not sure what he meant, because none of those folks was painted in negative light.

The book references the “River Rats”, the group of kids that grew up on the edge of South Lorain, where the Black River bordered the city; this was the group that included my dad and my uncles.  As youths, my friends and I modeled ourselves in part after this mythical gang of teens who ruled the woods and fields near my house.

Kulics also tells of the seedier side of South Lorain — gangs, child molestation, and violent crime.  While I’ve always spoken of the wonderful diversity of my neighborhood, I haven’t been shy about saying that it could be a pretty rough place.  And this story lays that out in gory detail.

Again, I’m not even sure what to say about the story itself.  Is this how someone who grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan feels every time they read a book that takes place there?  I don’t know.  I just feel like I’m in a special club of people who will “get” this book, because I know exactly what the author is talking about.  I will make sure all of my childhood buddies read this, and I can promise that we’ll be on the phone with each other talking about it.

Upon approaching Lorrie Moore

There are a select few people from whom I view a book recommendation, done properly (impassioned, fervent, urgently, usually over drinks), as a lifeline. A postcard into a world that person desperately desires me to glimpse, to join them in, to become a part of. A good book, a really good book not simply a “pass the time where the heck is the G train oh wait it’s the weekend and that means the G is like a unicorn” book, is a permanent addition to your working psyche, a tattoo of a set of words placed in a distinct order by another forever embedded in you.

(That’s some heavy-handed waxing right there, but it’s the truth and you know it so deal.)

From these select few people, I know the phrase “you have to read this”, said after 7 PM and in public places, is a huge deal. From these, book recommendations don’t come lightly, as a result of that friend everyone has (possibly even the same friend) who blathers on and on about, well, erm, The Kite Runner, telling everyone within earshot about how it’s “such a good book, y’all”. These people, one could say if one wanted to quote the 2009 social media phrase that pays, are “agents of trust” when it comes to recommending what to read.

One such person in my life is my friend Kelly, who I’ve known as a result of the magic that is the internet for ages now and under whose roof I lived when I first moved to New York. She’s getting ready to leave NY for greener pastures (literally-moving to Minnesota), and, out for drinks the other night, the conversation turned to Lorrie Moore-one of Kelly’s all-time favorite authors, with a new book out, a rare-from-Moore full-length novel A Gate At The Stairs, and someone I’d never read anything by. She insisted that Moore’s Who Will Run The Frog Hospital, at novella-length, was “perfectly crafted”,with every world “intentionally placed”.

(Full disclosure: not sure what Kelly’s actual verbiage was, but the essence of those quotes is 100% truth.)

I took a trip to my favorite friendly not-in-my-neighborhood bookstore, WORD, and the slim, tender size of the paperback version of Frog Hospital I purchased felt light and alive in my bag on the way home. I don’t read standing up waiting for the subway, ever (my balance isn’t good enough and I’m too clumsy, if I make a habit of reading while waiting for a train I’ll eventually meet my end toppling over onto the subway tracks), but I broke that rule and dived in.

The book is absolutely brilliant, beautifully crafted and paced in a way that causes progression to be less like page-turning and more like peeling. …Frog Hospital centers around two girls, Berie and Sils, told from the former’s perspective, and the summer when Berie was 15. Really, though, it’s a story about adolescence, growth, and, in the end, home and how it shapes a person.

What struck me most was Moore’s incredible use of language, her ability to tease and twist the very heart of a sentence:

Things, I know, stiffen and shift in memory, become what they never were before. As when an army takes over a country. Or a summer yard goes scarlet with fall and its venous leaves. One summons the years of the past largely by witchcraft-a whore’s arts, collage and brew, eye of newt, heart of horse. Still, the house of my childhood is etched in my memory like the shape of the mind itself; a house-shaped mine-why not? It was this particular mind out of which I ventured-for any wild danger or sentimental stance or lunge at something faraway. But it housed every seedling act. I floated above it, but close, like a figure in a Chagall.

I know. I KNOW. Believe me, I know. One of Moore’s most impressive strengths is that she writes like the gorgeous red-head in your undergrad creative writing class who would string together lush words and compose stories that would drip off the page like jam, yet with Moore the words don’t just look and sound attractive, they hold meaning.

Since this is less about …Frog Hospital and more about my first bit of exposure to Lorrie Moore, rather than attempt to encapsulate the plot (too late), here’s an excerpt from my “I just finished this book and can’t move” email to Kelly:

i think there’s something inherently, intrinsically linked to the
female adolescent experience in this book that anyone not RAISED as a
girl-not meaning female-identified, no, but anyone very very much not
RAISED as a girl, in the society that is, the society of young girls
and their weirdness and awkwardness and quirks-will never have access
to. as such, the last chapter didn’t slay me, it merely allowed me to
close the book softly and breathe and accept what a fucking piece of
magic i’d just read. the end for me was her driving back from her
reunion, and if it’d ended there i’d have been happy but the story
wouldn’t have been told, it wouldn’t have ended properly, and i know
that.

So Who Will Run The Frog Hospital? Absolutely incredible 130 pages, perfect, flooring, a triumph of language.

Then I moved on to her new novel A Gate At The Stairs.

Oh, god, I hadn’t realized: see that cover there? The illuminated, well-crafted staircase leading into the air and eventually to a bright, shiny nothing? It’s unfortunate that that’s the perfect metaphor for the book itself.

A Gate At The Stairs is called a “post-9/11″ novel, which apparently is supposed to mean “discusses racial interaction, fear and tension in an awakened America”. If that’s the case, A Gate At The Stairs couldn’t be further from that label. For a tense, realistic pulse of race-relations in modern America, pick up H.M. Naqvi’s recently-published Home Boy. For a grab-bag of plot threads that never flesh themselves out fully, including the have-to-be-capitalized Ideas of Identity, Race, Love and War? Yeah, that would be A Gate At The Stairs. Feeling less like a novel written by a master of language and more like a very pretty series of digressions, Moore’s novel centers around college-aged Tassie Keltjin, the daughter of a potato farmer, who becomes the nanny to a a restauranteur/chef and her husband. Moore would have us believe Tassie’s literature-obsessed, love-sick for a classmate and lost in her own impending adulthood, but somewhere she loses the plot (both literally and figuratively) and we’re left holding strings tied to nothing.

Very, very pretty strings, yes, very attractive strings that sing with heartfelt emotion, but nonetheless strings tired empty air. If this had been the first of hers I’d read, I’d be asking myself, and others (mostly others) right now “really? Really? This is the great, powerful, incredible Lorrie Moore?”

I feel, for those who have been waiting the 11 years since Moore last wrote, that I’m ruining a literary Christmas. I wondered if maybe my reading Who Will Run The Frog Hospital? immediately before beginning A Gate At The Stairs meant this disappointment was inevitable, but a hard and honest poll of friends have proven that to not be the case. The consensus is such:

Lorrie Moore is a genius of language, yes. A treasure of literature, and one who simply must be discovered. She writes the sort of stories, the sort of short fiction, that’s good enough to live on and live for. A Gate At The Stairs, stripped of its attempts at Important Themes, would have made for an intensely emotional short story. Stretched to over 300 pages (which isn’t what I’d consider “long” for a novel), A Gate At The Stairs feels bloated, tired, unimportant. And that’s a shame from someone who I’ve only recently come to realize is by far one of the most important voices and pens in modern fiction.

Fortunately, I have all of Lorrie Moore’s other works ahead of me.

Oprah backs BGB Pick

On Friday, Chicago area motivational speaker and bookseller Oprah Winfrey selected Uwem Akpan’s fantastic short story collection Say You’re One of Them as her next book club selection.

Of course, BGB had the good taste to highly recommend this book last summer.  I’m guessing this is where Oprah first got the idea.

Our Noise

Earlier this year, the independent music label Merge Records turned 20 years old.  The anniversary was celebrated with a five day music festival just outside of Chapel Hill, NC, the label’s home.  The milestone was also featured on NPR Music’s All Songs Considered.   And now, there’s a big beautiful book for indie rock nerds (that’s me!) to feast on: Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, The Indie Label that Got Big and Stayed Small by John Cook with Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance.

First, let’s stand back and admire that cover for a bit, shall we?  If that doesn’t capture the energy/spirit/joy/enthusiasm/hell yeah! of music done right, I don’t know what would.  That cover makes me want to join a band tomorrow. And then jump up and down.

Merge Records is the home of some of my favorite bands/singers such as Superchunk, Portastatic, Neutral Milk Hotel, Imperial Teen, Polvo, The Rosebuds, The Magnetic Fields, Camera Obscura, Dinosaur Jr, M. Ward, Spoon, and Arcade Fire.  And that’s just for starters.  The end notes contain a complete discography of the label’s releases. I was surprised again and again at some of the names, old and new, that I came across.

The book tells the story of the label, but it is also the story of the ups and downs of the band that the label was created to release records for in the first place: Superchunk. Superchunk was fronted by Mac McCaughan. McCaughan and his girlfriend/bass player for Superchunk Laura Ballance started the label because the big labels weren’t exactly knocking down their door to put out the new Superchunk album.  The couple ran the label from a spare bedroom in Laura’s apartment for years.  Often, money went from the band’s touring proceeds to cover the label’s cash flow needs.

Naturally, the history of the label is also tied to the relationship between Mac and Laura.  Traveling the country in a van with your significant other/band mate/business partner, not to mention the rest of your band and crew, while keeping a business running seems likely to take a toll on any relationship. To their credit, they still run a successful business despite the end of their romantic relationship almost a decade ago.

The book also provides a fascinating glimpse of the record industry over the past twenty years.  Merge made its name by releasing small runs of albums by up and coming bands.  Through careful planning, they made money releasing albums by the bands that they liked.  Eventually, bands came to seek them out for their fair play and integrity.  The band Spoon’s experience on a major label (before inking a deal with Merge) should be a cautionary tale for all who would consider going down that road. Meanwhile, Arcade Fire is an example of how a band can crack the Billboard Top 10 on a small independent label without sacrificing integrity.

Our Noise is written in a “cut and paste” oral history style.  Short paragraphs or even a sentence or two are cobbled together from various sources to make up the bulk of the narrative.  A single page typically has numerous people providing snippets of the story being told.  The text is spread out over two columns, like a newspaper.  It took a few pages to get used to the style of the writing, but I was sucked in fairly quickly.

I was a college radio dj when Merge Records started up and have been an indie rock nerd ever since.  This book was more or less made with me in mind. It would be cool if this led to a series of oral histories of other labels – both dead and living.  (Hey, Sub Pop turned 20 a few years ago!)  Aging hipsters are standing by.

Bonus:

This review begs for some audio accompaniment. It was extremely difficult to limit myself to a handful of songs that represent what Merge is “all about.”  So I punted and went with five songs on the Merge catalog that I love.  I could do that all day and not repeat any of the same five.

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Superchunk- Slack Motherf*cker

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The Rosebuds – Kicks in the Schoolyard

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Spoon – The Way We Get By

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Imperial Teen -Shim Sham

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Arcade Fire – Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)

From the time before marketing

The concept: What if classic books were released today? What would their titles look like after the marketing department was through with them?

The idea seems to have started here, but it really took off here and here. Some of my favorites so far:

Then: ‘Gone With The Wind’
Now: ‘Extreme Home Makeover: Confederate Edition’

Then: The Wealth of Nations
Now: Invisible Hands: The Mysterious Market Forces That Control Our Lives and How to Profit from Them

Then: Walden
Now: Camping with Myself: Two Years in American Tuscany

Then: Book of Genesis
Now: FLOOD! A true story of heartbreak, heroism, and the will to survive

Then: Romeo and Juliet
Now: The Teen Sex and Suicide Epidemic: What You Need to Know to Protect Yourself and Your Family

Then: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Now: Subs and Squids: The Journey of a Madman

Then: Poor Richard’s Almanack
Now: Lifehacks+: Crowd-Sourced Common Sense From Tweets & Blogs

Then: Declaration of Independence
Now: The Pursuit of Happiness: How to get control of your continent and have fun doing it!

(Thanks to Lain and Dr J for the links)

The Missing Tomb

Speaking of Dan Brown, Slate has rolled out a make-your-own Dan Brown Plot Generator.  The directions are simple, plug in a city and secret sect, and the generartor does the rest.  When you plug in “Atlanta” and “Major League Baseball” you get this:

The Missing Tomb

When renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to the Ebeneezer Baptist Church to analyze a mysterious ancient script—imprinted on a gold ring lying next to the disfigured form of the head docent—he discovers evidence of the unthinkable: the resurgence of the ancient cult of the Baalinati, a secret branch of Major League Baseball that has surfaced from the shadows to carry out its legendary vendetta against its mortal enemy, the Vatican.

Langdon’s worst fears are confirmed when a messenger from the Baalinati appears at Centennial Olympic Park to deliver a deadly ultimatum: Deposit $1 billion in Major League Baseball’s off-shore bank accounts or the exclusive clothier of the Swiss Guards will be bankrupted. With the deadline fast approaching, Langdon joins forces with the lupine and enigmatic daughter of the murdered docent in a desperate bid to crack the code that will reveal the cult’s secret plan.

Embarking on a frantic hunt, Langdon and his companion follow a 300-year-old trail through Atlanta’s most exalted buildings and historic statues, pursued by a pigeon-toed assassin the cult has sent to thwart them. What they discover threatens to expose a conspiracy that goes all the way back to Babe Ruth and the very founding of Major League Baseball.

When renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to the Ebeneezer Baptist Church to analyze a mysterious ancient script—imprinted on a gold ring lying next to the disfigured form of the head docent—he discovers evidence of the unthinkable: the resurgence of the ancient cult of the Baalinati, a secret branch of Major League Baseball that has surfaced from the shadows to carry out its legendary vendetta against its mortal enemy, the Vatican.

Langdon’s worst fears are confirmed when a messenger from the Baalinati appears at Centennial Olympic Park to deliver a deadly ultimatum: Deposit $1 billion in Major League Baseball’s off-shore bank accounts or the exclusive clothier of the Swiss Guards will be bankrupted. With the deadline fast approaching, Langdon joins forces with the lupine and enigmatic daughter of the murdered docent in a desperate bid to crack the code that will reveal the cult’s secret plan.

Embarking on a frantic hunt, Langdon and his companion follow a 300-year-old trail through Atlanta’s most exalted buildings and historic statues, pursued by a pigeon-toed assassin the cult has sent to thwart them. What they discover threatens to expose a conspiracy that goes all the way back to Babe Ruth and the very founding of Major League Baseball.

You can mix and match all day.

Dan Brown

Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown:

Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown. Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown. Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown Dan Brown and Dan Brown

This has been a BGB exclusive.

The Angel’s Game

I absolutely adored The Shadow of the Wind, and upon reading that book I was confident that Carlos Ruiz Zafon would become one of my favorite authors.  The story he told in that novel was so engaging and thrilling that I probably read that book faster than any other I’ve ever read.  So when his latest novel, The Angel’s Game, was released earlier this year, I was at the front of the queue with cold hard cash in hand, ready to pay whatever the price for the hardcover.

It didn’t take long to realize that this story was linked to the story in The Shadow of the Wind, with both set in Barcelona, and both featuring a few recurring characters.  However, this story focuses on young David Martin, an aspiring writer looking for direction in his life and in his writing.  He has several mentors, including Senor Sempere, the owner of the bookshop featured in the earlier work.  Senor Sempere’s son, the main character in The Shadow of the Wind, even plays a minor role.

The Angel’s Game features a myriad of mysterious characters whose interactions in David’s life take twists and turns that never let you feel comfortable that you understand what their motives might be or what might come next.  The most pivotal mysterious character is a man who purports to be a publisher and editor from Paris named Andreas Corelli.  Corelli makes David an offer that David can’t (and wouldn’t seem to want to) refuse, and  thereafter David begins a journey to try to understand who these people in his life are and what choices he has with regard to his life’s destination.

Sound interesting?  Excited to read this one?  Well, so was I.  And I was absolutely and utterly disappointed.  Unlike in his first novel, Zafon couldn’t seem to craft a cohesive, compelling story the second time around.  In fact,  I fought my way through this one based on my confidence in Zafon and my certainty that he would somehow pull things together and make some sense of everything.  He totally fumbled in my opinion, and I left the book feeling confused and frustrated.  I actually can’t even really tell you what happened by the end of the book — not only could I not tell what was real and what was fantasy, I can’t even sum up how the story ended.

I recently spoke to a friend who had also read both novels. (Godspeed in your return to health, Sherry!) She is convinced that Zafon is building a trilogy, with this being book two of the set.  Sherri was also disappointed in this one (although maybe not as much as me); I’ll probably leave it her to read the third installment in the trilogy before I dare spend my time and money on it when it arrives.

Scuttlebutt

Whoa!  Have you seen this yet?

For some reason, Paste is still showing the August “Best of What’s Next?” issue’s cover on their web site, so I had to scan my cover to share with the class. “What’s next?”  September.

Chuck Klosterman serves up the best imitation of an il-informed music blogger’s review of The Beatles re-masters at The Onion’s A/V Club:

Like most people, I was initially confused by EMI’s decision to release remastered versions of all 13 albums by the Liverpool pop group Beatles, a 1960s band so obscure that their music is not even available on iTunes. ..But then, against my better judgment, I arbitrarily decided to give this hippie shit an informal listen…

At least I hope he’s joking.  Either way, it just gets better from there.

Speaking of out of this world, the Blue Elephant Bookshop in Decatur has landed an appearance by astronaut Buzz Aldrin.  (See what I did there?) The guy who has been to the moon will be speaking and signing his book Magnificent Desolation.  This is an event that requires tickets and has rules, so check out the Blue Elephant web site for all of the details.  I think that you may be able to order a signed copy if you can’t make it.

The Booker Prize shortlist has been announced.  It’s a little tough to get excited about this when one (1) of the books have been released in the US yet.

• The Children’s Book, AS Byatt (US publication – October)
• Summertime, JM Coetzee (US publication – December)
• The Quickening Maze, Adam Foulds (US publication – ?)
• Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel (US publication – October)
• The Glass Room, Simon Mawer (US publication – ?)
• The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters (April 2009?)

Which book that you can’t read yet will you cheer for?  The one book that I had read from the longlist, Brooklyn by Colm Toibin, did not make the cut. Typical.  And, of course, I am shocked, SHOCKED! that  Me Cheeta by James Lever has been dumped.

And finally, no Friday is complete without a movie trailer.  This is the trailer for the John Krasinski-directed adaptation of David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews with Hideous Men:

Rosie and Skate

Did you ever wonder what happens to all the people who live in a touristy beach town after the summer season is long over?  It turns out they have lives, just like the rest of us.  Rosie and Skate, a couple of teen-aged sisters living near the boardwalk on the Jersey shore, happen to have things a little more complicated than most.  Throughout Beth Ann Bauman’s first YA novel, Rosie and Skate take turns narrating with distinctly different voices what each of their lives is like during the fall and winter of their father’s imprisonment for his actions while on an alcoholic binge.

High school was a pretty long time ago for me, but I think I can remember it being difficult enough without having to attend weekly Alateen meetings, visit my dad in jail, wonder what my mother was like before she died, deal with a distant cousin as my guardian in a dilapidated Victorian house, and re-earn the big cash my dad stole from my sock drawer in order to replenish his whiskey stash.  Throw that in with the typical high school shenanigans like first kisses, minimum wage earning  jobs, college boyfriends, parties, beer, and a little homework,  and the reader wonders how Rosie and Skate manage to survive their high school years with the humor, intelligence, and eventual confidence and independence that you’d hope your daughters would have if you ever ran amuck as a parent.

I would say this is a great book for young teenagers to check out if it weren’t for the sex and drinking (I have a daughter and I’m a HUGE prude in that regard).  It’s probably a better book for moms to read; maybe we’ll feel a bit better about things if we believe after years of brainwashing and strong foundation- building that our children will be ok and “figure things out”, despite the sex and drinking.  I enjoyed reading Rosie and Skate,  I genuinely liked the characters, and I empathized and cheered for them as I watched them deal with some atypical teenage issues and still grow into pretty likable individuals. If you have a teen that picks up this book, please send a comment.   I am, as always, curious to know what those crazy kids out there think about books like this.

Scenes from a bookfest

The Decatur Book Festival, which ended on Sunday, was so overwhelmingly excellent that is took me almost half of a week to recover sufficiently to write about.  Where to start?  This year’s fest seemed to be the best attended yet.  There were lines snaking down the street for several author events, the children’s stage was always hopping, and the vendors booths were better than ever.

As seen on the poster, “Bookzilla” was the official mascot of this year’s fest.  #bookzilla was the official Twitter hashtag of the weekend (but I really don’t know what that means).  The giant inflatable Bookzilla towering over the old Decatur Court House served notice that this is not a book festival that takes itself too seriously.  Books are fun!

Vendor/exhibitor tents lined Ponce de Leon and the Square.  By my totally subjective count and remembrance of year’s past, there were many more vendors/exhibitors this year.  I was happy to see McSweeney’s was back in the mix, and I happily gave them a pile of my money.  An interesting new vendor to the fest (new to me anyway) was the Dust-to-Digital tent.  Dust-to-Digital are a local (and Grammy-winning) record label that specializes in releasing “rare and essential” recordings of American music.  They have a new book out, Take Me to the Water: Immersion Baptism in Vintage Music and Photography 1890-1950, that looks very cool.

One of the highlights of the weekend for my family was checking in with Skippyjon Jones, the Siamese Cat who thinks he is a Chihuahua.  Judy Schachner (Skippyjon’s author and illustrator) sang, drew, and read at her packed appearance.  Skippyjon himself made an appearance at the signature table.   He needed the Friskies, because he was there for a long, long time.

Schachner signed books at her table for at least 3 1/2 hours after her reading (and she had signed books at an author brunch earlier in the day, too).  Aye, Carumba!   One reason why she may have been there so long is that she drew a picture of Skippyjon in each book she signed.

This inscription started a two day debate over the proper spelling of the word moustache/mustache.  (The author used my preferred spelling.  Who Moustache is a whole other story.)

The offices of Lenz Marketing, the gang responsible for the look and feel of the festival, displayed some of the artwork that made onto this year’s promotional materials and signage (besides Bookzilla).  I am partial to this book-carrying gorilla that I didn’t see anywhere else.

I also dug the studious Book Worm.

Speaking of art: The world’s greatest children’s bookstore, The Little Shop of Stories was mobbed all weekend long.  On Sunday James Dean, the illustrator for the wildly popular local children’s book Pete the Cat: I love my White Shoes, was painting a new Pete the Cat canvas.  Kids were beside themselves.

And there were authors everywhere.  Did I mention that?   Many were getting the rock star treatment with lines down the block.  Sadly my pictures of these events mostly feature blurry and poorly lit blobs at a podium.

Hats off to Directors Tom Bell  and Daren Wang for putting on what, for me, was the liveliest and most fun Decatur Book Festival yet.  I’m looking forward to next year already.

Linky Links

Due to the late season Major League roster expansion this week, the following links were able to join the big club.   They are glad for the opportunity and hope to contribute down the stretch.

First of all, do not forget:

If you are in the Atlanta area, the Decatur Book Festival kicks off tomorrow.

Also:  Don’t forget to enter our Longshot sweepstakes.  Win one of three signed copies of Katie Kitamura’s excellent debut novel The Longshot.  The odds are better than powerball, but you have to play to win.  Leave a comment here to enter.

In other news:

• The Oxford American names its picks for the Best Southern Novels of All Time.  All time!
• It’s David Byrne’s turn to weigh in on the Kindle experience.  Qu’est-ce que c’est?! Fa fa fa fa fa….
• Lev Grossman (The Magicians) issues a pro-plot manifesto in the Wall Street Journal
• Author Ben Tanzer eats his words.
• Carolyn Kellog compiles a list of The 46 Essential Rock Reads.  Why 46?  She doesn’t haven’t to conform to your bourgeois expectations, square.
• 2008-2009 Challenged and Banned Books (pdf)
• Song of the week (thanks for the tip, Rich)

Decatur Book Fest

Hey, yall, the Decatur Book Fest is this weekend.  That kind of snuck up on me, even though I’ve been keeping up with the news almost daily.

There are over 300 authors descending on Decatur Square, make sure you check the list and then check it again to make sure that you don’t miss anyone.  There are at least four Pulitzer-winning authors in the house.  Local author Collin Kelley will be debuting his new novel Conquering Venus. Gazillion-selling Water for Elephants author Sara Gruen will add to her sales. And on and on.  Seriously.  Check out the whole list.

I’ll be spending huge chunks of time with my young reader at the Kids’ Stage, where it is always happening.  This year’s children’s authors include Jon Scieszka (The Stinky Cheese Man, Cowboy and Octopus), Judy Schachner (Skippyjohn Jones – I am muey excited), Kate Dicamilo (The Tale of Desperaux, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Because of Winn Dixie), Atlanta’s own Laurel Snyder (Any Which Wall, Inside the Slidy Diner), and… really, check out the children’s author list.

And speaking of the kids, be sure to pick up a copy of The Wayfarers Diary from the Wren’s Nest booth.  Atlanta area high school authors have been working hard all summer to bring their top notch literary journal to the fest, which is kind of the coolest thing ever. Last year’s edition was very cool, and it’s for the kids.

There are also plenty of special events on tap, including a Literary Death Match – check out the events schedule.  Of course, there is also A Book Market and Street Fair.  McSweeney’s will be there again.  Last year they were giving huge “sweaty guy discounts” – and I still dropped a truck load of cash.  Check out the list of vendors.

I’ll be there all weekend toting a hundred pound sack of books that I didn’t know that I needed.  BGB contributor Russ Marshalek, making his triumphant return from the Big Apple, will be taking a victory lap around The Square.  It’ll be a party. If you see us, say howdy.

BGB Interview with Katie Kitamura

If you read my review of Katie Kitamura’s The Longshot last week, you’ll know that I am a big fan of the author’s first novel.  You’ll have to take my word for it that a novel about the world of mixed martial arts fighting was not one that I was prepared to fall for so completely.  I was first intrigued by Kitamura’s back story – she’s a petite Ivy League graduate who has a PhD from the University of London, she’s a former ballet dancer, and – of course – she’s a woman writing about a brutal ultra-male sport.  But the story won me over on its own its own merits.

Katie Kitamura was gracious enough to take time out to answer our burning questions.  She’s awesome like that. Read on…

Baby Got Books interview with Katie Kitamura, author of The Longshot

Baby Got Books: Your novel The Longshot takes place in the violent world of mixed martial art fighting. What is it about violent sports that makes for compelling literature?

Katie Kitamura: I think writers necessarily live in their heads. It’s a disembodied lifestyle, and the highly embodied nature of combat sports can become an alluring contrast. I don’t know that writers are necessarily drawn to writing about what they know, even if they should be. I can only speak for myself, but I’m more often drawn to writing about what I don’t understand. You have to be a little bit in love with the world you’re writing about, and I think it’s easier to fall in love with what you don’t fully know.

BGB: At what point will it become very old and/or very insulting that every review or article about this book will begin with pointing out that you are “a girl”? (And I am as guilty of this as anyone…sorry about that)

KK: To flip the tables again, if a man wrote a novel set in a nail salon, people would inevitably comment on it! I genuinely don’t mind – it seems like a natural enough response.

I’m slightly more intrigued by the fact that on the whole, people are saying they can’t tell the book was written by a woman. I can see myself all over the book, and I’m not exactly out of touch with my feminine side. Having said that, I can’t pinpoint exactly where and how that expresses itself in the novel; I think it must do so ways that I haven’t fully worked out myself.

BGB: A cornerstone of the book is its intense realism. It’s clear that you must have spent a great deal of time with fighters and coaches. How did you go about inserting yourself into the very male MMA world? Was there resistance to you being there?

KK: I spent a lot of time with fighters, but to borrow from Joan Didion – I’m small, unobtrusive and neurotically inarticulate. I think they were only half aware I was present. I spent most of my time listening. I wasn’t necessarily listening for content (although a lot of the fight lingo that is in the book came directly from the mouths of fighters); I was listening more for the cadences of their speech. The rhythm of the banter, the jokes that would be picked up and drawn out, the things that were left unsaid.

I never sat down and asked a direct “What is it like to step into the ring?” type of question. It almost didn’t seem necessary, because so much of that experience was telegraphed in their faces, and – both before, during, and after the fight – their bodies. The atmosphere around a fighter is very particular, it has an incredibly tense vibration. I can see how people get addicted to the adrenaline rush of a fight. Even the post fight crash has its nuances.

BGB: Did you ever end up lacing gloves on yourself?

KK: No, no – physically speaking, I’m a complete coward. Probably if I’d had the courage to fight myself, I never would have felt the impetus to write the book in the first place. Maybe to write at all!

BGB: Longshot centers on the relationship of two men, Cal the fighter and Riley the coach. Clearly there is an interdependency between the men. Quoting myself, “Each has a responsibility to the other, neither wants to let the other down, and each play a central role in the continued livelihood of the other.” On the page their relationship is defined as much by what they do not say to one another as what they do say. How did you find the restraint, and the confidence, to leave so much of what is happening between the men off the page?

KK: Any good fight tells an emotionally engaging story through the bodies, and not just the minds, of the fighters.  I think I wanted to see if I could do the same in fiction. I didn’t want to do a lot of exposition on the emotions of the men, their motivations and their back-stories. When you sit down to watch a fight, you don’t need to know the back-story of the individual fighters to get drawn in; all you need is the most basic of narrative arcs.

Having said all that, I really did not want to (and hope I haven’t!) frustrate the reader by leaving things unsaid and off the page. I hate the idea of frustrating the reader solely for the purposes of servicing some kind of larger conceit you’ve entertaining as a writer. I hope the relationship between Cal and Riley still feels sufficiently engaging, and also realistic. I think there are a lot of relationships where the core of what is happening is never explicitly stated, but is only revealed in the small details.

BGB: In a profile featured on The Daily Beast, it quotes you as saying that you were shocked at first by the way that MMA is fought here as opposed to Japan where you had previously seen the sport. It’s difficult to imagine your description of the scene in Japan – 50,000 people in attendance, families watching together, polite applause, etc. Why do you think what can be a family outing in Japan has been recast here – whether through marketing or perception – as a bloodsport?

KK: There are a lot of arguments for cultural context – there’s a long history of martial arts in Japan, with judo, karate, and sumo, and most children learn some kind of martial art in school. Certainly I think the way we understand any sport is couched in a received set of aesthetic standards. We perceive boxing as aesthetically valid in part because of everything from Norman Mailer’s prose to archive footage of Ali. I don’t know that a similar aesthetic has been developed for MMA; on screen, it can strike people as ugly, in part because when we watch MMA, we don’t have the tape of Raging Bull or Fat City running in the back of our minds.

Maybe the language of martial arts has been more fully integrated into the Japanese imagination, but I think you’re absolutely right to think that it’s as much a question of marketing as anything else. In America, there was initially a bit of a back door approach to the sport. The marketing relied on shock tactics (the use of the cage, for example, is in essence one giant marketing ploy). It’s now methodically cleaning up its image, and I think is poised to become fully mainstream. But in Japan, MMA was presented and understood to be a mainstream sport from the beginning.

BGB: I’ll admit to not having watched any MMA fights prior to reading your book, so forgive the ignorance that is inherent in this question, but… The fight in your book takes place in Mexico in what seems to be a traditional boxing-type ring. Everything that I have ever seen about the sport – which is only the marketing behind the UFC – takes place in a small cage. Did you purposefully set the fight in Mexico to avoid the UFC scene as – maybe? – too distracting from the story that you wanted to tell?

KK: Yeah – well noted! They use a ring in Japan, and when I went down to Tijuana to watch some fights, they also used a ring. But on the whole, the cage has become the standard across the sport. I’m getting used to it, but I still prefer the ring. I like the associations better, I like the word better in prose – and then there’s the very simple fact that you can see the fighters more easily in a ring.

But to respond to your larger question – in a lot of ways, the book is deliberately nostalgic. In some ways, I wanted to take a very contemporary sport (MMA) and blunt that currency by creating an atmosphere around it that was less immediately locatable, less identified with a particular brand and cultural moment.

BGB: Your first novel has not only found its way to a supportive (and large) publisher, but it has also been getting great reviews. What has that experience been like so far?

KK: I feel very lucky that the book found a home at Free Press – it’s not the most obvious book, and first fiction remains a gamble for any publisher. They’ve been incredibly supportive; my editor used a very sure and light touch in working on the book, and the team at Free Press were very generous in allowing me to meddle in everything from the font on the book cover to marketing ideas.

I’m starting to get feedback from actual readers, and that’s possibly the most exciting part of all. It will sound naïve, but I’m completely astonished to discover that people apart from my friends and family have taken the time to read the book! Giving over that time to an unknown writer seems to me an incredibly generous thing to do, and I’m very grateful.

Bonus: Speaking of grateful, the author has graciously signed three (3!) copies of The Longshot for us to give away here on BGB.  Again, she’s awesome like that.  If you’d like to get your mitts on a copy to check out this excellent novel yourself, leave us a comment. At the end of the week holiday weekend we’ll choose three enthusiastic readers at random.