The Friday Link Round-Up

There is a new trailer for the big-screen adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  The trailer features gratuitous use of Tom Hanks and U2, but still.  I’m going to need to check it out.  My wife almost started bawling during the clip.  Naturally it comes out Christmas Day.

Atlanta author Laurel Snyder gets the Largehearted Boy treatment for her new book Bigger Than A Bread Box.

The Millions presents  A Pessimistic Reading List

John Hodgman’s My Position on Subway Fares  - features a cobra staff –  in comic form

The ten best songs based on books.  In pictures.

That’s Disgusting! For kids.

The Guardian unveils an excellent  poster of Dickens’ heroes and villains for free download.

Salon suggests that there are some books that deserve to be banned.  Or at least kids should be spared having to read them.

The Top 10 cities for book lovers.  Did Atlanta make the list?  Please.

You may have heard something about this: Amazon unveils its new tablet

I have literally been waiting my whole life for someone to make this argument

Overdue Book Review: Two by China Miéville

These overdue book reviews are getting out of hand.  I had no idea that I was so far behind.  Time to start doubling-up.

After reading the amazing The City and The City by China Miéville (my review), I decided that I needed to start digging into the author’s other novels.  Over the summer I tackled the Miéville’s latest, Embassytown, and another recent novel, Kraken.

Embassytown

Embassytown begins with alternating chapters from “before” and “after”.   Before and after what, exactly, are a mystery.  The reader is left purposely adrift for almost 100 pages, trying to figure out what’s going on.  It’s almost as though the author were purposely trying to eliminate the easily distracted readers before getting to the meat of the story.  Once the stories merge, it becomes a fascinating sci-fi novel of big ideas.

The embassy town of the title is located on a remote planet on the edge of the explored universe.  The planet is inhabited by strange creatures who are useful in that they are able to “biomanufacture” products.   The products are grown on farms and then shipped via living intestinal-type pipes into the human city, the embassy town, where they are prepared for shipment to waiting consumers.  If that’s not the perfect metaphor for the manufacture/consumer relationship, I don’t know what is.  However interesting this process is, it’s not the central idea behind Embassytown.

The creatures living on this planet have two mouths that they use for speech.  Their speech is represented in the novel by the part spoken by one mouth written as though it were the numerator and the part spoken by the second mouth as the denominator.  If it seems that speaking from two mouths would be a recipe for duplicity, that’s not the case here – at first.  The beings on this planet cannot conceive of that which is not – or lies.  The introduction of lies, which has a narcotic effect on the locals, leads to a planet of language junkies and a colonist population in danger of total destruction.

Any attempt to summarize the novel, like this one, almost necessarily does a disservice to the novel.  Embassytown is a sprawling epic on the ideas of languages, how they work, their meaning, and their importance to life itself.  I enjoyed the novel and was ready for more Miéville, but I recognize that Embassytown is clearly not everyone’s thing.

Kraken

Kraken is an entirely different novel.  This novel is set in a what is more or less modern-day London.  It begins with Billy Harrow noting the abrupt departure  of a man with a doomsday sandwich board from his regular spot outside the London Natural History Museum. Foreshadowing.  Billy is a curator of exhibits at the museum.  His prize specimen – the museum’s prize specimen – a perfectly intact giant squid, beautifully preserved by Billy, has disappeared.   The improbability of the enormous tank holding the squid just disappearing is baffling to all – but suggests an inside job.

The disappearance launches Billy into a world that is usually carefully hidden just beneath the surface of our world.  It is a world of strange sects, paranormal investigation police units, dark forces, spirits, magic, and mayhem.  The disappearance of the squid could possibly hint at the destruction of the world.  A lot is riding on locating the squid, and everyone believes that Billy, preserver of the specimen, holds the answers.  Yanked from his quiet life as a museum curator, Billy is unsure of who he should trust amidst competing offers of help and shifting alliances.   A gripping page-turner, this was a perfect read for the beach.

Maybe these reviews are overdue because I am unable to write about either book without making them sound completely bizarre.  Sure, they are that, but these are well written stories, too.  I do not recommend either novel for the science fiction phobic.  If you’re a genre reader, Miéville may be for you.

Just in time for banned book week…

Banned Books Week can some times raise some difficult questions:  David L. Ulin wants  to know why no one is reading Mein Kampf at read banned book aloud events.

In a case of a book really being made unavailable, an Alabama prison has prohibited an inmate from reading a Pulitzer-winning book on Southern history.

Banned Book Week

This week is Banned Book Week.  Do your part to defend books.  Check out this handy map of documented book challenges across the US from 2007-2011 to see what has happened in your area.

Friday Links

There’s a new Dragon Tattoo trailer up. I like.

Banned Books Week begins tomorrow.   Get your banned books ready.

Amazon has made agreements with 11,000 library systems to allow e-book lending to your Kindle (or Kindle app) from the comfort of your own home. Does this include the Atlanta Public Library? The New York Times article quotes the APS Director in a vague way, but there are no clues on the APS site yet.

Speaking of Amazon, an emergency room doctor had to report the company Amazon after seeing several workers reportedly worked to exhaustion in high heat conditions.  A company spokesman says it’s due to unusual circumstances.  A reporter fact checked their claim and isn’t so sure.

The Moneyball movie is finally here.  I’m looking forward to checking it out.

Facebook to add a “read” button.  What does it mean?

Oxford commas: a visual explanation of why they are necessary involving JFK, Stalin, and strippers.

Borders employees document how they really felt about you.

Overdue Book Review: The Tiger’s Wife

In order for this review to be remotely timely, I would have to have written it when I finished the book way back in March.  March!   What took so long?  I have no idea.  Téa Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife is easily one of my favorite reads of the year so far. This overdue review may be a good thing.  The book got tons of great press early on, but it seems to have fallen off the radar screen.  Back in March (March!), I posted the following on the early reviews for The Tiger’s Wife:

Téa Obreht’s debut novel The Tiger’s Wife is garnering critical acclaim everywhere… Playing the role of “the Russian judge” is Salon with the lone slightly negative review – “…if Obreht narrows her focus and curtails her embellishments, her undeniable flair for storytelling could produce a magnificent novel. Until then, “The Tiger’s Wife” will seduce and confound, fascinate and exasperate.”  That’s the worst thing that’s been written about the novel that I’ve come across.

So let’s call this “an accidentally planned” overdue book review designed to refocus attention on a worthy novel.

The Tiger’s Wife first entered my world as a short story in The New Yorker.  If you’d like a preview of the novel, hunt down that issue.  Téa Obreht is a US immigrant from the Balkans.  The author, only in her late twenties, was named one of The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 and the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35.  That’s a lot of hype to live up to for a young, debut novelist.  Luckily, The Tiger’s Wife is up to the task.

The novel takes place in the Balkan states that comprised the former Yugoslavia.  Natalia,  a young doctor, travels to the neighboring state on a medical mission to inoculate children and to investigate the circumstances of her grandfather’s death.  Though terminally ill with cancer, the grandfather hides it from his wife (but not Natalia) and seemingly chooses to die in a strange town far from his home in a neighboring country.

Along her journey, Natalia remembers the stories that her grandfather told her as a child.  Fact and fable are seemingly intermingled in his stories.  The story of the tiger’s wife mythologizes the actual bombing of the Belgrade zoo by Germans in World War II that resulted in the escape of a tiger into the countryside.  Another story, the tale of the deathless man, seems to mirror the grandfather’s acceptance of death as his life and medical practice mature.  Natalia also discovers similar myths among the local people while on her medical mission.  These local myths have at least some basis in reality and are even being actively perpetuated by some in the community that recognize the healing powers of the myths.

The idea of storytelling as a means to make sense of the chaos in the world around us is a central theme of this novel.  Reading The Tiger’s Wife, I was reminded of a reading that I attended by Aleksandar Hemon, another author from the former Yugoslavia. As a way of explaining to a US audience just how much turmoil the region has experienced, Hemon noted that none of his recent ancestors had died in the same country that they were born in – most of them had not moved.  Clearly that kind of turmoil can create emotional havoc.  Stories and fables, Obreht seems to suggest, are essential not just for understanding, but also for survival.

This is a fantastic novel.  Obreht is very deserving of all the pre-publication hype, and I can’t wait to see what she does next.

Overdue Book Review: Ten Thousand Saints

It would have been timely had I reviewed Eleanor Henderson’s wonderful novel Ten Thousand Saints on the heels of compiling a Spotify playlist of the music mentioned in the music a few weeks back.  That didn’t happen.  Alas, it’s another overdue book review.

I have always been a big fan of the intersection of music and fiction.  The cover of Ten Thousand Saints has blurbs by novelist Ann Patchett (Bel Canto) and musician/memoirist Dean Wareham (Black Postcards).  Wareham narrates the book’s trailer, too.  If you’ve been paying attention around here, you’ll know that Wareham carries a lot of weight for me. (I reviewed his memoir at Largehearted Boy and added a musical companion to the review here.) It wasn’t really a matter of if I’d read this novel but when.

As it happens, Ten Thousand Saints is set in the eighties straight edge scene – a splinter off of punk that I’d heard of but wasn’t very familiar with.  The straight edge kids were notable for their militant stance against drinking, smoking, eating meat, and sex.  It was common at the time for bouncers to mark underage kids hands with an X in magic marker so they wouldn’t be served alcohol at all ages shows.  Hardcore straight edge kids would tattoo the X on their hands to show that they were against the very idea of being served, regardless of their age.  If you are wondering what kind of teenage hell results in that particularly extreme form of rebellion, you have an idea of what Ten Thousand Saints holds in store.

The book begins in Vermont of all places.  Teddy and Jude are two rural teenage burnouts from broken homes who are going nowhere fast. They escape boredom and the promise of a dim future by getting high and setting themselves apart as outcasts.

Jude was the one in Converse high-tops, the stars Magic Markered into pentagrams, and he wore his red hair in a devil lock–short in the back and long in the front, in a fin that sliced between his eyes to his chin.  Unless you’d heard of the Misfits, not the Marilyn Monroe movie but the horror rock/glam-punk band, and if you were living in Lintonburg, Vermont in 1987, you probably hadn’t, you’d never seen anything like it.

Too broke for pot, they usually resort to huffing whatever they can get their hands on.  Their dream is to get out of Vermont as soon as possible and join Teddy’s half-brother, a musician and tattoo artist,  in New York City.  A fateful New Year’s Eve gone wrong, results in a pregnant girl and Teddy’s death.

Set even further adrift by Teddy’s death, Jude ends up being sent to live with his father in the rough and tumble Manhattan neighborhood of  St Mark’s Place.  His father,  a former Vermont hippie and current pot dealer extraordinaire, is clearly not the ideal role model but they are able to coexist – for a while.  A chance encounter with Johnny leads to Jude’s entry into the straight edge scene.  In the absence of any effectual family involvement, Johnny, Jude, and the pregnant Eliza create a family of sorts among themselves, desperately trying to eke out a place and a future for themselves

The depressed and violent East Village of the late eighties portrayed in the Ten Thousand Saints rises to the level of an additional character in the novel.   They details ring so true, I kept waiting for Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe (Just Kids vintage)  to make a cameo.  Almost unbelievably, tattooing was illegal in the New York City of the time.  The AIDS epidemic was still a new and baffling development just beginning to make its presence known on a wider scale.  The homeless and poor residents in the East Village rallied around Tompkins Square Park as the epicenter of the battle of the neighborhood against encroaching gentrification, which resulted in the Tompkins Square Riot.  The chaos of the city mirrors the upheaval in the lives of our young punks and features prominently in their story.

Ten Thousand Saints has been called this year’s A Visit from the Goon Squad.  While both deal with some of the harsh realities of the music business, I think that Ten Thousand Saints is clearly the better book.  Saints is cohesive, where Goon Squad is disjointed. More importantly, Ten Thousand Saints is a novel with heart.  I loved it.

Overdue Book Review: The Submission

Timeliness is everything.  It may have been nice to review Amy Waldman’s The Submission after seeing her read at The Decatur Book Festival.  Having blown that, squeezing it in before the 10th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attack would have been timely, too.  Better late than never I suppose, which is going to be the theme of this week at BGB.

In the Submission, Waldman creates a convincing alternative historyof our last decade.   In the novel, an unspecified terrorist attack by Islamic fundamentalists has occurred in New York City.  An independent commission assigned to choose among blind submissions for a memorial to be built on the site of the attack wrestles with making a worthy selection.  The winning submission comes down to one championed by an art critic and one championed by a widow of the attack.  The process plays out and only then is the winning submission revealed to be a promising young architect raised in Virginia – who happens to me Muslim.  A predictable media firestorm ensues.

Waldman tells the story from multiple viewpoints, including the widow, the families of other victims (including an illegal Muslim immigrant), the winning architect, Muslim advocacy groups, a talk radio host, the fictional mayor and Governor, and the man chosen to lead the commission.  As the story progresses and the media circus escalates, the viewpoints of the main players are tested, as are those of the reader, in what should be a straightforward problem.

My own reaction to media shitstorms is to ignore the ever-ratcheting rhetoric of the 24-hour news outlets and talk radio echo chamber, preferring to read the thoughts of a select few rationale commentators.  Waldman doesn’t allow the reader that out.  The reader is carried deeper into the chaos as it swirls around the explosive issue.  It makes for uncomfortable reading at times, no matter what side of the political divide you may be on.

Waldman is a journalist, and she has served as the New York Times South Asia Bureau Chief .  She began writing her book in 2003, and it seems a little prescient and a little sad how closely her novel mirrors events like the “Ground Zero mosque” episode and the conflict of the actual architect selected to design the 9/11 memorial.   The great accomplishment of this novel is its unflinching ability to hold a mirror up to our paranoid post-9/11 society with a journalists eye for detail.  This is a thought-provoking novel that excels at documenting our collective frame of mind in a particular time and place.

Friday Links

Laura Miller: Why we haven’t seen a great 9/11 novel.

Amazon to start Netflix-style e-book rentals?

SAT reading scores continue downward trend.

Galleycat editor uses the word irregardless on television, gets grief.

Goodreads launches their own “recommendation engine” to suggest books that you might like by tapping the data of their 6 million users.  I just tried it out.  I like it.

An indie bookstore is *gasp* expanding.  Go, Greenlight, go.

The Guardian launches a very cool book swap, asking authors and readers to give away copies of their favorite books today by leaving them for others to find.  Check out the rules.

A fall book preview from the LA Times

To Kill A Mockingbird named the UK’s favourite book.

From Penguin’s Asshat Division…

Like to cheer the death of an uninsured young person and/or the efficiency of the Texas Death Sentence?   There’s an app for that!   The Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged app for the iPad is here!  You no longer have to merely cite quotes from the book that you’ve always meant to read!  The app includes:

• Videos and audio excerpts from the author on main topics from the book
• Full length audio lectures by Rand, including a Q&A on Objectivism, an outline of its basic principles, and commentary on the state of business and government
• Handwritten, original manuscript andnotes pages by the author
• An illustrated timeline of the author’s life and major works
• Informative articles on the author and her philosophy of Objectivism
• Memorable quotes throughout that can be easily shared via Facebook, Twitter and email
• A photo gallery of early images of the author
• Discussion Guide

I’m especially excited about the sharing quotes via social media feature. The perfect gift for the craphead in your life!

The Family Fang

My wife and I clearly have different tastes in literature.  It’s not a question of right or wrong or whose taste is better, they’re just different.  One clear point of differentiation is that she really likes sci-fi/fantasy/vampire stuff and has read every series I’ve ever heard of in those genres; I, on the other hand, have tried a few times and bailed on various attempts in those veins.  So naturally, when she recommended that I read The Family Fang, by Kevin Wilson, I was rather dismissive, assuming it was a vampire book.  When she explained that it wasn’t, I opted to give it a try.  Good move on my part.

As noted, The Family Fang is most certainly not about vampires; rather, it is about a family with the last name Fang who are performance artists (or at least that’s how the parents, Caleb and Camille, would describe themselves).  Caleb and his younger wife/former student Camille, have dedicated their lives to art — not conventional art, but rather creating provacative situations that elicit reactions from unsuspecting people.  They refer to them as “happenings”, and these events take plenty of planning and scheming and are sprung on the general public in shopping malls or other public gathering places.  When Caleb and Camille have children, they are determined to incorporate their children, Annie and Buster, into their act.

The book focuses on Annie and Buster (also known as “A” and “B”, references to the roles they play in the various happenings), through a series of flashbacks intermingled with current events.  Both of the children are reluctant to participate in the lifestyle dictated by their parents, but they do as they are told.  As they grow older and mature, the tension between their parents’ wants and needs and their own individual passions and desires seems to drive a rift in the family.  Annie goes on to become a successful actress (and somewhat of a head case), and Buster becomes a struggling writer.

When circumstances compel the two children to return home to Caleb and Camille, the divide between parents and children evidences itself in the most extreme fashion — Caleb and Camille step out one day but don’t return.  When a grisly crime scene is traced back to them with evidence that they may have been the victims of a roadside killer, Annie and Buster are initially convinced that it’s merely another event staged by their parents.  As the police struggle to solve the crime, Annie and Buster begin their own investigation based on the assumption that their parents are pulling the wool over the public’s eyes.  With pretty hilarious and entertaining results.

Big thumbs up for this book.  Well written, with unique characters and a page-turning story.  Whether you like vampires or not, I think you’ll like this one.

Friday Miscellany

Booktrack is a new service that provides a musical score and sound effects to your books as you read.  And by books they mean things that you read on your iPad. (Thanks, Kathleen.)

Karl Marlantes, author of the incredible Matterhorn (my review), was on NPR talking about his new, non-fiction What it is Like to Go to War.

This collection of classic albums reimagined as book is fantastic. (Thanks, Frank.)

Conan spices up author appearances on his show: famous authors on ziplines.

Have you read Lev Grossman’s The Magician King (my review)?   Get your geek on and  send a postcard from Fillory.

If you love your book, set it free.

Best novels about 9/11.

More 9/11 books.

The worst fiction about 9/11.

Decatur Book Festival: The Recap

Bookzilla was representin’ on Decatur Square last weekend.

It appears that the consensus on the Sixth Annual Decatur Book Festival is that it may be the best one yet. It certainly gets my vote.

The weekend kicked off with the keynote speakers Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis giving what was one of the best reading’s I’ve ever seen. Colin Mel0y opened by reading a passage from their new middle grade novel Wildwood.  The couple then kicked back in easy chairs and shared a presentation from their laptop on collaborating on the novel, their influences, and other  cool stuff – all illustrated with Carson Ellis drawings and photographs.  The couple charmed the socks off a packed auditorium.  I’ve been reading Wildwood ever since, and I can’t wait to read it with my daughter.

I ran from reading to reading the rest of the weekend lugging  a bag full of freshly signed books by George Pellacanos, Chris Adrian, Amy Waldman, Tom Perrotta,  and Karen Russell.  I have also added several books to my to read stack, including the TWO new student publications put out by The Wren’s Nest this year.  I mentioned to one of the festival organizer’s that there was too much great stuff happening all at the same time – next year they should have less great stuff and spread it around.  I don’t think that this idea has legs.

Every year I stumble across something unexpected, and this year as no exception.  I went to a session called “Not Your Father’s Fiction” and listened to three authors that I didn’t know much about talk about their writing: Adam Ross, Blake Butler, and Jesse Ball.   The three authors were fascinating, and I need to check out their work.

Hats off to new Director Terra McVoy, Daren Wang, Tom Bell, and the rest of the festival board for a great event.  Thanks to Ryan Klee and the gang at Lenz for their amazing hospitality that makes a great event even more enjoyable – year after year.

Booker Short List

The Booker Prize Short List has been announced.  The final six novels are:

• Julian Barnes -The Sense of an Ending (available in US 2012)
• Carol Birch – Jamrach’s Menagerie
• Patrick deWitt – The Sisters Brothers
• Esi Edugyan - Half Blood Blues (not available in the US yet)
• Stephen Kelman – Pigeon English
• A.D. Miller - Snowdrops 

Only two are not available in the US yet.  Progress?  Galleycat posted links to excerpts from some of the nominees for your convenience.  Of these, I’m most intrigued by The Sisters Brothers.   Looks my to read stack is now +1.

The Unnamed

I read Joshua Ferris’s first novel And Then We Came to the End (read my review), which interested me mostly because I work in the advertising industry (which was the arena for that novel).  I wasn’t blown away by the story, but I also didn’t not like it.  I was kind of satisfied but underwhelmed.

Well, when I read the description of his second novel, The Unnamed, I couldn’t turn myself away.  The Unnamed tells the story of Tim Farnsworth, a successful New York City trial attorney who lives in the suburbs with his wife and daughter.  Tim suffers from a disorder that no one — not one of the experts anywhere in the world — can diagnose or treat; when it hits him, he starts walking and cannot stop himself.  He seems to go in and out of remission, but when it hits, it turns his entire world upside down because he can’t predict when an episode will happen or where it will lead him.  He usually ends up waking up behind a gas station somewhere and calling his wife to have her come pick him up.

As someone who suffers from Restless Legs Sydrome (I swear it’s real), I immediately empathized with Tim.  Not that my condition leaves me naked and shivering next to a dumpster in New Jersey very often, but at least I can relate to having your body do things that are completely outside of your control.  And with him, there wasn’t an easy prescription remedy to control it, and no one could discern whether it was mental, physiological, or both.  It got to the point where they were chaining him to his bed (I can’t imagine the agony of being restrained like that).

When our story starts, Tim’s condition had seemed to have gone away, but it returns, and he and his wife and daughter struggle to figure out how best to manage it as it not only disrupts his domestic life, but also his professional life.  As the story progresses, Ferris throws in a couple of red herrings here and there that I was disappointed weren’t resolved, but still I was riveted to the page trying to figure out what would happen to Tim.  The title of the book could refer to Tim’s undiagnosable condition, or it could refer to his alter ego, who emerges partway through the book as the enemy that Tim feels he’s facing.

Tim eventually embarks on a solo journey to try to beat The Unnamed, and much of the second half of the book tries to get inside his head as he struggles with reality and ownership of his actions.  I’ll admit that I wasn’t thrilled with the way the story resolved itself, but I also didn’t throw my Nook against the wall.  Ferris is a good writer, with a good idea for stories; I just wish I could relate a little better to how he ends them.

Friday Round-up

Hey, check it out, my Ten Thousand Saints Spotify playlist gets a shout out on Galleycat.

Dick Cheney writes a memoir and comedy ensues.

• The Onion: Cheney Memoir Reveals He’s Going To Live Full Life Without Remorse And There’s Nothing We Can Do About It
• @TheTweetOfGod: 1. Buy Dick Cheney’s memoir. 2. Tie it to a board. 3. Pour water on it. 4. Demand the truth. 5. Fail to get it.
• @alecbaldwin:  Cover of Cheney’s book looks like he’s maitre’d at the lounge in Hell. Table for how many?
• Mike Lukovich, AJC’s Pulitzer-winning political cartoonist weighs in
• This faux diary entry at Medium Large
• The Taiwanese animator dudes offer their surreal take

Coming soon?: Fight Club – The Musical

“What we have witnessed over the last 50 years is the progressive shittification of the book as an object.”

Some guy’s take on the recent banning of Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood by a New Jersey school district:

Here we see the intersection of parental values being offended, the hypersexualisation of our youth and the homosexual agenda being pushed. This just illustrates why a lot of American parents are not willing to entrust their children to the public schools any more.

Bookslut says: “ Apparently people ask him questions and then record his answers, despite obvious problems with that…”  Heh.

Decatur Book Festival is here!

The Decatur Book Festival gets underway tomorrow evening with the keynote address by Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis, the husband/wife author/illustrator team behind the brand new book Wildwood.  I’m there.

Other personal highlights of the weekend fest include:

• Chris Adrian reading
• Multiple appearances by friend-of-the blog Collin Kelley
• Author George Pellecanos
• Tom Perotta
• Owly creator Andy Runton
• Swamplandia’s Karen Russell
• Geek Dad’s Tom Vandermeer
• Amy Waldman
• the Out of Print t-shirt booth
• Performances by The Theatrical Outfit AND the Atlanta Opera
• The always amazing Dust to Digital booth
• Picking up the latest publications by cool kid authors at the Wren’s Nest Table

There will probably be some food and drinks thrown in there, too.  Check out the full schedule, and I’ll see you there.