The Millions has  a nice piece on the price of fame featuring Nirvana and Tennessee Williams.

Worst book ever?  Sure sounds like it might be in the top 5.

The snarkiest announcement of the upcoming production of Atlas Shrugged Part 2:  The Crap-enning that you’ll read all day:

But do not underestimate such men of the mind, who would fight for the virtue of their pride, fight for the essence of that which is man, and fight for the necessary financing to make a sequel to a film that earned just under a $5 million return on a $20 million investment—financing that could be seen as an altruistic donation under the circumstances, if altruism were not something that only communists and lepers believe in.

Man, I hate Ayn Rand.

J Franz: E-books = bad.  NPR: Can we stop with the e-books vs print books arguments, please?

Flavorwire has your guide to faking that you’ve read James Joyce

10 of the best books set in Tokyo

The 10 most dangerous novels of all time

Best YA novels of 2012

American Psycho as written by P.G. Wodehouse

How Bloggers Sparked the Indie Publishing Revolution.  In other news, there is an indie publishing revolution…

Where can you go to see poetry readings like this? And do you really call a female poet a “poetess?”

Taking place during the wee hours of one night when most people are sleeping, we are told from the very beginning that we are mere observers into the story – a bird flying above or a solitary camera.  The narration begins objectively to find nineteen year old Mari Asai reading alone in a Tokyo Denny’s.  She is approached by college student Takehashi, a  part time jazz trombonist who reminds her that he has met her and her model sister Eri before.  This chance meeting drags Mari into a virtual foreign world far from her suburban life.  Fluent in Chinese, Mari soon finds herself in a “love hotel” helping a Chinese prostitute who had just been beaten.  As the night continues, she becomes familiar with the hotel’s staff and not only learns their secrets, but confesses her own.  Many of Mari’s secrets relate to her insecurities surrounding her beautiful sister.

During Mari’s story, Mr. Murakami reminds us that we are just observers as we frequently visit Mari’s sleeping sister Eri.  We learn later that Eri has been sleeping for two months and no one knows why.  And frankly, neither do I.  Mr. Murakami takes the reader on a bizarre journey from Eri’s sleeping room, into a television set with a man with no face. Uh, ok.

The camera also jumps into the life of the man who beat the Chinese prostitute.  Not a very interesting man, he works a lot of hours at a company while his wife dutifully waits for him at home.

I found After Dark very odd.  The individual stories were compelling enough to hear through to their respective conclusions, and the third party observer perspective was unique. Although not giving any obvious insight into the actual thoughts of the characters, I was able to form my own judgments based on their dialogue and actions.

After traveling through the book as a simple observer, my take away is the story of the two sisters, one who deeply cares for the other.  I also enjoyed the Tokyo setting and little American references – the Denny’s where the story begins and the mention of Hall & Oates on the sound system.

Once in a while I am interested in broadening my horizons to challenge myself.  I’m not giving up on Mr. Murakami, he has received accolades for his work.  Maybe after experiencing a couple more books, I will come back to After Dark and say “A-ha, of course!”

Coming soon: French Men Don’t Wear Tube Socks: One American Man Discovers the Wisdom of French Sport Hosiery

I hadn’t realized that Hemingway’s final work, A Moveable Feast (which I have not read), was a memoir that told of his time in Paris with Hadley and the generation of literary intellectuals hanging out there at the time — Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and others.  McLain, having read A Moveable Feast, has opted in her book to tell the other side of the story — Hadley’s side — from the first person, relying on correspondence, notes, and incredible amounts of research.  And as you read The Paris Wife, you can’t help but think that Hadley is writing it herself.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that Hemingway and Hadley’s marriage didn’t last; most who have even a passing familiarity with Hemingway know that he had many wives (four) and an untold number of lovers outside of his marriages.  But at the end of A Moveable Feast, Hemingway notably said that he would have rather died than have fallen in love with anyone but Hadley.  He ruined their marriage, but it appears that when he looked back on his life, he realized that she was his one true love.

This story is so well-written that it leaves me deeply torn.  The first Hemingway book that I read was The Sun Also Rises, and only through reading The Paris Wife did I realize that Sun was based on actual events involving Hemingway, Hadley, and a group of friends who traveled to Pamplona together.  I don’t know how I would have felt if I had read them in the opposite order; had I read Sun reflecting on how Hemingway was characterizing events and his friends as characters, I might have thought entirely differently about that book.  As things stand, I have a deep admiration for Hemingway — both for his writing, and for what he accomplished; he was sort of like a method actor, but as a writer.  It seems that all of his stories are based on things that happened in his life, and he purposely put himself in those situations to live the events, thereby being better able to write about them.

And while that is an admirable feat, arguably requiring tremendous courage, you cannot help but start thinking that he was a world-class ***hole.  He deliberately sabotaged friendships and played one-upsmanship games with people who went out on a limb for him to help him along, both professionally and personally.  It’s hard to like him as a person, although it’s impossible not to be interested in him as a character.

Hadley, on the other hand, demonstrated such strength, devotion, and loyalty, that you cannot question that she is a heroine.  And I am happy to have learned that she subsequently remarried and lived a wonderful life with her second husband.

If Hemingway, Paris, the Jazz Age generation, or biographical material interest you, you should read this book.  It’s fantastic.

Atlanta ranked forth most literate city. bit.ly/xx4C3r

— AJC(@ajc) January 26, 2012

The closing of another Atlanta indie bookstore also suggests that “forth” might be too high on the list.

Electric Literature’s January Mixtape is for Leigh Stein’s The Fallback Plan.  I’m reading it now.  It’s excellent.

Check out Melville’s House’s Making the Cover slide show to see the design iterations for The Fallback Plan. I’m all about The Fallback Plan right now.

And speaking of Electric Literature, they somehow dug up a picture of me reading Moby-Dick to use as their latest cover.  I’m also all about the Electric Literature right now.

On average, Kindle books are cheaper than Nook books.

A list of McSweeney’s 10 best literary lists

Johnny Ramone autobiography?  Yes, please.

The new hybrid book economy

10 Bestselling Books with More than 80 One Star Reviews

What Your Favorite Blog Says About You – doesn’t include BGB  - but rest assured that if BGB is your favorite blog it means that you are awesome.  And you are probably my mom.

Sign this petition if ensuring that all children have access to a functioning school library is something that you believe in.

Part 1

Part 2

If you’ve read anything at all about Cline’s book, you probably know that it takes place in the year 2044, in times where our society is a disaster.  We don’t get enough information from Cline to necessarily call it dystopian (a la Brave New World), but suffice it to say that despite advances in technology, times are tough and some significant sector of society is slumming it.

Our protagonist, Wade Watts, is one of those people who is slumming it.  He is an overweight social outcast who lives with some extended family and countless guests in the “stacks” — vertically stacked trailer homes — outside Oklahoma City.  But Wade’s escape from the horrors of day-to-day life, like many others, is to log in to the OASIS, a virtual world that allows users to create a virtual identity and live in a virtual world with virtual friends, virtual toys, and virtual joy and excitement.  Even though Watts is poor, he at least has a computer and the necessary equipment to log in to the OASIS (where he also attends high school virtually), which he does in his secret hideout inside a van at a nearby junkyard.

So far, so good, right?  Standard futuristic blah, blah, blah, right?  Well, this is where Cline takes his novel into a direction that, while not completely original or unexpected, is flawlessly executed.  The man who founded the company that created the OASIS, James Halliday, has passed away and in his will has disclosed that he’s hidden an “easter egg” somewhere in the Oasis, and that the user who can find the three virtual keys to pass through three virtual gates to access this easter egg will inherit his fortune (including the OASIS).  This sends the entire world into a tizzy as companies, teams of individuals, and independent “gunters” like Wade Watts, a/k/a “Parzival”, put aside their lives to embark on a quest for the easter egg.

To this reader there were two elements of Cline’s story that struck a chord.  The first, which might only resonate with me and others from my generation, was that Halliday was a child of the 1980′s, and so his clues and the tasks that users must accomplish to advance in their quest are all tied to the 1980′s.  Movies, tv, music, video games, etc.  So it was unavoidable for me to try to test my own skills as we went along.  I didn’t fare as well as I would have thought.

The second really cool thing about Cline’s book, and this would be equally valid for any reader regardless of how much you know or care about the 1980′s, was how Cline blurred the line between the real and virtual worlds.  As players’ avatars interact with other avatars, and as greed and hostility manifest themselves in the OASIS, it becomes clear that certain participants aren’t playing fair and are using their money and power in the real world to gain an advantage.  This includes monitoring real people’s behaviors, and eventually murder.  Alliances that are formed in the virtual world extend into the real world, and mystery and adventure ensue.

No spoilers here, other than to say that once the story got going, it was literally (meaning I mean it) a virtual (meaning I read it on my Nook) literary virtual-reality page turner.

Ruth, a divorced mother of two girls, is a Sex Education teacher at the local high school.  She is serious about her subject and wants her students to be armed with all of the facts.  Seemingly overnight, complaints about the curriculum are grabbing the attention of the school and local school board.  Coincidentally, the congregation of The Tabernacle, the local Evangelical Church, is becoming a louder presence in the community and suddenly Ruth is instructed that “abstinence only” will be taught, no questions asked.   The order doesn’t end Ruth’s continued conflict with the school officials and the new beauty-queenesque “Abstinence Consultant.”

Added to Ruth’s career angst, her personal life is boring.  A re-connect with her pudgy teenage-sexual-partner-turned-hard-body is a complete bust.  Then one day, Jesus-loving Tim enters her life and she is shocked and embarrassed at the feelings he stirs within her.  To add insult to injury, not being a fan of the Tabernacle doctrine, her daughters come home and tell her they want to go to church to “get to know” Jesus.

Tim, divorced father of one daughter and former drug addict/alcoholic/rocker, is a new member of the Tabernacle.  He is trying very hard to live a successful Christian life with his new Christian wife, but constantly struggles with his former self.  He can’t stop thinking of bedding his former wife as she greets him at the door in lingerie.  And the thrill of having played the guitar in a rock band must be currently fulfilled by jamming during church services.  Tim enters Ruth’s life when, as soccer coach to Ruth’s daughter, his faith overcomes him after a game and he prays with the team.  When Ruth hears about this, she and he have a heart to heart meeting which temporarily halts Ruth’s continued actions against him.

Contrary to what the title may suggest, The Abstinence Teacher isn’t only about Ruth.  Every character in Mr. Perrotta’s book abstains from something –whether by choice or not.  Ruth’s students are denied the facts, Ruth’s gay friends are denied the right to get married, her previous pudgy teenage sex partner must be denied the food that he used to enjoy, Tim’s ‘Christian’ wife denies herself in order to please her husband, and the list continues.  By bringing all of these characters together, Mr. Perrotta creates a story about this suburban town and what happens when the Christian Right invades and imposes their beliefs on everyone.   If I think about this subject too much, I become aggravated as The Abstinence Teacher poses more questions than answers about what should/could be done in this situation which seems to be currently happening all over America.  Thus, I choose to enjoy the story simply as entertainment.  Becoming upset is not the goal of listening to audio books during a long commute.

I have concluded that I have enjoyed all of Mr. Perrotta’s books thus far (Little Children, The Leftovers, The Abstinence Teacher) because I can put myself into any one of his stories.  Some readers don’t want stories so true to life – too depressing.  However, I find Mr. Perrotta’s sarcasm and humor extremely entertaining as I sit in traffic.  The Abstinence Teacher allows you to go deeper if you want to, but you can also enjoy it as is.