Baby Got Books

Each morning, while I stand on the platform waiting for my train to work, this man is smiling at me:

Once on the train, this smiling countenance welcomes me:

Neither of those books will tell you on their covers that the authors head mega-churches and are preachers of the “prosperity gospel”. Slate did a nice job of exposing some of the problems with that top guy’s theology. The bottom guy (based here in Atlanta) is under Congressional investigation because a Senator wanted to know why churches that but Rolls Royce automobiles should be tax exempt entities. And his name is not in any way ironic.  Both of these books are bestsellers.

I was busy with being annoyed by these guys when a link to a web site for The Christ Corporation appeared in my inbox. At first glance, it appeared to be the logical progression for the prosperity gospel gravy train. Instead, it appears to be a poker-faced lampooning of the kinds of churches that these guys run. While checking out the site, I had that occasional feeling that lighting was going to come crashing through the window at any moment. But seriously, who are the sacrilegious here?

And of course, The Christ Corporation has a blog. It features tips for dressing for success (business casual conveys a saintly image) and some original scholarship on the nature of the Antichrist (it’s not who you think!).

And what’s with these guys’ hands? Who poses that way? This guy, while not a preacher, does the same thing…

It’s creeping me out! I guess that one guy at that success seminar at the Arena said that you gotta get those hands in the the picture - no matter how ridiculous you look.

Dear Publisher’s Weekly:

It was brought to my attention by keen-eyed readers Russ and David that you recently posted this shirt on your web site in a post titled Baby Got Books:

O! the copyright infringement-larity! While you were on questionable legal ground with that post, you then sought to proceed further into additional infringing activities by posting lyrics to a fictional song in your post Sir Mix-A-Lot Remixed.

As it should be clear to any reasonable party, this blog has a long established use of Sir Mix-A-Lot derivative work that clearly pre-dates your offending work.  My lawyers have begun to calculate just how much your activities will cost you. Please have your checkbook out and ready when they call in order to avoid any unnecessary, expensive, and potentially protracted legal actions through the courts. Thanks.

Tim

P.S.  Or you could just send us one of those shirts.

Chuck Klosterman, writing in Esquire, railed against the sports news establishment last month, especially against ESPN.  This was particularly impressive, because Klosterman is a regular contributor to ESPN’s Page 2.  In the article he lays out a plan to set things right.

Interestingly, ESPN’s Obudsman wrote a blistering assessment of the network after Klosterman’s hit.  She agrees with Klosterman: “what is not OK is cloaking opinion in the camouflage of reporting.”

Expect nothing to change.

On the fiftieth anniversary of the court decision that ruled that Alan Ginsberg’s poem Howl was not obscene, radio stations are reluctant to air a reading of the poem. Faced with the potential of stiff fines from the Federal Communications Commission for “indecency,” radio stations are taking a pass on the poem. Fifty years have passed and a court decision has ruled that the poem is NOT obscene, and they are still afraid to broadcast an important poem. Damn you, Janet Jackson.

Meanwhile, in Canada the government of Toronto used a picture of a penny in a campaign to lobby the Canadian government to return a portion of the taxes raised by the Province. Not only does Toronto appear to be getting stiffed on the tax issue, they are also being sued by the Canadian Royal Mint for copyright infringement for unauthorized use of a photograph of Canadian money and using the words “one cent”.

If you’ve read and were moved by Dave Eggers’ novel about Sudanese civil-war and genocide, What is the What, then you need to run - don’t walk - over to Google Earth. The coolest map toy in the world has partnered with The US Holocaust Memorial Museum to bring actual pictures of the atrocities that are taking place now in the Darfur region. You can zoom in on destroyed cities, click on embedded pictures, read eyewitness testimonies, etc. I had no idea that the USHMM was doing this kind of work, but God bless ‘em. It sure makes it a lot harder for governments to deny this is happening when anyone can check out the evidence for themselves. Here’s a screen shot of what you can expect:

I was going to call this post “the revolution will not be blogged,”  but I have no idea what that even means.   Below are some more pics from the protest/read-in at the AJC today.  I work around the corner, so I was able to pop in and out at various times throughout the day.

Things kicked off at 10 with protesters meeting in front of the AJC building with signs. Some were hand lettered, while others were simply the AJC book section mounted on a stick.  In a previous post, commenter FlavaWheel suggested carrying a sign that said, “When book reviews are outlawed, only outlaws will have book reviews.”  Given the anti-litblog backlash that has been brewing over the past week, I would have needed a black hat to go with the sign.

I was pleasantly surprised to find Tom Key conducting readings as things got underway.  If you’re not from Atlanta, there is a simple way to tell if a play here is going to be any good - check to see if Tom Key has anything to do with it.  If so, your odds are pretty good.  The readings that I saw were excellent, and I couldn’t believe that I was getting to check it out for free.  Someone needs to corral Tom Key into making this reading thing a regular feature of the Atlanta scene, charge admission, and serve drinks.  Seriously.  Make it happen.

The media were out in force.  The word on the sidewalk was that CNN, C-Span, the local Fox station, and others were on hand.  CNN ran this post, but that’s all I’ve seen from them.

A bulletin board was set up that included Richard Ford’s post at Critical Mass, a paper copy of the online petition, etc.  Hand outs of each were available for foisting on the passerby as well.

Have I mentioned that Tom Key was there?  Holy crap!

Later in the day, as the the numbers dwindled, the sidewalks did the talking.  One item said, “book reviews are better in print.”  I’ve got some doubts. After all, I’ve never held a paper copy of The Guardian, but I think that they have some of the best book coverage going.  It may be true for the AJC though.  Here’s an experiment: (1) go to the AJC web site,  (2) try to find anything that you would call the “book section,” (3) Keep looking.  I’ve been searching high and low.  If they truly plan to move their book content online, they may need to learn how to put things on the internet first.  I’m just saying…

I ran back by around 3 PM and everyone had cleared out.   I guess now we wait and see.  I’m not expecting much.

I returned to the office to find that Atlanta author (and Emory professor) Joseph Skibell had posted about the controversy at Critical Mass (So weird. We were just talking about that guy).  Anyway, it could be argued that the AJC could now invoke Godwin’s Law and win the arguement.

The protest/read-in at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Building began this morning at 10. I ran down to check it out. So far, a small but determined group has assembled. A nice media presence was present reporting on the event. Tom Key, the king of Atlanta theater and head of The Theatrical Outfit, was reading aloud from To Kill a Mockingbird, The Moviegoer, and other works. That was cool enough on its own to warrant a crowd. The one misstep, and I’m quibbling, Tom Key said in his intro to The Moviegoer that if left to bloggers the book probably would not have received the recognition that it deserves. WTF? Everyone in the blogosphere totally blew it on The Road this year, right? Tom, it’s not an either/or scenario. ANYWAY, I had to dash back for a meeting. I’m going to go back out during lunch and see how its going. I’ll post more (and better) pictures this evening.

The Atlanta literary scene’s battle with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is not an isolated incident.  Across the country, newspapers are “redesigning” book sections and/or eliminating book reviews from their papers.  The National Book Critics Circle has drawn a line in the sand and says its time to fight back.  They’ve launched the Campaign to Save Book Reviewing.  As part of this campaign they’ve set up an online petition where you can voice your concerns about what is happening in Atlanta. (Over 1000 signatures so far!).  The Campaign also has a list of five things that you can do, wherever you live, to keep book reviews and literary news in our nation’s papers.  Visit the NBCC blog at the link above and get involved. 

Also: Wordsmiths’ Russ has an excellent post on the Atlanta Literary Community.  Check it out.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, our local newspaper, has decided in its infinite wisdom that it no longer needs a book editor. Presumably (although it hasn’t been said) this means that the paper will run reviews/stories from the wire services rather than locally written pieces. That sucks - especially considering that the paper has an American Idol/”local radio station drama” beat in its online edition.

Zach from Wordsmiths’ is leading the local response. His recent blog post details why a local book editor matters and what you can do to help. Don’t just wish that we had a better local book scene - make it happen.

Point of order: Zach’s post quotes an NBCC blog post that calls Atlanta the 15th most-literate city in the U.S. If the NBCC had checked with us first, they’d know that we’re #3 (tied with D.C.)

I was reminded by Nitro’s Lit Mag as accessory post that I’ve been meaning to write about the n+1 vs. lit-blog dust up. The good thing about being late to the party is that there are nice summary posts on other blogs to point to. So here we go.

The Millions blog has a very nice (and even-keeled) summary of a brief essay that the lit mag n+1 ran, unattributed, in its latest issue. The n+1 essay explains why lit blogs are highly suspect. The gist is that lit-bloggers (and I count us in that group) are whores for advance copies, are only writing for the recognition/legitimacy of the publishing houses, and are essentially an unpaid army of publicists writing what is expected of them. Or something.

Wet Asphalt takes up the issue with a little more umbrage, pointing out the hypocrisy of n+1’s position.

The Elegant Variation reproduces Exhibit A - n+1 may think that bloggers are free publicists for the publishing house, because that was the expectation that they had when they provided free issues to bloggers.

The timing of this couldn’t be worse. After writing night and day for over two years, we’ve just to begun to receive a trickling of complimentary books. (To date this blog has received a grand total of five (5) free books from publishers.) We have been “recognized” by one publisher who used a blurb from a review that I wrote about a self-purchased book. We’ve clearly sold out for all this bling and respect - only to now be called on the carpet by n+1. I’m so ashamed.

Actually, no I’m not. It is nice to be recognized, but I suspect that we’d be doing this without the molehill of schwag that we’ve received to date. Don’t get us wrong, we love free stuff. And nothing is cooler than an advance copy. In fact, we’d be just fine if we never had to pay for a book again. That would be swell. (Please keep sending us stuff!)

Among the free copies that we’ve received, there has been no indication that the sender has an expectation of a positive review or even of a commitment to mention the book. Certainly nothing as blatant as Elegant Variation’s note from n+1. Maye a publisher would stop sending us stuff if we hated everything they sent us. But that would be a good thing, right?

Here’s some math - we’ve posted reviews of 199 books to date. One of those posts was based upon a free copy of the book. 0.5%.

So where does that leave us? Should we point out generally that some of the books that we write about may have been given to us by the publisher? Should we point out that a specific book was free? I’ve never seen either scenario anywhere. Ever. Does Michiko Kakutani buy her own books? (We’re certainly not Machiko, and we don’t mean to compare what we do here to what she does.) Help us chart our ethical path forward in our comments.

I still think that n+1 should have been the name of a statistics blog/journal.

Ripped from today’s headlines (or last month’s):

First off, I’ve been taken to task by a BGB Board Member for not mentioning an article that ran in the San Francisco Chronicle. The article details the kick in the family jewels that independent publishers recently received when their book distributor’s parent company filed for bankruptcy - after collecting all of their holiday season sales. The entire inventory of some small publishers remains in the warehouses of the bankrupt company while negotiations with the creditors are on-going. McSweeney’s is one of the independent publishers involved. Proceeds of Dave Eggers’ What is the What, which were intended to go to a Darfur-related charity, are basically gone. Nice.

Speaking of San Francisco, this Writers with Drinks series (voted best literary drinking by SF Weekly) sounds like the kind of idea that needs to be exported to other cities. I’ll get our West Coast partner on this ASAP.

The Top Fake News Stories of 2006 have been announced.

This guy is creating a chapter-by-chapter graphic novel adaptation of 1984. He has very cool INGSOC gear for sale at his MINIPLENTY store to support the effort.

Finally, some really old news, back in November Boing Boing linked to some “great” photo sets on Flickr that “documented” hilarious “signs” with inappropriate use of quotation marks. “Hilarious.”

If you’re like me, you might be a little over-protective of your books. An example: I wouldn’t let BGB Contributor, Shaft, borrow my copy of The Tender Bar. It was signed after all. He is a good friend and a fairly responsible, productive member of society. I knew he was good for bringing it back. We swap CDs and DVDs back and forth all the time with no problems. That wasn’t the issue. What if he dropped it in a tub of mayonaise (like he does)? What if the dog got to it? What if…?

In 1991, my copy of The First Man in Rome, an enormous brand new hard cover, rode on the top of my car for a few blocks until it fell off on a busy street in downtown Orlando. By the time I got to it, the cover was gone and it had tread marks all over the pages. Luckily I had thought to remove the dust jacket before bringing it inside for lunch. I was able to cover the book and restore some of its former dignity, but I’m afraid I never recovered. I still have that book.

It should be no wonder that I react badly when the few volumes that I do loan out never find their way back home. I hate the idea of defacing a book by gluing a bookplate inside the front cover. If I could bring myself to do it though, I might go for something like this to get the message across.

The more likely scenario is that I would then become obsessed with bookplates, and the no-goodnik book thieves would remain oblivious to their crimes. The Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie blog gives some idea of what book plate addiction looks like (link via Librarian.net). Won’t someone think of the children!

I have election fatigue so bad I may never wake up.  Seriously.  End already.  There’s a part of me that believes that’s the plan of The Man - to wear us down. Where’s the anger?  Where is this slacker generation’s protest music?  The best I can come up with on short notice (and it is very angry) is Mr. Marshall Mathers song from the 2004 election.

If you want to take the high road (isn’t that how we found ourselves where we are?), please read Michael Kinsley’s lengthy political book review and treatise on intellectual dishonesty from Sunday’s NYT Boook Review.

U2 and Green Day offer some suggestions on how things might have been handled a little better/quicker in New Orleans after Katrina:

In all the excitement over the announcement of the Booker Prize, I completely missed that the 2006 Quill Awards were awarded the very same night. The Quill Awards are some manufactured corporate bullshit People’s Choice-style awards that are at least 87% ridiculous. The Awards view themselves this way:

The Quill Awards pair a populist sensibility with Hollywood-style glitz and have become the first literary prizes to reflect the tastes of the group that matters most in publishing-readers.

What that means in practice is that the Book of the Year is Tyler Perry’s Don’t Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings: Madea’s Uninhibited Commentaries On Love and Life. You heard me. Book. Of. The. Year. That’s just offensive to me, as the most important person in publishing - a reader.

Marley and Me won Best Audio Book and Best Memoir (it was my pre-event favorite to win best book at this travesty). Best Business Book? The Girl’s Guide to Being A Boss (Without Being a Bitch) (Ladies - is that title at all offensive?). I keep waiting for the companion book for men - How to Be A Boss Without Being a Complete Douche. So far, nothing. Best Cooking Book author? Rachel Ray.

On the plus (non-BS) side, Al Gore won for An Inconvenient Truth, and If You Throw a Pig A Party is pretty awesome.

Seriously. Madea won Best Book of the Year. That’s just F-ed up.

Prerequisite: Irony 101, 212, and previous demonstration of compelling use of irony

A father/daughter team are outraged, outraged!, at a high school near Houston’s choice of assigned reading.  (”It’s just all kinds of filth!”)  The duo want nothing less than the removal of the book from the school altogether.  Let’s listen in:

“If they can’t find a book that uses clean words, they shouldn’t have a book at all…” He [the father] looked through the book and found the following things wrong with the book: discussion of being drunk, smoking cigarettes, violence, “dirty talk,” references to the Bible and using God’s name in vain.

None of which will otherwise be encountered in high school.  The book in question is…wait for it…Fahrenheit 451.  Naturally, the call for the book’s removal occurred during banned books week.  Also: I’m not sure that “looked through” is the same as “read.”
I can’t be too smug about the idiocy of Texans.  Way closer to home, the mother who was denied in her efforts to remove all copies of the Harry Potter books from Gwinnett County (GA) schools had an appeal to the State Board of Education on Tuesday.  The appeal was open to the public and took place about a quarter-mile from my office.  I considered walking over to check out the circus.  I missed out on gems like this:

The stories, she said, encourage children to perform spells and promote Wicca…”When my children are at school, I’m trusting them to the teachers and that school,” Mallory said. “They are my most precious things in the entire world to me. I surely don’t want them indoctrinated into a religion whose practices are evil.”

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that Ms. Mallory has not read much of the Potter books.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution returned to fertile ground this past weekend, electing to mock children on Page 1. To be fair, they are choosing to belittle both jocks and nerds. No kid is safe from the comedy gold mine that is the AJC. If you can’t read the poorly reproduced headline, it says, “There’s no crying is baseball.” Nice. This kid’s crime was getting emotional in the Little League World Series, where his team from Columbus, GA had been kicking ass on their way to winning the LLWS. Like the word nerds, this poor kid gets an extra helping of grief at school, compliments of the friendly community paper. Front page news.

Here in Atlanta, our northern suburbs are a constant source of amusement and alarm due to their conservative and reactionary government by what appear to be the smallest minds available for the jobs. Cobb County used to be the county most likely to make national news for stupid decisions, like putting evolution is “just a theory” stickers in all science books or any number of institutional homophobic offenses.

Gwinnett County, our other neighbor to the north, is poised to fight for the dumbass crown. Not deterred by their loss in trying to remove Harry Potter from school libraries, the no-bookniks are at it again. First, they fired their Library Director, who led them to a National Library of the Year Award in 2000, without cause, apparently in an attempt to “harmonize the library system with conservative values” of the community. Uh, huh.

What are the conservative values of the community? Well for one thing, the library won’t be buying any more works of fiction in Spanish, because they ”can’t supply pleasure reading material for all language groups, so we’re not going to go down that road”. Also, “we didn’t need to cater to illegal aliens”. Here is my personal favorite and most paternalistic of all the self-serving quotes in the story:

Board member Dale Todd said her only objection to the Spanish books is that Harlequin romance novels are not of high enough literary value. Instead, she said, the library should offer life-skills books to help immigrants.

Ms. Todd, can I come over to your house and make some personal reading decisions for you? I have a few “life-skills” books that I think should take precedence over anything else on your shelf. Michael Schaub at Bookslut says that the money earmarked for Spanish books “will instead be allocated to the county’s “cross-burnin’ fund.” Heh. Wait until they find out that another library system recently tried to ban kids from the homeless shelter from borrowing books - those lazy reading bastards.

In the Atlanta area, we have a special kind of idiot. Many (most?) of them live in Gwinett County. Here’s one now:

The “Harry Potter” book series may soon be taken off the shelves of all media centers in Gwinnett County Public Schools if a parent’s appeal is successful. A parent of students at J.C. Magill Elementary School filed appeal forms for each of the books, requesting the wildly popular series be removed from public school libraries. On the forms, she wrote that she objected to the series’ “evil themes, witchcraft, demonic activity, murder, evil blood sacrifice, spells and teaching children all of this.” She wrote she had not read the series because it is long, and she is a working mother of four.

It seems to be a rule that the parents have not even read the books when they file this kind of appeal. They just know that they are wrong, wrong, wrong.

Oh, that Tournament of Books is really starting to bug the crap out of me. First, it was announced in January and then took its own sweet time getting off the ground. It’s still going on, and its bracketed brethren have been long finished. I’ve got nothing better to do than wait around for this thing to play itself out? Then, THEN!, there is the surprise announcement of the “Zombie Round”. What the? In the Zombie Round, previously eliminated books On Beauty and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close are brought back into the competition in new modified brackets, because they are crowd favorites. Hey, won’t that drag things out even longer? And doesn’t that sort of stack the deck? You betcha. The final and greatest indignity was suffered in yesterday’s match-up. For some reason, the TOB powers-that-be thought that it would be a great idea to get “critic” and professional asshole, Dale Peck, to judge a round. I’m no sure what they were expecting. What I was expecting was a well-considered comparison of Saturday by Ian McEwan and The Accidental by Ali Smith. What we got instead was a bunch of petulant bullshit that would embarrass the most pretentious undergraduate. And he refused to pick a book as the winner. “Look at me, I’m a jerk and I brought the TOB to a screeching halt! Hurray.” In the end, Ian McEwan lost on a coin toss so that the tournament could continue. I don’t know why I’m getting so pissed off about this, but until further notice the Tournament of Books can suck it.

Oh, wait, today is the match-up of Home Land and the once-eliminated On Beauty. I wonder how that turns out?