They read and they write, write, write!

Full list of book bloggers can be found here. It's overwhelming but a terrific resource for all the blogging on reading, writing, and publishing you could want! Enjoy, folks.

(I believe there is a voting component to this whole thing too, so feel free to vote for this blog if possible. Just sayin' is all.)

Author in the Middle

In internet time, I'm a bit late to this game, but I was saddened and frustrated, like many, to read about Stephanie Meyer putting her latest novel "on hold" after a draft was leaked to the internet. I haven't read her work, admittedly - my partner read the first novel in the current series and did not exactly praise it, and quite frankly, it's not my proverbial cup o' tea - but like many bloggers, I can't help but see this as a modern and particularly undignified problem.

The author's explanation on her website is just tragic, for anyone who appreciates the process. This woman may not be writing novels that are going to become literary classics, but she's writing successful novels with legions of fans, so she clearly has talent (again with the disclaimer, I haven't read a word). And she is showing respect for both herself and her fans in explaining how she feels:

"I did not want my readers to experience Midnight Sun before it was completed, edited and published. I think it is important for everybody to understand that what happened was a huge violation of my rights as an author, not to mention me as a human being... I tried to write Midnight Sun now, in my current frame of mind, James would probably win and all the Cullens would die, which wouldn't dovetail too well with the original story. In any case, I feel too sad about what has happened to continue working on Midnight Sun, and so it is on hold indefinitely.

I'd rather my fans not read this version of Midnight Sun. It was only an incomplete draft; the writing is messy and flawed and full of mistakes. But how do I comment on this violation without driving more people to look for the illegal posting? It has taken me a while to decide how and if I could respond. But to end the confusion, I've decided to make the draft available here (at the end of this message on the Midnight Sun page). This way, my readers don't have to feel they have to make a sacrifice to stay honest."

Good for the internet for making it possible for an author to respond to immediately and to respond so directly to readers, but shame this same technology led to such a disruption to an author's process of writing.

I should say that the ellipsis you see above is where I skipped her sentences on copyright, which is not to say I don't respect her explanation of copyright and her legal rights as the owner of this intellectual property, and her use of this angering moment to explain copyright to fans seeking her out, but I think readers of this blog know all about our nation's copyright system, with its warts and all. Right?

Naturally, we all recall when the final Harry Potter book got posted online just before it went on sale. Who are these people? I suppose they're opportunists looking to get a jump, and I'm sure it has happened in different incarnations for generations. But like McCain picking someone wholly unqualified to be his VP, this action, putting drafts of an unfinished novel unline, shows such a fundamental disrespect to the thing itself - in McCain's case, the office of VP, and in the Meyers case, a final book. Is respect for a book, worked to completion by an author working in partnership with an editor and a publisher, being devalued by e-readers and such so much that people don't care about anything but how the words themselves get strung together? It's one thing to not care about packaging - hell, I sometimes can suck it up and read a mass market novel - but it's quite another to scrap everything and just download an incomplete manuscript so you can say you read it first. How much can one enjoy such an experience? On some level, I guess I have to wonder, "what are you after?"

As ever on this blog, I worry about sounding like a Luddite, but are we really so enamored at the thought of an immediate experience, and the thrill of being first, that we are willing to throw out the value of the larger experience so entirely? Damn shame.

I would just like to add before closing, are you reading The Root? Because I think you should, it's pretty amazing, very smart stuff over there. This article by Gary Dauphin on the website Stuff White People Like is a good one, but their stable of writers in general are quite top-notch.

A few things before we go

It's almost Labor Day, folks, so I thought I'd post a few links for anyone whiddling away these final hours before the long weekend.

First, Richard Nash, the publisher over at the amazing Soft Skull (seriously - I'm still working through the great selection we got from them when they did a grab bag last year for $100), was a guest blogger over at Ecstatic Days. Recently, he posted a few links, and one was to an interview by Grove Atlantic editor Jofie Ferrari-Adler of agent Nat Sobel. Go read it! No really! It offers an interesting perspective that encompasses so many aspects of publishing and bookselling. One particularly interesting point Sobel makes is that the loss of independent bookstores has hurt first-time fiction writers. He also sings the praises of literary journals, which was good to see. It's long but well worth the read.

Next, I was going to offer this link to a VT's public radio coverage of Chelsea Green's controversial decision to sell their new book, Obama's Challenge by Robert Kuttner, through Amazon's POD service exclusively, to get it to people during the DNC convention. (I appreciate how the company allowed a single bookseller comment on their blog regarding this decision, with a single response from an appropriate sales rep. Surely others tried to comment there.) Shelf Awareness offered more links to coverage of this decision, which many independent booksellers felt was inappropriate for an independent publisher, seeing as it gave an unfair advantage to the enemy, Amazon. But we can all appreciate B&N getting huffy about it! They've decided to pull their order, refusing to carry the book in their stores (though they'll carry it online). Remember when B&N said they wouldn't carry O. J. Simpson's If I Did It? Then they decided to sell it due to consumer interest? I know they carry serious weight when publishers, especially indie publishers, are deciding print runs, but let's all agree that they are fickle, not smart about their orders but chasing the market. This pretty much, for many of us, sums up the problem with corporate booksellers taking over the planet.

And finally, I added a button for Book Blogger Appreciation Week, which I believe was instigated by the blogger over at My Friend Amy's. Amy herself sent out an email to participating bloggers with a list of all the participants. It's long but pretty exciting, so I've listed the first chunk of them below. I wanted to list them all but it wasn't formatting right, and it is an exhaustive list. I also should note that I have not been to most of these blogs so I cannot vouch for them, but I imagine there's tons of fun stuff. So... get to clickin'!

http://bookingmama.blogspot.com
http://booksnbordercollies.blogspot.com
http://bookchatterandotherstuff.blogspot.com
http://savvyverseandwit.blogspot.com
http://blbbooks.blogspot.com
http://zero-toeight.blogspot.com
http://amateurdelivre.wordpress.com
http://zensanity.blogspot.com
http://bookchronicle.wordpress.com
http://ismellbooks.blogspot.com
http://icroak.wordpress.com
http://booklorn.com
http://deenasbooks.blogspot.com
http://jennsbookshelf.blogspot.com
http://worldaccordingtobooks.blogspot.com
http://readingtoolate.net
http://books-movies-chinesefood.blogspot.com
http://worducopia.blogspot.com
http://www.bookconfessions.com
http://zetor-mogsblog.blogspot.com
http://rjsbooklady.wordpress.com
http://cherylsbooknook.blogspot.com
http://smallworldreads.blogspot.com
http://jezebelsk.blogspot.com
http://athomewithbooks.blogspot.com
http://2kidsandtiredbooks.blogspot.com
http://musebookreviews.blogspot.com
http://julyso4463.blogspot.com
http://blog.literarily.com
http://relzreviewz.blogspot.com
http://mrstreme.livejournal.com
http://alessandrasplace.blogspot.com
http://smilingsally.blogspot.com
http://bookcritiques.blogspot.com
http://thethrillionthpage.blogspot.com
http://www.3rsblog.com
http://bermudaonion.wordpress.com
http://shootingstarsmag.blogspot.com
http://bookreviewmaniac.blogspot.com

Tragic Refusal

I don't have a lot of love for John Updike, I admit. I haven't read all those rabbit books, and quite frankly, I get him mixed up with John Irving in my head (fortunately, I don't usually do this aloud). I see his name and I think of bland older white men in suburban America. I suppose that's not fair.

Well in a post on the Guardian's Books blog, writer Joe Keenan really puts this old fella in his place. Keenan fairly uses Updike's famous address at Book Expo in 2006 to explain why Updike is falling behind, not in his writing style per se but in his effort to depict life as most of us currently know it. In that address, Updike complained bitterly about the digitizing of books, about the supposed end of books as we know it. I agree with him on the importance of books as "the site of an encounter, in silence, of two minds, one following in the other's steps but invited to imagine, to argue, to concur on a level of reflection beyond that of personal encounter, with all its merely social conventions, its merciful padding of blather and mutual forgiveness." But it's clear he's resisting an inevitable change too much, and while I'm all for exalting independent booksellers at every and any opportunity, you are doing them no favors by praising them for refusing to roll with these changes. I don't like the market anymore than you do, but it's still a massive force that can crush you - you, but at this point, not Updike.

So Keenan and Updike's new novel, The Widows of Eastick: Apparently, in this novel,

"the characters inhabit a world that has disappeared. When they are not gossiping on land line telephones, the three widows write long information-strewn letters to each other which they despatch via the mail... Sukie, one of the main characters, is dismayed to find upon returning to Eastwick that the rather smart local newspaper she helped produce has been closed down and replace by a cheap Xeroxed sheet. Xerox? Even the smallest hamlets now have their dedicated websites..."

Yikes. In sum, Keenan reports: "His withdrawal from the hurly-burly of contemporary communication may be one reason why his novels have become less despatches from the frontline than cosy remembrances of things past."

This presents for me a question I have often considered when watching movies or reading modern novels, or I should say novels set in the present. How can one produce a work of gravitas but still incorporate our current, incredibly casual modes of communication? Will something weighty and significant be created using snippets of text messages? If you saw such a thing in flipping through the pages of a novel, would you not think it was YA or at least very commercial? I would be concerned if I found an IM conversation in the middle of a new novel I thought looked promising, but then I actively IM people and have had very serious conversations using this form of communication.

How to use it effectively and maturely in art, then?

I don't have an answer, and I don't know if I've seen it done very well, so I appreciate Keenan raising this entirely fair critique. I'll have to continue looking out for examples of modern, casual conveniences in mature and artful literature... when I read it. (Which may not be for a long time, given the length of Strange Piece of Paradise!)

To each their own

My mother loves this expression - "to each their own." Having just spent four glorious days in Provincetown, a.k.a. Heaven on Earth, it should be no surprise that this phrase comes to mind.

But in fact, I'm thinking of this phrase as I ponder this post on Galleycat, regarding the publication of Crystal Mangum's memoirs - she's the young woman who accused three Duke University athletes of rape. The book, with the rather impressive title of The Last Dance for Grace: The Crystal Mangum Story, is going to be published by a new publisher called fire! Books, just getting off the ground led by her co-writer Vincent Clark.

Galleycat goes on to quote Clark on why he chose to publish in this way. In reading these quotes, I went from skepticism to... well my interest was piqued, though I'm still suspicious of motives. One must be when reading about this type of publishing, no? But he makes some points:

"[When I met her] She was being approached by people who said they could help her make a lot of money and all of them seemed to be a little slick and shady. I just talked to her about what she wanted to do with her life. We developed a good working realtionship and we worked on her just getting back to a normal life... It isn't about making money. She really wants to set the record straight about some of the things that have been said about her personally. Any large publisher would have been looking to do book tours and all of that stuff. She really wasn't interested in all of the extra stuff."

$1 from each sale will be donated to help battered women (though the post doesn't mention an actual organization, and who knows if the press release does. That's always questionable to me, when an actual org isn't mentioned.)

Clark's new business will also publish, eventually, something by the drug dealer who supplied Marion Jones and other "elite-level athletes" with performance enhancing drugs.

What piques my interest is that Clark seems to be developing this niche that could be just plain exploitative or it could be legitimate, in trying to publish voices getting maligned in the press who are problematic but are also, to some extent, in a position in society in which that are marginalized. They responded perhaps in an unhealthy way but that does not make their voice worth silencing, and they could offer an interesting perspective on a story we all, as a nation, know due to media hysteria. They are the people we want to disappear, the relatives that are embarassing. They are the Other in a way, right?

And he's publishing this in a way that is not entirely different from Free Press publishing Michael Phelps' Built to Succeed, his memoir that will conveniently be out by the holiday season this year. (Expect more gratuitous shots of his taut body, folks - at the pool, in the pool, from above looking down, from under the water, etc etc etc.) It's opportunistic publishing, trying to jump on a media sensation and capitalize on it while the iron is hot, knowing that many of those million books you print will end up on remainder tables and/or in used bookstores for years to come. Working in this kind of publishing, while surely exciting, must be hell, as you are just producing crap over and over. I'd be curious to hear of someone who enjoys this. Maybe the editor of Kathie Lee Gifford's autobio still has it proudly displayed on a bookshelf, and I'm the fool.

So I can't fault Vincent Clark for seeing an opportunity and going for it, and maybe he really is going to protect his subject/client/co-authors from media sharks. I'll be curious to see how it plays out, because a book by this Crystal Mangum could easily be another My Story by Amy Fisher, and surely no one wants that.

Review etc

I will do a book review, below, but I first wanted to point readers to the nice community forum that Shelf Awareness has set up regarding Amazon's Kindle. Readers of Shelf Awareness have been writing in regarding sightings (or lack thereof) of the Kindle, and feelings about this device. Some points are interesting, anecdotes are somewhat informative, comments are a bit annoying and even borderline rude, but to hear this was frustrating:

Ellen Smith of the Hudson Library and Historical Society, Hudson, Ohio, had a money-saving tip for all e-readers. "Train commuters who are inclined towards e-books (or audiobooks, for that matter) should realize they can save themselves their hard-earned dollars by downloading books from their public library for free--so long as they DON'T use a Kindle. Amazon has not made its device compatible with any public library version (a product of OverDrive), therefore everything viewed on a Kindle costs money!"

Oh Amazon. Tacky.


My review:

Young author Robert Leleux wrote an article for the Texas Observer about a gay Texan writer named Edward Swift, who wrote about a town just a few exits down Highway 59 from where I grew up, and I enjoyed the article, so I first wanted to read Leleux's book, The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy, before reading Swift's Splendora. Leleux is from outside of Houston, like myself, but my mother is not nearly as, um... fabulous as his, and this book is about her, his fabulous mother, in a way that I found a bit unsettling. If you get along with your parents, fantastic, but Leleux cannot get enough of this mother, who speaks in quotable quotes, and anecdotes that could be 2 pages long become 10 pages of "I know, can you BELIEVE she did that?! I KNOW!!!!1111!!omg!!1!!" If he didn't use the c-word, this book would be straight-forward YA and that would be fine, but as a book for adults, it's a bit l-i-t-e; having said that, he's a young guy and it definitely has its moments, so here's hoping he keeps at it, maybe gets over his mom and isn't quite as moonie over his husband, and turns to fiction to create an alternate bizarre world, rather than stretching this one to fit our current idea of whacky gay memoir.

(PS I couldn't get through Splendora after finding it in the library, as it's endlessly descriptive with little to no action (at least in the first 60 pages), but I still support any Viking novel published in the '70s in which a cross-dresser returns to his small town in Texas, a town I know and perhaps fear a bit, in complete drag. As you can see from what I'm reading on the sidebar, I've moved to Capote for southern gayness, and Other Voices Other Rooms, a book I'm thoroughly enjoying, should take care of this current gay-southern itch.)

New Ways to Publish Old Material

A post by Blake Wilson over at Papercuts, "A Blog About Books" hosted by the New York Times, was all about yet another blog. Papercuts seems quite good by newspaper literary blog standards, as those folks are really trying to generate discussion. Smaller papers smartly use local literary events and local bestseller lists for content, like David Mehegan's Off the Shelf hosted by the Boston Globe, and while that makes sense, it makes for a rather dull blog. So here's hoping Papercuts sticks with it and finds a strong readership.

Wilson's post that caught by eye was entitled, "George Orwell, Tween Narcissist?" It was all about The Orwell Prize blog, which is publishing Orwell's diary entry by entry, as blog entries. As they explain, "From 9th August 2008, Orwell’s domestic and political diaries (from 9th August 1938 until October 1942) will be posted in real-time, exactly 70 years after the entries were written." August 12th entry reads,

Very hot in the morning. In the afternoon sudden thunder-storm & very heavy rain. About 50 yards from the gate the road & pavement flooded a foot deep after only 1 1/2 hours rain.

Blackberries beginning to redden.

I don't know, I find this rather charming.

I like the mundanity, and judging from the number of commenters, I'm not alone. (Wilson disagrees - read his post to see why). They are still working out the best way to provide context without taking away from the basic and simple concept, but I think we can get it from the About section.

This intrigues me as a way to publish important archival material in a engaging way, with modern technology that makes the material not just accessible, but strangely enjoyable. Orwell is on our level. The commenters are both amused and intrigued by their ability to speak back to the entries, clearly.

It makes me wonder what else can be digitized and made part of modern culture like this, in a way that seems to be relatively free of branding (besides the literary prize, which seems okay to promote). There's always something disappointing about a song being rediscovered because it's in a new car commercial. But this uses the internet, html, for it's original purpose, as a sharing tool, without corporate involvement. Hell, it's not even Google sponsored!

Kinda exciting stuff.

Our Progressive Zeitgeist

I am intrigued by this idea being led by Jennifer Nix over at Guernica: the need for progressives to reclaim art as a way to open minds and bring people into progressive thinking. Perhaps in part because of my own personal professional experience, I appreciated her discussion of people leaving art for activism, not seeing that the two can work together, side by side, for the same purpose. She explains that art and activism "are very much part of the same continuum, [but] over the past eight years there has been a kind of damaging divergence between art and life, for many progressive activists." She sees blogs in particular as ideal vehicles to bring these communities together.

She's drawing her inspiration from novelists like Mark Twain who, during the Gilded Age, reached more common folk by publishing in affordable newspapers, thereby upping the literacy rates and hooking in readers to think outside of the elitist rhetoric of the era: "The masses were able to read fiction and to imagine better realities than those put forth and controlled by the era's robber-baron elites." She's also jumping off Aleksander Hemon's The Lazarus Project, though I was confused by her quotes that she attributes to Hemon. If they were in this novel, the novel must break into some pretty didactic language.

Her point is that progressive blogs need to help "integrate literature back into American life." Who doesn't agree with this? But yes, she has a more specific plan of action, and I support her completely. Some novelists have made this effort - Barbara Kingsolver comes to mind, and of course writers from countries with oppositional leadership like Orhan Pamuk in Turkey - but we should encourage more. Let's get people over this idea that literary writers shouldn't muddy their hands with politics, or maintain objectivity just like journalists. So preposterous.

I then thought of The Poetry Foundation and their efforts to insert literature into the average American's life. If you'll recall, they received a massive $100 million donation from Ruth Lilly, great-granddaughter of the founder of pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. Initially, they had discussed "trying to figure out how to finance the notion of bringing poetry to people in libraries, schools and elsewhere," as reported in the New York Times. They then branched out to try to get poetry into hipper venues. This New Yorker piece by Dana Goodyear explains it well.

[T]the foundation is offering its services as an external poetry editor. Over the past year, it has sent a dozen magazine editors mockups with poems superimposed on actual layouts from those magazines (a Basho haiku in a Good Housekeeping spread showing how to “pair old china with fresh blooms”; Lucille Clifton’s “Homage to My Hips” on a fitness page called “Love Your Curves”). To Details, the foundation suggested an essay by Jim Harrison: “If Jim Harrison, poet, novelist (Legends of the Fall) and walking vat of testosterone, needs a daily shot of poetry, it must not be for sissies. . . . A good hed for the piece might be ‘Don’t Be Afraid of Poetry.’ A better one might be ‘Read Poetry. Get Laid.’ ”

Yeah, seriously. Actually, the article does a fine job, nicely mentioning the foundation's history. Goodyear explains how Harriet Monroe founded Poetry magazine in 1912 because “the well of American poetry seemed to be thinning out and drying up, and the worst of it was that nobody seemed to care. It was this indifference that I started out to combat, this dry conservatism that I wished to refresh with living waters from a new spring.”

I know another initiative in the foundation was getting poetry into smaller local newspapers, which I thought was smart. I don't know how successful the foundation's been in this new endeavor overall, but I respect the effort. I'm all for enlivening poetry and getting it to reach the masses in a form more sophisticated than children's verse.

And I applaud Nix's concept of reminding progressives that art and politics are not oil and water, and I thoroughly enjoyed Hemon's quotes in her article, including:

There is a loss of intellectual self-confidence all across the board, for capitalism prefers a non-thinking consumer to a thinking citizen. The restoration of public space in blogosphere, I think, alleviates that problem. I hope it can also provide space for a resurgence of serious literature."

Here here!

More on how to support her at the end of the article, so check it out - especially if you're a progressive political blogger.

It ain't me, babe

I had to post again so quickly to differentiate my general position on this blog from the position of Richard Cohen in this Washington Post op-ed, which I found through a Shelf Awareness link.

I'm concerned for many things in this world, including the pace of our cultural discussions, but I am not against digitization across the board. Reading this op-ed, that becomes more clear than ever. It's a tragic piece of writing, as many of the commenters note (sometimes nastily). Poor Cohen is misguided. He's right that bookstores offer a special and important environment, of course, and I'm all for someone promoting independents, of course. But you can find books online, using recommendations from any number of people - reviewers on Amazon, bloggers, bookstore employees who keep blogs, etc... And then when you buy that book, you may have no idea where you got it, just like he doesn't know where he got some of his books. He tells an anecdote about a bookseller guiding him to Her Privates We - "The Hemingway blurb sold me." I don't even understand that, but the reality is, one could stumble upon this book just as easily online.

In fact, I went to the Texas Observer site for some reason recently, where I found this terrific article by Robert Leleux about gay East Texas novelist Edward Swift. I'm now reading Leleux's book, as noted in "Now reading" on the margin here, and have Swift's novel, Splendora, out from the library, as well, to chase Leleux's YA-like memoir (sorry!). All done online! (The TX Observer, btw? **** (four stars). The New Yorker of the South! You heard it here... )

But Cohen says other tragic things, like:
- "I understand that it's bulky and expensive to ship and that it entails the consumption of paper, which is probably not green, but then what is?" What is green? Really?
- "If I were younger, I'd go [to the bookstore] to pick up girls. I'd look over their shoulders and say, "Oh, 'The Prophet,' a book of eternal truths" -- or some such tripe. (It used to work.)" Ugh. I mean, honestly. UGH.
- "It is called the Kindle, which must be one of those focus group words. Sounds like the German word for children. Sounds like kind. Sounds innocent. Of course, it is not." Oh Dick, the drama!

There must be a middle road, or at least a more sophisticated manner in which to navigate the electronic age. My concern is valuing knowledge and art and their (or its) production. I love bookstores and books, yes, but I also welcome technology.

So it's clear now, right? I'm not a luddite, and I'm not naive, and I'm all for moving forward. AND I don't buy books with Hemingway blurbs, I don't care what some ol' bookseller says.

Books of Connecticut Past

Off to Connecticut this past weekend, and despite my partner's feelings to the contrary, I quite like the state in some ways. I'm troubled by the gross inconsistencies, sure, wherein cities are intensely dangerous and rundown while the countryside is comically bucolic and moneyed, but I also find things to like in both city and country. But alas, I'll let those who know better debate the finer points.

On Saturday, we left my sister's li'l oasis in Middlebury to hit three bookstores. The first one was the John Bale Book Co. in Waterbury. It looked so cool, but as it turns out, it's closed every Saturday in August due to building repairs. I was bummed. The cafe looked pretty nice, too.

It was not meant to be this time.



So we left the fine industrial big town/li'l city of Waterbury to find the next store on our list, which was about 1/2 way between Waterbury and New Haven. It was listed as a book barn, and my partner and I both love book barns (Especially Pleasant Street Books of Woodstock, VT)!

And the store was Whitlock Farm Bookstore in Bethany, CT - which has no website, hence this link. It was, indeed, a charming place, with a good collection of books. We arrived in the pouring rain, after driving down a charming country road. It turned out to be near perfect weather for browsing through dusty old books in a converted turkey barn, the rain providing a steady beat as we went aisle to aisle, corner to corner.


Having read his book, Rats, I picked up a copy of Robert Campbell's The Meadowlands: Wilderness Adventures at the Edge of the City, about that swampy area of New Jersey just outside of NYC that is protected but presumably polluted to all hell. I've become a fan of this urban nature writing, so I thought this would be a good addition to the library. My partner, an academic, figured out that a fellow leftist historian had just sold a large collection of leftist history books to the store, so he found a good few titles to buy as well as a number of books he would have happily purchased if he did not already have copies at home.


But there was more! Whitlock has a second barn - converted from a sheep barn, the woman told me - about 30 yards away, so we raced through the rain to that barn to find all the books under $5. What a great idea! Neither of us ended up purchasing anything from this barn, but I loved that it was there, and it was full of vacation reads and books you don't mind buying just in case, since they were cheap cheap cheap.

The rain had stopped by the time we left Whitlock, and we got back on the road for New Haven. We did not have Yale in mind in and of itself, as neither one of us felt the need to see another ivy league campus, but I did want to see the Labyrinth Books, the indie bookstore that I believe started in New Haven before opening in Princeton and in NYC, near Columbia (not necessarily in that order. Though I have since learned that the store where I bought the charming novel, The Boy Detective Fails, in NYC is no longer Labyrinth, but is now Book Culture.

The store in New Haven was fine - clean, easy to navigate, approachable employees. Rather quickly, we headed to the annex downstairs with remainders, and found some good stuff. It was a predictable selection - white leftist intellectual stuff - but my partner found another few books to purchase. I almost bought Barry Glassner's The Gospel of Food, but decided against it. It was a bit eerie because there were very few customers there on this Saturday afternoon, but the thunderstorm had just finished and it was Yale in the summer, so it made sense. It just gave the place a bit of a sterile feeling.

So that was Saturday afternoon. On Sunday, as we headed back to Boston, we stopped at a place I have always noticed and always wondered about, like so many drivers on I-84: Traveler Food and Books, or Restaurant, or Bookstore. I don't know the official name, but the place is pretty damn cool. It had a certain sense of books - as not disposable, but far from elite. Here, books are lying around everywhere, around the tables, as you walk in, outside the restroom - this is on top of the basement that offers a more traditional used-bookstore set-up. And they also had book bundles they had created, with themese like Bestsellers, Horror, YA, Romance... and you could get a dozen mass markets for $10. Terrific! Sadly, I found nothing to buy here, but I was hungry and a bit cranky after a weekend with the family. Then we went upstairs thinking we'd eat, but my partner had been there before and wasn't sold on the food, and the prices were not as cheap as one might imagine looking around. Add to this the fact that the two women working there refused to look up so as to seat us, and you can appreciate why we left. I should note, however, that my partner once again found some leftist book to buy, so we did give them some money. I'm anxious to go back in a more relaxed state of mind.

So a bookish weekend, proving Connecticut is more than rich white people, NYC suburbs, and pizza slices. I also discovered, upon coming back, a new Texan writer to read up on, but more on that in another post...


[please forgive the formatting mess - or blame blogspot!]

The Meaning of Reading in an Internet Age

If I were more on the ball, I would have linked to this Motoko Rich article, "Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?," from the New York Times earlier in the week. The good news is that this is apparently "the first in a series of articles that will look at how the Internet and other technological and social forces are changing the way people read." So more to come!

It's an interesting enough article that does a fine job providing the kind of surface of this debate, which they are framing as "digital versus print." The parents want the kids to read books, the kids want to spend all their time online. I appreciated the point that some kids, and even some adults, saw books as boring when you know there is a more interactive alternative, but as ever, I was troubled by the lack of control of online content.

“It takes a long time to read a 400-page book,” said Mr. Spiro of Michigan State. “In a tenth of the time,” he said, the Internet allows a reader to “cover a lot more of the topic from different points of view.”

Zachary Sims, the Old Greenwich, Conn., teenager, often stays awake until 2 or 3 in the morning reading articles about technology or politics — his current passions — on up to 100 Web sites.

“On the Internet, you can hear from a bunch of people,” said Zachary, who will attend Columbia University this fall. “They may not be pedigreed academics. They may be someone in their shed with a conspiracy theory. But you would weigh that.”

The difference between that 400 page book and a variety of websites, though, is that the book can be checked for accuracy, both in its content and in its presentation. I worry that this kid is giving equally weight to "someone in their shed" and experts. Are we really ready to dismiss credentials that easily?

Later, another teenager's habits are discussed:

When researching the 19th-century Chief Justice Roger B. Taney for one class, he typed Taney’s name into Google and scanned the Wikipedia entry and other biographical sites. Instead of reading an entire page, he would type in a search word like “college” to find Taney’s alma mater, assembling his information nugget by nugget.

Again, Wikipedia information is not always accurate. I'm not going to get too upset about the idea of piecing together information because this happened long before the internet, when people would do the same with books, but the sources are questionable, even unreliable, so the information is cheapened.

And I suppose this is what it comes down to: how much respect do people have for information if it's so readily available? It seems the value of this currency drops when it's provided by so many, some of whom may be putting out false information. Using a currency analogy also allows us to bring up the elitism of this view: am I suggesting only a privileged few should have access to and be able to provide information, to keep it's value high? I think everyone should have access, but not everyone should necessarily be providing information, or rather, we shouldn't trust anyone with information. If we don't continue to value education that turns people into experts, then we're heading into some fairly frightening uncertain times.

This article discusses testing internet navigation skills, and I can see some value in this. Kids are using it so often, why not test the skills so they do not waste time and trust bad sources of information? The Educational Testing Service developed an exam called iSkills, and of the 20,000 students who have taken it since 2006, "only 39% of four-year college freshmen achieved a score that represented 'core functional levels' in Internet literacy."

There's plenty of good crap to read online, but let's face it: 80% is personal opinion dressed as fact, or pornography. And I have no problem with opinionated writing or, for that matter, porn, but both should be enjoyed only when one knows enough to navigate them skillfully.

(I'm not sure how porn got tangled up in this point, but maybe it'll get the site more hits.)

PS - I just noticed a letter to the editor on nytimes.com from Mark Hussey, a professor of English from Pace University (whose name again calls to mind pornography), who makes this sound point:

As more and more people fail to “read,” it becomes easier for the powerful to hoodwink them because extended narratives disappear, to be replaced by the quick conclusions available in a Google search. We no longer see that we are repeating old narratives, no longer see how we got to where we are.

To engage with democratic processes — to participate in making difficult decisions or answering challenging questions (shall we go to war? whose fault is poverty?) — requires the ability to examine multiple perspectives, to hold conflicting ideas simultaneously in the mind.

That's in part what I meant to say... thanks!

Another Bullshit review

Sorry to have one on top of another, but here's my 4 sentence review of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn.

I tried this book a couple of years ago and ended up selling my copy after reading about 40 pages, but after meeting someone who worked with the author at Pine Street Inn, I gave it another shot. I'm glad I did, but Christopher rightly said that he found the narrator unreliable, and I'm afraid I found this as well. I was fascinated by the story of the author's father and his life, and I was horrified by the tragic early life of the author, but I found the author's clever asides and parenthetical allusions and occasional attempts at literary style (including a chapter in dialogue format, which I just had to skip) frustrating. He has his moments, and I particularly appreciated his handling of the inevitability of inheritance, as he comes to grip with his estranged father's delusions of being a writer as a writer himself, and it was an easy read, but it could have used perhaps one or two more edits to tighten it up, focus it, and really have it deliver, without MFA pretensions.

Outside of my 4-sentence review, let me just say how much I love the title and packaging. Fantastic!

The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu

My 4-sentence review

This novel started out a bit rocky: I was concerned the author wasn't being consistent with facts, and I thought descriptions were uneven or thin. Two things allow me to forgive this rockiness to an extent: 1) it's his first novel, and 2) the fragments come together, the slow pace evolves into a sweet story that, in fact, parallels the kind, tragic character of Sepha Stephanos, an Ethiopian refugee running a bodega in DC with little to no passion for life, a broken man, a man watching gentrification occur around him as an outsider, who lets things wash over him and convinces himself they don't impact him, and he can't impact them. This story is very current, and quiet, and gentle. I wouldn't heartily recommend it, but it is sweet, simple enough for any modern reader (16 and up maybe?) but slow enough to not please anyone looking for a fast delivery, and urban in a way you don't see as much, insofar as it's very much based in the city, the city as character, without being frenetic or fearful, without feeling the need to keep up with the pace, but just being in the moment as pieces of the past, of the terror inflicted on the character's family during the revolution (not entirely sure of the politics of all this...), of the desperation of professionals and the poor surround this man, not a hero but not a case to pity either.

Don't believe the hype

I wish this chair were cooler than it is:

When I saw it referenced, I had high hopes, but it looks terribly uncomfortable, no?

I had thought of posting today about how this WSJ article by Rebecca Smith proves capitalism's a failure (how electricity deregulation in TX, signed in by Bush as governor there, has failed miserably) and somehow relate that to publishing and books, but alas, it never happened.

So... just... gaze at this chair instead.

Soon, Christopher and I will start 4-sentence reviews of our books, as we remove them from the "Now Reading" sidebar item. I guess I'll come up with reaction to Dinaw Mengestu's The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears soon. So there's that to look forward to.

Until then, go find a book. Happy reading!

Further proof the Cape is just that much closer to heaven

I cannot wait, cannot wait, cannot wait to go here next month: it's The Bookstore & Restaurant in Wellfleet, MA, on Cape Cod, and it looks so cool I cannot stand it. It's just what it sounds like, selling used books and breakfast, lunch, AND dinner. They also have "jazz & blues that swings!" No cover - no minimum.

I can't believe we didn't go when we were on the Cape this last weekend.

I hope this ol' codger is still there!

Did I mention that the "late night tavern" is a bomb shelter? I know, I KNOW.

And yes, that is a foosball table. Bring it.

Books in newspapers 2.0 or something?

I'm a bit behind on this, but David Mehegan of the Boston Globe posted this blog entry about Lee Abram's memo regarding books sections in newspapers. It seems Senor Abrams is formerly of XM Satellite Radio and now the "chief innovation officer" of Sam Zell's Tribune Co. Mehegan quotes the memo's section on newspaper coverage of books, so I'll copy and paste:

"Books: Heard a conversation about how Book reporting doesn't generate revenue and may have to go away. WAIT! Maybe Book reviews and coverage are one of those things that don't generate revenue right now, BUT--are trademarks for newspapers and elicit high passion from readers. At XM, we had Opera channels. Low listenership...HIGH passion...AND--it was one of those things that even if people didn't listen or even like Opera, it was one of those things you had to have for completeness. Maybe Book sections in newspapers are just dated. Not the idea...but the look and feel. Maybe they're modeled after a book store in 1967 whereas we're in the Borders, Amazon, B&N era. Maybe they are too scholarly. Maybe they avoid genres like Christian books, Celebrity books and Popular novels, opting instead for reviews of the Philippine Socialist Movement in the 1800's. The point here is maybe Book sections need to be as dramatically re-thought as Borders re-thought retail. Not dumbing down--but getting in sync with the 21st Century mainstream book reader."

Mehegan kinda dismisses this quote, but I'm not ready to entirely. It's not written by someone who reads a whole lot, obviously, but there is some idea(s) to salvage perhaps. Mehegan's right, it's not a problem of newspapers reviewing obscure books per se. But first, I like the thinking that we should retain the sections even if they're not the most popular, a la the opera stations. And book folks like us are passionate and demanding when it comes to books. And they could use a revamp oft times to be punchier and livelier and engaged. Show covers, mention publishers, and provide a short column with some insider news, why don't you, newspapers? Make it cool to like books and want to know about authors. Make authors cool.

Mehegan is right about one thing: the Borders analogy wasn't the way to go. Sorry, Abrams, but that was the wrong direction. Instead, why not think of independent bookstores that are thriving by being active, different, and knowing their local customer base? Why use nasty, oversized, underfed Borders?

Again, the main clearly doesn't read much, but maybe we could use this quote to start a more promising conversation about mainstream culture's coverage of books and publishing. Maybe.

Lazy publishing days of summer

Ain't a whole lot happening in publishing these days, except vacations. So, in lieu of me actually thinking up some idea or concept and babbling about it, please enjoy this more intelligent post over at the Reading Experience, about why experimental novels are cool and people that complain about them are maybe a little bit lame.

Happy Bastille Day!

Not revolutionary, but working in ag

By now, most of us know all about CSAs - community supported agriculture. This NY Times piece by Susan Saulny doesn't exactly provide shocking new info, but it's a nice reminder of how well CSAs are doing, how nicely they've caught on. As she reports, "There were fewer than 100 such farms in the early 1990s, but in the last several years the numbers have grown to close to 1,500, according to academic experts who have followed the trend."

Once again, though, as I read this latest report on successful CSAs, I wonder about something similar working for bookselling. There are "often prohibitive costs" associated with independent bookstores and publishers, just as there are with small farms, so couldn't this solution be brought in? And it has been, as reported on this blog and everywhere else, with subscriptions like McSweeney's Book Release Club , CSP at South End Press, and the arrangement with investors in Houston, at the Brazos Bookstore.

But has there been a successful collective bookstore that is not a radical lefty, kinda ratty, possibly scary bookstore, that is clean and well lighted and thriving? (Sorry Lucy Parsons, I still patronize you when I can!) With Boston real estate, it's unrealistic to expect in the city, but maybe in an outpost. I don't know if it can work, but it seems there could be a whole in the independent literary community that includes authors, publishers, booksellers, etc...

CSAs took some time but are really catching on, so there's some hope. If farmers can do it...

Reading Culture, Africa-style

There are a few reasons I like this story by Wanjiru Waithaka from Africa Business Daily - not a paper I read regularly, admittedly, so I'll just admit I went through a Shelf Awareness link.


First, the writing is quite straight forward and unflashy, even a bit informal in spots: "Often, the four bookshop employees had to climb a ladder in order to access books in the confined space. Forget that now. " And also, it's good and interesting news coming out of Africa that is not about political corruption, poverty, disease, etc... I know all that is real and urgent, but I also know Africa is a fascinating, exciting continent full of thriving and even prosperous cultures, so here we have a story about this private rental book library in Nairobi. (I also have become increasingly interested in Nairobi in particular due to my friend Lynsey's research and blog.)

So there's all that, but there's also the actual business itself, this Book Villa.

It's a private library, where you buy a subscription. They have different levels in which you pay more to be able to take out more books at a time - a bit like Netflix. But wait, there's more! You can also then buy a book that you love for a discount, and sell novels (fiction only it seems) back to the store. AND they serve food and have lounge areas to eat and relax and read - something I've decided will never happen in Boston except in chain stores. Thanks, real estate market.

I'm conflicted because I don't want to see libraries privatized. I love libraries, I love going to the BPL, even with all the homeless people there. I've always loved them, even the crappy one in my Texas town growing up. But I like the idea of a collective "store," where you can borrow and buy and sell, a bit like Zipcar in a way - though that place ain't without its problems, with ongoing customer service issues and, as it turns out, a growth strategy that involves overpowering smaller car-sharing services across the country, from Oakland to Philly. All the same, I think I'll read this article about Robin Chase, the founder of Zipcar, on "the economy of sharing." For a sample: Owning assets in their entirety, like an entire car or swimming pool is an excessive way to spend money. "We feel ourselves in a state of scarcity because we feel we have to own the whole asset, and 'we just want a little piece of the benefits.'"

So my curiosity is piqued by this Book Villa, as I think through ways to support books and reading in a non-profit but sustainable way. And apparently, I'm not the only one who found this story interesting...

Coming alive for literature

My apologies for not posting in nearly a month. Okay, it hasn't been *quite* that long, but it's been too long. With a new job and other personal stresses, I just haven't been able to post.

But let's move on. I wanted to link up to this Washington Post article by famed publisher Jonathan Karp, which is one of these inside-baseball publishing rants. (Hopefully you don't have to be registered to read it, though I am registered with the Post, for free, so it may be the case.) It's a good consideration of the current state of publishing, and worth a read. He's talking about all the cheap, disposable books out there - neither of those adjectives being literal. He means the celebrity bios and quickie politco books, these books that will be sitting dusty in used bookstores in about a year, marked down to a dollar. And it's not just the books that bother him, but "the underlying cynicism of the people acquiring, publishing and selling them."

But his later point really hit me. Working at a small non-profit press, I assumed we couldn't pay enough, but I hoped others were. Then I read this:

I talk to literary agents and fellow publishers, they acknowledge an unarticulated truth about our business: Fewer authors are devoting more than two years to their projects. The system demands more, faster. Conventional wisdom holds that popular novelists should deliver one or two books per year. Nonfiction authors often aren't paid enough to work full-time on a book for more than a year or two.

So no one's paying more, really, or if they are, it's only with the understanding that the author will be hyperproductive. This isn't good for the author or the reader, of course, but reading Karp's words I realized that of course it was true.

Now Karp takes the optimistic approach, envisioning a sea change in which online access helps knock the big boys in publishing down. Indie presses will have access to readers as readily as giant corporate publishers, and a lot of the old standbys, like reference, will move online, so they will be taken out of the equation. This hyper competition will raise the bar so only publishers that can deliver the very best quality literature will survive, which will push dollars back into "research and development" - which in this case, he's interpreting as money for authors to work.

Once again, though, ain't this just falling back on the ol' virtues of capitalism? Aren't we hoping a free market will lead to the best for everyone, and hasn't that failed miserably over and over, as seen in the latest mortgage crash? I don't trust the internet to be the great equalizer. And I don't trust this notion of quality literature, as if no one defines it, it's just something readers know. Karp announces with what seems to me great confidence: "The novelists who are truly novel will thrive; the rest will struggle." Spoken like one incredible editor, I suppose.

I'd rather see brand loyalty, but maybe that's my own pipe dream. I'd like to see people seek out publishers they trust, rather than getting online and saying to the market, "okay, what do you got? C'mon, publish exactly what I want and I'll throw you some pennies." (Here's where I admit my unfortunate dissatisfaction with McSweeney's Book Release Club. I mean what the f(#$ is this?!!? I hate it and don't want it in my home, so my brand enthusiasm is currently, for them, at a low.)

So yes, despite that parenthetical, I'd like to see more strategic, considerate consuming of books, not this may-the-best-man-win mentality. Because what's to stop the crap Karp complains about from being just the thing that rises to the top and drowns out the wonderful independents he praises? Why does he assume these most novel novelists will be given the credit they deserve, just because of the internet?

We need more change than that. I would have liked to see him mention independent bookstores and librarians as another level of gatekeepers, invaluable for how they steer reading. I trust these folks more than the internet machine, don't you?