Pete Dexter's Missing Pages

I'm doing it again - getting excited enough about a book to write about it even before I finish it. This time it's Spooner, by Pete Dexter, a book that came from nowhere to catch me completely by surprise.

I was not unaware of Pete Dexter's work before I started Spooner, having read God's Pocket, Deadwood and Paris Trout, Mr. Dexter's first three novels. But none of those prepared me for the wit and humor on display in this new one. The writing in Spooner reminds me a lot of what John Irving produced at his peak, the kind of writing I've really missed. Warren Spooner is a special character, one not easily forgotten even though he is surrounded by equally memorable (and rather strange) people, including his mother and the stepfather who helped raise him. This is the story of a very troubled young man and his stepfather's refusal to give up on him - no matter what.

I knew this one was going to be fun when I spotted Pete Dexter's "note to early readers." Who could resist reading a book with a note that says, in part:

As far as I know, sometime in November of last year, the book you have in your hands was three years late. There are many reasons it was three years late, probably the most conspicuous being that it was once 250 pages or so longer than the version you hold, and it takes maybe half a year to write an extra 250 pages, and at least twice that to subtract them back out. I realize this leaves another year and a half unaccounted for, and all I can say about that, readers, is get in line. Whole decades are missing from my life, and I am pretty sure I wouldn't have it any other way.

[...]

...god knows how many of my greatest admirers have died while I've been diddling around with this thing - and so you can understand, perhaps, that in the end somebody had to put his/her foot down and say enough, and in the end somebody did. Be assured it wasn't me. I could have kept this up for another five years.

[...]

...you should keep in mind that you're reading somebody who is still missing 18 months of the last 36, and has no idea about 2006 at all.

The Advance Reading Copy of Spooner comes in at a whopping 466 pages, all of them worthy (at least through the 365 pages I've read to this point), but I wonder what those other 250 pages had to say about Spooner and Calmer. It's a shame that we'll never know.

We're All Doomed!

The New York Times and some San Francisco books stores believe the world, as they know it, is soon to end. According to them, the twin monsters known as WalMart and Glenn Beck are on the verge of killing off liberal thought. In the best tradition of Chicken Little, the Times has this to say about the discounting of a handful of bestselling hardcovers by WalMart, Amazon and Target:

So if this is all a scheme to control those influential bestsellers, just what would a future look like if, say, Wal-Mart became the last bookstore standing?

A visit to Wal-Mart stores in Oakland and Mountain View revealed a remarkably limited selection, a narrow worldview and a political bent that can be summed up best with two words: Glenn Beck. The Oakland Wal-Mart carried only 21 hardcover titles: Mr. Beck’s “Arguing With Idiots” (plus the audio book) and his holiday offering, “The Christmas Sweater”; “Going Rogue” by Sarah Palin; the book of Carrie Prejean, the dethroned Miss California, “Still Standing”; and titles from the Rev. Rick Warren and the television minister Joel Osteen.

[...]

Praveen Madan, co-owner of The Booksmith in San Francisco, disagrees with this fear. He said people would not start “reading this rightist propaganda literature instead of reading more worthy things” simply because the books cost less.

Mr. Madan said bookstores were more threatened by the recession and e-books than the current price war. Censorship? Not with the Internet selling virtually every book. He, Ms. Caldwell and Mr. Petrocelli — all independent bookstore owners — sell online, and even Wal-Mart’s Web site has a larger, more diverse inventory.

Mr. Madan, at least, is bringing a little common sense to the scare tactics of the Times. He knows that his Bay area customers are not likely to buy "rightist propaganda" as long as he continues to be their supplier of "leftist propaganda." Don't think so? Just read what another bookstore owner there has to say about the Palin book:

“It’s like buying porn,” he said. “People might want to buy it, but they don’t want to be seen buying it in the Bay Area.”

Lit

Reading Mary Karr’s latest memoir, Lit, is akin to catching up with an old friend over a cup of coffee or, perhaps in this case, over something a bit stronger than coffee. Karr’s earlier memoirs, The Liars’ Club (1995), which covered her childhood years, and Cherry (2000), the story of her adolescence and early adulthood, established for her a well deserved reputation as an exceptional memoirist. Now, some nine years after Cherry, Karr completes her story, for now, by revealing how she managed to overcome the odds to escape both the insular little town in which she grew up and the quirky upbringing she endured there.

One thing is certain; Mary Karr has not had an easy time of it. Growing up in a muggy, mosquito ridden little East Texas refinery town, one in which its residents breathe polluted air no matter from which direction it blows (as I well remember), she was raped by a teenaged neighbor when she was eight years old. Her father, a heavy drinking refinery worker, loved her dearly but was not exactly a role model for his daughters. Her seven-times-married, artistic mother was a bit of a desperado in spirit who struggled with a tendency toward full-blown psychotic episodes throughout much of her life.

As she so frankly details in Lit, Mary Karr is a combination of the good and the bad components of both her parents. Always a bit of a rebel at heart like her mother, she went into the world resenting those born to wealth as much as her father disliked them, taking pride that she could at least outdrink those who “had been born on third base” but who believed “they hit a home run.” And outdrink them, Mary did - all the way to the point of her own debilitating struggle with alcoholism, a struggle that would steal years of her life and ultimately destroy the marriage that produced her son.

It was a close thing, but Mary managed to save herself, and she accomplished it by doing something so completely out of character for her that it still surprises her. She turned to prayer and organized religion despite a lifetime spent scoffing at both. Despairing and suicidal, she committed herself to what she calls “The Mental Marriott” and the timeout there that would ultimately lead her to place her future in the hands of God, the possibility of whose existence she previously had not been able to take seriously. Lit is a word of several meanings when it comes to Mary Karr. It can be a reference to her success in the literary world or it can be used to describe the drunken state in which she spent so many of her waking hours for so many years. Finally, and most hopefully, it also describes the religious experience that saved Mary Karr’s life when she finally “saw the light.”

Fans of Karr’s previous memoirs will be pleased with this inspirational addition to her story, but Lit also works well for those reading her for the first time, so well that I suspect the new Karr readers will now want to turn to the first two books.

Rated at: 5.0

(Advance Reading Copy provided by Harper)

Across the Endless River

Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, born in 1805 during the Lewis and Clark expedition, is one of the most unique figures in American history. The son of a French fur trader, Toussaint Charbonneau, and Sacagawea, the Indian woman who played such a prominent role in the expedition, Baptiste was carried on his mother’s back all the way to the Pacific Ocean. He was born with a foot in two different worlds and, before he was twenty years old, the young man would find himself visiting Europe’s major cities as the five-year guest of amateur natural historian, Duke Paul of Wurttemberg.

In Across the Endless River, Thad Carhart recounts how the two men met and imagines what Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau might have experienced during his half-decade living among Europe’s minor royalty. As Carhart points out in his “Author’s Note,” while no record of Baptiste’s European years exists today, some details of Duke Paul’s history during those same years are known. Carhart largely uses what we know about Duke Paul to frame Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau’s European adventure. Baptiste would have been, for instance, instrumental in assembling and cataloging the Duke’s huge North American natural history collection and would have witnessed the Duke’s arranged marriage (a marriage very much to the Duke’s economic advantage) and his equally arranged separation after the birth of his son.

Across the Endless River clearly contrasts the differing lifestyles Baptiste experienced before he turned twenty. In America, as a boy, he moved between his Mandan village and Captain Clark’s St. Louis home, and learned the skills that would allow him to make his living as a frontier guide for Europeans looking for adventure and fortune. He was able to converse in several Indian languages and is known to have also spoken English, French, German and Spanish, a skill that allowed him to move relatively easily within whatever world he found himself.

One can only imagine, of course, what Baptiste thought of the different cultures he experienced and this is the real theme of Across the Endless River. What would a man raised in the wilds of a young country think of the decadent lifestyle of European royalty? What would he think of the servant class and its relationship to the wealthy? Would he relate to the servants or would he learn to reflect the attitudes of the Duke and the Duke’s royal family? Would he have sexual adventures in Europe and who might those couplings involve – prostitutes, servants, members of the royal family? Would he be treated as a mere curiosity in Europe or as an equal?

The possibilities are endless for a man caught between two, so different worlds, and Thad Carhart makes the most of them. The book does suffer a bit because of the contrast between its fast paced early sections and the much slower pace at which the book’s European sections move. Much of Baptiste’s time in Europe is spent idly traveling from one royal home to another where little more than another banquet or ball ever seems to occur. This may perfectly reflect the lifestyle of Europe’s “rich and famous” of the day but even Baptiste grew bored with it and it gives the book an uneven feel. In the end, though, Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau is a fascinating character and it is great fun to speculate along with the author about what he was really up to from 1824 to 1829.

Rated at: 3.5

(Review Copy provided by Doubleday)

City of Bones

When a dog returns to its waiting owner with a human bone clutched in its jaws, Detective Harry Bosch inherits one of the coldest of cases, the 20-year-old murder of a young boy who was never reported missing. Bosch has seen everything during his long career with the LAPD but he is still capable of feeling a sense of outrage about the murders he investigates for the city. And what he learns about the short life of this young murder victim will hit him particularly hard.

It soon becomes obvious that the boy lived not just a short life, but a very painful one. There is evidence of numerous breaks in the bones recovered by the police and some of the fractures appear to have been suffered when the boy was only two years old. Bosch knows there is a killer out there who believes that he will never be caught - and that the killer is likely to be one of the boy's parents. What he does not know is the boy’s name or who his parents are.

There can be no doubt that Michael Connelly is a master of the police procedural and much of City of Bones is textbook police procedural. The reader is intimately exposed to the time-consuming and tedious process that is a police investigation, including the dozens of false leads that have to be worked before the real ones can be followed. Detective Bosh and his partner, Jerry Edgar, are determined that, against all odds, they will bring this boy’s killer to justice and, as one piece of the puzzle after another slowly begins to fall into place, they seem to be getting there. But at what cost to the boy’s family and to the detectives, themselves?

City of Bones is a superb procedural but what saves it from the possibility of becoming tedious are side-plots involving two women well known Harry Bosch. One is the egotistical coroner he is forced to work with, a woman so determined to become a national celebrity that she has her own documentary cameraman follow her around from case to case. The other is an overage police rookie who manages to attach herself to both Bosch and the case he is working. Between these complications, the internal politics of the LAPD and the 20-year-old murder case, Bosch has plenty on his plate.

What longtime Harry Bosch fans will remember most about City of Bones, however, is likely to be the revelation Harry makes at the very end of the story.

Reader, beware: Don’t go there first.




Rated at: 3.5

A Quick Personal Note

I have been down with the flu since Friday and I've spent more time sleeping than reading or doing anything else. Thankfully, I'm feeling a bit better this afternoon and I'm hoping that things gradually return to normal for me over the next few days.

I've actually been able to finish two books since Thursday but I can't imagine writing anything about them right now that would even come close to making sense. The good news is that I've caught up on sleep (thanks to the medicine) and lost a few pounds. The bad news is that I caught the flu on my third vacation day and I'll be way behind when I return to the office early next week. At this point, I'll consider this a moral victory if I can keep some of those lost pounds from returning - you have to take your wins where you find them.

Bookshop Santa Cruz Is "Just Plain Nutz"

The bookstore from which I would never buy a book is at it again. Remember this from July 16,2008? Well, here we go again. This time it's Sarah Palin and her new memoir that are being ridiculed by the business-plan-challenged management of Bookshop Santa Cruz. Not surprisingly, the Santa Cruz Sentinel is there to cheer them on:

By golly, a downtown bookstore has found a way to poke fun at former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and draw attention to her new book released this week, "Going Rogue: An American Life." Several copies of Palin's book, about her experience as John McCain's running mate in 2008 and life in Alaska, are stacked on the checkout counter at Bookshop Santa Cruz next to a bowl filled with small bags of walnuts -- a 2-for-1 special of sorts. Customers who buy Palin's book, priced at $29 in hardcover, also get a free bag of "Just Plain Nutz."

[...]

However, down the street at Borders, customer Marc Schwartz laughed at the Palin stunt, but turned the joke on Bookshop Santa Cruz.

"For them, it's hypocrisy. They're using Palin to line their pockets," Schwartz said. "They like capitalism as long as they have a monopoly on it."

Bookshop Santa Cruz isn't worried about offending many customers. So far only one book has been sold.

"We know some customers have to buy it because it's on some uncle's wish list," Coonerty-Protti said. "But it's not a big seller for the Santa Cruz market. We haven't had a lot of interest in selling the book anyway."

Why would any conservative-minded reader patronize a bookstore that believes he is an idiot? Obviously if Bookshop Santa Cruz has only sold one copy of a book that has already sold 300,000 copies elsewhere, the answer is: they don't patronize it. I admit to getting a bit of a chuckle from the fact that this bookstore is located in a state on the brink of financial collapse and in search of a bailout from the rest of us. Does that tell you a little about who is "Just Plain Nutz"?

(No, I am not a fan of Sarah Palin and will not be reading her book. I am, though, intrigued by the utter stupidity of some businesses and those who "manage" them.)

First Impressions of the Sony PRS-600 Reader Touch Edition

I decided to purchase the Sony PRS-600 Reader Touch Edition this morning and I've been playing around with it all day. I was relieved to see that the Sony salesperson was familiar with the offer (although I was the first such transaction handled in this store) and that everything was set up to make it all go pretty quickly. I was given $75 off the price of a new reader for turning in my old one.

I was able to get my new reader "authorized" by the Sony e-book store and had all of my e-books on the new reader within an hour of having arrived back home.There were 113 e-books on the old reader and I had quite a few others in formats not supported by my old PRS-500. So after uploading the 113 books I knew would work, I started in on the ones in .txt and PDF format - and they all seem to work just fine on the new reader.

I hated to see my old PRS-500 being carried to the backroom but after playing around with the new version in the store for a few minutes I knew I would never be happy with the old one again. There are just too many new features - the very ones I've been wanting to see for a long time. I'm not saying that the PRS-600 is perfect, because it is not.

There are definite pluses and minuses:

Pluses:

1. Handles multiple formats, including epub, .txt, PDF, and Word documents
2. Offers five font sizes to help overcome formatting differences
3. Allows for "highlighting" and written notes on book pages
4. Has slots for Sony Memory Stick and SD cards
5. Touch Screen makes turning pages quick and natural
6. Notes can be written by hand, using a stylus, or by using the pop-up keyboard
7. Internal Memory can hold approximately 350 books
8. Extended battery life of 2 week or about 7500 page-turns (Old reader was good for only 1400 page-turns)
9. Battery takes charge much more quickly than the one in the PRS-500
10. Pop-Up Dictionary that defines any word double-tapped by stylus
11. Works with library e-books downloaded from public library systems
12. Screen Orientation can be switched to horizontal to better read certain PDF documents


Minuses:

1. Touch Screen means that the "ink" appears a bit lighter than in the old reader
2. Touch Screen makes the new reader more susceptible to glare problems
3. Lacks WiFi connection to purchase and download new material
4. Sony e-book store is still clunky and slow, requiring lots of patience

I'm happy with what I've experienced so far and I hope that I feel the same way two weeks from now. I have placed about 140 books on the reader, mostly classics, and have "borrowed" my first e-library-book (although the choices seem very poor here in Harris County, Texas). I don't use the reader for music or pictures so I won't be testing those aspects of the PRS-600. I can't imagine ever having such an urgency to get my eyes on an e-book that I'll miss the WiFi option so that won't be much of a minus for me. At this point, the only thing that has bugged me at all is the glare I get in certain lighting situations.

E-books will never replace physical books for me; they are just not the same thing. But I suspect that I'll be reading more of the classics because of this new reader and I'll be more likely to accept review copies in e-book format now. And, frankly, my wife is thrilled with the idea that the rate at which physical books come through the front door might slow down a bit. Maybe that's the answer - buy physical copies of books I want to keep and electronic copies of ones that are more disposable. We'll see.

Sony Wants to Sell Me a New Reader

Sony may have just sold me a new e-book reader - with an assist from Kristy who alerted me to an email offer she received from Sony yesterday. It turns out that, as far as its e-book store goes, Sony is killing the e-book format that works on my PRS-500 reader. That means that I can no longer get new content for the reader from Sony.

Sony offers two workarounds, however, and both of them are tempting. Option number 1 involves sending my PRS-500 back to Sony for about two weeks so that they can do a free firmware update that would allow my reader to use the new format. Option number 2 offers me either $50 or $75 for my old reader if I buy one of the two new Sony readers.

I'm seriously considering the PRS-600, the "Reader Touch Edition." What intrigues me is that the reader claims to work perfectly on PDF files, Word documents, other text files, the ePub format, and others. It also offers access to all the non-copyrighted Google books out there and to library systems that make e-books available to patrons. It seems to cover all the bases for me. Admittedly, if I understand correctly, there is no WiFi access for ordering new books from Sony or another bookstore but that is not an option I would use often anyway. No big deal.

The numbers look like this:

I spent $300 in 2005 for the PRS-500. Sony is willing to give me back 75 of those dollars if I give them another $300 for a PRS-600, leaving me with $525 invested in Sony readers. Now, of course, I've used the original reader for over 4 years so I've probably gotten my money's worth out of it already. (I'm a CPA and I just can't help running the numbers in my head - bad habit.)

I'm off the rest of the week, and I will probably run up to the big Sony Store at my local mall tomorrow. Can I resist the temptation? Should I even try? I suspect it's hopeless.

Last Night in Twisted River

Last Night in Twisted River is not quite the comeback John Irving needed to make readers forget, or to forgive, the dreary Until I Find You, but it is a giant step in the right direction. One of things Irving has always done best is to create remarkably detailed and realistic settings in which to place his larger-than-life characters and he uses that skill to great effect here. Irving also touches on so many of his familiar themes (wrestling, single-parent homes, New England locales, sudden loss of those closest to you, and bears, among them) that his longtime readers will recognize the territory.

This story of the Dominic Baciagalupo family, spanning more than five decades and three generations, begins in the remote logging environment of 1950s New Hampshire, very near the Canadian border. Dominic, known to everyone in the logging camp as “Cookie,” is in charge of feeding all those involved in the formidable task of harvesting the riches of the New Hampshire forests. He has lived alone above the cookhouse with his twelve-year-old son Danny ever since losing his wife to the tragic river accident that claimed her so suddenly one winter night. Dominic, having experienced or witnessed numerous crippling, if not always fatal, accidents in Twisted River over the years, knows that he lives in “a world of accidents” and he lives in dread of the next moment someone close to him will be snatched away.

Even in his wildest imagination, however, Dominic could not have imagined the accident that would force him to flee Twisted River with his son in a desperate attempt to keep the two together. Nor could he have imagined that what happened in the cookhouse that night would haunt Dominic and Danny Baciagalupo for the next fifty years. The pair may have left Twisted River behind forever but they still had to reckon with a man who wanted revenge so badly that he would never stop searching for them. Over five decades, and three generations, Dominic and Danny would live in several states and Canada, moving every time their tormentor seemed to be catching up with them.

Dominic and Danny are lucky to have the help of their old friend, Ketchum, a giant of a man who still lives near enough Twisted River to keep an eye on the man filled with such hate for Dominic and his son. Several times over the decades, Ketchum convinces Dominic and Danny that it is again time for them to abandon their new life in favor of avoiding the man who wants to see them dead. Several geographic moves will culminate finally in Danny and his father living in Toronto where Dominic works in a popular restaurant while Danny pursues his career as the bestselling author Danny Angel.

Ketchum, Dominic and Danny are not the only memorable characters in Last Night in Twisted River, however. The book is filled with women that are large in every sense of the word and each of them plays a significant role in the lives of the Baciagalupo men. Among others, there are “Injun Jane,” Dominic’s one-time lover who weighs in at more than 300 pounds; “Six-Pack Pam,” Ketchum’s lover who is large enough to intimidate most men with malice on their minds; and “Lady Sky,” the naked skydiver who literally falls into Danny’s lap.

Last Night in Twisted River is an intriguing story but there is a bit of a problem in the way that Irving tells it. At over 550 pages in length, its repetitiousness becomes tedious, especially, but not limited to, the chapters following the book’s climax. Too, numerous pages toward the very end of the book are used as a political rant of sorts (an extremely mean-spirited and vulgar rant, at that) against all things Republican, conservative, George W. Bush, or religious right. Similar, but more concise, expressions made earlier in the book fit the voices of the characters making them, but one feels that the rant at the end of the book is there strictly for the benefit of Irving, not his characters. It makes for a jarring change of tone and, because it occurs so close to the end, it is what some are likely to remember most about the book.

Rated at: 3.0

(Advance Reading Copy provided by Random House)

Two Chunksters at a Time

I am reaching the end of one of those rare weeks for me - 7 days during which I have not finished a single book. Not one. I should have seen this coming but it still feels strange. It's not that I haven't been reading at pretty much my normal pace for the last week or so but I started two books on the same day that, between them, total right at 1,000 pages. Now, almost 800 pages of reading later, I'm only now approaching the end of the two novels.

One of the books I've been immersed in for the last few days is the new John Irving novel, Last Night in Twisted River, a 553 page saga that covers three generations of one family over a period of 50 years. I'm over 500 pages in now and still feel ambivalent about the book but Irving has reminded me of one storytelling technique I have always found interesting.

In this story, Irving spends several hundred pages building suspense about the threat that two of his main characters are trying to escape. The years pass - the threat refuses to go away - and it seems more and more likely that time will finally force a deadly confrontation. When it finally happens, Irving sets the scene in great detail and brings the suspense to its peak level. Then, just when the action is about to begin, he does something unexpected by revealing the end result of the confrontation in what at first seems like just a descriptive throwaway phrase at the beginning of a sentence.

It takes a moment for the words to sink in but when they do the reader is stopped in his tracks. Irving spends the next dozen or so pages describing what happened but the reader already knows how the scene ends and is reading from a whole different perspective than the one most often offered in thrillers (not that Last Night in Twisted River can be called a thriller). I find this to be a very effective way to handle suspense and tension in a novel and I've come to prefer it to the more straightforward, linear approach to storytelling.

I wish I could think of other specific examples of this approach but, even if I could, they would probably be "spoilers" and I couldn't use them. In fact, I can already see that reviewing Last Night in Twisted River is going to be a tricky.

Man Hopes to Donate 100,000 Books Before His Time Runs Out

I was hoping to find something today that would be a nice contrast to yesterday's downer about the 12 thieves caught stealing $140,000 worth of textbooks from several Maryland libraries. I never expected to find something as perfect as this story, however.

According to Kentucky.com, sixty-four-year-old Jim Davis of Sheperdsville, KY, is in a desperate race against the clock to collect and donate 100,000 books to Kentucky libraries before his personal battle with cancer makes it impossible for him to continue.

...he was touched by a Kentucky Educational Television program about two months ago decrying the disproportionate number of high school dropouts in some Eastern Kentucky counties as well as the increase in teen pregnancies and soaring use of illegal drugs.

"If we don't do something now to keep kids in school and give them a good education, this whole country is going to hell in a hand basket," Davis said.

He contacted Bullitt County Public Schools and churches in that area, asking people to help him collect 100,000 books for libraries that needed them. He asked for textbooks, reference books, children's books, anything people had on their shelves collecting dust but not enhancing minds.

[...]

Davis saw that KET documentary while recovering from rounds of radiation and chemotherapy for cancers found in his brain, lungs and hip in January.

"The doctors gave me a year to 18 months to live," he said.

But the treatment sent the cancers into remission, he said. Follow-up CT and PET scans, however, found cancer in his neck, lower spine and stomach, he said.

[...]

Davis estimates he and others have collected 50,000 books. That's halfway to his goal.

Although he plans to be in Powell County on Monday, "I'm not doing this for that," he said. "This is something I can do before I'm gone."

A lot of people, including the Barnes & Noble folks, are working to help Mr. Davis meet his goal but he's only half way there. If anyone out there is interested in getting books to Kentucky on his behalf, please call (502) 428-6029 for details.

12 Book Thieves Hit Libraries for $140,000

College and community libraries in Maryland have lost $140,000 worth of textbooks to twelve thieves looking to make a quick buck by reselling the books to area college students.

WBAL-TV, Baltimore, has the story:

The investigation into the thefts began in July when University of Maryland, Baltimore County police discovered a large number of the books in a car. The barcodes were removed from many of them. UMBC police said they believe that more than $54,000 worth of books were stolen from the campus library.

[...]

Their cases were supposed to go to court in September, but a judge dismissed three of them, claiming that police didn't have probably cause to stop and search the car.

UMBC police then shared their information, and the book theft investigation continued in other areas until the indictments were announced Tuesday.

[...]

"Ironically, there were books on ethics and philosophy, but largely, the bulk of the books were in the nursing field and the sciences, like chemistry," said Mary Eilerman, HCC's Chief of College Security.

Charging documents showed that some of those who were charged are family members.

According to the story, these guys were checking out dozens of books at a time, near the 75-book limit that some of the libraries allow its patrons. Maybe it's me, but why should anyone be allowed to check out 75 books at a time? Are there really enough books in the library system to allow one person to walk away with 75 of them? We all know how slow some people are to return books - are they even allowed to renew 75 books for additional time?

I know there are librarians out there who see this kind of thing all the time. Please help me understand why any library would allow such a large number of books to walk out the door with one person. I don't get it.

What Would You Give Up to Keep Reading?

Kathleen, over at Boarding in My Forties, asks an interesting question today.

"What would you give up to keep reading?"

Like Kathleen, I've been a reader as long as I can remember, always carrying a spare book around for those unexpected moments when I can sneak in a few extra minutes of reading time. I've come to the point that I actually see long lines and traffic jams as little bonus reading opportunities - and I'm willing to bet that's worked wonders on my stress level and blood pressure.

So what would I give up to keep reading? Well, that's a no-brainer for me. I would give up any hobby that intrudes on my daily reading - but that's not as easy as it sounds because I'm already so conscious of time wasting activities that I have very little fat left to cut. For instance, I found a way of compressing even my limited television watching hours by recording almost every single program I watch and then zipping through the commercials. Since every 60 minutes of television programming includes more than 20 minutes of commercials, this really saves a lot of time I can devote to reading.

But I am an avid fan of Houston sports teams - and can't bring myself to record football or baseball games - so I lose a few hours a week to television commercials that way. And, even though I've been a baseball fan almost as long as I've been a reader, if it came down to a choice between giving up reading or giving up my beloved Astros, it would be sorry, boys, but you can play ball without me. That might not impress non-sports fans, but I suspect some of you know how serious a reader that means I am.

What about you guys? What would you give up to keep reading?

Nibble & Kuhn

Derek Dover is fast approaching a career crossroad all too familiar to young attorneys and accountants everywhere. In Derek’s particular case, Boston law firm Nibble & Kuhn is considering him for promotion to partner– and, as is usually the case, only three things can happen. He will be made partner; he will not be made partner and will have to resign himself to years of grunt-work for those who do reach that level; or he will be asked to leave the firm.

Derek, until recently, believed that his chances of being the one chosen to join the firm’s inner circle were pretty good. But things change, and he is finding out just how quickly that can happen. Derek has mixed emotions about the make-or-break case he suddenly inherits, one in which he is to represent seven young boys who claim to have gotten cancer from the industrial polluter located near their neighborhood swimming hole. He knows the case is inherently weak, and he is astonished at the poor preparation done by the partner who handled the case prior to dumping it in his lap, but he knows that winning the case is vital to the future of Nibble & Kuhn. He also knows that winning this case will almost certainly land him the partnership he wants so badly.

And then there is Maria Parma, one of Nibble & Kuhn’s newest and lowest ranking associates, with whom Derek is madly in love. The good news is that Maria is so in love with Derek that she can barely keep her hands off him even in the office. The bad news is that she is engaged to someone she has known all her life and cannot even imagine how she might break off that engagement without devastating the two families.

Nibble & Kuhn is a lighthearted look at a law firm gone mad. Despite the failings of the firm’s overall leadership and the despicable nature of the man at the very top, David Schmahmann finds enough humor in Derek Dover’s situation to make this one fun to read. His story is, of course, absurd. Or is it? Is justice, as dispensed by the American judicial system, really nothing more than a role of the dice? Is it all a matter of which side can place the highest number of gullible jurors in the jury box? O.J. Simpson, anyone?

Despite its serious (and disturbing) message, Nibble & Kuhn is filled with smile-out-loud moments as Derek and Maria struggle with their own relationship while trying not to look like total incompetents in front of a judge who recognizes the absurdity of the case they are representing in his courtroom. I think readers of Nibble & Kuhn will care about what happens to Derek and Maria and that they will be pleased with the book’s satisfying, if somewhat predictable, ending.

Rated at: 4.0

(Review Copy provided by Academy Chicago Publishers)

Just What Is It about Sarah Palin?

Just what is it about Sarah Palin that makes her such a threat to her opponents (both outside and inside her own political party)? Seldom has a politician seemingly come from nowhere to generate so much hate, disgust, love, and enthusiasm in the political class of America.

The Christian Science Monitor book blog has a nice summary of all the Palin book activity scheduled for this month:

Being released today is “Sarah from Alaska: The Sudden Rise and Brutal Education of a New Conservative Superstar” by Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe. The authors are reporters (Conroy is a digital journalist for CBS News and Walshe was a reporter and producer at Fox News) who were “embedded” on the Palin vice-presidential campaign trail.

[...]

On Nov. 12 comes “The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star” by Matthew Continetti. Continetti is an associate editor at The Weekly Standard magazine. The book’s subtitle probably tells you all you need to know about the book’s political orientation but in case you’re interested, Karl Rove calls it “a tough, revealing look at how the bias or habits of liberals in the media led them to assault a political figure who shared neither their values nor background.”

[...]

On the 17th, just as Palin’s own book hits bookstores, readers will also be able to pick up “Going Rouge: An American Nightmare,” a collection of essays pulled together by two senior editors at Nation magazine. Here, again, the subtitle probably tells you all you need to know about the book’s angle on Palin, but if you need another clue, consider the fact that its publisher, OR Books, has a self-described “distinctive progressive edge.”

To make this all more confusing, however, is the fact that another “Going Rouge” is being published on the same day. That “Going Rouge” is a satirical coloring book by Julie Sigwart and Micheal Stinson who identify themselves as “longtime liberal activists.”

Longer range, journalist Joe McGinniss (”The Selling of the President,” “Fatal Vision”) is currently researching his own unauthorized Palin biography.

Personally, I don't get it. On the one hand, Palin's opponents seem so terrified of her potential that they are desperate to destroy her as quickly as possible and, on the other, her fans see her as the best possible chance to save conservatism. Perhaps it's because I'm conservative on fiscal matters and fairly liberal on social issues that I understand neither her appeal nor the anger directed her way.

One thing for sure: book publishers have to be loving her right about now.

Me and My Antique Sony E-book Reader

I normally only use the Sony reader when I'm on a trip during which it is impractical to carry several books with me and, since I don't travel at nearly the pace I used to, my PRS-500 has been stashed out of sight for the last several months.

But this afternoon I decided to take a look at it through today's eyes rather than through the eyes of a 2005 purchaser of the technology. And, you know, this is not a bad little gizmo. Admittedly, it doesn't offer the ability to wirelessly purchase e-books from the Sony bookstore or to download any of the "million" books made available by Google. (I have been expecting to hear that Sony has upgraded the PRS-500 software to make the Google books compatible with the reader but I'm now starting to doubt that will ever happen.)

This Sony e-book reader (Sony's original version) is relatively lightweight and it has room for well over 100 books on its hard drive plus an SD card slot that makes the reader's capacity almost limitless. So this antique reader (almost three years old now) still has its uses.

What does irk me is the poor job the reader does on PDF documents and e-books not "published" by Sony explicitly for the PRS-500. The resolution on those books is very poor, so light a shade of gray on white that it is almost impossible to read them. Couple that problem with the small font displayed by the reader - and the reader's inability to adjust the font of these particular books - and the third-party books are just about worthless to owners of this Sony device. I have noticed, though, that books saved as text files are legible when displayed on the reader - just very ugly because of the limited formatting offered by text files.

This was my first visit to the Sony e-book store in a long while and I was happy to see that some very much needed cosmetic changes have been made to the store's appearance. Unfortunately, the electronic bookstore still has a clunky feel to it and it is not all that easy to move around the site with any degree of confidence. I always feel lost there. I did notice that book downloads are quicker than I remembered them to be - and, since I had to download again all 57 of the Sony e-books I own, that was nice to see. Prices are competitive with those of Amazon and Sony offers special prices on several books, even to offering about ten of them free and several others for only a buck.

I understand why Sony is spending all its time and money on the new readers. The future of the company depends on getting new products from the pipeline into the stores. I get it. But why can't Sony throw me and the other thousands of early-adapters a bone by upgrading the primitive software of the PRS-500? I buy a lot of Sony products as it is, but they could really lock my business in by showing me that they care enough about me as a past customer to keep my $300 investment working as long as possible.

Come on, Mr. Sony, give a guy a break.

Ghetto Lit - Good, Bad, Embarrassing?

Juan Williams, one of my favorite political commentators and writers, has an article in the Wall Street Journal on what he calls Ghetto Lit. I've often wondered how serious black authors feel about having their books housed in their own little ghettos in bookstores all across America. You know what I'm talking about, those little sections labeled "Black Literature" and the such. I assume that black authors sell more books to African-American readers that way, but I also believe that they lose many more sales to white and hispanic readers - a net loss to them and to their publishers.

Ghetto Lit, admittedly, is a whole other thing. From what I've personally seen of it, and from what Mr. Williams has to say about the genre, perhaps those writers are lucky to get their books inside a bookstore at all.

As the author of books on black history and black culture, I was disappointed but not surprised. To see a working-class 30-ish black woman with a book these days is almost always to find her reading a selection from the fastest-growing segment of African-American letters, a genre called "ghetto lit" or "gangster lit."

The best that can be said about these books is that they are an authentic literary product of 21st-century black America. Black women are much bigger readers than black men, and gangster lit dominates the best-seller list in Essence Magazine, which calculates rankings using sales at black-owned bookstores nationwide. Recent titles shout out to the hard, fast lifestyle: "Bad Girlz 4 Life," "Still Hood" and "From the Streets to the Sheets."

[...]

The black imagination as revealed in gangster lit is centered on the world of drug dealers— "dough boys" who are heavy with drug money—and the get-rich-quick rappers and athletes who mimic the druggie lifestyle. And there are lots of "ghetto-fabulous" women, referring to themselves as bitches, carrying brand-name handbags and wearing big, gaudy jewelry. Attitude and anger are everything. The dispiriting word "nigger" is used freely by black characters talking about one another.

[...]

At least two black-owned publishing houses have been created as a result of the growing market for these books. Large established publishers, including Simon & Schuster, Kensington Books and St. Martin's, are on the bandwagon. They created "urban fiction" divisions after realizing that the grass-roots demand for these books was strong enough that authors were making money with vanity-press printing and hand-to-hand sales at black beauty salons, over the Internet and even from car trunks.

[...]

Not only the best but the worst that can be said about these books is they are an authentic literary product of 21st-century black America. They are poorly written, poorly edited and celebrate the worst of black life.

[...]

It is hard to believe, but legendary black writers telling stories about the full scope of the black experience, from Langston Hughes to Toni Morrison, are being pushed aside. Inspirational books on black history or the civil-rights struggle are now for the classroom only. Even libraries now stock gangster-lit novels, because they bring new readers in the door.

Mr. Williams obviously feels very strongly that this kind of writing is harmful to the community it is targeting - and I just as strongly agree with him. The other word that comes to mind is embarrassing. Come on, guys, you can do better than this. Is this really the way you want to represent yourself to the world. Shame on you, writers of this trash. Shame on you.

Now This Is Just Silly

We've talked about the limited price war on books being fought by Walmart, Target and Amazon but what happened today turns an idea that already is dangerous to publishing into one that is simply absurd. John Grisham's new book, Ford County, seems to have helped set off a feeding frenzy.

This New York Times piece does its best to explain what happened yesterday:

At first, Amazon appeared to be the low-price player when it extended its $9 price tag to three hardcover books that were officially released Nov. 3. Amazon had originally offered that price in response to price-cutting by Wal-Mart on its Web site for preorders of 10 titles that included the three that were released Tuesday: “Ford County” by John Grisham, “The Lacuna” by Barbara Kingsolver and “Kindred in Death” by J. D. Robb. As of Tuesday morning, Amazon still had those titles priced at $9 while Wal-Mart, which had offered them on pre-order at $8.98, and Target, which had offered pre-orders for $8.99, had raised their prices. At Walmart.com, for example, “Ford County” was selling for $12, while “The Lacuna” was $13.50. At Target.com, “The Lacuna” was on sale for $18.89 and “Kindred in Death” was $17. But by late morning, Amazon had raised its prices — “The Lacuna” and “Kindred in Death,” for example, were offered for $13.50 — while Walmart.com had cut them again.

I think the three wheeler-dealers are right on the brink of ticking off some of the customers they're so busy trying to attract. When book prices start going up and down like Wall Street stock certificates there are going to be some who feel they have been cheated by buying in when they did. They are going to experience buyer's remorse and wish they had bought two hours earlier or one hour later. And they are going to blame Walmart, Target and Amazon.

This is getting strange but I suppose they Big Three are loving the publicity so much that stranger decisions may yet be coming.

Jackson

Few would argue that American workers are facing a crisis of confidence today - or as T.P. Jones puts it, a “loss of certainty.” That jobs are disappearing is beyond dispute; layoffs and terminations can be easily counted and their staggering number makes national headlines every week. It is, however, more difficult for the average worker to buy into the government’s claims about the number of new jobs being created or saved during the same week that so many jobs have been lost. There is just too great a feeling of “smoke and mirrors” involved, especially when it comes to the easily manipulated “jobs saved” category.

Jackson, book one in the Loss of Certainty trilogy, personalizes today’s economic headlines by placing the reader inside the heads of a group of Midwesterners who have spent their entire working lives at JackPack, one of Jackson, Iowa’s biggest businesses. The Jackson Meatpacking Company employs some 2,000 Jackson citizens who do the backbreaking work of slaughtering several thousands hogs a day and, tough as the job might be, most of them cannot imagine ever doing anything else. But times are changing.

Jackson Meatpacking’s physical plant is old and rundown and no one will loan the company the money it needs to modernize the facility. The company is already facing a slow death when its management suddenly learns that a fierce and well-funded competitor is moving into the region and will be buying hogs from the same farms counted on by Jackson Meatpacking for its own supply of healthy animals. As hog prices inevitably rise because of this new competition, JackPack’s daily losses will increase, and the company will be pushed ever closer to the day it has to shut its doors for good.

But no one is ready to pull the plug on the company, least of all its employees and the man who runs it. That man is the grandson of Jackson Meatpacking’s founder and, because most company stock is still in the hands of his relatives, he has a very personal stake in the success of the operation. Even at that, he is not the only one with everything to lose if the company shuts down, meaning that a very different group of people will have to find a way to work together if JackPack is to have any chance of surviving. This time the inherent distrust between white collars, blue collars and union leaders will have to be cast aside for the good of all. Add to this mix a young investigative reporter new to Jackson and the vindictive newspaper publisher who hired her for reasons of his own, and it is anyone’s bet as to what Jackson Meatpacking’s ultimate fate will be.

Jackson includes an interesting side plot involving the construction of a dog racing track that must largely be built during the coldest months of a long Iowa winter. This side story involves city managers, construction people, and numerous other characters that I suspect will play larger roles in the second book of the Loss of Certainty series.

T.P. Jones did an extraordinary amount of research in preparation for Jackson and the books that will follow, and it shows. His characters are everyday, real people faced with uncertain futures and they react to the stress of their situations just as hardworking people all across America are reacting to their own uncertain futures today. At almost 540 pages, Jackson is a long but easily read book because Jones uses a very fluid and straightforward style to tell his story, a story to which his readers will strongly relate.

Rated at: 4.0

(Review copy provided by Synergy Books)

Direct from Target, Amazon and Walmart: Book Rationing

Looks like Amazon, Walmart and Target are not too crazy about the idea of subsidizing the indie bookstores around the country by selling those stores bestselling books at prices lower than those at which the stores can obtain them from publishers on their own.

Indies were quick to recognize a win-win situation when they saw one. All they have to do is buy the books at these giveaway prices, mark them up enough to make a tidy profit, and still give their loyal customers a nice discount. Indies are happy; their customers are happy; Amazon, Walmart and Target are ticked off. What a deal.

This Wall Street Journal article has the details:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has limited its online customers to two copies each of certain bargain books. Amazon.com Inc. has a three-copy maximum on certain discounted titles and Target Corp. has a five-copy limit online.

[...]

The retailers are losing money on each copy sold because publishers charge them about 50% of a book's hardcover price. The prices for the 10 books involved in the promotion are also lower than the wholesale price independent booksellers pay for the merchandise.

Arsen Kashkashian, head buyer at the Boulder Book Store, in Boulder, Colo., said he had intended to buy as many as 70 copies of Barbara Kingsolver's "The Lacuna" from Walmart.com, Target.com or Amazon, because their prices are "more than $5 cheaper than what we can get it for from the publisher, Harper.

Mr. Kashkashian said he was surprised to see that the three retailers were limiting the quantities sold. "We're a big store, and if a customer wanted to order 100 copies of anything, we'd sell it to them," he said.

[...]

Joel Bines of consultancy AlixPartners LLP said retailers commonly ration loss-leader promotions to stop competitors from buying up the merchandise. In the book promotion, Mr. Bines noted, some independent booksellers surely would purchase Wal-Mart's books in bulk if possible at their below-wholesale price. He said some of the books would also probably end up on eBay, offered by speculators.

"It's to prevent a run on the bank, so to speak," Mr. Bines said of the limits. "They are losing money on every item they sell at this price, so they want to make sure the items actually go to customers, who might then buy something else."

I understand why the three big retailers are trying to protect themselves from this kind of thing and I wish them luck. I also understand why the indies, who are being crushed one-by-one by Target, Walmart, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Borders, would jump at an opportunity to stick it to the bullies on the block. Are the indies crossing an ethical line if they have employees, friends and family members order the maximum number of books allowed by Target? It's definitely a gray area but I think that if I were in the shoes of an indie bookstore owner, I would do it. (And I know that Target, Walmart and Amazon would do the same if the shoe were on the other foot.)

Great Festival with One Disappointment

The Texas Book Festival was even better this year than last, but that might be because I was so much better organized this time around. I haven't had time to digest all I saw and heard but I can say that it was a wonderful experience to hear so many authors speak - authors who were only names on a book jacket before the festival are now real people with distinct personalities, and that will make me a better reader of their work.

I will say that one of my favorite writers let me down in a big way. I knew, of course, that she was very much a liberal because I've read most of her books. I always take something positive away from reading this woman and her new book, as she explained it to her audience, sounds as intriguing as any of her earlier works. She's quite the humorist (and feminist) and makes men the butt of many of her jokes and stories so, as you would imagine, her audience was about 80% female and largely of the age group coming of age in the '60s and '70s.

I try to avoid politics here - but when she made the statement that anyone protesting the President's policies regarding health care or anything else is objecting simply out of racism - no other reason - I had to pack up my things and leave the audience (so quietly that I doubt that anyone even noticed). I'm paraphrasing what she said but I have the exact quote on my recording of her presentation (along with me muttering "bullshit" a couple of times).

This is a writer who is best known as a BS-sniffer, a reputation she takes great pride in claiming. Apparently, her BS-sniffer does not work on words that come out of her own mouth. I can't believe she believes such a simplistic explanation of the Tea Party protesters and, even more shockingly, I can't believe that she doesn't recognize how ignorant this makes her sound.

Having one of your favorite nonfiction writers call you a racist is not a great way to end such a pleasant weekend. But I'll live - and eventually I'll read her new book.

2009 Texas Book Festival - Day 1

I managed to stay pretty much on schedule today with one major exception. I decided to skip the last hour so that I could make a side trip to a little community north of Austin to visit my brand new great niece. It was a good choice and I really enjoyed meeting her (she's five days old now).

I found the session on "Are Books Dead" t0 be fascinating despite the fact (or maybe because) all four presenters are heavily involved in the e-book business. The good news is that everyone on the panel ,and everyone else in the room, agreed that books are far from dead. The bad news is that panel members see the growth of e-books as another nail in the coffin of independent bookstores unless those stores find a way to specialize even more than they already do. There was also an interesting discussion on what public libraries might look like in anothrt ten years - again, not a very encouraging picture for book lovers. More later.

This is the House Chamber in which the first session was held (about 20 minutes prior to the session):


And this is a shot of the front part of the room:



The second session was in the same room and featured four excellent biographers who gave insights into their most recent biographies, their research techniques, biographers they admire, and plans for their next books.

From left to right, Brad Gooch, Blake Bailey, moderator Dwight Garner, Brenda Wineapple and Tracy Daugherty

I admit that I went into the Peter Maass presentation expecting the worst from him in regards to the oil industry and his discussion of his new book, Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil. Perhaps because he was speaking to a whole bunch of Texans, Maass was pretty even handed and did not try to make the oil companies into complete villains. There is plenty blame to spread around when it comes to oil's impact on producing countries and on the countries so desperately needing the oil of those third-world nations. It is not a pretty picture - and I'll have a whole lot more to say about the book when I can get it finished and sit down to write a formal review.

I managed to get this shot of Peter Mass (on the right) and moderator John Spong without annoying either of them too much (no flash involved):



Peter Maass, author of Crude World

And tomorrow is another day. Austin is pretty wild tonight, especially along its infamous 6th Street where tens of thousands hit the street in celebration of Halloween every year. From what I understand, it's a night the Austin police dread and they expect things to be particularly wild this year because this is the first time that Halloween has been on a Saturday night in eleven years. It's Austin's version of Mardi Gras.

I think I'll stay and read. How sad is that?

2009 Texas Book Festival

The rains have stopped, the temperature has dropped, and it looks it will be a nice weekend for Austin, Texas. I'm leaving early tomorrow morning for my three-hour drive to the capitol where I'll be enjoying Texas Book Festival XIV. I have all my battery chargers going right now so that I'll be able to record video, audio and still pictures when opportunities to do so present themselves.

I've penciled in the following sessions but I'm staying open to last minute changes of plan:

Saturday -

10:00 - 11:00
Are Books Dead?: The Digital Future of Reading, moderated by Bob Carlton

Or

Richard Russo - a 45-minute presentation

11:30 - 12:30
Writing about Writers: Blake Bailey (on Cheever), Tracy Daugherty (on Barthelme), Brad Gooch (on O'Connor) and Brenda Wineapple (on Hawthorne)

1:00 - 1:45
Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America
with Helen Thorpe

2:00 - 2:45
Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil with Peter Maass

3:30 - 4:15
Margaret Atwood - 45-minute session

There are several conflicting sessions I would love to get to and that might result in a change of plans tomorrow. For instance, Joe Lansdale has a session at the same time as the one with Margaret Atwood - and Atwood's is a bit of a walk from where I will be for the previous session. It's the last presentation of the day, and I might decide based entirely on how up I am for a long walk in the opposite direction from where I will be parked. I would also like to make the 2:00 discussion between Elizabeth Berg and Amanda Eyre Ward but I'm reading the Peter Maass book right now and would love to challenge him on his extreme bias against the oil industry (any book of this type with book blurbs from Robert Redford and Robert Reich is a clear indicator of its point-of-view). What to do?

Sunday -

11:00 - 11:45
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle with David Wroblewski and Dick Donahue

12:00 - 12:45
Gerald Posner as presented by The Daily Beast and Texas Book Festival

1:30 - 2:30
Scene of the Crime: Two Texas Mystery Writers with Kathryn Casey and Jay Brandon, moderated by Steven Saylor

3:30 - 4:15
Barbara Ehrenreich on her book, "Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America," introduced by Sarah Bird

Or

Douglas Brinkley on his new book, "The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America," introduced by Evan Smith

4:00 - 5:00
A few minutes listening to the music of one of my favorite Austin singers, Jimmy Lafave

I made a few changes on the fly last year so this is not necessarily who I will see because I'm hoping to get in as much as possible over the two days. The amount of overlap is distressing because for some hours I want to be at three sessions at once and, for other hours, nothing much appeals to me. Oh, well; I suppose that's a nice problem to have.

Demented Censor Runs Wild in Tennessee

Well, it seems that Maury County (Tennessee) Library patrons are going to have to use their imaginations a little more than they thought they would when they went to the library for something to read. The library is being victimized by a mystery censor with a big blue pen and a tiny little mind who is marking out all the "offensive" words in those library books.

MercuryNews.com has the details (what there are of them):

Officials believe the same person has used a blue pen to censor words in between 50 and 100 books during the past several months.

Library Director Elizabeth Potts said most of the books are mystery novels, but the vandal also targeted the "9/11 Commission Report."

Potts said no one is forced to read the books and "if they don't like them, they should just return them."

Potts said the library doesn't have the money to replace the damaged books, so patrons will to have to use their imagination to guess what the blotted out words are.

If this wasn't so stupid, it would be funny. I am so sick of all the nannies out there who think they know better what's good for me than I do. Come on, library system, nab this fool before more books are destroyed.

Macmillan Authors Take a Pay Cut

Publishing giant Macmillan (including the Farrar Straus & Giroux and St. Martin's Press imprints) has a new deal for its authors, one that lowers royalties on e-books to 20% of net proceeds received by the company. That is well below the 25% rate paid by most other mainstream publishing houses.

According to the New York Times,

Currently, most popular retailers of digital books sell new releases and best sellers for $9.99 apiece, far below the typical $25 to $35 list price on hardcovers. For now, the retailers still pay publishers a standard wholesale price that is equal to half the list price of a hardcover book, but publishers fear that as e-books grow to a bigger share of the total market, the retailers will pressure publishers to cut their wholesale prices.

Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, said that Macmillan was anticipating a time when Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other e-book retailers would try to push down wholesale book prices. “This is Macmillan’s attempt to pre-emptively squeeze authors.”

[...]

Richard Curtis, a literary agent ...said the difference between Macmillan’s standard e-book royalty and other publishers was not the point. “The point is whether we should be playing on such a low ballfield at all,” Mr. Curtis said, “and whether the industry should not really be thinking about a 50 percent royalty of net receipts.” He argued that because the cost to publishers of producing e-books was so low, authors should get a higher proportion of sale proceeds.

What Mr. Curtis says makes perfect sense to me. It costs the publisher relatively little to produce and market an e-book in comparison to doing the same for a paper version of the same title. Why should the authors accept such a small royalty percentage when publishers appear to be making a bigger profit, percentage-wise, on e-books than they make on the paper and cardboard kind?

I am intrigued by how the publishing and book marketing business models are evolving - and by the rapid pace things are changing. This is going to get interesting. At this point, I only hope that things work out well for all of us: publishers, writers, and readers. Are you an optimist or a pessimist?

Massachusetts Private School Trashes Library - Opens Coffe Bar Instead

Here we go. I suppose it had to happen sooner or later, but Cushing Academy's decision to dump almost its whole library in favor of a lavish rec room seems a little empty-headed to me. According to this USA Today article, the school junked almost all of its library books in favor of Kindles, big screen TVs and a coffee bar. Welcome to the Cushing Cyber Cafe, boys and girls:

Its 20,000-book collection was barely used, administrators say. Spot checks last year found that, on some days, fewer than 30 books, or about .15%, circulated. And it was becoming rather lonely down there.

[...]

So the venerable boarding school west of Boston — the first in the USA to admit both boys and girls — last summer undertook another first: It began getting rid of most of the library's books. In their place: a fully digital collection.

[...]

Three big-screen TVs now greet visitors at the entrance, and the old circulation desk is now a coffee bar. Officially it's called Cushing Cyber Cafe, but students quickly nicknamed the spot "12K Cafe" after its $12,000 espresso machine.

[...]

He concedes that the $12,000 coffeemaker has become a distraction, but he says the real idea behind the cafe was to create "a new commons, a new agora, where people in a convivial setting exchange ideas and socially interact around ideas with culture and literature at their fingertips."

The USA Today article does a good job enumerating the pros and cons of a high school taking this approach with its school library so, if you still find yourself on the fence, you should take the time to read the whole thing. Myself, I have to wonder why these school administrators think that a bunch of students who don't seem to be readers in the first place are suddenly going to become avid readers/users of e-books. I suspect that once the "new" wears off, they will just be watching a lot of television and getting wired on all of the expresso being cranked out by their fancy new coffeemaker.

Private schools can get away with this kind of thing as long as apathetic parents let them but if I were a student there I would hate to have my research limited to only the books available on Amazon.com.

Perhaps Cushing Academy should change its name to Amazon Academy.

Even Money

Even Money, the third collaboration between Dick Francis and his son Felix in the last three years, is another in the long line of Dick Francis horse track mysteries, and it is a good one. Longtime fans of Dick Francis might react differently to Even Money, of course, believing that it suffers in comparison to the author’s earlier work. I, on the other hand, having only ever read one other Dick Francis novel, and that many years ago, experienced Even Money more as a standalone novel. And as such, I enjoyed it.

Ned Talbot is thirty-seven years old and has been a bookmaker all his life, having inherited the family business from his grandfather, Teddy Talbot. In fact, when Ned sets himself up to do business at various tracks, the board above his head still says “Trust Teddy Talbot” on it. With the help of Luca, a computer whiz who accepts and manages each day’s bets, Ned makes a decent living for himself and Sophie, his mentally fragile wife. He may be doing quite well but Ned thinks often about how bookmakers are despised by most everyone in the racing world, even those who make their own livings from the services he and his fellow bookies provide.

Ascot is not one of Ned’s favorite racetracks and, in fact, he seldom enjoys setting up shop there. But because his grandfather had considered participation at Ascot to be one of the firm’s best marketing techniques, Ned and Luca are there hoping to make the best of things. What Ned does not bargain for is the stranger who approaches him at the end of the day to claim that he is Ned’s father, a man Ned had thought dead for thirty-six years. Just one hour later, as Ned and Peter Talbot make their way to Ned’s car, they are assaulted by a knife-wielding thug and Ned begins a frantic race of his own, one he has to win if he is to stay alive.

It is relatively common for bookies to be robbed of their day’s earnings before they leave the track, but Ned senses that what happened to him and his father is no ordinary mugging. What he discovers in his father’s rucksack (30,000 pounds in cash, counterfeit horse passports, an electronic device that reminds him of a television remote, and ten little devices each the size of a grain of rice) confirms for Ned that his father was specifically targeted by the man who attacked them. Now he wants to know why.

Even before the sudden appearance of his father, Ned has a lot going on in his world. Sophie is bipolar and her illness has gotten so bad that she has again been institutionalized for treatment; Luca is threatening to quit the firm unless Ned makes him a full partner; and the grandmother who raised him is suffering from dementia and living in a nursing home. Via these subplots, the reader comes to see Ned Talbot as a real human being who has managed to get himself in way over his head - and that is half the fun of Even Money.

I particularly enjoyed the novel’s details of how the world of bookmaking works, how odds are set, how bookies cover themselves with side bets of their own (a bit like insurance companies cover themselves by reinsuring their risk through other companies), and how they view themselves and those with whom they do business. I have not been a fan of this type of novel in the past but that little bit of “inside information” makes it more likely that I will seek out other Dick Francis novels now.

Rated at: 4.0

(Advance Reader Copy provided by G.P. Putnam's Sons)

Alternate History Sunday - The Winterberry

I read a whole lot of science fiction as a young teen and, in fact, I credit that genre for turning me into the avid reader that I am. The fifties and sixties were a nice period for science fiction writers, a couple of decades during which some of the real masters were reaching their peak or first appearing on the scene, and it was exciting to see what they would come up with next.

Alternate history is sometimes considered to be part of the science fiction world but that assumption can be misleading because so much alternate history is a rewrite of military history or other major world events. Of course, lots of alternate history does involve time travel and, as Harry Turtledove points out in his introduction to The Best Alternate History Stories of the 2oth Century, so many well known science fiction writers have very successfully written alternate history that it seems natural to lump the two genres together.

I dipped into Turtledove's anthology this morning to read "The Winterberry" by Nicholas A. DiChario - and I wish I could tell you more about this little gem but whatever I tell you might ruin its impact. So I'll be very careful. "The Winterberry" is a bit unusual as alternate history goes in that the author leaves it up to the reader to figure out exactly what piece of history is being rewritten.

The clues DiChario offers are more and more obvious until suddenly everything becomes clear. The story is only ten pages long and, honestly, not much happens. But when that little light goes off in your head, "The Winterberry" becomes a story you will remember and think about for a while because what the story's mentally handicapped narrator tells you about his life in his big house takes on a whole new meaning. Enough said.

Fuzzy as all of this must be, I hope it manages to influence a few people to find and read the story. I think you will like it - and you might develop a taste for alternate history in the process.

Little Bird of Heaven

Little Bird of Heaven is vintage Joyce Carol Oates, so much so, in fact, that fans of her writing will immediately recognize the novel’s setting and tone. Krista Diehl, the young girl whose father Eddie is suspected of the brutal murder of his mistress, is beginning to realize just how dangerous the world can be for a girl fast approaching sexual maturity. She is both repelled and fascinated by the boys and men with whom she is beginning to come into contact, and what her father is accused of having done leads her to the conclusion that men are dangerous beings. When her father one day emotionally grabs her by the wrist, her first thought is “Always you are astonished. Their size, their height. Their strength. That they could hurt you so easily without meaning to.”

Zoe Kruller was somewhat of a minor celebrity in little Sparta, New York. She was the best thing that her bluegrass band had going for it and any performance of theirs at the local park was guaranteed to attract the attention of a large number of male admirers, men who found it difficult to resist Zoe’s charms. To Krista, however, Zoe was the woman who served her ice cream at the local dairy and always remembered her name. She was Krista’s friend. That she was also her father’s mistress and that he would be accused of her bloody murder would change Krista’s life forever.

Also changed forever by Zoe’s murder would be her son Aaron, a boy whose own father is believed to be the most logical suspect in the murder if Eddie Diehl can prove that he is not the killer. Aaron, already on somewhat of a downward spiral of his own, is as certain that his father is not guilty of the crime as Krista is sure that her own father did not do it. Krista’s determination to find the truth about her father and his relationship with Zoe Kruller leads her to become as obsessed with Aaron Kruller as her father had been obsessed with the boy’s mother.

Oates tells her story from two distinct points-of-view. The first half of the book is filtered through the eyes of Krista Diehl who is really too young to understand everything that she discovers about the murder. This part of the book focuses on the gradual disintegration of the Diehl family which results from everything that happens to them following the murder. Aaron Kruller narrates the second half of the book and, since he is older than Krista, he fills in some of the blanks of Krista’s version of the events before and after his mother’s murder. Inevitably, these two young people have so much in common that their paths cannot help but cross – in a way that neither of them could have imagined and from which each are lucky to come out whole.

Little Bird of Paradise is a novel about self-discovery, pain, loss and how children so often have to pay for the sins of their parents. It is well written, as is almost always the case in a Joyce Carol Oates novel, but it is sometimes not easy to read because one feels, almost from the start, that its two narrators are doomed to repeat the mistakes of their fathers. This sense of impending doom will, however, keep readers turning the pages all the way to the end.

Rated at: 5.0

Look Out Kindle - Nook Has Landed

The new Barnes & Noble e-book reader, known as Nook, may prove to be more of a headache for Amazon's Kindle than the Sony Reader has been. Nook offers some important features that users of the Amazon and Sony readers can only dream about: sharing of e-books and the first inkling of a color screen. According to Computer World, the color screen is limited to search results that come via Nook's "virtual keyboard," but that is a good start and it is certain to gain the Nook a second glance from anyone shopping for an e-book reader. Most important, however, is that Barnes & Noble e-books can be loaned to friends who have either a Nook of their own or access to the free download that B&N offers to computer users and those who own certain smart phones.

Nook weighs 11.2 ounces and is 7.7 x 4.9 x .5 inches in size. The upper electronic paper display, with 16 levels of gray scale, is 6 inches diagonally, while the lower color LCD display is 3.5 inches.

A first in e-readers will be the ability for users to lend their e-books for up to 14 days at a time. With LendMe technology, an e-book can be shared to a friend's Nook, iPhone, iPod touch, and some BlackBerry and Motorola smartphones, possibly the upcoming Cliq, which is based on Android. Desktop and laptop PCs with Barnes & Noble eReader software can also receive the books being lent.

Users can also listen to songs uploaded through a computer to the Nook, as well as audiobooks and podcasts, using standard headphones.

OK, Amazon. The ball is back in your court now. The Nook is priced at $259, same as the Kindle, so here's hoping that Amazon and B&N start a little price war of their own. Come on, guys, it's all about market share at this point...start slicing away.

Glenn Beck's Common Sense

Considering today’s political environment, I feel it necessary to emphasize that this is only a review of Glenn Beck’s Common Sense. It is not a review of Glenn Beck, the man. It is not a review of Fox News Channel or the program that Mr. Beck has on that network. It is a book review – period – and that is all it is meant to be.

That said, there is a whole lot of common sense in Glenn Beck’s Common Sense (including a copy of the Thomas Paine work that inspired Beck’s book). Simply put, Beck does not trust those who have been elected to represent us in Washington D.C. and he has not trusted them for a long time. He does not trust Democrats, and he does not trust Republicans, to represent properly the wishes of the people who give them their jobs and who pay their salaries. And based on the mood of this country, particularly as expressed since early this summer, Glenn Beck has a lot of company.

According to Beck, it is impossible to trust a President and members of Congress when:

· They will not tell us any hard truth that would hurt them at the time of their next election
· Every President since Carter has promised to lower the country’s dependence on foreign oil but we import more oil than ever from our political enemies
· They promise a protective fence on our southern border, appropriate the funds, and never intend to build it
· They use racial and ethnic politics to keep themselves in office
· They see themselves less as public servants than as an entitled political class all their own
· They vote as directed by those who contribute the most to their campaign war chests rather than as would be best for those they actually represent
· So many of them have one set of tax rules for themselves and another set of rules for the rest of us

Make no mistake about it. Glenn Beck believes that we are living in dangerous times and that personal freedoms have never been more under threat in this country than they are today. According to him, these truly are desperate times – but he is not ready to surrender because he believes there is still enough time to fashion a return to the core values that made this country so unique in the world. He is convinced that our best days are not behind us, that we are already on the way back, and that public dissent and debate is what will finally get us there. Rather than waiting for others to express their unease with what is happening in Washington, Beck argues that our newfound sense of urgency should encourage each of us to express, loudly and clearly, our personal misgivings about what we see happening. The country can no longer afford our silence and apathy.

Beck believes that the average American has enough common sense to know when something does not pass the smell test. He is betting there are enough Independents to save us from those who have lost touch with their own common sense – Democrats, Republicans and Progressives, alike.

Rated at: 4.0

Little Bird of Heaven - So Far

I seldom post about a book before I finish it but I have to say how much I'm enjoying the new Joyce Carol Oates novel, Little Bird of Heaven. I started it on Saturday morning and read about sixty percent of the book over the weekend. It's a deceptively "thin" little volume and I didn't realize that it was 442 pages long before I got well into it. I wish other "chunksters" would use the same paper that is used in this one because I could get a lot more books on my shelves that way.

Little Bird of Heaven is the story of a brutal murder and it is told from two distinct points-of-view. The first part is narrated by the daughter of the man who is suspected of the murder, and the second part by the young man whose mother was killed. It slips back and forth into scenes before the murder and after the murder and, piece by piece, a detailed story becomes clear. The second part of the book, which I am only about 60 pages into, so far has not revisited any exact scenes from the first part but it hits all around those scenes.

It is the intricate plotting of the book that really intrigues me. I enjoy working puzzles and that's what reading Little Bird of Heaven is like. I've seen comments on Amazon that this is a boring book - and maybe it is for readers who have to have lots of action in their novels. Those who enjoy character studies, however, are going to love this book as much as I already do (although I am beginning to suspect that the murderer will not be identified at all).

Target Jumps into Book War

The book war we were discussing last week has just become more interesting with Target’s decision to join battle with Wal-Mart and Amazon to see who can sell the “most anticipated” books of the Christmas season the cheapest. Consumers, of course, welcome any kind of price war but now the publishing industry itself is beginning to wonder if this is really a good thing.

According to this New York Times article:

Publishers, booksellers, agents and authors, meanwhile, fretted that the battle was taking prices for certain hardcover titles so low that it could fundamentally damage the industry and the ability of future authors to write or publish new works.

[...]

“If readers come to believe that the value of a new book is $10, publishing as we know it is over,” said David Gernert, Mr. Grisham’s literary agent. “If you can buy Stephen King’s new novel or John Grisham’s ‘Ford County’ for $10, why would you buy a brilliant first novel for $25? I think we underestimate the effect to which extremely discounted best sellers take the consumer’s attention away from emerging writers.”

[...]

“What this does is accentuate the trend towards best sellers dominating the market,” Mr. Petrocelli (owner of San Francisco indie bookstore Book Passage)said. Without independents, decisions about what books to put on store shelves would reside in the hands of a few corporate executives rather than hundreds of idiosyncratic booksellers, he said.

“You have a choke point where millions of writers are trying to reach millions of readers,” Mr. Petrocelli said, “but if it all has to go through a narrow funnel where there are only four or five buyers deciding what’s going to get published, the business is in trouble.”

Despite having at least one of his books included in the "most anticipated titles" (the shock here is that he doesn't have two or three of his 150 books a year in the list), even James Patterson seems to have his doubts about how smart all of this is:

“Imagine if somebody was selling DVDs of this week’s new movies for $5,” Mr. Patterson said. “You wouldn’t be able to make movies.” He added, “I can guarantee you that the movie studios would not take this kind of thing sitting down.”

So there you have it. If the super-brilliant, wonderful writer and all-around Superman, James Patterson, thinks this is not good, it can't be good. After all, no one knows how to manipulate the bestseller lists better than Mr. Patterson.

I'm embarrassed to say that I agree with Superwriter. This might just backfire on those of us who don't shop the generally poor books that dominate the bestseller lists by squeezing higher quality books right off the press.

Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women

Despite never having read Little Women, I managed to obtain, over the years, a general understanding of the book’s plot and characters by reading about its author and her most famous novel. The Alcott family, with its numerous connections to the literary elite and thinkers of its day, has long fascinated me but it is only in recent years that I have become curious about the work of Louisa May Alcott herself. My interest was particularly peaked, I think, by Geraldine Brooks’ March, a wonderful fictional account of what Mr. March was up to during the times he left the four little women and their mother home alone to fend for themselves. Now, Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women has convinced me that it is finally time to sit down and read Little Women for myself.

Harriet Reisen reminds us that, in her day, Louisa May Alcott was as big, if not bigger, than Mark Twain. Her books sold in astonishing numbers, eventually making her a very wealthy woman who was able to support her entire extended family with the royalties they earned. She was perhaps the J.K. Rowling of her day - but life was not always so kind to Louisa May Alcott.

Born to a father who never quite figured out how to earn enough to support his family, life for Louisa and her sisters was difficult. The girls often ended the day hungry and there was seldom any money for dresses or housing comparable to those of their friends and relatives. The Alcott family, in fact, was dependent on those same friends and relatives for the loans and gifts without which they might not have survived as an intact family. And what a list of friends and relatives they had, among them, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller and supporters of the Transcendentalist movement in which Bronson Alcott played such an important role.

Bronson Alcott may have been the genius his friends believed him to be, but he was also the kind of dreamer who could never turn his dreams into the reality he envisioned for them. Bronson, however, had great faith that his family would somehow be provided for despite how little effort he made to support them himself. He was always willing to accept whatever monetary help his generous friends offered but his second-born daughter Louisa was determined that the family would one day earn its own way and repay all the debts her father had ignored for so long.

From the beginning Louisa was motivated by the money she could earn from her writing, seeing her efforts as the best chance to bring her family to financial respectability Determined to make it happen, she wrote quickly in marathon stretches that would often leave her bedridden and unable to write again for several weeks or months. But despite her illnesses, which grew more serious after her experience as a Civil War hospital nurse, Louisa earned enough money to give both her immediate and extended families the luxurious lifestyle none of them could have ever expected to see.

The Woman Behind Little Women offers remarkable insights into the inner workings of the Alcott family and Louisa’s role as provider and near-matriarch of the family. Fans of Little Women will be naturally drawn to the biography and coming PBS Alcott documentary, but I suspect that others lucky enough to discover The Woman Behind Little Women will be just as intrigued by what they learn. There is so much here that even the biggest Alcott fan will come away with a new appreciation of what this great writer accomplished in her relatively short lifetime.

Rated at: 5.0

(Advance Reading Copy provided by Henry Holt and Company)

Wal-Mart and Amazon Start Book War

You know, I really miss those gas wars that were so common when I was a teenager and young adult. Remember those? They would generally break out between competing gasoline stations sitting across the street from each other on the same corner. Before you knew it, the price of gasoline might drop by forty or fifty percent and stay that way until both stations realized they could not afford to keep the pumps open at those prices. As consumers, we made out like bandits.

Well, here's a bit of good news. Looks like Wal-Mart and Amazon are about to start a book war. According to the Wall Street Journal, it will happen just in time for our Christmas shopping (of course, all good book buyers will continue to buy locally from indie sellers...right?). Too, you have to be willing to shop exclusively from the best seller list to take advantage of all of this.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. launched a brash price war against Amazon.com Inc. on Thursday, saying it would sell 10 hotly anticipated new books for just $10 apiece through its online site, Walmart.com.

That was just the beginning.

Hours later, Amazon matched the $10 price, squaring off in a battle for low-price and e-commerce leadership heading into the crucial holiday shopping season. Wal-Mart soon fired back with a promise to drop its prices to $9 by Friday morning.

This could get interesting.

It's a Book a Day for Nina Sankovitch

Nina Sankovitch is my new book-blogging hero - heck, even the New York Times is impressed with what Nina has challenged herself to do and how well she is getting it done.

What's she doing? Well, how about reading a book every day and writing about each book on her blog? Those of us who have been at this thing for a while know how high a mountain Nina is climbing because most of us are happy to break 100 books and book reviews a year (a milestone I reached this past Sunday, by the way).

According to the Times:

Last Oct. 28, on her 46th birthday, Nina Sankovitch read a novel, “The Elegance of the Hedgehog,” by Muriel Barbery. The next day she posted a review online deeming it “beautiful, moving and occasionally very funny.”

And that's how it started.

[...]

In a time-deprived world, where book reading is increasingly squeezed off the page, it is hard to know what’s most striking about Ms. Sankovitch’s quest, now on Day 350, to read a book every day for a year and review them on her blog.

[...]

There were a few close calls — Christmas, for example, when she did not start reading until 10 p.m. She has household help for a day every other week, and it doesn’t hurt that the family is comfortable economically or that the household, now in full Halloween mode, seems to have a suburban Glass family quality. Peter, her 16-year-old, is reading Pynchon; the 14-year-old, Michael, reads Ayn Rand and political screeds like those by Al Franken; and asked what kind of books he likes to read, George, the 11-year-old, replied, “Long books.”

I love the thought that the New York Times is showing a little love to a fellow book blogger, so let's return the love by reading the whole article (see the link highlighted, above).

And, best of all, here's the link to Nina's blog. I'm adding her to my blog roll to see what she does on day 365 and, even more intriguingly, on day 366. Check her out.

Daylight Noir: Raymond Chandler's Imagined City

Raymond Chandler set his stories and novels in a Los Angeles that sometimes seemed to me to be part of an alternate universe. The city was still recognizable but something was always just a little off about it. Chandler created his striking version of Los Angeles so successfully, in fact, that it often seemed more real, if rather more odd and dangerous, to me than the real city streets of L.A.

I followed Chandler into his Los Angeles before I ever saw the real thing for myself and I was somewhat disappointed by what I saw when I finally got there. The two cities, real and imagined, just did not match up all that well for me. After having read Catherine Corman’s photo-filled Daylight Noir, I now know for sure that the problem was entirely my own. Daylight Noir is filled with moody black and white photographs of many of the locations prominently featured in Chandler’s work, photos as arresting as the images created by Chandler himself.

My problem was that I was looking at Los Angeles through modern eyes and in living color. Corman solves that problem by producing all of her photos in high contrast black and white, just as they might have been photographed in Chandler’s heyday. The reader will note, too, that there are no people in any of the pictures, a tactic that further enhances the feeling of big city loneliness so common in Chandler’s work. Catherine Corman has an artistic eye and her photographs reflect that artistry. They are shot from unusual angles, only rarely straight on, and yet have the look of pictures that could have been taken in the early decades of the last century.

Corman’s photos tell me more about Los Angeles than any of those thousands of self-promoting, touristy, pictures I have seen over a lifetime. As a bonus, they also remind me why I love Raymond Chandler’s work so much and they make me anxious to revisit his stories for the first time in a long while. Daylight Noir is the perfect companion piece to Raymond Chandler’s mysteries and I plan to keep it near my Chandler collection so that I can refer to it the next time I crack open one of his hardboiled stories.

Daylight Noir should appeal equally to fans of photo collections and to fans of the remarkable work of Raymond Chandler.

Rated at: 5.0

(Advance Reading Copy provided by Charta)

Death on the River

Young Jake Clay managed to get himself into the American Civil War just long enough to have his brains scrambled by a blow to the head at the battle of Cold Harbor. But, as it turned out, he was one of the lucky ones because he fell so close to the Confederate lines that he was almost immediately snatched up and taken prisoner. Others, less fortunate, died miserable deaths in the field when General Grant refused a truce during which the dead and wounded from both armies could be cleared from the battlefield.

It is the first taste of battle for Jake Clay and, as big a shock as battle is, he is about to get an even bigger one when he arrives at the Confederate prison in Andersonville, Georgia. Naïve young man that he is, Jake soon finds himself giving William Collins all the cash he has in exchange for promised protection that will help ensure his survival despite the horrible living conditions of the prison camp. Collins, a former big city street thug, is the self-appointed leader of what he calls Mosby’s Raiders, criminals who kill and steal from their fellow prisoners at will.

Jake Clay entered Andersonville Prison an innocent boy with high expectations of himself but, by the time he left the camp, he had condoned behavior that shamed him. He might be barely alive, but to stay out of the Andersonville cemetery he had done things, or allowed them to be done on his behalf, that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Little did Jake know that his journey home at the end of the war would offer him a final chance at redemption – an opportunity that would almost kill him in the process.

Death on the River, aimed at the Teen Market, offers a realistic look at Civil War fighting and the horrors of Andersonville Prison without over-focusing on the gory details. Jake Clay is a Union Army volunteer primarily because his older brother has already been lost in battle and Jake wants to honor his brother’s memory. Jake, though, like most soldiers of the period, has little idea what he is getting himself into as his first battle approaches and, like so many others, his first fight will be his last.

This historical coming-of-age novel is so filled with adventure that it might very well lead its young readers to search for more books on the American Civil War, much as I did at that age after I read Red Badge of Courage for the first time. Several decades later, I still find myself drawn to Civil War fiction, new histories of the war, and biographies of those who played a role in it. Here’s hoping that books like Death on the River help spawn a new generation of amateur historians who will move on to Civil War fiction classics such as MacKinlay Kantor’s Andersonville, winner of the 1956 Pulitzer Prize, or Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels, another Pulitzer winner (1975).

Rated at: 4.0


(Advance Reading Copy of Death on the River provided by Orca Book Publishers)

Rainy Weekends and Books

It's been raining steadily here for the last two days - and at least once a day for what seems like at least the last 10 days. But that's not all bad. Not leaving the house since Friday afternoon has allowed me to get in some extra reading hours, watch a movie or two, and watch some of the Civil War documentaries I've recorded from the History Channel.

In fact, I finished three books in the last two days: Lit by Mary Karr, Death on the River by John Wilson, and Daylight Noir by Catherine Corman. Lit is the Mary Karr memoir I wrote about last week, the volume that chronicles Mary's struggles with alcoholism, her marriage problems, her surprising turn to prayer, and her literary success. Death on the River is a Young Adult novel about the famous Andersonville prison where so many Union soldiers died during the Civil War, and Daylight Noir is a photograph book filled with pictures of buildings and locations mentioned in various Raymond Chandler novels.

I have a movie to recommend, one that I stumbled on this weekend. It's called A Family Thing and it stars Robert Duvall and James Earl Jones, a hard-to-beat combination of great actors. It involves a man in rural Arkansas who learns something shocking about his birth shortly after his mother dies. I won't say anything more because it is difficult to describe this movie without leaking a spoiler or two. Let's just say that if you enjoy great acting, lots of drama, and a few tears with your movies, you will probably love this one.

And speaking of a few tears, it's time for me to get back to the football game between Houston and the Arizona Cardinals. It's going to be a long, long football season for Texan fans.

Dear Federal Trade Commission

Dear Federal Trade Commission,

I am formally notifying you that I take pride in my amateur status when it comes to reviewing books here on Book Chase. As you will notice, if you bother to look around, I do not sell any ads on Book Chase relating to books or anything else.

I do, of course, receive a number of Advance Reading Copies of books throughout the year and I review close to 100% of the books that make their way to me that way (after carefully choosing from the titles I am offered). It appears that your new blogger guidelines consider ARCs as a form of compensation for my reviews. For that reason, I will include a disclaimer in each review from this date forward that involves an ARC received directly from a publisher.

In addition, I note that the little Amazon.com icons I place after most of my book reviews might be the source of a problem for me. After all, Book Chase readers have followed those links so many times that Amazon has paid me almost $10.50 this year (money I used to purchase a book for a Book Chase giveaway). At that rate, I will soon be able to retire from my day job and do this as a profession. I place the Amazon icons after my reviews only because I take pleasure in the fact that I might play a tiny role in moving a few books into the hands of readers who may have otherwise missed them.

While we are having this little chat, Mr. FTC, I have to ask why bloggers are expected to disclose the receipt of free ARCs and are not allowed to run related ads while print reviews are not held to the same standard. Why are magazines and newspapers not held to the same high ethical standards expected of book bloggers?

Thank you for your time.

Here's hoping that my efforts here at Book Chase meet with your wholehearted approval. I wish I could say the same for your efforts but I outgrew the need for a Nanny several decades ago.

Your pal,

Sam Sattler
Book Chase

Travel Writing

Peter Ferry is a storyteller and his debut novel, Travel Writing, is one terrific story. The novel’s dedication is the first clue that Ferry has chosen to write something a little different to mark his first time out. It will not take long for alert readers to notice that the three people to whom the book is dedicated have the same names as three of its main characters, nor that the author himself is the novel’s narrator. Soon enough, the reader is wondering what is real and what is not - and that is half the fun of Travel Writing.

Fictional Peter Ferry (as well as real life Peter Ferry) is an English teacher who makes a few bucks on the side writing newspaper travel pieces. He is also a born storyteller and he motivates and inspires his high school students by example, often telling them on-the-fly stories in class, rather than by preaching the mechanics of writing. All in all, Ferry is pretty content with his life, but all of that changes one winter night when he witnesses a car crash that claims the life of a young Asian woman.

Only moments before her death, Ferry had noticed the woman’s erratic driving before she pulled alongside him at a stoplight. The two make brief eye contact as Ferry realizes the woman is either too drunk or too ill to drive safely but before he can intervene she speeds away to her death. Realizing that his was the last face the woman would ever see, Ferry becomes haunted by his inaction, always wondering if he could have saved Lisa Kim’s life by acting more quickly and decisively.

This is the story Peter Ferry chooses to tell his high school English class, a story of one man’s personal obsession with the death of a woman he never knew in life but comes to know intimately after her death. Having failed to save her life, Ferry is determined to find out why she died. He is so obsessed with solving the mystery of Lisa Kim that he is soon neglecting his work and his live-in girlfriend to the degree that he is in danger of losing both. As Ferry comes closer and closer to the truth about what happened that winter night, readers will find themselves intrigued by the truths he uncovers.

But did any of this actually happen or is it all just an exercise being used by Peter Ferry to make a point about creative writing to his English class? Just about the time one begins to forget that Ferry is a writing teacher, the author yanks him back to his classroom to discuss the story with his young students. Further complicating things is the book’s narrative structure. The story is told from the past to the present with flashbacks and related travel pieces interspersed throughout, a choice that further helps to blur truth and which leads to the novel’s clever ending.

Did it happen? I found that I was not sure, and that I really did not care much, because I enjoyed the story for what it is, just as Mr. Ferry’s English class is so intrigued by it. I did have great fun along the way trying to decide whether or not the story is just part of Mr. Ferry’s lesson plan or if it really happened to him. But, in the end, despite all the fun readers will have with it, this is a book with a serious message about personal responsibility and how far that responsibility extends into the lives of perfect strangers.

Travel Writing is a remarkable first novel which, at least for now, moves into my 2009 Top Ten.

Rated at: 5.0

Mary Karr, Hometown Hero

I grew up in a little backwater town in southeast Texas that lets me call people like Janis Joplin, Tex Ritter, Frank Robinson, George Jones, The Big Bopper, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Johnny & Edgar Winter, Jimmy Johnson, Evelyn Keyes, Mark Chesnutt, Clay Walker and Tracy Byrd hometown heroes. Admittedly, not everyone on this list has had the same impact on our national culture - and they were born, or grew up, in several different cities in Jefferson County. But I still claim them all.

I got to thinking about the list today (and there are others I could add) when I put down an ARC of Mary Karr's new memoir, Lit, because Mary is another of my hometown heroes. And, book nerd that I am, she is near the top of the list for me these days. I grew up in Backwater, Texas, a full decade ahead of Mary but much of what she has written about her childhood and her own Great Escape hit very close to home for me. I feel like I know her - and, in a way, I do.

Lit is the perfect title for part three of Mary's overall memoir because of the word's double meaning. Mary Karr is a respected poet and her previous memoirs, The Liars Club and Cherry have done quite well, I think, because of the frank way she exposes her life to the scrutiny of her readers. So, in one sense, Lit refers to Mary's literary reputation and achievements. Unfortunately, Lit has another connotation in Mary's life, a good portion of which has been spent fighting her alcoholism, a disease from which both her parents also suffered.

What Mary Karr has accomplished, and continues to accomplish, amazes me. I know where she came from and I know how hard it is to escape from that kind of place. I hope to get a moment at the Texas Book Festival on Halloween weekend to tell her just how proud I am of her.

Return to the Hundred Acre Wood

I hesitate to write a third consecutive post about the new Pooh book - but here goes, anyway.

Because of a fluke in my work schedule, I had the opportunity this afternoon to get my hands on a copy of Return to the Hundred Acre Wood. I stopped at my local Barnes & Noble store on the way home and spotted a little display of about a dozen of the books at the entrance to the children's section.

The book retails for $19.99 but B&N, if I remember right, is offering a 10% discount. I was the only person in the store who seemed at all interested, but a Tuesday afternoon might not be the best time for me to make a judgment regarding any buzz that might be generated by the new book.

Physically, at least, this is a beautiful little book. It is printed on high quality paper and I enjoyed thumbing through the book's numerous illustrations. I read one of the stories but it has been so long since I read the original Pooh stories it would be unfair of me to compare the two. It will be interesting to read the reviews which should start showing up in the next few days.

"The Same Pooh Bear, but an Otter Has Arrived"

The responses to yesterday's post on the new Pooh book make me believe that there are a whole lot of people who feel uneasy, if not perturbed, by its release to bookstores today. The New York Times has a good article today on "Return to the Hundred Acre Wood" that hits on some of the same points we discussed:

“Some people said it shouldn’t be done, and there will still be some of that now, this feeling that this is a gleaming jewel in the world of children’s books and don’t mess around with it,” Michael Brown, chairman of the Pooh Properties Trust, said of creating the sequel. “This doesn’t damage the original stories at all, though, and allows us to continue the stories in a world of kindness, cheerfulness, laughter and fun.”


A less sanguine assessment came from Elizabeth Bluemle, a children’s book author, co-owner of the Flying Pig Bookstore in Shelburne, Vt., and president of the Association of Booksellers for Children. Spinoffs and sequels tend to be “thin soup,” she said in an e-mail message, and can keep children away from the original, better-written books.

“It’s just too much to hope that someone who isn’t the original writer will capture the voice, character, setting, pacing (and all the other elements of bookmaking) in the right measure,” Ms. Bluemle added, saying that she was not singling out “Return,” which she has not read.

David Benedictus, author of the new book responds:

“I didn’t want to do parody; I didn’t want to do pastiche,” Mr. Benedictus said of the danger of imitating someone else’s style. “Dorothy Parker thought Pooh was twee beyond words.”

Whether or not Pooh is twee, Mr. Benedictus said he stayed true to the original characters. “I made Eeyore a little more proactive so he wasn’t always the victim, although you can’t turn him into Gary Cooper or something,” he said. “Pooh may have put on an inch or two, but he’s the same old bear.”

And there's the problem. Mr. Benedict admits to changing the very character and personality of Eeyore and he has added "Lottie the Otter" to the beloved cast of characters created by A.A. Milne. I see red flags popping up everywhere and I'm more uneasy about the book than I was yesterday. This just doesn't feel right - but it is probably closer to the original than the Disney version, proving again that all things are relative.

Piglet Says Christopher Robin Is Back in the Forest

The buzz in the Forest is that Christopher Robin is back. Owl, Rabbit and Piglet have all heard the same thing and, though no one has seen Christopher yet, the possibility is all they can talk about.

Well, the rumors are true and Christopher returns to the Forest and his old friends tomorrow when Dutton Chrildren's Books (an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group) releases the first new Winnie-the-Pooh book in 80 years. The finished book was delivered to Dutton in January but its contents have been a carefully guarded secret until now - no review copies were released and the first chapter was made available for preview only last week.

From the official press release comes these details:

Written by David Benedictus and illustrated by Mark Burgess, Return to the Hundred Acre Wood continues the adventures of Christopher Robin, Winnie-the-Pooh, Tigger, Piglet, Eeyore and friends. Egmont Publishing will publish the book simultaneously in the UK. Penguin Audio will publish an audio version of the book read by Grammy Award-winner Jim Dale. The book has an announced first printing of 300,000.

[...]

Dutton officially introduced Christopher Robin and his "silly old bear" to the US in 1926 with the publication of Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne and illustrated by E.H. Shepard. However Pooh had a significant walk-on role in 1924 with the publication of When We Were Very Young by A.A Milne with illustrations by E.H. Shepard. Milne and Shepard went on to collaborate on two more titles: Now We Are Six in 1927 and The House At Pooh Corner, which introduced Tigger, in 1928. Together, these four books form the basis of the original Pooh books. Newly-designed editions of all four books were published September 3rd.

Link to the book's beautifully illustrated first chapter

The new book does have the approval of the Trustees of the Pooh Properties but I have mixed emotions about the whole concept. I tend to be a bit of a purist when it comes to this kind of thing and my first reaction is to prefer that well enough be left alone. Messing around with a classic book by having someone other than the original author write a sequel to it is always a bit dangerous because the new author is extremely unlikely to be able to reach the level of the original - and, as a result, both the original and the new become somewhat tainted in the minds of readers. That said, however, this kind of thing probably does work better with children's books because so much of the story is told with easily mimicked illustrations.

For a more complete look at Return to the Hundred Acre Wood, including a video, go to the official Penguin website.

A Report from Winter

By the time Wayne Courtois got to his mother’s deathbed, she was no longer able to communicate and he was never quite sure she even knew he was there. Courtois had not seen his mother, or the rest of his family, for ten years when he arrived in frozen Maine feeling somewhat guilty about his long absence. A Report from Winter explains why it happened that way.

Wayne Courtois and his older brother Bruce grew up in a family in which emotions and feelings were largely ignored. Certainly, they were never expressed out loud or through any kind of physical intimacy. The one exception to the rule was the anger into which his mother would erupt at seemingly random moments, anger that often culminated with her expressing her utter contempt for Wayne, her youngest son. Wayne’s mother paid so little attention to the feelings of her sons that he grew up believing that having an emotional life was a secret best kept to himself. Open communication was so taboo in the Courtois family, in fact, that Wayne still believes that his parents died without the knowledge that both their sons are gay.

Finding it difficult to cope with his emotions while waiting for his mother to die, and having no one in the family with whom he can share his feelings, Wayne reluctantly decides to ask his partner, Ralph, to join him from Kansas City. The close relationship of the two men, and the unquestioning support Ralph provides in this moment of crisis, underscore everything wrong with Wayne’s family and transforms A Report from Winter into a remarkable story.

Wayne Courtois is one of those writers whose prose is almost effortless to read. One is left with the impression that his memoir is a brutally honest one, a book that is unlikely to be appreciated by his brother or his Aunt Louise, the two family members who spent some time with him at his mother’s bedside. He has little good to say about either of them, and readers of A Report from Winter will certainly understand why that is after reading the flashbacks to an incident from Wayne’s childhood which alternate with chapters about his mother’s death.

When he arrived in Portland that day in 1998, Wayne was not sure what to expect. As he puts it, “With a start I realized that, while I hadn’t taken this journey to indulge in self-contemplation, I’d be doing plenty of it whether I liked it or not. My goal might eventually be to get the hell out of here with my short supply of self-esteem intact.” Thanks to Ralph, I think Wayne Courtois left Maine with his self-esteem stronger than ever.

Rated at: 4.0

Will HarperCollins Marketing Tactic Tick Off Amazon?

HarperCollins is set to try something different with the release of Sarah Palin's new book, Going Rougue: An American Life. Rather than release the hardcover and the e-book at the same time, HarperCollins has elected to hold off on its e-book release until December 26 (one day after all that Christmas shopping is all done).

It is beginning to look like publishers still don't know how much the profits from the sale of e-books are offset by the predictable drop in hardcover sales. The companies have tried various strategies in recent weeks. On the one hand, Dan Brown's latest poorly written book, The Lost Symbol, saw a simultaneous release of both versions, and both the hardcover and the e-book sold in predictably spectacular numbers. And, on the other hand, Ted Kennedy's True Compass is only available in hardcover - with, at least for now, no plan to release the book in e-book format.

The approach taken by HarperCollins is somewhere in the middle, and by holding the e-book version off until after Christmas, the publisher hopes to maximize the sale of hardcover volumes. I doubt that Amazon and Sony are happy with the way the Kennedy and Palin books are being marketed, but this may be the only way for publishers to fight the $9.99 e-book price of which Amazon seems to be so fond.

Personally, I'm not in the least interested in any of the three books, but I do wonder what e-book fans think about the decision to limit their e-book access to the two political books. Any thoughts?

Hardball

The good news is that Sara Paretsky is back. Even better news, though, is that she brought V.I. Warshawski with her this time around - and that longtime fans of Paretsky’s Warshawski novels will find reading Hardball to be a little like experiencing old home week. Not only will they be able to catch up on what V.I. has been up to since 2005’s Fire Sale, they will get to spend some time with other favorite characters like Vic’s elderly neighbor, Mr. Contreras, and her doctor friend, Lotty Herschel.

When, as a favor to a nursing home pastor, Vic agrees to do a cut-rate search for a young black man who disappeared in 1967, she opens up a can of worms with the potential to ruin the reputation of her deceased father, Tony, a longtime Chicago policeman. 1966 was not a pretty year in the history of Chicago race relations and, when Martin Luther King led a peaceful march through one of the city’s parks, white protesters erupted in a riot that claimed the life of a young black woman marching near Dr. King. Vic knows that the man she wants to find was part of that march but she knows nothing about what happened to him after.

Lamont Gadsden has not been seen since he entered a neighborhood club one night, and the deeper she digs into the circumstances of his disappearance, the more complicated Vic’s life becomes. Her investigation is somewhat complicated by the unexpected appearance of an exuberant young cousin of hers who has come to Chicago for a few weeks to work on a political campaign. Although the two had never met before, Vic finds herself spending almost as much time with her enthusiastic cousin on a tour of Warshawski family history as she does on the search for Lamont Gadsden.

It all may seem like ancient history to Vic, but her investigation has made some very important people willing to play hardball to stop her from uncovering the truth about the 1966 murder and its aftermath. When her young cousin disappears, possibly at the hand of kidnappers, Vic finds herself searching for two people instead of one - and running for her life.

Hardball is a frank look at a subject as much in the news today as it was in the sixties, the rampant political corruptness of America’s third largest city and the related problems within the city’s law enforcement agencies. V.I. Warshawski is a social activist, a true believer who has lived in Chicago her whole life, and she refuses to look the other way even if her father might have been involved in something shady more than four decades earlier. Let’s hope that there are equally determined people in real world Chicago today.

Rated at: 5.0

Selling Light

Peter Cooper is one of those rich young men who wake up every morning wondering what the world can do for him today. Self-centered to the degree that he truly believes he has been placed upon the Earth simply to enjoy himself, Cooper surrounds himself with people who acquiesce to his supposed superiority. That he will one day cross paths with George, the lighthouse keeper, and young research student, Briege, is unfortunate but not so surprising.

After all, when George decides to use the internet to sell his life, who is more likely to purchase it than someone like Peter Cooper? George, filled with personal despair, is ready to sell, and Peter, who will buy anything he thinks might amuse him, has the money to buy George’s life on a whim. And that is exactly what happens.

Meanwhile, Briege goes merrily along studying crabs and other assorted creatures offered up by the little seaside village. Briege, though, is no ordinary researcher. Rather, she comes to know the crabs she studies as individuals, even to drawing their personal portraits in her notebook, naming them, and recognizing them as individuals with personalities when she spots them again days later. Briege’s problem is that she relates better to the crabs than she does to people.

Effie Gray’s Selling Light offers a glimpse into the lives of people who are totally unprepared for what they find and feel when they stumble into each other. Gray often uses humor to make her point about the nature of modern relationships in a world in which so many find it impossible to form long term connections, but her message is both serious and sad.

Selling Light is another in the Roast Books series of Great Little Reads, books designed to be read in one or two sittings spread over a couple of hours. As usual, the back cover of the book contains its “List of Ingredients.” This time around those ingredients are: “Dilapidated Lighthouse, Obsessional Research Student, Identity Crisis.” Effie Gray brews up a complicated and entertaining little story from those ingredients.

Rated at: 4.0