Man Gave Names to All the Animals

There are a handful of record albums that I find myself coming back to year after year. Two of those are Bob Dylan albums, but probably not the ones most would think of first when listing Dylan's recordings: Nashville Skyline and Slow Train Coming.

With Nashville Skyline, Dylan went country, even going to Nashville to record the album and inviting Johnny Cash to record a song with him (beginning a long friendship between the two men). Slow Train Coming is Dylan's first Christian album, one of three he recorded after announcing that he had become a born-again Christian. I find the combination of simplicity and heartfelt emotion in these two albums to be particularly appealing for some reason.

Now comes word from Rolling Stone that a new children's book based on one of the Slow Train Coming songs, "Man Gave Names to All the Animals," is to be published in September:

“From the first time I heard it, the lyrics created pictures in my mind of a land of primeval beauty,” Arnosky (artist) said in a press release. “I thought this vision would make a dream of a book, and I asked for Bob Dylan’s permission to make this dream come true. Happily, he said yes.”

[...]

“[Arnosly] has outdone himself with the lush, detailed illustrations, and we couldn’t be more delighted to have this opportunity to work with Bob Dylan,” said Sterling Children’s Book Senior Editor Meredith Mundy in a press release. Sterling previously released a children’s book dedicated to “Puff the Magic Dragon,” and its success persuaded them to publish another book by a folk legend.

Those unfamiliar with the song lyrics might want to watch the YouTube video I've attached, below. Do keep in mind that the illustrations shown in this video have absolutely nothing to do with the new picture book, however. (In fact, I'm not at all sure I understand what these pictures are all about- if anyone gets their point, please do enlighten me.)

The Lost Man Booker Prize

Peter Straus, honorary archivist to the Booker Prize Foundation, has come up with a neat twist on the Booker Prize for best novel this next time around. It seems a rule change made in 1971 had the effect of eliminating from consideration every single novel published in 1970.

Booksellers (New Zealand) explains it this way:

In 1971, just two years after it began, the Booker Prize ceased to be awarded retrospectively and became a prize for the best novel in the year of publication. At the same time, the award moved from April to November, creating a whole year's gap when fiction published in1970 fell through the net.

So now, some 29 years later, a group of 1970 finalists has been released. From this group of finalists, a short list will be announced in March and, from that short list, the "international reading public" will choose the winner (to be announced in May 2010).

These are the 22 finalists:

The Hand Reared Boy - Brian Aldiss
A Little Of What You Fancy? - H.E.Bates
The Birds On The Trees - Nina Bawden
A Place In England - Melvyn Bragg
Down All The Days - Christy Brown
Bomber - Len Deighton
Troubles - J.G.Farrell
The Circle Elaine - Feinstein
The Bay Of Noon - Shirley Hazzard
A Clubbable Woman - Reginald Hill
I'm The King Of The Castle - Susan Hill
A Domestic Anima -l Francis King
The Fire Dwellers - Margaret Laurence
Out Of The Shelter - David Lodge
A Fairly Honourable Defeat - Iris Murdoch
Fireflies - Shiva Naipaul
Master and Commander - Patrick O'Brian
Head To Toe - Joe Orton
Fire From Heaven - Mary Renault
A Guilty Thing Surprised - Ruth Rendell
The Driver's Seat - Muriel Spark
The Vivisector - Patrick White

If you like this kind of thing, keep your eyes and ears open so that you don't miss your chance to vote. I'm sorry to say that I've only read two of these twenty-two finalists (embarrassed is probably a better word for how I feel about that) so I hope to do a little catching up before the voting period. I know, I know...good intentions get you nowhere by themselves.

Cutting for Stone

Cutting for Stone is one of those novels whose size and reputation could easily intimidate its prospective readers. It comes in at almost 550 pages, after all, and most of the story takes place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, of all places. Its main characters are Ethiopian, Eritrean, Indian, British, or some mix of those nationalities and, even when the action moves to New York City, it is to a part of the city few Americans know anything about. The novel is part history lesson, part love story; it is both a modern novel and a reminder of the kind of thing Charles Dickens wrote on his best days; it is a science lesson and a travelogue. Bottom line: This is a very special novel, a reading experience everyone should at least consider having. Pick up this book; flip through it; read a few pages to see if it is something for you. If not, put it aside and try it again in a few months. Maybe you will get lucky the second time around.

When Sister Mary Joseph Praise gives birth to twin boys, no one is more surprised than the people trying to save her life – even Dr. Thomas Stone, the man suspected of being the father of the babies cannot believe what he is seeing. Stone feels such shock and dismay at his failure to save the nun that he walks out of the lives of his sons even as they are struggling to draw their first breaths.

Right up to the moment of her tragic death, Sister Mary Joseph Praise and Dr. Stone have been integral parts of the Missing Hospital community (called Missing only because native speakers have difficulty pronouncing the word Mission). Now, Hema, the mission’s obstetrician, decides that she needs to devote herself to raising the twins, and Ghosh, the only other doctor, has to transform himself into a confident surgeon. Marion and Shiva Stone will grow into young men surrounded by loving and supportive people but, to say the least, they live in interesting times.

The boys will prove to be good students and, with the encouragement of Hema and Ghosh, both develop the interest in medicine that will define their lives. What better place can there be than Missing Hospital for would-be medical doctors to gain countless hours of hands-on experience other medical students can only dream about.? Unfortunately, politics, in the form of military coups and Eritrean separatist rebels, will have tragic consequences for some of those closest to Marion and Shiva, even to the point that Marion is forced to leave Missing Hospital for work in a New York ghetto hospital. But that is far from the end of Marion and Shiva Stone’s story.

Readers will be totally immersed in the world and characters Abraham Verghese has created in Cutting for Stone, and will find that Marion and Shiva Stone soon become believable characters despite their rather mythical entry into the world. Their relationship suffers over the years but, despite everything that happens between them, the pair shares the kind of bond only experienced by identical twins. They are so close, in fact, that Marion often feels they should be called MarionShiva rather than by their individual names. The reader will also come to love most of the supporting cast, despite the fatal flaws exhibited by a few of them, with which Verghese surrounds the Stone brothers.

I do have one warning about Cutting for Stone (and I say this with a smile): Keep in mind that Abraham Verghese is a doctor and that he uses surgical detail and medical condition descriptions to add authenticity and passion to his prose. This is not a book to be read during lunch or dinner by anyone with a “weak stomach.” Those who have read the book will know what I mean; those who have not should consider themselves warned.

Rated at: 5.0

Best of 2010, Update 7

I finished Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stone Sunday night and I'll be posting my thoughts about the book in a few minutes. Simply stated: I love the book and the time I spent in mid-20th century Ethiopia with Marion and Shiva Stone. This one goes to number 1 and it might be there for a while.



So, after 11 books, I have dropped the first book off the list and I'm left with this Top 10:

1. Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese (novel)
2. Man of Constant Sorrow - Ralph Stanley and Eddie Dean (biography)
3. The Opposite Field - Jesse Katz (memoir)
4. The Calligrapher's Daughter - Eugenia Kim (novel)
5. Homer & Langley - E.L. Doctorow - 4.0 (novel)
6. Blind Submission - Debra Ginsberg (2006 novel)
7. Goosetown: Reconstructing an Akron Neighborhood - Joyce Dyer (memoir)
8. Get Out of the Way - Daniel Dinges (novel)
9. Boston Noir - Dennis Lehane, Editor (short story collection)
10. The Unnamed - Joshua Ferris (novel)

Amazon vs. Macmillan

There seems to be a temporary truce in the new war between Amazon.com and book publisher Macmillan over the publisher's demand that Amazon sell Macmillan's bestselling e-books at prices ranging from $12.99 to $14.99 rather than at Amazon's standard price of $9.99 per e-book. It will be interesting to see how other publishers react. Will they join Macmillan by raising their own prices or will they try to grab a bigger piece of the e-book pie by undercutting the new Macmillan pricing scheme?

I do find Amazon's spin amusing. The giant retailer is crying foul and is tremendously upset, it claims, about how this price increase affects its customers.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Amazon said it briefly halted sales of e-books from Macmillan for its Kindle e-reader device after learning that Macmillan wanted to charge between US$12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.

[...]

In a pointed notice to customers posted Sunday night, Amazon said it expressed its "strong disagreement" with Macmillan and temporarily cut off the sale of all Macmillan titles.

That decision, however, was soon overturned.

"We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books," the company said. "Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it's reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book."

Amazon said it doesn't expect any of the other five big publishers to make the same decision. Amazon suggested the price increase will create opportunities for other authors and publishing companies to supply "attractively priced e-books as an alternative."

Not mentioned by Amazon is the impact that higher e-book prices will have on the sale of the Kindle reader itself. Having this happen just when the new Apple iPad is set to enter the market has to have Amazon wondering if its Kindle sales numbers have peaked and its e-book reader market share is about to shrink. Time will tell.

Goosetown: Reconstructing an Akron Neighborhood

Joyce Dyer is searching for what she considers her “missing years,” those first four or five years of life of which few people can salvage many reliable memories. Dyer does remember a few things about when she lived in Goosetown, an Akron neighborhood, but she wonders if her memories are more akin to the product of someone else’s stories or of the few old photographs of herself in Goosetown settings she has studied. Now, along with her elderly uncle, Dyer is traveling the streets of her old neighborhood in search of buildings and street corners that might help her recover memories of a time and place she barely recalls.

Goosetown: Reconstructing an Akron Neighborhood is as much about Dyer’s reconstruction of what she knows about her family as it is about reconstructing the old neighborhood. She finds, despite how little Goosetown now resembles the area she remembers, that the buildings, homes and other physical markers from her youth point her toward truths about herself and her family she never expected to learn. Goosetown may no longer exist, but what it can teach her about her family will change her forever.

Joyce Dyer, in effect, had two sets of parents. Joyce’s mother reacted badly to her birth and was never able to fully accept, or fill, her role as mother to the little girl, and her father dealt with the problem largely by ignoring it and getting on with his own life. Luckily, Joyce’s Aunt Ruth (her mother’s sister) and Uncle Paul were there to give her the love and guidance she did not always get at home. Joyce spent as much time with Ruth and Paul as she spent with her own parents, and she became as much a sister to their son Paul as she was his cousin. She was also close to her young cousins Carol and Eddie, although Eddie was struck and killed on a Goosetown street when he was just five years old.

Now, all these years later, it is her 89-year-old Uncle Paul, a man who has outlived two wives and jokingly calls himself the “Mayor of Goosetown,” who accompanies Dyer on her quest. Paul is there to answer her questions and to put what she learns about her Haberkost grandparents into its proper perspective. Some revelations are triggered by the neighborhood’s geography; others come from her study of public records, family letters and diaries; and still others are mined from the memories of relatives. What she learns about her family’s history of alcoholism, depression and its tendency to suffer from Early-Onset Alzheimer’s explains to her much about the family skeletons she had never really understood.

Near the end of Goosetown, Dyer hints about the skeletons still in her own closet and what remains to be said if she is ever to tell the whole truth - all the things she keeps inside at the risk of her own well-being. Perhaps what she has learned about Goosetown and her family will make it easier for her to reveal the rest of her story. I hope so.

(Look at the book's cover and you'll spot the author in the center of the picture - there's something going on there for sure.)

Rated at: 4.0

(Review copy provided by publisher)