An Eight-Book Week - Followed by a Seven-Book Week!

I knew they were coming but the sight of seven more new books arriving in the mail this week filled me with a combination of anxiety and glee. I can't remember ever receiving so many promising books in such a short period of time.

This week I welcomed:

The Turnaround by George Pelecanos - Pelecanos is one of the finest writers of urban crime fiction and this 2008 novel (now in trade paperback) got nice critical reviews last year. Pelecanos is described as a "literary crime writer," and this is the story of some naive young people who stray into the wrong Washington D.C. neighborhood with tragic results. Their story, covering several decades, is one I am really anxious to start.

In the Land of Cotton by Martha A. Taylor - This is a look at life in the Deep South just as the Civil Rights Movement is beginning to pick up steam. It is one little girl's story but I'm curious to see how closely it parallels my own memories of what life was like in the South during the late 1950s.

The Last Child by John Hart - I really enjoyed Hart's Down River and I've recently picked up a free e-book version of his first novel, The King of Lies, from his publisher. This one will be released on May 12 with a first printing of 175,000 copies and lots of high hopes. It is about a 13-year-old boy who decides to search, on his own, for his twin sister who has disappeared.

Border Songs by Jim Lynch - This one promises to be quite a character-driven novel about an American Border Patrol officer working the Canadian border. The publisher, Alfred A. Knoph, seems to be particularly excited about this title, so I'm being tempted to jump right in. Just picking it up long enough to write this bit has, in fact, made me even more anxious to get to it.

The Winter Vault by Anne Michaels - My quest for Canadian fiction drew me to this one. It is the story of a Canadian couple, archeologists, who go to Egypt to help save as much of ancient Egypt as they can before engineers flood the area via the new Aswan Dam. Tragedy (of some sort) strikes and they return to Canada as much different people than they were before.

Annie's Ghosts by Steve Luxenberg - This is the true story of Beth Luxenberg, believed to be an only child by everyone who knows her, including her own son, who when she is 80-years old suddenly speaks of having had a disabled sister. Her son, both shocked and intrigued by his mother's late revelation, decides to find out the truth of his missing aunt.

The Last Paradise by Michael Kasenow - I couldn't pass up the chance to read this one since it is a novel about the great hurricane that wiped out Galveston, Texas in 1900. I've lived most of my life within 75 miles in one direction or another from Galveston and have always been intrigued by the storm that killed at least 5,000 people and almost wiped the island clean. I've been especially interested in what happened in 1900 since Hurricane Ike came through and smashed Galveston last year. I started reading this one today.

So there you have it, fifteen books received in a two-week period, and I don't smell a clunker among them. Excuse me while I find a comfortable spot to read...

Short Story Sunday: "The Worm in the Apple"

Since my wife's out-of-town this weekend, I read another John Cheever short story with my lunch. I'm reading from a collection of all of Cheever's stories and choosing stories based entirely on my reaction to his titles; if the title makes me curious, or gives me a particular image, I read the story to see how closely my imagined plot fits the actual story.

Some titles, like "The Worm in the Apple," don't tell me much about a story's content but give pointed clues to its tone. As it happens, "The Worm in the Apple" was difficult to predict from its title but, as I suspected, it is another version of Cheever's generally low opinion of life in the suburbs. One has to suspect that Cheever was not exactly a fan of "Leave It to Beaver."

"The Worm in the Apple" is about the Crutchmans, a family that seems too perfect to some to be real. The neighbors believe that the Crutchmans cannot possibly be as successful or happy as they appear and that the family is working doubly hard to hide its problems and failures. Friends and neighbors are not about to let them get away with that little charade.

A few "worms" did show up in the Crutchman apple over the course of the years, of course, as they always will. However, much to the disappointment of those keeping score, the Crutchmans always manage to get past any family setback or misstep and to remain as happy and successful as ever. As Cheever put it, near the end of this little five-page story, "one might wonder if the worm was not in the eye of the observer..."

"The Worm in the Apple" is a reminder that some people are insulated by their enthusiasm for life and that, almost by habit, they make the most of what each day brings them. On the flip side, it also reminds that others are so unhappy with life that they desperately want to believe that everyone else feels the same. Sadly, I have to believe that Cheever himself falls in the latter camp.

Can CBS News and Obama Increase Book Sales?

I'm always fascinated by the power that celebrities have to dramatically increase book sales. We all know that Oprah can create instant bestsellers on her show - even for books published years earlier. The same thing happens, to a lesser degree, in the U.K. via the Richard and Judy Show. I remember when President Clinton was seen carrying a novel in his hand as he made his way to his helicopter for a trek to Camp David - instant bestsellerdom for another author.

Now I wonder if CBS News and President Obama are going to have the same impact with CBS's decision to publicize Obama's recent New York Times interview in which the president mentions the book he is currently reading. The three have teamed up to give Joseph O'Neil's Netherland a shot at the big bucks. This is not a new book, already having sold some 90,000 copies, so it will be interesting to see what, or if anything, happens.

When he gets tired of trying to solve the country’s problems, it seems President Obama likes to kick back with a novel: In an interview with the New York Times, the president said he is "sick of briefing books" and is reading "Netherland" by the Irish author Joseph O'Neill.

...

"Netherland," as one of New York Times's best books of the year, has already sold over 90,000 copies but that number might surge on the news. Mr. Obama has a way of making books wildly popular – when Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez gave him a copy of "Open Veins of Latin America," that book shot up to from about 50,000 in total sales to the become the second bestselling book on Amazon.com.

What is it? Do people feel closer to celebrities if they can imagine that they are experiencing the same book that the celebrities have read? Is this really a good thing? Is it fair or is there room for under-the-table dealing to corrupt the whole process? It's a mystery to me, but I'm always happy for the authors and publishers who benefit because what's good for them generally is good for me as a reader.

As I write this, Netherland is number 790 on Amazon's list of bestselling fiction. Will it move?

Then We Came to the End

Corporate America is filled with cubicle dwellers and, if you are not one those now, it is very likely that you have been one sometime in the past. Some of us finally escape the dreaded cubicle jungle for good; others of us spend large chunks of our lives there. Then We Came to the End is the story of one such place, a Chicago ad agency suffering the steady drip of office layoffs due to the 2001 economic downturn. Joshua Ferris, himself a former member of Cubicle America, takes a tricky first person plural approach to tell this company’s story and his collective “we voice” makes it easy for cubicle veterans to identify with what he describes.

Ferris so successfully describes the office setting and its daily goings-on that some office veterans might cringe when he hits a little to close to home for comfort. This is an agency filled with people much like the ones you work with every day. You like most of them well enough, and even consider one or two of them to be good friends, but you almost never see them outside the office setting. Some of them have little habits and mannerisms that drive you nuts, some of them you find attractive, and you might even feel threatened by one or two others who always seem ready to stab you in the back if it means a move up the corporate ladder for them.

As the layoffs continue, surviving agency workers feel more and more pressure to look busy even as their actual workloads shrink to almost nothing. Rumors and speculation become the order of the day, and little clusters of whispering employees gather to discuss old rumors - and to send a few new ones out into the workplace themselves. They may not know each other very well but the employees have strong opinions about each other based on what they observe at the office. As office-mates disappear one-by-one and the company looks more and more unlikely to survive its downward spin, personal grudges, petty dislikes, and old rivalries become more and more important.

One laid-off copywriter sneaks back into the office and even attends meetings in an attempt to prove his worth to the agency. Another refuses to admit that he suffers depression but begins stealing prescription medicine from a co-worker’s desk. Others prefer to pretend that it is business as usual and they carry on with their office love affairs, both real and imagined. As their numbers dwindle, those still on the job become more and more frantic and strange things begin to happen. Workers raid newly vacated offices to find better chairs or office doodads for themselves; some fired employees tend return like bad pennies; and others begin to crack in their own rather unique ways.

Joshua Ferris put me back in a world I personally experienced not that long ago. His use of satirical dark humor to describe the office trauma in Then We Came to the End sets just the right tone for the story he tells. Ferris also has a knack for perfectly describing even the most minor of his characters, as he does, for instance, in the case of one loner payroll clerk: “Her office was a firetrap of put-off filing. Sandy had gray hair and wore one of those ribbed finger condoms that gives one speed in the sport of accounting.” (Hey, I think I know that woman.)

Despite my flashbacks, this was a fun book for me to read and I recommend it to anyone who has been there and is not afraid to go back one more time for a little visit.

Rated at: 4.0

J.K. Rowling Wants No Part of E-Books (At Least for Now)

Have you wondered why certain books, many of them classics and huge bestsellers, are not available in e-book format? There are lots of reasons, actually, and not all of them have something to do with the bottom lines of the authors and publishers. The same thing happens in the music business, as Beatles fans who have searched for Beatles music online know well, but I was a bit surprised that so many writers are resistant to the idea of their work being published electronically.

Yahoo News discusses the situation in this article by Hillel Italie.

Many authors complain that the common 25% of net receipts royalty rate is simply too little for a product whose production cost is so minimal (the rate varies slightly from publisher to publisher). They would like to see that rate changed to 50% of net proceeds, doubling the royalty rate that was set eight years ago.

Big holdouts include J.K. Rowling who does not believe in e-books and prefers to see her work remain in paper format only. Other, now classic works, are also missing from the various electronic bookstores: Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, Catch-22 and even Atlas Shrugged, among them.

The folks in charge of Ayn Rand's publishing rights might want to rethink that limitation considering the renewed interest in her work that the Great Recession of 2009 has created.

Read the article - it's interesting.

Vern Gosdin Dead at 74

I heard very early this morning that the great voice of Vern Gosdin was silenced last night and I've had Vern on my mind ever since. Vern Gosdin was one of the best stylists in the history of country music and, for the most part, he stayed true to the genre by refusing to slide into the watered-down claptrap that passes for country music today. Of course, that meant Vern had to kiss country radio goodbye a long time ago - but he knew that was coming anyway because country radio, with rare exception, refuses to play anyone over 40 years old (much preferring the music of 17-year-old girls who cannot sing without an autotuner in their hip pockets).

I know that I'm ranting - but when I think of all the great talent that gets pushed aside for the likes of those who become "stars," my blood pressure tends to rise dramatically.

This, though, is about Vern Gosdin, the man called "The Voice" by those who love real country music and know its colorful history. Enjoy.



"Chiseled in Stone" was the 1989 country music song of the year and no one can possibly ever match Vern's version. The emotion he displays, in combination with how he uses his voice to sell this song, is simply superb. Vern was under-appreciated by the general country music audience but those who know country music best (singers, musicians, critics and astute fans) always place him among the very best singers in country music history. And, without a doubt, they are correct.

Rest in peace, Mr. Gosdin. Your fans thank you and hope to catch you on the other side.