Book Tour Gone Bad - and Cancelled

As a follow-up to yesterday's post on the Tony Blair book tour for A Journey, here's a bit of news from The Sun.  It now appears that the twit protestors will follow Mr. Blair from bookstore to bookstore as he attempts to sign copies of his memoir for those who want to add signed copies to their libraries.  Blair, showing what I think is a proper level of concern for the safety of the general public and the amount of money being wasted on extra police security, has decided to cancel his London appearances.

I imagine this means the end of the tour, period, unless Blair wants to eventually test the waters in other countries.

Thanks, though, for the publicity, twit protestors.  I had not planned on buying a copy of the book before this happened, but I will be buying one now.  And I doubt that I am the only one feeling this way.  The proceeds go to a worthy cause and you should be ashamed of yourselves for trying to stop the sale of the book to those who admire the man - or to those just curious to hear what he has to say.  Shame on you.

(This one is filed under the "Opinion" category, obviously - as was yesterday's post.)

Book Tour Gone Bad - Day 1

Former British PM Tony Blair's new memoir, A Journey, has just hit U.K. bookstores and Mr. Blair has embarked on a book tour to publicize the release.  Keep in mind that Blair is donating all proceeds from the book, including his huge advance, to the World British Legion Centre for the Rehabilitation of British Soldiers.  We are talking about several million of pounds that will ease the longterm pain or British soldiers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This Dublin bookstore appearance was the first stop on Blair's book tour, but I doubt that he was much surprised by the crowd of university twits who showed up in the rain there to throw eggs and shoes at him.  In fact, he seems somewhat amused by their hysteria.  Good on him.



It will be interesting to see how Mr. Blair is received in London and whether or not he will continue to be greeted the way he was in Dublin.

What Is a Charity to Do with All Those Donated Dan Brown Books?

In the past few months, I've been called everything from a literary snob to someone who will never get beyond lower-middlebrow reading (feedback like that is what makes book blogging so much fun).  As mutually exclusive as those two terms seem at first glance, I think they do describe my attitude about writers and the kind of reading I most often do.

I detest a literary marketplace dominated by the likes of James Patterson, Dan Brown, and Danielle Steele (and a dozen or so others of their type).  I suppose that does make me a literary snob.

But when it comes to my personal reading, no one would categorize me as being a highbrow reader.  I do enjoy "literary fiction," long, well-researched biographies, the classics, etc.  But I also enjoy: books on sports and politics, well written thrillers, series detective fiction, frank memoirs, and some books that edge into the dreaded (for a male reader) "chic lit" genre.

Today, I want to put on my literary snob hat long enough to share two interesting author lists originating with the U.K.'s Oxfam charity shops.  One is a list of the most heavily donated authors, the other ranks authors by the number of books sold at Oxfam.  There is an obvious correlation between the two lists, of course.  It is impossible for an author to sell a lot of books at Oxfam unless his books are being dumped there in great number by previous owners.

It stands to reason that an author with the most books on the Oxfam shelves will rank high on the list of books sold there if there is still a strong demand for his work.  Ranking high on the "dumped list" but low (or not at all) on the "purchased list" cannot be a good thing.

Authors Most Dumped on Oxfam
1. Dan Brown
2. Ian Rankin
3. Patricia Cornwell
4. Alexander McCall Smith
5. John Grisham
6. Danielle Steele
7. J.K. Rowling
8. Jeremy Clarkson
9. Maeve Binchey
10. Bill Bryson

Oxfam Bestselling Authors
1. Ian Rankin
2. Steig Larson
3. J.K. Rowling
4. Stephenie Myer
5. John Grisham
6. Patricia Cornwell
7. James Patterson
8. Terry Pratchett
9. Kate Atkinson
10. Dan Brown

So, among other things, a comparison of the two lists tells us that:

• Ian Rankin books are flying off the shelves as fast as they hit them
• J.K. Rowling books change hands at a similar pace to Rankin's
• Books by Grisham and Cornwell are still sought after
• Books by Pratchett, Atkinson and Patterson are selling well despite being available in relatively lower quantities
• People are actually holding on to more of those dreadful James Patterson books than to those horrors written by Dan Brown
• Vampires and Werewolves are still loved in the U.K.
• Steig Larson is selling well despite his limited backlist
• There are more and more Danielle Steele books on Oxfam shelves all the time
• Dan Brown books sell at such a slow pace that eventually Oxfam will have to find its own place to dump them

The Gettysburg Approach to Writing and Speaking like a Professional

I cannot imagine being more intimidated about writing a book review than I am about writing this one.   After all, The Gettysburg Approach to Writing and Speaking like a Professional all but promises to make me a better writer (and speaker).  So, if you think this is a sloppily written review, all I can offer in defense of the book’s effectiveness is that you should have read my reviews before I completed it.

Will my thoughts be judged more on style and presentation points than on content?  Will my average sentence length come close to the suggested 20-word standard?  Will I use too many prepositions per sentence or use the passive voice too often?  Will I allow long introductory clauses to overwhelm the main thoughts of my individual sentences?  Will I be able to avoid my bad habit of using “weasel words,” words so vague the reader can interpret them in countless shades of gray?  You get the idea.  Or have I already bored you to the point of abandoning the review for good?  

Using Lincoln’s The Gettysburg Address as his inspirational model, Philip Yaffe offers a concise instructional manual for those desiring to improve the effectiveness of their writing.  The book will appeal to those who enjoy writing already, as well as to those who write only when they absolutely must.  Yaffe clearly admires how at Gettysburg, in only 272 words, Lincoln “says more than most people could say in several thousand.”  Based upon that model, Yaffe divides his book into two short theoretical segments: 55 pages on writing fundamentals and 43 pages on public speaking.  He follows those sections with a series of appendices (A through M) that reinforce, through examples and exercises, the points he makes in the book’s theoretical sections.

Much of what Yaffe says about writing and speaking skills is common sense and will already be second nature to some readers.  But just as good writing habits become second nature with repetition, the same is true for bad ones; after a while, they will feel as correct to the writer’s “ear” as the real thing.  The appendix exercises address this problem by providing poorly written pieces that are to be edited and rewritten in the author’s suggested style.  These exercises are, in fact, where most of the book’s real teaching occurs.  

The Gettysburg Approach is written in an informal, anecdotal style that distinguishes it from most other writing manuals.  It is fun to read and so concisely written that it is probably the only such manual I have read from cover-to-cover.  That I expect to revisit its pages on a regular basis until I can assimilate all its tips and suggestions suggests to me that the book is also an excellent choice for new high school and college students.

Rated at: 5.0

Barnes & Noble, Borders on Death Row and Who Really Cares?

Borders Being Carried Out by Rapidly Melting B&N Snowmen

Chris O'Brien has written an interesting piece over on MercuryNews.com today in which he explains his indifference to the prospect that Barnes & Noble, Borders and Books-A-Million may not be long for this world.  In fact, I think it would be a pretty safe bet that none of these national chains will exist in their present format by the end of this decade (and probably much sooner than that).

What I find interesting is O'Brien's reaction to their probable disappearance.  He recalls how callously the "disruptors" moved in during the 1980s to wipe out thousands of local bookstores - and how consumers everywhere flocked to the big box stores, local stores be damned.  Now, he says it is the "disruptors" that are being disrupted and he really does not much care.

I've written here before about the irony of the situation in which the Big-2 bookstore chains now find themselves, considering how ruthlessly they behaved in city after city as they carved up the national market for themselves at the expense of the bookstores that preceded them.  That's, perhaps, the main reason that, like O'Brien, I am not particularly upset to see the chains suffer this humiliation.  It's one of those "live by the sword, die by the sword" things, after all.  What I'm wishing for is a return to the marketplace of independents willing to carve out a new niche for themselves.  How likely that scenario is, I'm afraid to guess.

We consumers are a greedy lot.  We want more stuff and we don't want to pay a dime more for our stuff than we have to pay, meaning that online bookstores are going to dominate the industry very soon (some would say they already do).  If that means that used-book stores, independent bookstores and libraries thrive again - or at least get a decent shot at thriving - then this might not be such a bad thing.

And, as O'Brien goes on to say, no one will much care when the Amazon.com business model gets routed by the next big thing.  It's just a matter of time.

2010 Texas Book Festival vs. Bluegrass Weekend

The 2010 Texas Book Festival, as started by Laura Bush in Austin when she and George lived in the Governor's Mansion there, is fast approaching - and I am faced with a choice I never expected to have to make.  It turns out that the Book Festival is being held two weeks earlier this year than in 2009, the weekend of October 16-17, to be exact.  Well, guess what?  That's the exact weekend that what is probably the best bluegrass festival held in Texas every year will be happening up near Dallas.  Even though the bluegrass festival ends late Saturday night, there is no way I can get to Austin early enough on Sunday morning to catch even the second day of the book festival.

What's a guy to do when the art gods conspire against him?  I've been thinking about this for a week now and - get ready for this - have decided to go to the music festival and skip Austin this year.  The way I look at it, quality bluegrass music is harder to find in this state than are quality book events.  I still can't believe the two festivals are overlapping this way, though...never saw that one coming.

The festival organizers have posted a list of authors who will be at the festival and the first thing I notice is that the authors of my top two fiction choices of the year (as of my last update) are both on the list: Abraham Verghese (Cutting for Stone) and Karl Marlantes (Matterhorn).  Wouldn't you know it?  


Now, I'm going to try to put the festival out of my mind until October 2011.  Yeah, right.