Book Trailer of the Week: "Raiders! The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made!"

Most of the book trailers I stumble upon have been viewed anywhere from a few dozen times to a few hundred times when I find them.  That's just the nature of book-releated videos on YouTube...definitely a limited audience for these things on a site dominated by music videos and the antics of celebrity fools (such fools of which there seem to be an infinite number and variety).  This trailer however, has already been viewed over 15,000 times, making it one of the most popular ones on the site.  Whether that popularity turns into actual book sales, of course, remains to be seen.

I find the whole idea that a couple of kids in Mississippi would spend seven years of their lives re-shooting every single scene from Stephen Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark to be absolutely fascinating.  You read that correctly...every single scene.  Run a few of those spectacular Raiders stunts through your head for a moment and you will realize how amazing their achievement is.  Now their movie is being shown in theaters, and there's a new book all about it: Raiders! The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made.  As the author notes in the video, this is really a story about friendship, one that, in this case, was almost permanently destroyed by the girl who came between them.



 15th Book Trailer of the week in a continuing series of unusual and memorable book trailers spotted by Book Chase

Louise Erdrich Wins National Book Award for Fiction

Because I never manage to read all the shortlisted books, I do not normally spend much of my emotional energy pulling for a particular book to win the National Book Award for fiction.  But this year, probably because I just finished (and so much enjoyed), Louise Erdrich's The Round House, I was really rooting for it to win.  And it did!

I have enjoyed reading Louise Erdrich since stumbling upon Tracks in 1988.  After that one, I immediately ran out to find a copy of her 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award for best work of fiction, Love Medicine, and I have been a fan ever since.

Erdrich is an interesting, and very talented, writer.  She is half Chippewa (her mother) and half German-American, and writes pretty much exclusively of the experiences of modern Native-Americans as they struggle for an identity in a country that still, often as not, treats them as second-class citizens - especially if they stay on the reservation.

The Round House is a memorable coming-of-age story of a boy who, although he is growing up inside the boundaries of a reservation, is the only child of one of the more prominent families on the reservation.  But it is really the story of the boy's mother, a woman who suffers a brutal crime for which the legal system offers no remedy.  Erdrich exposes and explores a legal question that still makes it difficult, in some cases, for Native-Americans to find justice in our legal system.  I believe the jurisdictional problem Erdrich speaks of will surprise - and outrage - her readers.

Honestly, because I have only ever picked one other major book award award correctly, I did not expect The Round House to win.  For that reason, my review is not quite ready for posting.  I'll just say, for now, don't miss this one...more later.

Moby-Dick Big Read, Chapters 33-40

Chapter 35 illustration by Robert Fearns

Chapters 33-40 of Moby-Dick total 36 pages and conclude at page 179 of my Library of America edition of this classic novel...still no sighting of the big guy, himself, however.  Chapter 41 is titled "Moby Dick" and Chapter 42 is called "The Whiteness of the Whale."  Will Moby Dick make an actual appearance then?  Well...

These chapters are largely introductory ones in which the hierarchy aboard the ship is explained, beginning with the high status of the "harpooneer," "a class unknown of course in any other marine other than the whale fleet."  The status of the harpooning class is rather obvious when one considers that the success of the entire three-year voyage largely depends on having competent whale-stickers on board.

After contrasting the living arrangements of the men and their officers, Melville describes the ship's three mast-heads, high perches manned by whale-spotters in two-hour ships during daylight hours almost as soon as whaling vessels leave port.   According to our narrator, an ordinary sailor will spend the equivalent of "several months" at the mast-head over the course of a long voyage.

The reader also learns in this section of the book of the regimented hierarchy of the "captain's table," a table in which the officers are served in order of rank - including the quantity of food they can expect to receive.  Melville sets the scene this way: "Over his ivory-inlaid table, Ahab presided like a mute, maned sea-lion on the white coral beach, surrounded by his war-like but still deferential cubs...They were as little children before Ahab..."  We also get a peek at the contrast between what happens at the Captain's table and the atmosphere at that same table when the harpooneers use it for their own meal.  Let's just say that the young serving boy seriously fears that, if he is not careful, he might just become part of the cannibals' meal.

Up on the quarter-deck, Captain Ahab gives his crew the kind of charismatic pep-talk that few would have expected from the usually reticent captain.  By the end of Ahab's tirade, all but a handful of those on board (mostly of the officer class) are more than willing to risk life and limb to help the captain avenge the loss of leg to the great Moby Dick.

Dive Deeper (by George Cotkin), my companion piece to the novel, uses these chapters to offer another set of interesting insights into Melville's themes, the influence of Moby-Dick on generations of writers, and Melville's conscious effort to transform the novel into something more important than a money-maker.  The country's struggle to survive the slavery issue - and race relations, in general - are, according to Cotkin, "resounding themes in Moby-Dick," something obvious even to a reader like me who often struggles to identify "theme."

More surprising, is Norman Mailer's revelation of how greatly he patterned his first novel, The Naked and the Dead, after what he "stole" from Moby-Dick: "I was sure everyone would know.  I had Ahab in it, and I suppose the mountain was Moby Dick."

I am particularly fond, this time around, of the reading offered of Chapter 34 by Charlie Phillips.  Mr. Phillips has a pleasant, and surprisingly easy to follow, Scottish accent that works very well for this chapter about the captain's dinner table.  Here's a YouTube video of what I believe is the correct Charlie Phillips as he explains his studies of Bottlenose Dolphins off Scotland's west coast...and a link to the chapter itself.

Chapter 60 was just released today by the Big Read people, so I am rapidly losing ground.  My four-month project to read Moby-Dick and Dive Deeper together is starting to look more like a six-month project.

One-Use-and-Out for 35% of E-Book-Readers?

Photo Credit: The Digital Reader 

Something called CouponCodes4u.com (according to Shelf Awareness) surveyed almost 2,000 e-book-reader owners recently - and uncovered a few surprises in the process:

1. 337 (17%) claim to use their reader at least once a week
2. 575 (29%) say they use their reader every day
3. 694 (35%) say they used their reader one time - and don't plan to use it again

I find it rather amazing that more than one out of every three owners of e-book-readers find that, after using their readers only one time, they have no desire to ever use them again.

More than half of this once-and-out group say they simply don't have the time to use an e-reader, so they probably aren't regular readers, and I wonder how they ended up with a relatively expensive device in the first place.  Just over 20% say they received the reader as a gift and don't need it.  And, finally, 25% say they prefer tree-books to e-books.

Personally, I own a Sony Reader but have not used it for months because of the e-book applications available for the iPad.  So far this year, I've read 9 e-books - after reading 17 of them last year.  An e-book version of a book is never my first choice.  I only read them when publishers insist on sending only electronic review copies, when I want to read a classic not in my personal library, or when I take an e-book out of my county's library system.

How about you guys?  Are you as surprised as I am?

Too Bright to Hear, Too Loud to See

Rightly or wrongly, readers have come to expect that the central character of a literary-style debut novel will be of the same sex as that novel’s author.  Juliann Garey, however, has chosen the opposite approach for her debut.  Greyson Todd, the protagonist of Too Bright to Hear, Too Loud to See is a Hollywood studio executive whose clients swept the 1974 Oscars.  He is also a man who will walk away from it all just ten years later when his bipolar disorder finally becomes more than he can handle. 

Perhaps more interesting, his entire story occurs during the time it takes to administer twelve 30-second sessions of electroshock therapy to Greyson.  During the administration of, and recover from, those 30-second sessions, Greyson flashes back to events he experienced during his childhood, during his marriage and career, and to the ten years - beginning in 1984 – after he walked away from his family, having abandoned himself to the disease that still defines him. 

Juliann Garey

As the novel’s narratives jumps back and forth in ten-year spurts, it becomes clear that, for decades, Greyson had only been postponing the inevitable.  We learn what it was like for him to watch his father be destroyed by the very same illness, and how little guilt he felt as he silently slipped out of the lives of his wife and little girl one night.  Tellingly, because he felt he was doing his daughter a favor by disappearing from her life, Greyson felt worse about abandoning his job than about leaving the child fatherless. 

That Greyson is able to wander the world (Bangkok, Rome, Santiago, the Negev, Uganda) for most of a decade before finally crashing into ruin in New York City, is an achievement in itself.  But, when he finally does crash, he does it big time.  Despite the horrifying course of “treatment” endured by Greyson (hit-and-miss drug therapy, in addition to the ghastly electroshocks), the novel’s most effective comic moments tend to occur inside the mental hospital – and there are several charming and memorable ones. 

Too Bright to Hear, Too Loud to See is more than a novel about depression and nervous breakdowns; it is a book about the tragedy of losing one’s most precious memories, second chances granted or not granted, and the luck of the draw.  Greyson Todd’s decision to get out of his little girl’s life may well have been the best gift he ever gave her.  Would she return the favor by giving him a second chance?  The greater question might be, should she?

(Review Copy provided by Publisher)

Series Fiction: James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux

I have enjoyed "series fiction" for as long as I have been reading, particularly series that focus on crime detectives - be they "official" or "private," male or female, American, Japanese, or anything in between.    And, it seems that the longer the series, the more I enjoy them.  There is something very special about watching a character evolve and go through the same aging process that I, as a reader, am experiencing in the real world.

So it makes perfect sense that many of my favorite authors write exactly the kind of stuff I love most: James Lee Burke, Elizabeth George, Sue Grafton, Ruth Rendell, John Harvey, Dennis Lehane, Ian Rankin, Sara Paretsky, Robert B. Parker, and Denise Mina.  I knew I could depend on them to provide me with a new chapter in their hero's life story each and every year, regular as clockwork.  Some of them are still doing that, others have killed off their hero (or themselves died), and a few have gone in others directions.  Some lost interest in the old storyline and started entirely new series or decided to spin secondary characters into series of their own.  Others have simply slowed the pace down by going longer than a year between series books.

James Lee Burke is still Old Dependable.  He somehow manages a new Dave Robicheaux novel almost every year while steadily adding to his shorter Hackberry Holland and Billy Bob Holland series.  I really like the Holland clan, but it is a new Dave Robicheaux novel that still gets me most excited about Burke's writing.  It all started twenty-five years ago with 1987's The Neon Rain in which I was introduced to Dave, the first popular-fiction Cajun hero I ever ran across.  Has there ever been another, for that matter?  As someone of Cajun heritage, I have always taken the jokes, the name-calling, and prejudice pretty much in stride, but I have to admit that it was rather gratifying to finally run across a heroic cajun (even though, at times, Dave is more anti-hero than hero).  I was hooked - and still am.

Dave is, or has been, many things: recovering alcoholic, oil field trash, Viet Nam veteran, homicide cop in one of the dirtiest police forces in the country, jazz fan, racetrack regular, fisherman supreme, and defender of the weak.  The man has almost as many flaws as the bad guys he chases, and that's why he gets the job done - he does whatever it takes.  We've almost lost Dave to the bad guys a time or two (see 2010's The Glass Rainbow), but he's still with us.  Thanks for that, Mr. Burke.

Dave Robicheaux's story is a fascinating one best experienced in the order it was published.  Catching up will require some time and energy, but it is well worth the effort.  You will thank me, especially if you read the books in this order:

1. The Neon Rain (1987)
2. Heaven's Prisoners (1988)
3. Black Cherry Blues (1989)
4. A Morning for Flamingos (1990)
5. A Stained White Radiance (1992)
6. In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead (1993)
7. Dixie City Jam (1994)
8. Burning Angel (1995)
9. Cadillac Jukebox (1998)
10. Sunset Limited (1999)
11. Purple Cane Road (2000)
12. Jolie Blon's Bounce (2002)
13. Last Car to Elysian Fields (2003)
14. Crusader's Cross (2005)
15. Pegasus Descending (2006)
16. The Tin Roof Blowdown (2007)
17. Swan Peak (2008)
18. The Glass Rainbow (2010)
19. Creole Belle (2012)

So there you have it - 19 James Robicheaux books in roughly 25 years.  It doesn't get much more consistent than that.  Throw in the three Hackberry Holland novels and the four novels in the Billy Bob Holland series and Burke is right on that one-a-year pace that his loyal fans hope for.