As grammatical or syntax errors go, I’ve always been fond of this one – modifying the word “unique.” Either something is one of a kind, or it is not, I’ve always believed. However, in our present not-rational world, things can be very unique, the most unique, uniquer-than-thou.
The word “uniqueness” passes spell checkers quite well, but it’s a clumsy word. I’d rather say “uniquity” for the quality of being unique, but although Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary recognizes uniquity as a word, it hasn’t caught on, probably because “uniquity” sounds a lot like “iniquity” or injustice, which reminds me that it’s always a mistake to write run-on sentences, not because you were told not to in high school, but because the reader will run out of breath reading or saying the whole thing at one go.
Uniquity/iniquity somehow reminds me of the use of the word “disinterested” to signify “uninterested,” as in bored. These two have become through usage interchangeable, but we don’t have to like it. To be disinterested is to be unbiased, fair-minded. Uninterested is just that – a distinct lack of interest, or apathy.
This all is very interesting, at least to me. Yesterday’s misused words may become tomorrow’s new words. No one can resist the progression of meaning in English. But we can try.
Teacher: What does the word “apathy” mean?
Student: I don’t know, and I don’t care.
Apathy arrived in English about 1600, from the French/Latin/Greek “apathia” or “apátheia” meaning “insensibility to suffering.”
If you are not apathetic, you must be “pathetic,” from the Latin “patheticus” and the Greek “pathetikós.” Call someone pathetic on the school yard and you’ll start a fight, yet pathetic didn’t start out that way.
About 1600, we adopted the French “pathétique” to mean “affecting the emotions, exciting the passions.” A hundred years later “pathetic” had shifted meaning to “arousing pity, pitiful.” It wasn’t until the 1930s that scholars recorded the most current meaning: “so miserable as to be ridiculous,” and thus your Dead End Kids, your Bowery Boys, your East Side Kids brawling in movie school yards during the Depression.
Pathos derives from the same roots as pathetic, but it is no longer pathetic’s first cousin. You experience pathos as a kind of down feeling, a sense of sorrow. You may say an excellent novel has plenty of pathos, but people will mistake it if you instead describe the novel as pathetic.
My favorite book on English is Bill Bryson’s “The Mother Tongue, English and How it Got That Way.” Bryson has nothing to say about pathos. But he’s eloquent on American dialects (yes, we have them), plosives and runes, and word origins.
He calls English “an adoptive, borrowing tongue” – shampoo from India, chaparral from the Basques, and so on. “As long ago as the sixteenth century English had already adopted words from more than fifty other languages – a phenomenal number for the age,” Bryson writes.
Take garbage. In fact, please take out the garbage. “It has had its present meaning of food waste since the Middle Ages, was brought to England by the Normans, who had adopted it from an Italian dialectical word, ‘garbuzo,’ which in turn had been taken from the Old Italian ‘garbuglio’ ‘a mess’ which ultimately had come from the Latin ‘bullire’ (to boil or bubble).”
In modern Italian, to boil or bubble is “bollire,” a change of one single letter from the Latin of two thousand years ago. That’s the Italians for you: slow food and slow language. Italians do change, but they take their time about it.
NOTES:
“The Mother Tongue” by Bill Bryson. Harper Perennial paperback $14.99. ISBN 0380715430.
Jimmy Buffett is credited with saying “Is it ignorance or apathy? Hey, I don't know and I don't care.”
“Disinterestedly Apathetic” is “disinteressatamente apatico” in Italian. Memorize this.
Not to mention lay and lie... less and fewer... “rest” rooms... it and it’s... irregardless... and so many more!.
A fascinating usage note ... “Disinterested and uninterested share a confused and confusing history. Disinterested was originally used to mean ‘not interested, indifferent;’ uninterested in its earliest use meant ‘impartial.’ By various developmental twists, disinterested is now used in both senses. Uninterested is used mainly in the sense ‘not interested, indifferent.’ It is occasionally used to mean ‘not having a personal or property interest.’ Many object to the use of disinterested to mean ‘not interested, indifferent.’ They insist that disinterested can mean only ‘impartial’: A disinterested observer is the best judge of behavior. However, both senses are well established in all varieties of English, and the sense intended is almost always clear from the context.”
If I have made any mistakes in this essay, please don’t tell me. Okay, do tell me, but be kind.
11 March 2010
04 March 2010
Looking Backward, WAY back...
Over the years this column has had many names (and been called many names). Here is my selection of Golden Nuggets from the past:
From the very first Words on Books, published on this date in 1902:
“The lumber schooner Amazon LLC hove into Mendocino harbor today carrying four seasick passengers and a crate of books destined for the new bookstore on Main Street. Idle bystanders, curious to discover what books were in the box, were told to wait until store opens Monday next.”
From 1903: “No doubt writing in haste for money, Polish writer Joseph Conrad (nee Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) undermines The Empire with a feverish tale of misbehavior. In one lovely passage, indeed the only lovely passage, set on shipboard, at sunset, on the Thames, the reader senses ‘The Heart of Darkness’ may be an edifying story well told. However, Korzeniowski soon dives into literary territory of the African variety.”
From 1908: “Well-known humorist Mark Twain, investor in the Mechanical Type-Writer, works daily on his autobiography, utilizing that machine with the assistance of a secretary, thereby risking further deterioration of an already deplorable handwriting.”
From 1912: “To celebrate ten successful years of insightful commentary, this column will now be named ‘The Discourse of Excursis Bibliomanicus.’
Forced by an editor to invent a name that would fit on one page, this column was renamed “The Back Number” in July, 1917:
‘In the room the women come and go, speaking of Michelangelo.’ With these words the Irish expatriate T.S. Eliot signals that writers of his generation will have nothing new to offer us. We know the women speak of Michelangelo. What else is there to speak of in Italy? Really, Mr Eliot, must we hear again from these insufferable women?”
Renamed “Saddle Stitched,” 1918: “Would I were to say ‘We told you so!’ would I be, thereby, gilding a lily? I think not! Hereby the remarks of Anonymous in The Times Literary Supplement: ‘The fact that these things occurred to the mind of Mr Eliot is surely of the very smallest importance to anyone, even to himself. They certainly have no relation to poetry.’ ”
1920: “Is my column, Folio Fiddle-Faddle, worth a hoot? I wonder, then receive this letter:
“Pa and I enjoy reading Fiddle-Folio-Faddle (sic) in the Mendocino Beacon news paper, which makes its way to us at Camp 24. Harvesting of the redwoods proceeds apace, and after church of a Sunday afternoon Pa will catch and skin a raccoon – a squirrel if we’re lucky. Soon the savory smell of simmering squirrel stew, or roasting raccoon ragout, signals Sunday supper. Later, we catch up with the literary life. We cannot afford to purchase even one of the books you recommend. Regardless, Sunday would be much less interesting without our Fiddle-Faddle-Folio.” (sic)
From the newly named Excursis Bibliomanicus Romanticus, 1934: “The Devil resides in Washington and bread lines stretch around the block. Yet here in Mendocino we are stuffed with the filling news of books and literature.”
From Bibliomania Exfoliosis, 1937: “The improved bridge over Big River brings new books to us almost every couple of months. Arriving rain-soaked and torn, yet these tomes were packed in excelsior, nailed firmly into wooden boxes by unionized longshoremen sitting on the dock of the San Francisco Bay.”
From The Reading Radar, 1942: “Buy Liberty Bonds, save tin foil, conserve words, that’s the ticket. Few travel far on gasoline coupons. More Americans stay home & read. Used books bundled by Boy Scouts for shipment overseas may have covers removed to fill paper drive quotas.”
1961: “Today we are reborn as ‘Crazy for Books!’ We are ‘crazy!’ about books! We are not ‘crazy!’ and we are not smoking anything herbal or stuffing white powder up our nose! Got it? Just writing! About books!”
1979: “The Man says I’ve served my time, so I’m back with ‘A Few Words on Books.’ Banned from the Beacon and fired by the Advertiser (and because community radio station KZYX has not yet gone live) this mimeographed flyer is yours to keep.”
Hang on to it, bro. It’s collectible.
NOTES: None this week.
From the very first Words on Books, published on this date in 1902:
“The lumber schooner Amazon LLC hove into Mendocino harbor today carrying four seasick passengers and a crate of books destined for the new bookstore on Main Street. Idle bystanders, curious to discover what books were in the box, were told to wait until store opens Monday next.”
From 1903: “No doubt writing in haste for money, Polish writer Joseph Conrad (nee Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) undermines The Empire with a feverish tale of misbehavior. In one lovely passage, indeed the only lovely passage, set on shipboard, at sunset, on the Thames, the reader senses ‘The Heart of Darkness’ may be an edifying story well told. However, Korzeniowski soon dives into literary territory of the African variety.”
From 1908: “Well-known humorist Mark Twain, investor in the Mechanical Type-Writer, works daily on his autobiography, utilizing that machine with the assistance of a secretary, thereby risking further deterioration of an already deplorable handwriting.”
From 1912: “To celebrate ten successful years of insightful commentary, this column will now be named ‘The Discourse of Excursis Bibliomanicus.’
Forced by an editor to invent a name that would fit on one page, this column was renamed “The Back Number” in July, 1917:
‘In the room the women come and go, speaking of Michelangelo.’ With these words the Irish expatriate T.S. Eliot signals that writers of his generation will have nothing new to offer us. We know the women speak of Michelangelo. What else is there to speak of in Italy? Really, Mr Eliot, must we hear again from these insufferable women?”
Renamed “Saddle Stitched,” 1918: “Would I were to say ‘We told you so!’ would I be, thereby, gilding a lily? I think not! Hereby the remarks of Anonymous in The Times Literary Supplement: ‘The fact that these things occurred to the mind of Mr Eliot is surely of the very smallest importance to anyone, even to himself. They certainly have no relation to poetry.’ ”
1920: “Is my column, Folio Fiddle-Faddle, worth a hoot? I wonder, then receive this letter:
“Pa and I enjoy reading Fiddle-Folio-Faddle (sic) in the Mendocino Beacon news paper, which makes its way to us at Camp 24. Harvesting of the redwoods proceeds apace, and after church of a Sunday afternoon Pa will catch and skin a raccoon – a squirrel if we’re lucky. Soon the savory smell of simmering squirrel stew, or roasting raccoon ragout, signals Sunday supper. Later, we catch up with the literary life. We cannot afford to purchase even one of the books you recommend. Regardless, Sunday would be much less interesting without our Fiddle-Faddle-Folio.” (sic)
From the newly named Excursis Bibliomanicus Romanticus, 1934: “The Devil resides in Washington and bread lines stretch around the block. Yet here in Mendocino we are stuffed with the filling news of books and literature.”
From Bibliomania Exfoliosis, 1937: “The improved bridge over Big River brings new books to us almost every couple of months. Arriving rain-soaked and torn, yet these tomes were packed in excelsior, nailed firmly into wooden boxes by unionized longshoremen sitting on the dock of the San Francisco Bay.”
From The Reading Radar, 1942: “Buy Liberty Bonds, save tin foil, conserve words, that’s the ticket. Few travel far on gasoline coupons. More Americans stay home & read. Used books bundled by Boy Scouts for shipment overseas may have covers removed to fill paper drive quotas.”
1961: “Today we are reborn as ‘Crazy for Books!’ We are ‘crazy!’ about books! We are not ‘crazy!’ and we are not smoking anything herbal or stuffing white powder up our nose! Got it? Just writing! About books!”
1979: “The Man says I’ve served my time, so I’m back with ‘A Few Words on Books.’ Banned from the Beacon and fired by the Advertiser (and because community radio station KZYX has not yet gone live) this mimeographed flyer is yours to keep.”
Hang on to it, bro. It’s collectible.
NOTES: None this week.
23 February 2010
A Room Stuffed with Books
I live in a room stuffed with books. Many of you do as well.
From where I sit I can see trees, a squirrel, the odd passing cat or flock of turkeys. That’s the window view. Everywhere else I look it’s books, books, books.
On my right: A complete 20-volume set of the “The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians” copyright 1980.
Also: Guidebooks to various computer programs; travel books that don’t fit on the other travel book shelves in this room; a 1907 set of “The Life & Works of Abraham Lincoln,” commemorative edition, partially bound in red leather; a boxed set in the original French of “A la Recherche du Temps Perdu” by Marcel Proust, some Boswell, a bit of Dostoyevsky, “The Fundamentals of Musical Art, Volume 10" which was a gift signed by two friends in 1990.
Those titles cover maybe 20 feet of shelves. There are 14 more eight foot-high cabinets in this small study. I admit it is lovely to be so surrounded. As if I had read even half these books. As if I ever will read most of them.
On her book blog this week Barbara Vey asks, “To Keep or Not to Keep?”
“...What benefit do I get from titles staring me down? Why daily expose my conscious brain to Kafka and Chekhov randomly placed next to Annie Dillard, Louise Erdrich, and Aldo Leopold? I’ll never read those books again. (Will I?) Just because they came into my possession doesn’t mean I have to keep them. ‘Possession’! I loved that book by A. S. Byatt. Where did I put my copy? Don’t tell me I got rid of it!” she writes.
I know that feeling so well that recently I purchased a hand-held scanner and the software to go along with it so I may catalog my collection, and find out how many duplicate copies I have and where my books are in the first place.
What prevents me from carrying out this plan is the certain knowledge that before entering all these books into a database I must organize them so the computer can guide me to a title it thinks I own.
How to make sense of such a crazily diverse group of books? Maybe I will label the shelves One Two Three and so on. Then the computer can report that “Photo Retouching & Restoration For Dummies” has a spot on shelf three, cabinet four. Or worse yet, physically move these books into categories... Do historical novels shelve with Fiction or History? Is it all Fiction? Should Dickens sit next to Dick? Cornwell near Calvino, Chaucer on the same shelf as Churchill?
As someone once asked in the bookstore, “Where is your NON-fiction section?” I had to think about that for a minute.
Right now I get along on memory and intuition. I remember holding a monograph on the ant. I was over by that chair, and the book had a blue cover. I’m pretty sure it’s still there, if I didn’t move it.
Gliding along a wall of multi-hued books I randomly pick out an advance uncorrected proof of “The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, & the Fault Line Between Reason & Faith” by David L. Ulin.
Back when I was an active bookseller, I probably said to a sales person, “Could you send me a copy of that earthquake book? Even though I’m not going to buy it for the store, maybe I’ll do a Words of Books on it.” That was six years ago. I really should dust more often.
Blogger Barbara Vey asks what should we do with books we may never read, or never read again? The first problem, for me, starts with the fact these are BOOKS, not week-old newspapers or burrito wrappers.
I could give some to friends, or swap with strangers on the Internet, but I’d just be exchanging one unread book for another. I offered a look-see to a used book dealer, but he turned me down. He has too many books, too.
I could give books to a local thrift store, but I’d probably end up buying some of them back, and anyway, could they possibly use them, or would they end up one-cent-sale-ing them into a box in the rain? It’s horrible to contemplate.
In the meantime, I live in a room stuffed with books. A few are valuable first editions, some so useless they really should go out with the burrito wrappers.
Taken together, I admit, these books provoke in me a quiet joy. They are silent friends, ready to speak in their many voices, never insisting on being heard. Eyes and hands will find them again one day.
NOTES:
Barbara Vey’s blog at Publishers Weekly got me thinking about all this.
An excellent software source for cataloging books, music, your just-about-anything you have a lot of...
A national directory of thrift stores.
A recent list of “The 10 Best Websites To Swap Books, Movies, Games & CDs”
From where I sit I can see trees, a squirrel, the odd passing cat or flock of turkeys. That’s the window view. Everywhere else I look it’s books, books, books.
On my right: A complete 20-volume set of the “The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians” copyright 1980.
Also: Guidebooks to various computer programs; travel books that don’t fit on the other travel book shelves in this room; a 1907 set of “The Life & Works of Abraham Lincoln,” commemorative edition, partially bound in red leather; a boxed set in the original French of “A la Recherche du Temps Perdu” by Marcel Proust, some Boswell, a bit of Dostoyevsky, “The Fundamentals of Musical Art, Volume 10" which was a gift signed by two friends in 1990.
Those titles cover maybe 20 feet of shelves. There are 14 more eight foot-high cabinets in this small study. I admit it is lovely to be so surrounded. As if I had read even half these books. As if I ever will read most of them.
On her book blog this week Barbara Vey asks, “To Keep or Not to Keep?”
“...What benefit do I get from titles staring me down? Why daily expose my conscious brain to Kafka and Chekhov randomly placed next to Annie Dillard, Louise Erdrich, and Aldo Leopold? I’ll never read those books again. (Will I?) Just because they came into my possession doesn’t mean I have to keep them. ‘Possession’! I loved that book by A. S. Byatt. Where did I put my copy? Don’t tell me I got rid of it!” she writes.
I know that feeling so well that recently I purchased a hand-held scanner and the software to go along with it so I may catalog my collection, and find out how many duplicate copies I have and where my books are in the first place.
What prevents me from carrying out this plan is the certain knowledge that before entering all these books into a database I must organize them so the computer can guide me to a title it thinks I own.
How to make sense of such a crazily diverse group of books? Maybe I will label the shelves One Two Three and so on. Then the computer can report that “Photo Retouching & Restoration For Dummies” has a spot on shelf three, cabinet four. Or worse yet, physically move these books into categories... Do historical novels shelve with Fiction or History? Is it all Fiction? Should Dickens sit next to Dick? Cornwell near Calvino, Chaucer on the same shelf as Churchill?
As someone once asked in the bookstore, “Where is your NON-fiction section?” I had to think about that for a minute.
Right now I get along on memory and intuition. I remember holding a monograph on the ant. I was over by that chair, and the book had a blue cover. I’m pretty sure it’s still there, if I didn’t move it.
Gliding along a wall of multi-hued books I randomly pick out an advance uncorrected proof of “The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, & the Fault Line Between Reason & Faith” by David L. Ulin.
Back when I was an active bookseller, I probably said to a sales person, “Could you send me a copy of that earthquake book? Even though I’m not going to buy it for the store, maybe I’ll do a Words of Books on it.” That was six years ago. I really should dust more often.
Blogger Barbara Vey asks what should we do with books we may never read, or never read again? The first problem, for me, starts with the fact these are BOOKS, not week-old newspapers or burrito wrappers.
I could give some to friends, or swap with strangers on the Internet, but I’d just be exchanging one unread book for another. I offered a look-see to a used book dealer, but he turned me down. He has too many books, too.
I could give books to a local thrift store, but I’d probably end up buying some of them back, and anyway, could they possibly use them, or would they end up one-cent-sale-ing them into a box in the rain? It’s horrible to contemplate.
In the meantime, I live in a room stuffed with books. A few are valuable first editions, some so useless they really should go out with the burrito wrappers.
Taken together, I admit, these books provoke in me a quiet joy. They are silent friends, ready to speak in their many voices, never insisting on being heard. Eyes and hands will find them again one day.
NOTES:
Barbara Vey’s blog at Publishers Weekly got me thinking about all this.
An excellent software source for cataloging books, music, your just-about-anything you have a lot of...
A national directory of thrift stores.
A recent list of “The 10 Best Websites To Swap Books, Movies, Games & CDs”
18 February 2010
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Who Played with Fire and Kicked the Dragon's Nest
Last week we praised the writer John Biggins. This week Steig Larsson. I am so fickle, and in fact, so uninformed.
Steig Larsson’s three thrillers have been world-wide best sellers, and his first novel, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” also is a movie soon to be released in this country. In 2008 (it is reported) the author was the second best-selling author in the world. How did we miss this?
It took a slight nudge from a friend of mine who works in a bookstore for me to pick up the first of Larsson’s books and give it a look. I now have joined those who clamor for this intriguing author.
Six years ago Steig Larsson died unexpectedly at age 50 of a heart attack. He had just delivered three manuscripts to his Swedish publisher. Like one of his lead characters, Larsson was a crusading left-wing journalist. He was “a leading expert on antidemocratic right-wing extremist and Nazi organizations,” all of which is reflected in his novels as well as the subject of his journalistic work.
When a Swedish labor-union leader was murdered in his home by neo-Nazis in 1999, the police discovered photos of Larsson in the murderer's apartment.
For reasons of personal safety Larsson and long-time girl friend Eva Gabrielsson never married despite a decades-long relationship. To do so would have required public disclosure of their home address.
There is no evidence that Larsson’s death was anything but natural. Yet he wrote thrillers about dark forces hiding in plain sight. His readers naturally have to wonder...
“Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” gets off to a leisurely start that some have said is due to lax editing. No explosions, no assassinations, just a gradual build that introduces the main characters and themes of the novel. You soon discover that it’s not only residents of Mendocino who drink way too much coffee and live in an isolated village. The Swedes have their coffee pots and their secrets, too.
It’s amazing to me that such a book, that reads in many places like sitting through the slow parts of Ingmar Bergman movies, could become such a popular sensation. It’s a compliment to readers everywhere, and should give hope to more literate writers, very much including John Biggins, who was praised here last week.
Despite Larsson’s icy Nordic-ness, by the middle of the book I was enthralled, entranced, enraptured, captured, intrigued, glued. I read this book last thing at night and first thing in the morning. Even in a small mass market edition it runs well over 600 pages.
There are rumors that Larsson may have left a fourth manuscript, and at least the outlines of further books, and that he planned a series of ten novels. He has become so posthumously successful that I would not be surprised to hear another writer will be commissioned to carry on the series, as was done, for example, to Robert Ludlum after his death.
“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” currently is selling well in the US; “The Girl Who Played with Fire” will be available in March, and in June “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.”
To discuss plot points would risk spoiling the book for future readers. But I should note that there are very strong females in this tale. It was originally titled “Men Who Hate Women” and that is a big hint on the theme of this engaging thriller.
Writers of a more literary bent with books of a less commercial nature will ponder Larsson’s posthumous success with wonderment. Money and fame seem to be handed out by the mysterious hand of fate, not a panel of Olympian judges.
NOTES:
Stieg Larsson is on line here and here.
An excellent recent BBC piece on the author...
All three of Stieg Larsson’s books are available in various editions. If you’d like to read them in their least expensive format ($7.99 mass market editions) the first is available now; the next two will be published in March, and June, 2010, respectively.
(Available now)
“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) ISBN 9780307473479.
(Due March, 2010)
“The Girl Who Played with Fire” (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) ISBN 9780307476159.
(Due June, 2010)
“The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest” (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) ISBN 9780307739964.
Steig Larsson’s three thrillers have been world-wide best sellers, and his first novel, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” also is a movie soon to be released in this country. In 2008 (it is reported) the author was the second best-selling author in the world. How did we miss this?
It took a slight nudge from a friend of mine who works in a bookstore for me to pick up the first of Larsson’s books and give it a look. I now have joined those who clamor for this intriguing author.
Six years ago Steig Larsson died unexpectedly at age 50 of a heart attack. He had just delivered three manuscripts to his Swedish publisher. Like one of his lead characters, Larsson was a crusading left-wing journalist. He was “a leading expert on antidemocratic right-wing extremist and Nazi organizations,” all of which is reflected in his novels as well as the subject of his journalistic work.
When a Swedish labor-union leader was murdered in his home by neo-Nazis in 1999, the police discovered photos of Larsson in the murderer's apartment.
For reasons of personal safety Larsson and long-time girl friend Eva Gabrielsson never married despite a decades-long relationship. To do so would have required public disclosure of their home address.
There is no evidence that Larsson’s death was anything but natural. Yet he wrote thrillers about dark forces hiding in plain sight. His readers naturally have to wonder...
“Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” gets off to a leisurely start that some have said is due to lax editing. No explosions, no assassinations, just a gradual build that introduces the main characters and themes of the novel. You soon discover that it’s not only residents of Mendocino who drink way too much coffee and live in an isolated village. The Swedes have their coffee pots and their secrets, too.
It’s amazing to me that such a book, that reads in many places like sitting through the slow parts of Ingmar Bergman movies, could become such a popular sensation. It’s a compliment to readers everywhere, and should give hope to more literate writers, very much including John Biggins, who was praised here last week.
Despite Larsson’s icy Nordic-ness, by the middle of the book I was enthralled, entranced, enraptured, captured, intrigued, glued. I read this book last thing at night and first thing in the morning. Even in a small mass market edition it runs well over 600 pages.
There are rumors that Larsson may have left a fourth manuscript, and at least the outlines of further books, and that he planned a series of ten novels. He has become so posthumously successful that I would not be surprised to hear another writer will be commissioned to carry on the series, as was done, for example, to Robert Ludlum after his death.
“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” currently is selling well in the US; “The Girl Who Played with Fire” will be available in March, and in June “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.”
To discuss plot points would risk spoiling the book for future readers. But I should note that there are very strong females in this tale. It was originally titled “Men Who Hate Women” and that is a big hint on the theme of this engaging thriller.
Writers of a more literary bent with books of a less commercial nature will ponder Larsson’s posthumous success with wonderment. Money and fame seem to be handed out by the mysterious hand of fate, not a panel of Olympian judges.
NOTES:
Stieg Larsson is on line here and here.
An excellent recent BBC piece on the author...
All three of Stieg Larsson’s books are available in various editions. If you’d like to read them in their least expensive format ($7.99 mass market editions) the first is available now; the next two will be published in March, and June, 2010, respectively.
(Available now)
“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) ISBN 9780307473479.
(Due March, 2010)
“The Girl Who Played with Fire” (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) ISBN 9780307476159.
(Due June, 2010)
“The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest” (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) ISBN 9780307739964.
11 February 2010
John Biggins is Back... and so is Frans Michielszoon van Raveyck
I read recently that more than the usual number of bookstores in the United Kingdom have closed over the past year. The Guardian counts (almost) two a week, for a total of 102 shops closed in 2009, leaving just 1,289 in business.
Yes, that small store in the Cotswolds, the one you consulted for the name of a particular insect you saw the previous week in France, that store. It’s gone now along with “...the UK's only specialist crime bookshop, Murder One... Lancashire's award-winning Kaydee Bookshop... south London independent Crockatt & Powell” and all the others.
Perhaps for related reasons and the sorry state of publishing, the redoubtable British author John Biggins is planning to self-publish his next novel, “The Surgeon’s Apprentice.”
Due to a long-lasting, long-distance acquaintance with the author, I was privileged this week to read the not-yet-published Chapter 11, no financial irony intended. Mr Biggins’ dedicated readers, who have had nothing new from him for at least a decade and a half, can now anticipate further wonderful adventures among the feeble-brained and half-witted, in other words commanders, lords, and others in authority.
You may have read Mr Biggins’ previous novels. If you are not so fortunate, do treat yourself to one of the four paperback books. You likely will join many other readers who not only cherish and recommend these novels, but also suffer from the so far unfulfilled longing for more. Fans live on a forlorn island surrounded by the sea of lesser works, waiting to be rescued by just one more book from this author.
I continue to receive fan mail addressed to the author because previous WOBs I wrote on Mr Biggins live forever as searchable Internet space nuggets. For example, the the most recent, from Greg Coultis, in Brisbane, Australia:
“I have just finished reading the entire.. ‘Otto Prohaska’ series by the author John Biggins. What an entertaining read! The author has a wonderful style and I found the ‘historical’ side very engaging. I would love to read more of his adventures if the author is willing and a publisher can be found. True gems lying in the dust! I will be recommending these to all my friends.”
Biggins’ hero in the earlier books was a lieutenant in the land-locked Austro-Hungarian Navy, a navy consisting of one submarine and perhaps a few rowboats as World War One began. In the new series (yes, more than one ms. already has been drafted) the hero’s name will be much harder to pronounce: Frans Michielszoon van Raveyck, but he is likely to be just as unlikely a hero as Otto Prohaska. Van Raveyck is a surgeon’s apprentice serving in the Dutch navy in 1625.
In Chapter 11, “Frans, thanks to his knowledge of English and his ability to write shorthand, is sent by the admiral of the Dutch flotilla to take a note of Viscount Wimbledon’s council of war aboard his flagship off the coast of southern Spain... the fleet having arrived there after a fortnight at sea without any very clear notion of what it intends doing next. In the end nothing very much is decided: so when the fleet arrives before Cadiz the following day matters drift somewhat for lack of firm direction…”
In an email Mr Biggins wrote, “I've just finished the final edit and I have to say that I like the book and have enjoyed writing it, which is always a good sign. It's another cheerful canter through the limitless badlands of human folly, wickedness and self-deception with occasional halts to admire the things that we've accidentally created in the process of robbing and oppressing one another, like science and art.
“These aren't seafaring yarns even to the extent that the Prohaska books were, though the hero does spend quite a lot of time at sea and also ends up doing things like being the first European to explore Australia, thanks to his ship having piled up on the coast as the result of the flotilla admiral miscalculating their longitude and making the turn north for Java rather too late.
“Really they're about the world of the baroque and the very beginnings of science. But I'm sure you'll enjoy them even so. They're certainly not for stupid people or those who wish to be told only what they know already.”
John Biggins’ new web site will be online soon, his book will be available for purchase later this year, and his many fans should start placing nickels, or shillings, in the cookie jar in anticipation.
Biggins is writing again. Great news for smart readers everywhere!
NOTES:
The Guardian article...
“A Sailor of Austria: In Which, Without Really Intending To, Otto Prohaska Becomes Official War Hero No. 27 of the Habsburg Empire” by John Biggins. McBooks Press paperback $16.95. ISBN 9781590131077
“The Emperor's Coloured Coat: In Which Otto Prohaska, Future Hero of the Habsburg Empire, Has an Unexpectedly Interesting Time...” by John Biggins. McBooks Press paperback $16.95 ISBN 9781590131084.
“The Two-Headed Eagle: In Which Otto Prohaska Takes a Break as the Habsburg Empire's Leading U-Boat Ace and Does Something Even More Thankless” by John Biggins. McBooks Press paperback $16.95 ISBN 9781590131091.
“Tomorrow the World: In Which Cadet Otto Prohaska Carries the Habsburg Empire's Civilizing Mission to the Entirely Unreceptive Peoples of Africa & Oceania.” by John Biggins. McBooks Press paperback $16.95 ISBN 9781590131107.
(A current note from Alice Whitehead-Chan apropos of nothing above, but funny nevertheless) “The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threats and have raised their security level from ‘Miffed’ to ‘Peeved.’ Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to ‘Irritated’ or even ‘A Bit Cross.’ The English have not been ‘A Bit Cross’ since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies all but ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from ‘Tiresome’ to a ‘Bloody Nuisance.’ The last time the British issued a ‘Bloody Nuisance’ warning level was in 1588 when threatened by the Spanish Armada.”
Yes, that small store in the Cotswolds, the one you consulted for the name of a particular insect you saw the previous week in France, that store. It’s gone now along with “...the UK's only specialist crime bookshop, Murder One... Lancashire's award-winning Kaydee Bookshop... south London independent Crockatt & Powell” and all the others.
Perhaps for related reasons and the sorry state of publishing, the redoubtable British author John Biggins is planning to self-publish his next novel, “The Surgeon’s Apprentice.”
Due to a long-lasting, long-distance acquaintance with the author, I was privileged this week to read the not-yet-published Chapter 11, no financial irony intended. Mr Biggins’ dedicated readers, who have had nothing new from him for at least a decade and a half, can now anticipate further wonderful adventures among the feeble-brained and half-witted, in other words commanders, lords, and others in authority.
You may have read Mr Biggins’ previous novels. If you are not so fortunate, do treat yourself to one of the four paperback books. You likely will join many other readers who not only cherish and recommend these novels, but also suffer from the so far unfulfilled longing for more. Fans live on a forlorn island surrounded by the sea of lesser works, waiting to be rescued by just one more book from this author.
I continue to receive fan mail addressed to the author because previous WOBs I wrote on Mr Biggins live forever as searchable Internet space nuggets. For example, the the most recent, from Greg Coultis, in Brisbane, Australia:
“I have just finished reading the entire.. ‘Otto Prohaska’ series by the author John Biggins. What an entertaining read! The author has a wonderful style and I found the ‘historical’ side very engaging. I would love to read more of his adventures if the author is willing and a publisher can be found. True gems lying in the dust! I will be recommending these to all my friends.”
Biggins’ hero in the earlier books was a lieutenant in the land-locked Austro-Hungarian Navy, a navy consisting of one submarine and perhaps a few rowboats as World War One began. In the new series (yes, more than one ms. already has been drafted) the hero’s name will be much harder to pronounce: Frans Michielszoon van Raveyck, but he is likely to be just as unlikely a hero as Otto Prohaska. Van Raveyck is a surgeon’s apprentice serving in the Dutch navy in 1625.
In Chapter 11, “Frans, thanks to his knowledge of English and his ability to write shorthand, is sent by the admiral of the Dutch flotilla to take a note of Viscount Wimbledon’s council of war aboard his flagship off the coast of southern Spain... the fleet having arrived there after a fortnight at sea without any very clear notion of what it intends doing next. In the end nothing very much is decided: so when the fleet arrives before Cadiz the following day matters drift somewhat for lack of firm direction…”
In an email Mr Biggins wrote, “I've just finished the final edit and I have to say that I like the book and have enjoyed writing it, which is always a good sign. It's another cheerful canter through the limitless badlands of human folly, wickedness and self-deception with occasional halts to admire the things that we've accidentally created in the process of robbing and oppressing one another, like science and art.
“These aren't seafaring yarns even to the extent that the Prohaska books were, though the hero does spend quite a lot of time at sea and also ends up doing things like being the first European to explore Australia, thanks to his ship having piled up on the coast as the result of the flotilla admiral miscalculating their longitude and making the turn north for Java rather too late.
“Really they're about the world of the baroque and the very beginnings of science. But I'm sure you'll enjoy them even so. They're certainly not for stupid people or those who wish to be told only what they know already.”
John Biggins’ new web site will be online soon, his book will be available for purchase later this year, and his many fans should start placing nickels, or shillings, in the cookie jar in anticipation.
Biggins is writing again. Great news for smart readers everywhere!
NOTES:
The Guardian article...
“A Sailor of Austria: In Which, Without Really Intending To, Otto Prohaska Becomes Official War Hero No. 27 of the Habsburg Empire” by John Biggins. McBooks Press paperback $16.95. ISBN 9781590131077
“The Emperor's Coloured Coat: In Which Otto Prohaska, Future Hero of the Habsburg Empire, Has an Unexpectedly Interesting Time...” by John Biggins. McBooks Press paperback $16.95 ISBN 9781590131084.
“The Two-Headed Eagle: In Which Otto Prohaska Takes a Break as the Habsburg Empire's Leading U-Boat Ace and Does Something Even More Thankless” by John Biggins. McBooks Press paperback $16.95 ISBN 9781590131091.
“Tomorrow the World: In Which Cadet Otto Prohaska Carries the Habsburg Empire's Civilizing Mission to the Entirely Unreceptive Peoples of Africa & Oceania.” by John Biggins. McBooks Press paperback $16.95 ISBN 9781590131107.
(A current note from Alice Whitehead-Chan apropos of nothing above, but funny nevertheless) “The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threats and have raised their security level from ‘Miffed’ to ‘Peeved.’ Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to ‘Irritated’ or even ‘A Bit Cross.’ The English have not been ‘A Bit Cross’ since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies all but ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from ‘Tiresome’ to a ‘Bloody Nuisance.’ The last time the British issued a ‘Bloody Nuisance’ warning level was in 1588 when threatened by the Spanish Armada.”
Who is John Biggins? Now we know!
(from the author...)
John Biggins was born in October 1949 in the town of Bromley; then in Kent but now an outer suburb of London and notable only as the birthplace of H.G.Wells and the deathplace of the Emperor Napoleon III. The son of an electrician and part-time Communist Party activist, his childhood was sickly and his schooling intermittent; though he made up for this with a great deal of precocious reading while lying ill in bed. In 1961 he moved with his family to South Wales, his father having in the meantime abandoned the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to become a steelworks engineer, and decided from then on that he would no longer waste time being ill. After attending Chepstow Secondary and Lydney Grammar Schools, then reading history at the University of Wales in Swansea from 1968 to 1971, he went to then-Soviet Bloc Poland and remained there for the next four years studying for a Ph.D. This experience gave him an enduring fascination with institutional dysfunction and the pathology of decaying empires; as did his subsequent four years of unemployment in the now-abolished Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food where one of his tasks was to write a history of the 1974 Cheese Subsidy in such a way as to show his then-boss in the best possible light: a job which he undertook with such creative relish that he was soon moved to another department.
After being advised politely but firmly to leave the Civil Service in 1980 he turned to journalism to support his wife and two children, then to technical authorship in the burgeoning IT industry of the mid-1980s, then to writing fiction in 1987 largely in order to amuse himself and without much expectation that what he wrote would ever be published. So it was with some surprise two years later that he found his first novel, “A Sailor of Austria”, being taken up by the first publisher who had a sight of it. In later years his day-job, by now largely in medical engineering, took him to France, Scandinavia and the Netherlands where he occupied his evenings with reading in the local languages in an effort to try and understand what was going on around him. Later on, two years spent writing and teaching an English course for Polish doctors also allowed him to develop a long-standing interest in medical history and led indirectly to his latest series of novels.
Despite advancing years he remains as neurotically active as ever, tirelessly roaming the landscape of whichever country fate has deposited him in with a map in his hand as though other people’s word wasn’t good enough for him and he really expects to discover lost temples or hitherto unknown tribes amid the flat waterlogged fields and motorway junctions of the Rhine-Meuse delta. An inveterate cyclist, he is currently much engaged in reviving the bicycle as a mass means of transport in Great Britain.
As he looks back on a bright future his greatest satisfactions in life – apart from the novels, obviously – are to have known the love of a good woman (the same one all the time) and never to have taken part in any organised sport, for which he retains the profoundest of blind spots. Quite good at a lot of things but not outstandingly good at anything, his epitaph will probably be “he was clever but not wise”.
He has double-jointed thumbs.
John Biggins was born in October 1949 in the town of Bromley; then in Kent but now an outer suburb of London and notable only as the birthplace of H.G.Wells and the deathplace of the Emperor Napoleon III. The son of an electrician and part-time Communist Party activist, his childhood was sickly and his schooling intermittent; though he made up for this with a great deal of precocious reading while lying ill in bed. In 1961 he moved with his family to South Wales, his father having in the meantime abandoned the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to become a steelworks engineer, and decided from then on that he would no longer waste time being ill. After attending Chepstow Secondary and Lydney Grammar Schools, then reading history at the University of Wales in Swansea from 1968 to 1971, he went to then-Soviet Bloc Poland and remained there for the next four years studying for a Ph.D. This experience gave him an enduring fascination with institutional dysfunction and the pathology of decaying empires; as did his subsequent four years of unemployment in the now-abolished Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food where one of his tasks was to write a history of the 1974 Cheese Subsidy in such a way as to show his then-boss in the best possible light: a job which he undertook with such creative relish that he was soon moved to another department.
After being advised politely but firmly to leave the Civil Service in 1980 he turned to journalism to support his wife and two children, then to technical authorship in the burgeoning IT industry of the mid-1980s, then to writing fiction in 1987 largely in order to amuse himself and without much expectation that what he wrote would ever be published. So it was with some surprise two years later that he found his first novel, “A Sailor of Austria”, being taken up by the first publisher who had a sight of it. In later years his day-job, by now largely in medical engineering, took him to France, Scandinavia and the Netherlands where he occupied his evenings with reading in the local languages in an effort to try and understand what was going on around him. Later on, two years spent writing and teaching an English course for Polish doctors also allowed him to develop a long-standing interest in medical history and led indirectly to his latest series of novels.
Despite advancing years he remains as neurotically active as ever, tirelessly roaming the landscape of whichever country fate has deposited him in with a map in his hand as though other people’s word wasn’t good enough for him and he really expects to discover lost temples or hitherto unknown tribes amid the flat waterlogged fields and motorway junctions of the Rhine-Meuse delta. An inveterate cyclist, he is currently much engaged in reviving the bicycle as a mass means of transport in Great Britain.
As he looks back on a bright future his greatest satisfactions in life – apart from the novels, obviously – are to have known the love of a good woman (the same one all the time) and never to have taken part in any organised sport, for which he retains the profoundest of blind spots. Quite good at a lot of things but not outstandingly good at anything, his epitaph will probably be “he was clever but not wise”.
He has double-jointed thumbs.
04 February 2010
Words on Books readers and listeners have sent in their answers to a group of interesting questions about books. Last week, I had time to report what books you have on your nightstand, and mention a few favorite first lines.
This week, I’ve mixed and matched the remaining most interesting replies to questions usually posed to “Book Brahmins” by the Shelf Awareness newsletter.
Here are some of your responses.
Your top five authors... At least a hundred authors were named. Surprisingly, very few were mentioned more than once. You have very wide-ranging taste, you WOBers, you. Four persons rated Charles Dickens an all-time favorite. Barbara Kingsolver received three mentions. There were two votes each for Ursula LeGuin, Jane Austen, and Michael Chabon.
If I were Michael Chabon I’d faint from the company I’m keeping.
Book you've faked reading... Many people refused to answer this one. One person said, “How odd to imagine...” another “Oh golly, how embarrassing!” Another said, “I wouldn’t know where to begin.” Paul Takushi said, “As a bookseller, there are WAY too many to mention.” Elizabeth Morrison: “I know I have done this...”
A note from Michael Grady: “I had to write a report in 9th grade about an epic. I chose the heroic Celtic tale about Cuchulain, but just couldn't get it up to read it. We had to produce a written report and answer a set of prescribed questions. I eventually went to the “Encyclopedia Americana,” read the synopsis, and fashioned a report based on what I found there. The old English schoolmarm read my paper out loud as an example of what she wanted. My friends were later outraged when I told them I hadn't actually read the book. Perhaps it was my handwriting that was so exemplary...”
Book you're an evangelist for... John Fremont named “‘God Is Not Great,’ by Christopher Hitchens and asked, ‘Can one be an evangelical for atheism?’” Other readers recommended: “By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept” by Elizabeth Smart, “The Book of Ebenezer le Page” by G.B. Edwards; “The Trial of Socrates” by I. F. Stone; “Shadow Country” by Peter Matthiessen; “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin was named twice; There were many others.
Book you've bought for the cover... Joel Crockett purchased a hardcover copy of “Workin' Man Blues” by Gerald Haslam because “My dad, uncles, an aunt and grandparents are on the cover.”
Final question: A book that changed your life... "Marjorie Morningstar" by Herman Wouk and “The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency” by Alexander McCall Smith were two surprising answers. Charles Grady wrote, “For me, Hugo's ‘Les Miserables’ was a life-changer; it made me a liberal in a conservative family and ultra-conservative town.”
Paul McHugh named “Visions of Cody” by Jack Kerouac. Russ Harvey named “Catch-22" and added, “My 7th grade biology teacher busted me reading it behind my text book. I just couldn't put it down. I knew then that life would never be fair but would frequently be funny.” Katy Tahja named “The Secret Garden” and said, “I was a handicapped child of the 1950's... there were NO other books about a handicapped kid.”
Other books that have changed lives: “Be Here Now” by Ram Dass. “The Moonstone” by Wilkie Collins. “Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me” by Richard Farina. “The Greeks” by H.D.F, Kitto. “The Critical Path” by Buckminster Fuller.
Thanks to everyone who responded, and to those who gave it some thought but never sent in answers, thanks to you as well. It was an interesting experiment, and you may have noticed by quoting everyone else I never had to answer these questions myself.
I would say, if you asked, that “The Boy’s First Book of Electricity” did not change my life, exactly, but definitely alerted me to the amazing Army Surplus Store on Market Street.
My best friend and I rigged up a telegraph line, complete with clicking keypads, between our bedroom windows. The fact we never did get a signal to pass down the tiny copper wires may have had something to do with resistance of materials, but I’ll never know, because “The Boy’s First Book of Electricity” did not turn me into an engineer.
It was a total failure on that score, but it was fun to build electric things. I do remember that.
NOTES:
The newsletter that started all this...
The complete list of favorite authors: Jane Austen, Edith Wharton, Henry James, Phillip Roth, TC Boyle, Tom Wolfe, Alexander McCall Smith, Agatha Christie, Wendell Berry, Stephanie Cowell, Michael Chabon Ursula Hegi, Colin Cotterill, Rudolfo Anaya, Barbara Kingsolver, William S. Burroughs (“He and John LeCarre and C.S. Forester are not ‘Great’" but their soothing celebrations of the eternal alienated loner and outsider send me back to their words over and over,” said Michael Grady). Richard Feynmann, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Anthony Trollope, Peter Matthiessen, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Jack Kerouac, Aldous Huxley, John C. Gardner, John Irving, Eric Larson, Simon Winchester, Brian Greene, John Updike, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, Terry Pratchett, Chris Moore. “Today. I have always felt that this is not a fair question.” Bertolt Brecht, Charles Dickens, Ursula Le Guin, MFK Fisher, Emily Dickinson... “this pantheon is mutable, save for Brecht,” Franz Kafka, Elias Canetti, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Malcolm Lowry, Yeats, George R. Stewart, Ivan Doig, Sarah Andrews, Peter Bowen, Gretel Ehrlich, Robert Heinlein, Robert Pirsig, Ursula LeGuin, Alan Watts, Jim Dodge, Arthur Conan Doyle, Barbara Kingsolver, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Dave Barry, Raymond Chandler, Michael Chabon, James Salter, John Irving, John LeCarre, William Langewische, Malcolm Gladwell, Gene Yang, Bill Bryson, Cormac McCarthy, Rudyard Kipling, D.H. Lawrence, Rachel Ingalls, Rainer Maria Rilke, Dante Alghieri, Barbara Kingsolver, James Thurber, E.B. White, Geraldine Brooks, Marcel Proust, Shakespeare, Miguel Cervantes, Heinrich Böll, Thomas Mann. Whew.
Questions I should have asked:
Your favorite book when you were 60.
Book you couldn’t finish (in fact, you threw it across the room).
Book you stole.
Book you stopped someone from stealing.
Book you had no idea what the author was trying to say.
Book in a language you don’t read.
Book with unexpected blank pages, pages printed upside down, backwards, missing, on fire.
Book you dreamed about last night.
Book you totally forgot once you put it down.
Book you recommended to someone knowing they’d hate it but you recommended it anyway.
Book you faked reading, but actually you did read it.
Book (or author) you’d never, ever, read, especially if anyone could see you doing it.
This week, I’ve mixed and matched the remaining most interesting replies to questions usually posed to “Book Brahmins” by the Shelf Awareness newsletter.
Here are some of your responses.
Your top five authors... At least a hundred authors were named. Surprisingly, very few were mentioned more than once. You have very wide-ranging taste, you WOBers, you. Four persons rated Charles Dickens an all-time favorite. Barbara Kingsolver received three mentions. There were two votes each for Ursula LeGuin, Jane Austen, and Michael Chabon.
If I were Michael Chabon I’d faint from the company I’m keeping.
Book you've faked reading... Many people refused to answer this one. One person said, “How odd to imagine...” another “Oh golly, how embarrassing!” Another said, “I wouldn’t know where to begin.” Paul Takushi said, “As a bookseller, there are WAY too many to mention.” Elizabeth Morrison: “I know I have done this...”
A note from Michael Grady: “I had to write a report in 9th grade about an epic. I chose the heroic Celtic tale about Cuchulain, but just couldn't get it up to read it. We had to produce a written report and answer a set of prescribed questions. I eventually went to the “Encyclopedia Americana,” read the synopsis, and fashioned a report based on what I found there. The old English schoolmarm read my paper out loud as an example of what she wanted. My friends were later outraged when I told them I hadn't actually read the book. Perhaps it was my handwriting that was so exemplary...”
Book you're an evangelist for... John Fremont named “‘God Is Not Great,’ by Christopher Hitchens and asked, ‘Can one be an evangelical for atheism?’” Other readers recommended: “By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept” by Elizabeth Smart, “The Book of Ebenezer le Page” by G.B. Edwards; “The Trial of Socrates” by I. F. Stone; “Shadow Country” by Peter Matthiessen; “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin was named twice; There were many others.
Book you've bought for the cover... Joel Crockett purchased a hardcover copy of “Workin' Man Blues” by Gerald Haslam because “My dad, uncles, an aunt and grandparents are on the cover.”
Final question: A book that changed your life... "Marjorie Morningstar" by Herman Wouk and “The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency” by Alexander McCall Smith were two surprising answers. Charles Grady wrote, “For me, Hugo's ‘Les Miserables’ was a life-changer; it made me a liberal in a conservative family and ultra-conservative town.”
Paul McHugh named “Visions of Cody” by Jack Kerouac. Russ Harvey named “Catch-22" and added, “My 7th grade biology teacher busted me reading it behind my text book. I just couldn't put it down. I knew then that life would never be fair but would frequently be funny.” Katy Tahja named “The Secret Garden” and said, “I was a handicapped child of the 1950's... there were NO other books about a handicapped kid.”
Other books that have changed lives: “Be Here Now” by Ram Dass. “The Moonstone” by Wilkie Collins. “Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me” by Richard Farina. “The Greeks” by H.D.F, Kitto. “The Critical Path” by Buckminster Fuller.
Thanks to everyone who responded, and to those who gave it some thought but never sent in answers, thanks to you as well. It was an interesting experiment, and you may have noticed by quoting everyone else I never had to answer these questions myself.
I would say, if you asked, that “The Boy’s First Book of Electricity” did not change my life, exactly, but definitely alerted me to the amazing Army Surplus Store on Market Street.
My best friend and I rigged up a telegraph line, complete with clicking keypads, between our bedroom windows. The fact we never did get a signal to pass down the tiny copper wires may have had something to do with resistance of materials, but I’ll never know, because “The Boy’s First Book of Electricity” did not turn me into an engineer.
It was a total failure on that score, but it was fun to build electric things. I do remember that.
NOTES:
The newsletter that started all this...
The complete list of favorite authors: Jane Austen, Edith Wharton, Henry James, Phillip Roth, TC Boyle, Tom Wolfe, Alexander McCall Smith, Agatha Christie, Wendell Berry, Stephanie Cowell, Michael Chabon Ursula Hegi, Colin Cotterill, Rudolfo Anaya, Barbara Kingsolver, William S. Burroughs (“He and John LeCarre and C.S. Forester are not ‘Great’" but their soothing celebrations of the eternal alienated loner and outsider send me back to their words over and over,” said Michael Grady). Richard Feynmann, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Anthony Trollope, Peter Matthiessen, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Jack Kerouac, Aldous Huxley, John C. Gardner, John Irving, Eric Larson, Simon Winchester, Brian Greene, John Updike, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, Terry Pratchett, Chris Moore. “Today. I have always felt that this is not a fair question.” Bertolt Brecht, Charles Dickens, Ursula Le Guin, MFK Fisher, Emily Dickinson... “this pantheon is mutable, save for Brecht,” Franz Kafka, Elias Canetti, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Malcolm Lowry, Yeats, George R. Stewart, Ivan Doig, Sarah Andrews, Peter Bowen, Gretel Ehrlich, Robert Heinlein, Robert Pirsig, Ursula LeGuin, Alan Watts, Jim Dodge, Arthur Conan Doyle, Barbara Kingsolver, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Dave Barry, Raymond Chandler, Michael Chabon, James Salter, John Irving, John LeCarre, William Langewische, Malcolm Gladwell, Gene Yang, Bill Bryson, Cormac McCarthy, Rudyard Kipling, D.H. Lawrence, Rachel Ingalls, Rainer Maria Rilke, Dante Alghieri, Barbara Kingsolver, James Thurber, E.B. White, Geraldine Brooks, Marcel Proust, Shakespeare, Miguel Cervantes, Heinrich Böll, Thomas Mann. Whew.
Questions I should have asked:
Your favorite book when you were 60.
Book you couldn’t finish (in fact, you threw it across the room).
Book you stole.
Book you stopped someone from stealing.
Book you had no idea what the author was trying to say.
Book in a language you don’t read.
Book with unexpected blank pages, pages printed upside down, backwards, missing, on fire.
Book you dreamed about last night.
Book you totally forgot once you put it down.
Book you recommended to someone knowing they’d hate it but you recommended it anyway.
Book you faked reading, but actually you did read it.
Book (or author) you’d never, ever, read, especially if anyone could see you doing it.
28 January 2010
The Book Brahmins Speak Wisely
The free daily newsletter Shelf Awareness is fun to read and stuffed with news and gossip about the book biz. One of their most popular – they call it “wildly popular” – features is the occasional interview with a “Book Brahmin,” who answers nine itchy questions concerning their personal taste in books.
In the dictionary a Brahmin might be “a person who is intellectually or socially aloof” among other definitions.
When I sent out the same questions to Words on Books subscribers, I quickly heard back from no fewer than 15 readers, all Book Brahmins in their way, none of whom could be described as intellectually aloof. Quite the opposite.
So far I have responses from Todd Walton, Hank Lewis, Betty Barber, Elizabeth Morrison, Paul Takushi, Matty Goldberg, Raven Deerwater, Johanna Wildoak, Mark Hannon, Katy Tahja, John Fremont, Jill Hannum, Russ Harvey, Joel Crockett, and Paul McHugh, whose new book “Deadlines” was favorably reviewed here last week.
The first question is “On your nightstand now?” and the best way to share the response, I think, is to list everything that everyone said, along with a few comments.
So, deep breath, here’s what your neighbors have stacked up to read:
“The Dream of Scipio” by Iain Pears, “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy, “Deadlines” by Paul McHugh, “Our Town” by Thornton Wilder & “The Lacuna” by Barbara Kingsolver; Graham Greene, “The End of the Affair,” John Varley, “Red Thunder;” Richard Preston, “The Wild Trees;” Guy Kuttner, “Tales of the Dolly Llama;” Alexandra Horowitz, “Inside of a Dog,” “Lose Your Mother, by Saidiya; “Blind Descent,” about people who climb the deepest caves on earth... like a MILE deep... and live to talk about it; “1491" by Charles C. Mann (excellent), “The Lacuna” by Barbara Kingsolver (first book by her that disappointed me); “Matterhorn” by Karl Marlantes, “The Bill Simmons Book of Basketball,” “Soccer in Sun and Shadow” by Eduardo Galeano, Michael Chabon's “Maps & Legends” and “I.O.U.” by John Lanchester; “What The Dog Saw,” “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,” “Al Capone Shines My Shoes,” “Prince of Persia,” “The Man Who Loved Books Too Much,” “Benjamin Franklin” by Edmund Morgan and about 50 others; “Endless Forms Most Beautiful,” Sean Carroll; Dr. Don Hahn's “Change and A Good Laugh;” George Lakoff's “Political Mind,” the New Yorker; “Die Blechtrommel” (The Tin Drum); and “Brazil,” a fabulous anthology of Brazilian short stories from Whereabouts Press.
Russ Harvey mentioned “‘The Frozen Rabbi,’ plus ‘A Truth Universally Acknowledged,’ because I want to know why everyone else reads Jane Austen, and an as yet un-started mass market thriller from the $.50 pile at work. I'm not even sure which one. I just need some popcorn.”
The remaining eight questions are:
Favorite book when you were a child?
Your top five authors?
Book you've faked reading?
Book you're an evangelist for?
Book you've bought for the cover?
Book that changed your life?
Favorite line from a book?
What is the book you most want to read again for the first time?
Finally, some of your favorite first lines:
“Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.” (Conan Doyle, from “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”).
“As the egg from the fish, as the fish from the water, as the water from the cloud, as the cloud from the thick air, so put forth, so leaped out, so drew away, so fumed up the Soul of Teshoo Lama from the Great Soul.” (Kipling, “Kim”).
“Whether I will be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will fall on someone else, these pages will tell.” from Dickens’ “David Copperfield” AND John Irving’s “The Cider House Rules.”
I have to end with Jill Hannum’s favorite line, because it’s mine, too: “Once upon a time there was a ...”
NOTES:
The trade newsletter Shelf Awareness has been publishing a daily email for five years.
In the dictionary a Brahmin might be “a person who is intellectually or socially aloof” among other definitions.
When I sent out the same questions to Words on Books subscribers, I quickly heard back from no fewer than 15 readers, all Book Brahmins in their way, none of whom could be described as intellectually aloof. Quite the opposite.
So far I have responses from Todd Walton, Hank Lewis, Betty Barber, Elizabeth Morrison, Paul Takushi, Matty Goldberg, Raven Deerwater, Johanna Wildoak, Mark Hannon, Katy Tahja, John Fremont, Jill Hannum, Russ Harvey, Joel Crockett, and Paul McHugh, whose new book “Deadlines” was favorably reviewed here last week.
The first question is “On your nightstand now?” and the best way to share the response, I think, is to list everything that everyone said, along with a few comments.
So, deep breath, here’s what your neighbors have stacked up to read:
“The Dream of Scipio” by Iain Pears, “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy, “Deadlines” by Paul McHugh, “Our Town” by Thornton Wilder & “The Lacuna” by Barbara Kingsolver; Graham Greene, “The End of the Affair,” John Varley, “Red Thunder;” Richard Preston, “The Wild Trees;” Guy Kuttner, “Tales of the Dolly Llama;” Alexandra Horowitz, “Inside of a Dog,” “Lose Your Mother, by Saidiya; “Blind Descent,” about people who climb the deepest caves on earth... like a MILE deep... and live to talk about it; “1491" by Charles C. Mann (excellent), “The Lacuna” by Barbara Kingsolver (first book by her that disappointed me); “Matterhorn” by Karl Marlantes, “The Bill Simmons Book of Basketball,” “Soccer in Sun and Shadow” by Eduardo Galeano, Michael Chabon's “Maps & Legends” and “I.O.U.” by John Lanchester; “What The Dog Saw,” “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,” “Al Capone Shines My Shoes,” “Prince of Persia,” “The Man Who Loved Books Too Much,” “Benjamin Franklin” by Edmund Morgan and about 50 others; “Endless Forms Most Beautiful,” Sean Carroll; Dr. Don Hahn's “Change and A Good Laugh;” George Lakoff's “Political Mind,” the New Yorker; “Die Blechtrommel” (The Tin Drum); and “Brazil,” a fabulous anthology of Brazilian short stories from Whereabouts Press.
Russ Harvey mentioned “‘The Frozen Rabbi,’ plus ‘A Truth Universally Acknowledged,’ because I want to know why everyone else reads Jane Austen, and an as yet un-started mass market thriller from the $.50 pile at work. I'm not even sure which one. I just need some popcorn.”
The remaining eight questions are:
Favorite book when you were a child?
Your top five authors?
Book you've faked reading?
Book you're an evangelist for?
Book you've bought for the cover?
Book that changed your life?
Favorite line from a book?
What is the book you most want to read again for the first time?
Finally, some of your favorite first lines:
“Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.” (Conan Doyle, from “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”).
“As the egg from the fish, as the fish from the water, as the water from the cloud, as the cloud from the thick air, so put forth, so leaped out, so drew away, so fumed up the Soul of Teshoo Lama from the Great Soul.” (Kipling, “Kim”).
“Whether I will be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will fall on someone else, these pages will tell.” from Dickens’ “David Copperfield” AND John Irving’s “The Cider House Rules.”
I have to end with Jill Hannum’s favorite line, because it’s mine, too: “Once upon a time there was a ...”
NOTES:
The trade newsletter Shelf Awareness has been publishing a daily email for five years.
21 January 2010
Horse Kicks Lady, Dog Bites Man, Three Star Edition at 11
Paul McHugh’s new mystery/ thriller/ outdoor adventure/ travelogue/ dialog/ diatribe/ ecological morality play/ whatever, is titled “Deadlines.” It kicks off fast with a whinny and a gallop. A big white horse tramples to death a little old lady, and the hunt for justice begins.
A greenhorn journalist newly arrived in San Francisco gets involved with the story. He suspects foul play, but can’t yet prove it.
An older reporter with a drinking problem and a tragically dead girl friend gets on the case. The greenhorn reporter gets beat up, bad, and only the drunken lout can help. First he has to rally up, drop the sauce, dust off his reporting skills, save his job, fight his editor, and figure out the Who What When Where and Why of the whole thing.
The bad guys are horrible, the good guys heroic. On the embattled California coast justice may triumph, but it’s never a sure thing.
“Deadlines” is a cheerful romp through quite serious territory. The title is meant to invoke the heady atmosphere of a major daily newspaper, with its feuds and infighting, dedicated writers and corporate maneuvers.
I’ve long followed Paul McHugh’s career because once, much time ago, he lived in Mendocino. Paul seemed just another happy, hapless hippie, with a special appreciation for this gorgeous place.
He turned up later as a successful beat writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. He covered outdoor sports and environmental issues, and worked on a number of investigative series.
McHugh is only too well aware that newspapers are having a hard time of it. Readers who don’t already appreciate what they stand to lose if newspapers shut down will be reminded in “Deadlines.”
In answer to some questions I posed about how he came to write this book at this particular moment, Paul wrote:
“When I took the buy-out from the SF Chronicle in the summer of 2007, I also took it as a chance to change my life. As Yogi Berra says, ‘When you come to a fork in the road, take it!’
“... I had spent 30 years assiduously applying the rubric and values of non-fiction in my prose. I felt I achieved a fair amount that way, but it made the far more imaginative dimension and creativity of fiction seem like the Promised Land. I'd written some short fiction and one novel before: "The Search For Goodbye-To-Rains." That was a young man's first-person narrative, basically an intellectual and spiritual memoir of a cross-country motorcycle trip. The primary way fiction entered that picture was through exaggeration of my personal story.
“In truth, I did not pursue fiction further at that time of my life (30 years ago) because I did not feel that I understood other people, or life itself, well enough to create believable characters who were not me, or fictional situations that were not my own. However, after 30 years of research and writing, 22 of them in a big city newsroom, I had begun to feel that these deficits were cured, and that I could now apply creativity to my working capital of understanding.
“So, I took a deep breath, and plunged in! My first goal -- as it should be for any fiction writer, I think -- was to focus on creating a rattling good yarn. The story itself must be strong enough to carry any other purposes a writer may have. A secondary goal was to portray a newsroom in full uproar as it charges toward putting out an important, investigative article. I wanted to clearly present and celebrate journalism, with all its warts and flaws, certainly, but also with that tattered, inkstained nobility of purpose which also -- in its best moments -- it can display.
“... I wanted people - especially any young people who happen to read my book -- to understand that it is a valuable trade, and one worth pursuing, despite all or any difficulties. And a craft crucial to preservation of democracy.”
“Deadlines” is newly published in paperback by the esteemed Fort Bragg house Lost Coast Press. Later this year you yourself can meet and greet Paul McHugh when he returns to Mendocino for a book signing and celebration.
NOTES:
“Deadlines, A Novel of Murder, Conspiracy, and the Media” by Paul McHugh. Lost Coast Press paperback $16.95. ISBN 9781935448044.
Author Biography
Other source material on various pages here... and background on the book.
Lost Coast Press is an imprint of Cypress House. Cindy Frank and staff have helped any number of worthy authors find their way into print.More information.
A greenhorn journalist newly arrived in San Francisco gets involved with the story. He suspects foul play, but can’t yet prove it.
An older reporter with a drinking problem and a tragically dead girl friend gets on the case. The greenhorn reporter gets beat up, bad, and only the drunken lout can help. First he has to rally up, drop the sauce, dust off his reporting skills, save his job, fight his editor, and figure out the Who What When Where and Why of the whole thing.
The bad guys are horrible, the good guys heroic. On the embattled California coast justice may triumph, but it’s never a sure thing.
“Deadlines” is a cheerful romp through quite serious territory. The title is meant to invoke the heady atmosphere of a major daily newspaper, with its feuds and infighting, dedicated writers and corporate maneuvers.
I’ve long followed Paul McHugh’s career because once, much time ago, he lived in Mendocino. Paul seemed just another happy, hapless hippie, with a special appreciation for this gorgeous place.
He turned up later as a successful beat writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. He covered outdoor sports and environmental issues, and worked on a number of investigative series.
McHugh is only too well aware that newspapers are having a hard time of it. Readers who don’t already appreciate what they stand to lose if newspapers shut down will be reminded in “Deadlines.”
In answer to some questions I posed about how he came to write this book at this particular moment, Paul wrote:
“When I took the buy-out from the SF Chronicle in the summer of 2007, I also took it as a chance to change my life. As Yogi Berra says, ‘When you come to a fork in the road, take it!’
“... I had spent 30 years assiduously applying the rubric and values of non-fiction in my prose. I felt I achieved a fair amount that way, but it made the far more imaginative dimension and creativity of fiction seem like the Promised Land. I'd written some short fiction and one novel before: "The Search For Goodbye-To-Rains." That was a young man's first-person narrative, basically an intellectual and spiritual memoir of a cross-country motorcycle trip. The primary way fiction entered that picture was through exaggeration of my personal story.
“In truth, I did not pursue fiction further at that time of my life (30 years ago) because I did not feel that I understood other people, or life itself, well enough to create believable characters who were not me, or fictional situations that were not my own. However, after 30 years of research and writing, 22 of them in a big city newsroom, I had begun to feel that these deficits were cured, and that I could now apply creativity to my working capital of understanding.
“So, I took a deep breath, and plunged in! My first goal -- as it should be for any fiction writer, I think -- was to focus on creating a rattling good yarn. The story itself must be strong enough to carry any other purposes a writer may have. A secondary goal was to portray a newsroom in full uproar as it charges toward putting out an important, investigative article. I wanted to clearly present and celebrate journalism, with all its warts and flaws, certainly, but also with that tattered, inkstained nobility of purpose which also -- in its best moments -- it can display.
“... I wanted people - especially any young people who happen to read my book -- to understand that it is a valuable trade, and one worth pursuing, despite all or any difficulties. And a craft crucial to preservation of democracy.”
“Deadlines” is newly published in paperback by the esteemed Fort Bragg house Lost Coast Press. Later this year you yourself can meet and greet Paul McHugh when he returns to Mendocino for a book signing and celebration.
NOTES:
“Deadlines, A Novel of Murder, Conspiracy, and the Media” by Paul McHugh. Lost Coast Press paperback $16.95. ISBN 9781935448044.
Author Biography
Other source material on various pages here... and background on the book.
Lost Coast Press is an imprint of Cypress House. Cindy Frank and staff have helped any number of worthy authors find their way into print.More information.
14 January 2010
We're recalling that wiring manual you recycled in about 1981
It’s been a very long new year already, have you noticed?
For me, the long new year in books began on January 8 with an announced recall of titles that contain dangerous do-it-yourself advice: 951,000 home improvement books recalled by the Feds for instructions that could lead to dangerously bad wiring and fire hazard.
Luckily, the new Bernard Cornwell paperback novel I was reading as the new year dawned had absolutely no wiring diagrams in it.
Oxmoor House and the federal Consumer Products Safety Commission announced the recall of six Do It Yourself books. Just six books. But there are almost a million copies of these in print, and one was published as far back as 1975.
In the Cornwell novel there are several maps of the French countryside, but these have not been recalled by anyone, yet. Longbow instructions, check. How to don your armor (don’t forget to grease your jerkin), sure. The book is “Agincourt” or in the British edition “Azincourt” and it’s one of Cornwell’s best, and he’s already published a great pile of historical novels.
Why did it take American bureaucrats and publishers 35 years to figure out there were errors in published technical diagrams and wiring instructions? Couldn’t anyone figure that out in, say, 1976? 1977?
If you have a copy of one of the suspect books, for example “Sunset Basic Home Repairs” or maybe a copy of "Lowe's Complete Home Improvement and Repair" or similar titles, you can call 866-696-7602 for further instructions and a possible refund of the purchase price. It’s a free call.
According to one report Dawn Bridges, senior vice president of corporate communications for Time, which now is Sunset's parent company, said there may have been slight changes in wording or diagrams over the years from book to book. And the advice could crop up on different pages in different books.
There remain some mysteries around this entire event. Who first alerted the Consumer Product Safety Commission that there was a problem? Why hasn’t the Commission or the publisher told us exactly which diagrams on which pages contain misleading or harmful information? Would not that be useful information to share if you are trying to prevent harm to readers?
Since only an expert with the time and motivation to look closely could be certain which pages contain bad information, readers are going to have to be extra cautious and extra careful when using information in these books, or in similar books that may be flagged later.
This is the same federal commission that this month voted to postpone for another full year requiring third-party testing of toys for lead content. Lead has been discovered in some brightly colored children’s books.
This is the same commission that could not stop lead and cadmium from being imported in the first place. That allowed dangerous solvents to remain on store shelves months after another recall, allowed import of laptops that can burn their users, and only two years ago testified to Congress that no additional money or staffing would be required, thank you.
It was all so much simpler back in Henry II’s day. You believed you had a claim to France, you borrowed some money from the Jews and the Italians, you gathered 1500 ships and landed near Harfleur, which you proceeded to lay siege to.
Then, your horde hungry and exhausted and suffering from dysentery, you marched toward Calais, thumbing a metaphorical nose at the much more powerful French and their much more powerful army.
At the Somme River the French blocked the crossings, and King Henry found himself trapped in a forested area near the little-known castle of Agincourt.
Next day it was 60,000 arrows versus knights in shining armor, and let’s just say it did not turn out well for the knights. King Henry did not live long enough to become King of France, but he did make a powerful show of it, inspire Shakespeare, and add to Britain’s military glory.
“Agincourt” by Bernard Cornwell is quite a story, and an excellent way to forget about wiring diagrams, earthquakes, and how fast the new year has become just another heartbreak.
NOTES:
The recalled books: "AmeriSpec Home Repair Handbook," "Lowe's Complete Home Improvement and Repair," "Lowe's Complete Home Wiring," "Sunset Basic Home Repairs," "Sunset Complete Home Wiring," "Sunset Complete Patio Book," "Sunset Home Repair Handbook," "Sunset Water Gardens" and "Sunset You Can Build - Wiring."
One of many articles reporting the DIY books recall, this from the NY Times
The botched Stand ‘n Seal recall as reported in the NY Times:
A study shows many toys contain phthalates...
Consumer Product Safety Commission votes to delay requiring third-part testing for lead:
“Agincourt” by Bernard Cornwell. Harper paperback $14.99. ISBN 9780061578908.
For me, the long new year in books began on January 8 with an announced recall of titles that contain dangerous do-it-yourself advice: 951,000 home improvement books recalled by the Feds for instructions that could lead to dangerously bad wiring and fire hazard.
Luckily, the new Bernard Cornwell paperback novel I was reading as the new year dawned had absolutely no wiring diagrams in it.
Oxmoor House and the federal Consumer Products Safety Commission announced the recall of six Do It Yourself books. Just six books. But there are almost a million copies of these in print, and one was published as far back as 1975.
In the Cornwell novel there are several maps of the French countryside, but these have not been recalled by anyone, yet. Longbow instructions, check. How to don your armor (don’t forget to grease your jerkin), sure. The book is “Agincourt” or in the British edition “Azincourt” and it’s one of Cornwell’s best, and he’s already published a great pile of historical novels.
Why did it take American bureaucrats and publishers 35 years to figure out there were errors in published technical diagrams and wiring instructions? Couldn’t anyone figure that out in, say, 1976? 1977?
If you have a copy of one of the suspect books, for example “Sunset Basic Home Repairs” or maybe a copy of "Lowe's Complete Home Improvement and Repair" or similar titles, you can call 866-696-7602 for further instructions and a possible refund of the purchase price. It’s a free call.
According to one report Dawn Bridges, senior vice president of corporate communications for Time, which now is Sunset's parent company, said there may have been slight changes in wording or diagrams over the years from book to book. And the advice could crop up on different pages in different books.
There remain some mysteries around this entire event. Who first alerted the Consumer Product Safety Commission that there was a problem? Why hasn’t the Commission or the publisher told us exactly which diagrams on which pages contain misleading or harmful information? Would not that be useful information to share if you are trying to prevent harm to readers?
Since only an expert with the time and motivation to look closely could be certain which pages contain bad information, readers are going to have to be extra cautious and extra careful when using information in these books, or in similar books that may be flagged later.
This is the same federal commission that this month voted to postpone for another full year requiring third-party testing of toys for lead content. Lead has been discovered in some brightly colored children’s books.
This is the same commission that could not stop lead and cadmium from being imported in the first place. That allowed dangerous solvents to remain on store shelves months after another recall, allowed import of laptops that can burn their users, and only two years ago testified to Congress that no additional money or staffing would be required, thank you.
It was all so much simpler back in Henry II’s day. You believed you had a claim to France, you borrowed some money from the Jews and the Italians, you gathered 1500 ships and landed near Harfleur, which you proceeded to lay siege to.
Then, your horde hungry and exhausted and suffering from dysentery, you marched toward Calais, thumbing a metaphorical nose at the much more powerful French and their much more powerful army.
At the Somme River the French blocked the crossings, and King Henry found himself trapped in a forested area near the little-known castle of Agincourt.
Next day it was 60,000 arrows versus knights in shining armor, and let’s just say it did not turn out well for the knights. King Henry did not live long enough to become King of France, but he did make a powerful show of it, inspire Shakespeare, and add to Britain’s military glory.
“Agincourt” by Bernard Cornwell is quite a story, and an excellent way to forget about wiring diagrams, earthquakes, and how fast the new year has become just another heartbreak.
NOTES:
The recalled books: "AmeriSpec Home Repair Handbook," "Lowe's Complete Home Improvement and Repair," "Lowe's Complete Home Wiring," "Sunset Basic Home Repairs," "Sunset Complete Home Wiring," "Sunset Complete Patio Book," "Sunset Home Repair Handbook," "Sunset Water Gardens" and "Sunset You Can Build - Wiring."
One of many articles reporting the DIY books recall, this from the NY Times
The botched Stand ‘n Seal recall as reported in the NY Times:
A study shows many toys contain phthalates...
Consumer Product Safety Commission votes to delay requiring third-part testing for lead:
“Agincourt” by Bernard Cornwell. Harper paperback $14.99. ISBN 9780061578908.
random thoughts on two earthquakes...
We had a small temblor up Eureka way. Then Haiti exploded in what Pat Roberts called retribution for sin and sane people called a horrible, prolonged, intense shaking of the earth. All the cement buildings came down immediately. Uncountable lives lost or disrupted.
The northern California quake registered magnitude 6.5. The quake that rocked Port-au-Prince registered one half-step more: 7.0. Humboldt County, with its strict building codes and primarily wooden houses, reported 30 persons injured, 18 made homeless. In Haiti, at least 50,000 dead and badly injured, many thousands more made homeless, no effective building codes of any kind.
We are the lucky ones, indeed.
We had a small temblor up Eureka way. Then Haiti exploded in what Pat Roberts called retribution for sin and sane people called a horrible, prolonged, intense shaking of the earth. All the cement buildings came down immediately. Uncountable lives lost or disrupted.
The northern California quake registered magnitude 6.5. The quake that rocked Port-au-Prince registered one half-step more: 7.0. Humboldt County, with its strict building codes and primarily wooden houses, reported 30 persons injured, 18 made homeless. In Haiti, at least 50,000 dead and badly injured, many thousands more made homeless, no effective building codes of any kind.
We are the lucky ones, indeed.
07 January 2010
Just in time for the new year, two books about gods and the afterlife. Both fiction. One short, one long. And I got them for free!
The publishers sent me reading copies, thank you very much. The short one is titled “Sum,” the long one “36 Arguments for the Existence of God.” Both are charming, even witty, but “Sum” is the one I actually read all the way through, because, well, it’s short. Perfect for my attenuated attention span.
“Sum” author David Eagleman is a neuroscientist who researches time perception, synesthesia and other exotica. “At night he writes fiction,” the publisher notes. He’s way brighter than you or me, probably owns second and third homes in Venice AND Aspen. He’s intimidating, is what David Eagleman is.
His book is fun to read: “In the afterlife you receive a clear answer about our purpose on the Earth: our mission is to collect data” begins one story.
The title story claims “In the afterlife you relive all your experiences, but this time with the events reshuffled into a new order; all the moments that share a quality are grouped together. You spend two months driving the street in front of your house, seven months having sex. You sleep for thirty years without opening your eyes. For five months straight you flip through magazines while sitting on a toilet.”
There is serious purpose behind the light-hearted speculation. Eagleman is a science-based skeptic and he likes to push you off-center a bit.
Some of his imaginings contain a certain poignancy. “When you die, you are grieved by all the atoms of which you were composed... they part ways, moving off in their separate directions, mourning the loss of a special time they shared together, haunted by the feeling that they were once playing parts in something larger than themselves, something that had its own life, something they can hardly put a finger on.”
In a publisher-supplied interview the author says his stories “are not serious proposals; they’re satirical and thought provoking lenses through which to see our lives at new angles... The aim of this book is to swing a flashlight around the possibility space.”
Those intrigued by “Sum” might enjoy the deeper dive into Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s new novel “36 Arguments for the Existence of God.”
The “36 Arguments” refers to a book within the book, “The Varieties of Religious Illusion” which in Goldstein’s tale has become a surprise best-seller.
Goldstein has her own set of impressive credentials, including a doctorate in philosophy and a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award. In trying to marry fiction to philosophy she runs the risk of coming off like a pontificator, a la the wooden Ayn Rand. So far it does appear the author manages to keep it light.
Still, the underlying mood in “36 Arguments for the Existence of God” is quite serious. Goldstein acknowledges that fundamentalists of all kinds are in the ascendant. “The world shifted, catching lots of smart people off guard,” she writes, “churning up issues you thought had settled forever beneath the earth’s crust. The more sophisticated you are, the more annotated your mental life, the more taken aback you’re likely to feel, seeing what the world’s lurch has brought to light, thrusting up beliefs and desires you had assumed belonged to an earlier stage of human development.”
“It’s a tiresome proposition, having to take up the work of the Enlightenment all over again, but it’s happened on your watch,” she says.
In an appendix after the novel each of those 36 arguments for the existence of god is spelled out and rationally critiqued. That section alone could keep you entertained while brooding by the fire during long winter nights.
NOTES:
“Sum, Forty Tales from the Afterlives” by David Eagleman. Vintage Books paperback $13. ISBN 9780307389930.
About the title, Eagleman notes in the interview: “First, it’s Latin for ‘I am,’ as in Cogito ergo sum. Second, it’s related to the Greek term for the highest, as in summa cum laude, or the English word summit. Third, the point of this book is that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. As you read the stories, it becomes clear that they are mutually exclusive and that there’s something bigger emerging from adding them all together.”
“36 Arguments for the Existence of God, A Work of Fiction” by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. Pantheon Books hard cover $27.95. ISBN 9780307378187.
For Rebecca Goldstein take a look at this site, and for David Eagleman this one.
The publishers sent me reading copies, thank you very much. The short one is titled “Sum,” the long one “36 Arguments for the Existence of God.” Both are charming, even witty, but “Sum” is the one I actually read all the way through, because, well, it’s short. Perfect for my attenuated attention span.
“Sum” author David Eagleman is a neuroscientist who researches time perception, synesthesia and other exotica. “At night he writes fiction,” the publisher notes. He’s way brighter than you or me, probably owns second and third homes in Venice AND Aspen. He’s intimidating, is what David Eagleman is.
His book is fun to read: “In the afterlife you receive a clear answer about our purpose on the Earth: our mission is to collect data” begins one story.
The title story claims “In the afterlife you relive all your experiences, but this time with the events reshuffled into a new order; all the moments that share a quality are grouped together. You spend two months driving the street in front of your house, seven months having sex. You sleep for thirty years without opening your eyes. For five months straight you flip through magazines while sitting on a toilet.”
There is serious purpose behind the light-hearted speculation. Eagleman is a science-based skeptic and he likes to push you off-center a bit.
Some of his imaginings contain a certain poignancy. “When you die, you are grieved by all the atoms of which you were composed... they part ways, moving off in their separate directions, mourning the loss of a special time they shared together, haunted by the feeling that they were once playing parts in something larger than themselves, something that had its own life, something they can hardly put a finger on.”
In a publisher-supplied interview the author says his stories “are not serious proposals; they’re satirical and thought provoking lenses through which to see our lives at new angles... The aim of this book is to swing a flashlight around the possibility space.”
Those intrigued by “Sum” might enjoy the deeper dive into Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s new novel “36 Arguments for the Existence of God.”
The “36 Arguments” refers to a book within the book, “The Varieties of Religious Illusion” which in Goldstein’s tale has become a surprise best-seller.
Goldstein has her own set of impressive credentials, including a doctorate in philosophy and a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award. In trying to marry fiction to philosophy she runs the risk of coming off like a pontificator, a la the wooden Ayn Rand. So far it does appear the author manages to keep it light.
Still, the underlying mood in “36 Arguments for the Existence of God” is quite serious. Goldstein acknowledges that fundamentalists of all kinds are in the ascendant. “The world shifted, catching lots of smart people off guard,” she writes, “churning up issues you thought had settled forever beneath the earth’s crust. The more sophisticated you are, the more annotated your mental life, the more taken aback you’re likely to feel, seeing what the world’s lurch has brought to light, thrusting up beliefs and desires you had assumed belonged to an earlier stage of human development.”
“It’s a tiresome proposition, having to take up the work of the Enlightenment all over again, but it’s happened on your watch,” she says.
In an appendix after the novel each of those 36 arguments for the existence of god is spelled out and rationally critiqued. That section alone could keep you entertained while brooding by the fire during long winter nights.
NOTES:
“Sum, Forty Tales from the Afterlives” by David Eagleman. Vintage Books paperback $13. ISBN 9780307389930.
About the title, Eagleman notes in the interview: “First, it’s Latin for ‘I am,’ as in Cogito ergo sum. Second, it’s related to the Greek term for the highest, as in summa cum laude, or the English word summit. Third, the point of this book is that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. As you read the stories, it becomes clear that they are mutually exclusive and that there’s something bigger emerging from adding them all together.”
“36 Arguments for the Existence of God, A Work of Fiction” by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. Pantheon Books hard cover $27.95. ISBN 9780307378187.
For Rebecca Goldstein take a look at this site, and for David Eagleman this one.
24 December 2009
Riding along in my automobile...
It appears that both the year and the decade are coming to a close. This comes as something of a surprise to those of us who just assumed our calendars would never run out of pages.
The short days and longish nights bring on a kind of Scandinavian melancholy, even here in optimistic California.
You get to a certain age and you start losing things. Parents depart, then some of your friends begin to go, and damn it, where are those keys and why don’t they make floppy disk drives any more and will the sun return to the sky if we burn these sacred logs in our sacred air-tight fireplace?
This afternoon, speeding along in our automobile, my baby beside me at the wheel, we watched two different individuals walking the Coast highway on the day before Christmas, carrying their worldly possessions in a sack.
If that makes you slow down and think, you might also ponder the local distance between the well-fed and barely fed. In Mendocino County, approximately 22 per cent of children live in families whose income is below the federal poverty threshold. At the time of the most recent survey the poverty line for a five-person family with three children under 18 was $19,992 a year. Could you raise three children on $1,666 a month, plus buy shoes, toys and trips to the dentist?
The percentage of children living in poverty in Lake and Humboldt counties is a bit higher, 23 per cent; the state average is a bit lower, 19.5 per cent. In other words, one child in five in California lives in a state of statistical poverty, and it’s not getting better soon.
These numbers change depending on which survey you study, but they don’t change much.
A friend in England writes, “This is just to wish you a happy Christmas and New Year. Here in much of the UK it looks as if we might actually get the (in)famous `white Christmas'. We have about five inches of the stuff, frozen hard owing to the sub-zero temperatures. It looks nice enough, but isn't that nice when you have to go outside. Can't say I like the cold. Not my sort of weather at all, in fact.
On the subject of the Kindle and other electronic readers, discussed here the past two weeks he says, “...I don't have the Sony version, and I don't have the other version, either. Not out of conservatism, so much as from mortal fear of the face my wife would pull if I were to buy one! Anyway, would I be able to get the books on it that I want to read, should read? And can I grouse and snort in the margins? If not, pah! No good.”
The night before Christmas it was fairly silent in our house, except for the pounding diesel of a late-arriving UPS truck.
Among the packages was a copy of David Ledbetter’s definitive and highly readable “Unaccompanied Bach; Performing the Solo Works.” This book will be of interest to at least a dozen people, thus its publication by Yale University Press rather than some larger publisher. I am exaggerating, but only a smidge. No doubt thousands of performing artists and their counterparts in conservatories and universities will avidly study this wonderful work of research and synthesis.
Take the famous Six Suites for Solo Cello written by Johann Sebastian Bach in the mid 18th century. These compelling works have been a lifelong study for me, as they have been for generations of cellists. Ledbetter puts them into context, historically, and as part of a fast-changing musical tradition that encompassed the Italian, French and German baroque styles.
He writes, “Nowadays, Bach’s cello Suites are regarded as the foundation repertory of the instrument. Then, they were at the cutting edge of developments, forward-looking and innovative in technique, style, and scope.”
Ledbetter’s holiday gift to musicians is to consider together all of Bach’s compositions for unaccompanied instruments. “Bach was a connoisseur among connoisseurs of every nuance of style and genre... a performer emoting at large over the music in disregard of the composer’s mind can only seem false to those who at least have an inkling of it... instrumentalists generally are too narrowly fixed on the repertory of their own instrument and need to broaden their horizons.”
We watched “It’s a Wonderful Life” on TV Christmas eve, and it made us cry, as it always does. Maybe there is hope, as there was in 1946.
All the best to you and yours, and may the world be a better place because you are in it.
NOTES:
“Unaccompanied Bach: Performing the Solo Works” by David Ledbetter. Yale University Press hard cover $45. ISBN 9780300141511. Thanks to Yale sales representative Patricia Nelson for providing my copy.
A Mendocino county profile
And another
The short days and longish nights bring on a kind of Scandinavian melancholy, even here in optimistic California.
You get to a certain age and you start losing things. Parents depart, then some of your friends begin to go, and damn it, where are those keys and why don’t they make floppy disk drives any more and will the sun return to the sky if we burn these sacred logs in our sacred air-tight fireplace?
This afternoon, speeding along in our automobile, my baby beside me at the wheel, we watched two different individuals walking the Coast highway on the day before Christmas, carrying their worldly possessions in a sack.
If that makes you slow down and think, you might also ponder the local distance between the well-fed and barely fed. In Mendocino County, approximately 22 per cent of children live in families whose income is below the federal poverty threshold. At the time of the most recent survey the poverty line for a five-person family with three children under 18 was $19,992 a year. Could you raise three children on $1,666 a month, plus buy shoes, toys and trips to the dentist?
The percentage of children living in poverty in Lake and Humboldt counties is a bit higher, 23 per cent; the state average is a bit lower, 19.5 per cent. In other words, one child in five in California lives in a state of statistical poverty, and it’s not getting better soon.
These numbers change depending on which survey you study, but they don’t change much.
A friend in England writes, “This is just to wish you a happy Christmas and New Year. Here in much of the UK it looks as if we might actually get the (in)famous `white Christmas'. We have about five inches of the stuff, frozen hard owing to the sub-zero temperatures. It looks nice enough, but isn't that nice when you have to go outside. Can't say I like the cold. Not my sort of weather at all, in fact.
On the subject of the Kindle and other electronic readers, discussed here the past two weeks he says, “...I don't have the Sony version, and I don't have the other version, either. Not out of conservatism, so much as from mortal fear of the face my wife would pull if I were to buy one! Anyway, would I be able to get the books on it that I want to read, should read? And can I grouse and snort in the margins? If not, pah! No good.”
The night before Christmas it was fairly silent in our house, except for the pounding diesel of a late-arriving UPS truck.
Among the packages was a copy of David Ledbetter’s definitive and highly readable “Unaccompanied Bach; Performing the Solo Works.” This book will be of interest to at least a dozen people, thus its publication by Yale University Press rather than some larger publisher. I am exaggerating, but only a smidge. No doubt thousands of performing artists and their counterparts in conservatories and universities will avidly study this wonderful work of research and synthesis.
Take the famous Six Suites for Solo Cello written by Johann Sebastian Bach in the mid 18th century. These compelling works have been a lifelong study for me, as they have been for generations of cellists. Ledbetter puts them into context, historically, and as part of a fast-changing musical tradition that encompassed the Italian, French and German baroque styles.
He writes, “Nowadays, Bach’s cello Suites are regarded as the foundation repertory of the instrument. Then, they were at the cutting edge of developments, forward-looking and innovative in technique, style, and scope.”
Ledbetter’s holiday gift to musicians is to consider together all of Bach’s compositions for unaccompanied instruments. “Bach was a connoisseur among connoisseurs of every nuance of style and genre... a performer emoting at large over the music in disregard of the composer’s mind can only seem false to those who at least have an inkling of it... instrumentalists generally are too narrowly fixed on the repertory of their own instrument and need to broaden their horizons.”
We watched “It’s a Wonderful Life” on TV Christmas eve, and it made us cry, as it always does. Maybe there is hope, as there was in 1946.
All the best to you and yours, and may the world be a better place because you are in it.
NOTES:
“Unaccompanied Bach: Performing the Solo Works” by David Ledbetter. Yale University Press hard cover $45. ISBN 9780300141511. Thanks to Yale sales representative Patricia Nelson for providing my copy.
A Mendocino county profile
And another
17 December 2009
Electronic Books, Thoughts About, Part Two
Last week we were talking about the Kindle, the Nook, the Sony Reader. We could have added the Kobo, the iPhone, the BlackBerry, the fabled Apple Tablet, and more... All of these small machines will let you read a book not on paper, but in happy little electrons appearing on a screen that resembles the pages in a book.
There will be more developments soon: Color, easier navigation, more books to read, sharper text, perhaps useful illustrations. Students will find some text books not only available on e-readers, but ONLY available on e-readers.
Clearly, something is changing in our comfortable, comfortably old-fashioned, world of books. There always will be physical books to read in the usual way – on lap, in bathtub, commuting to work, sitting in the library, standing on your head at the beach. Millions of used books aren’t going anywhere. Every newly published book, in whatever format you find it, floats on an immense sea of books previously published and forever available to you.
A number of listeners to and readers of this program wrote to express their thoughts about this new landscape, and I read some of them last week. Here are a few more:
John Coate, manager of KZYX&Z commented: “Tony, there are a few concerns about the Kindle screen and it should be pointed out that it is an entirely different technology than you find in a laptop which makes it a far more pleasing experience than you can get from an lcd screen. When I was at the Chronicle we were sponsors of the MIT Media Lab when they developed that basic technology - I was there for the meeting where Jeff Bezos of Amazon attended and saw what it could do.”
From Donna Bettencourt in Grand Junction, Colorado: “From a library perspective, it's entirely different in that we pay the licensing fee from two vendors... and must take selections the vendors offer in their packages... The patron can download selections for free from a computer station in the library... if a patron already has downloaded ‘The Lost Symbol,’ (for example) then no one else can ‘borrow’ it until that person's time has expired... When you download these items, you have a time limit, just like a check-out period on a real book. Too bad if you haven't finished listening to something humongous like ‘The Story of Edgar Sawtelle’ or ‘Moby Dick.’
“I actually got a request from a patron who obviously doesn't understand the concept of a Kindle. She wanted us to purchase content for her... Evidently she had run into the problem (of)... Amazon sucking you in with low prices but hidden costs. This patron was hoping to get her Kindle content through the library for free. Hmm. Maybe that's next.”
From Paul Takushi, bookseller at UC Davis: (You can) report me to the Kindle police. I don't have one. I get so many... comps that I never have to buy books anyway... I don't commute far or travel very much for extended vacations so this is not an issue... I don’t crack open the spine and smell the binding. I don't go ape over first editions... I like the feel of books, but sometimes hardbacks are a pain in the neck, literally, when I'm not reading at a table or desk. Would I get one if I wasn't in the biz? ... I think (not) ... because I don't live the Kindle lifestyle.”
The Kindle lifestyle, whatever that is. The Wall Street Journal cautioned its readers “Books are having their iPod moment this holiday season. But buyer beware: It could also turn out to be an eight-track moment.”
A sampling of recent international stories: “In praise of the e-book,” “Seven reasons why e-book readers make lousy gifts this year,” “Should e-books be copy protected?” “Growing e-book industry discusses challenges at MediaBistro event,” “U.S. e-book content revenue will top $500 million next year” and so forth.
We will continue to follow this interesting phenomenon in the new year. Meanwhile, the one-person writing staff here at Words on Books wants to wish you and yours a most happy holiday season. And for those of you who still believe in Santa Claus, a hearty Ho Ho Ho.
NOTES:
An interesting note from Andrea Sharp about the Kindle as used on her iphone, too long to use on air, but not too long to reprint. If it reads a bit broken up, it’s not her prose, but the fact she was answering a string of questions I had posed:
I am using the Kindle reader for the iphone. I think I have been using it for about a year. I absolutely love it. The way I use it is to always have one book I am reading on it. Right now it is the John Irving book, ‘Last Night in Twisted River.’ I also read other books, in the normal way, at the same time. I usually am reading at least two books at the same time. Prior to starting to use the Kindle on the iphone, I would mostly get my books from the library, borrow some from friends and only occasionally buy new ones. Once I started with the iphone, I decided that I would indulge in always having a book on it that I am reading.
I always have a book to read, since I always have my phone with me. I can take it out anywhere, anytime. I can read in any light since the pages are back lit. I can read a book in a hotel room in bed with my husband sleeping next to me and it won't disturb him with either a light or the noise of turning pages. I find it very comfortable to hold and actually easier to read on then books. Especially hard backs. I can buy new release books for a discounted price that normally I would be waiting for at the library or having to get another way.
I always love to share my books or pass them on, and you can't do that (at least yet) with this medium. I think that might be the biggest drawback. I find it very easy to read on my iphone, and not as easy to read articles on my computer. You can sit anywhere, or lie down, when you are reading on the iphone. Harder to be comfortable reading on your computer.
I don't think I would buy a separate reader, but I am so happy reading on the iphone that it seems irrelevant to have a whole separate device. (It is) very easy to download and use. Books take just seconds to download onto the iphone. What a great feeling to know that you can literally have almost any book within moments. I am very happy with the small iphone screen. Very easy to flick through the pages. I like the short lines.
I am amazed at how skeptical people are about this medium. I love books and I love this way of reading. I don't know that I would give up reading "real" books if I could afford to, but I really enjoy the option of having this available to me.
Andrea
.... and more ...
Should e-books be copy protected?
Growing e-book industry discusses challenges at MediaBistro event
U.S. e-book content revenue will top $500 million next year
There will be more developments soon: Color, easier navigation, more books to read, sharper text, perhaps useful illustrations. Students will find some text books not only available on e-readers, but ONLY available on e-readers.
Clearly, something is changing in our comfortable, comfortably old-fashioned, world of books. There always will be physical books to read in the usual way – on lap, in bathtub, commuting to work, sitting in the library, standing on your head at the beach. Millions of used books aren’t going anywhere. Every newly published book, in whatever format you find it, floats on an immense sea of books previously published and forever available to you.
A number of listeners to and readers of this program wrote to express their thoughts about this new landscape, and I read some of them last week. Here are a few more:
John Coate, manager of KZYX&Z commented: “Tony, there are a few concerns about the Kindle screen and it should be pointed out that it is an entirely different technology than you find in a laptop which makes it a far more pleasing experience than you can get from an lcd screen. When I was at the Chronicle we were sponsors of the MIT Media Lab when they developed that basic technology - I was there for the meeting where Jeff Bezos of Amazon attended and saw what it could do.”
From Donna Bettencourt in Grand Junction, Colorado: “From a library perspective, it's entirely different in that we pay the licensing fee from two vendors... and must take selections the vendors offer in their packages... The patron can download selections for free from a computer station in the library... if a patron already has downloaded ‘The Lost Symbol,’ (for example) then no one else can ‘borrow’ it until that person's time has expired... When you download these items, you have a time limit, just like a check-out period on a real book. Too bad if you haven't finished listening to something humongous like ‘The Story of Edgar Sawtelle’ or ‘Moby Dick.’
“I actually got a request from a patron who obviously doesn't understand the concept of a Kindle. She wanted us to purchase content for her... Evidently she had run into the problem (of)... Amazon sucking you in with low prices but hidden costs. This patron was hoping to get her Kindle content through the library for free. Hmm. Maybe that's next.”
From Paul Takushi, bookseller at UC Davis: (You can) report me to the Kindle police. I don't have one. I get so many... comps that I never have to buy books anyway... I don't commute far or travel very much for extended vacations so this is not an issue... I don’t crack open the spine and smell the binding. I don't go ape over first editions... I like the feel of books, but sometimes hardbacks are a pain in the neck, literally, when I'm not reading at a table or desk. Would I get one if I wasn't in the biz? ... I think (not) ... because I don't live the Kindle lifestyle.”
The Kindle lifestyle, whatever that is. The Wall Street Journal cautioned its readers “Books are having their iPod moment this holiday season. But buyer beware: It could also turn out to be an eight-track moment.”
A sampling of recent international stories: “In praise of the e-book,” “Seven reasons why e-book readers make lousy gifts this year,” “Should e-books be copy protected?” “Growing e-book industry discusses challenges at MediaBistro event,” “U.S. e-book content revenue will top $500 million next year” and so forth.
We will continue to follow this interesting phenomenon in the new year. Meanwhile, the one-person writing staff here at Words on Books wants to wish you and yours a most happy holiday season. And for those of you who still believe in Santa Claus, a hearty Ho Ho Ho.
NOTES:
An interesting note from Andrea Sharp about the Kindle as used on her iphone, too long to use on air, but not too long to reprint. If it reads a bit broken up, it’s not her prose, but the fact she was answering a string of questions I had posed:
I am using the Kindle reader for the iphone. I think I have been using it for about a year. I absolutely love it. The way I use it is to always have one book I am reading on it. Right now it is the John Irving book, ‘Last Night in Twisted River.’ I also read other books, in the normal way, at the same time. I usually am reading at least two books at the same time. Prior to starting to use the Kindle on the iphone, I would mostly get my books from the library, borrow some from friends and only occasionally buy new ones. Once I started with the iphone, I decided that I would indulge in always having a book on it that I am reading.
I always have a book to read, since I always have my phone with me. I can take it out anywhere, anytime. I can read in any light since the pages are back lit. I can read a book in a hotel room in bed with my husband sleeping next to me and it won't disturb him with either a light or the noise of turning pages. I find it very comfortable to hold and actually easier to read on then books. Especially hard backs. I can buy new release books for a discounted price that normally I would be waiting for at the library or having to get another way.
I always love to share my books or pass them on, and you can't do that (at least yet) with this medium. I think that might be the biggest drawback. I find it very easy to read on my iphone, and not as easy to read articles on my computer. You can sit anywhere, or lie down, when you are reading on the iphone. Harder to be comfortable reading on your computer.
I don't think I would buy a separate reader, but I am so happy reading on the iphone that it seems irrelevant to have a whole separate device. (It is) very easy to download and use. Books take just seconds to download onto the iphone. What a great feeling to know that you can literally have almost any book within moments. I am very happy with the small iphone screen. Very easy to flick through the pages. I like the short lines.
I am amazed at how skeptical people are about this medium. I love books and I love this way of reading. I don't know that I would give up reading "real" books if I could afford to, but I really enjoy the option of having this available to me.
Andrea
.... and more ...
Should e-books be copy protected?
Growing e-book industry discusses challenges at MediaBistro event
U.S. e-book content revenue will top $500 million next year
10 December 2009
Electronic Books, Thoughts About, Part One
Many people are pondering the new devices called e-readers, some for gifts, some to own and use themselves. They cost a couple of hundred dollars each, plus the cost of electronic books to read on them.
Some readers sense a serious threat to paper-and-ink. Others believe electronic book reading devices are not very important; simply one more format in a long line of formats, from mud to papyrus, vellum to paper, now electrons encased in plastic.
In other words, The book is dead – long live the book... Again!
My brother bought an Amazon Kindle for his wife’s birthday last month. “I love it, I absolutely love it,” she told me over the Thanksgiving table. Aha, I thought, how do other readers feel about these things? I sent out a set of questions and received back a veritable torrent of responses.
Questions and responses were sent and read electronically. Already we read and write in electrons and hardly notice it anymore.
One of the most informed responses came from Christie Olson Day, owner of Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino. She wrote, “As for the Kindle, I have only one problem with it: amazon.com. Amazon is the Wal-Mart of the internet -- and I mean that in the worst possible sense. The relentless downward pressure on prices (for books, for woks, for everything) has brought a slew of hidden costs to the public. Amazon is selling e-books at well below cost in order to capture the audience, and once you buy a Kindle you are well and truly captured, since you can't get your content anywhere else. It costs between $3 and $4 to print and ship a hardcover book, and that should be the price difference. If publishers allow Amazon to establish the market for e-books at $9.99, they simply won't be able to afford to publish. Who wins?”
Two major publishers did announce this week they plan to withhold electronic versions of new books for four months after publication in hard cover. This is a first attempt to separate in customer’s minds the printed book from its electronic version.
Christy continued, “I expect that some of our customers will want to read e-books some of the time, and I'd like to be able to meet that need while keeping a gorgeous selection of paper books in the store. So as a bookseller, I don't have a problem with e-readers. The Sony Reader is a nice gadget ... and I may use mine some day. I can visualize the e-book as a helpful addition to the already-successful formats offered on paper: hardcover, trade paperback, mass market paperback, e-book. The digital version should be priced almost like a hardcover upon release, then be reduced to the trade paper cost, then the mass market. This system would keep the markets for paper books and e-books healthy.”
Deb Kvaka wrote, “Just like with newspapers, there is something gratifying about holding the printed paper in my hands to read. I do not have Kindle, nor have I ever tried it; I really don't even want to. I do use a computer, an internet radio, and other new-fangled contraptions. ...Browsing in the bookmobile or a small bookstore is one of the true pleasures in life. Carrying an engaging book with me to read in those spare moments, or cuddling up in front of the woodstove with a cup of tea and a good book......ahhhh.”
Tess Albin Smith: “I can't fathom reading a book on the computer, or watching TV on the computer either, for that matter. I use the computer
for too many other things... What I do with current technology is rent (audio books) free from the online county library, download them to my mp3 player, and play them for my walks and long drives. It gets me out of the house for lots of exercise, since I can't wait for the next installment. I still read 'real' books too once in awhile.”
Susan Lowery: “I have a Kindle, and admit to being somewhat ambivalent about it... It's nice to be able to change the type size when it feels too small – or large, for that matter. Not so great on illustrations, but then, one doesn't think of Kindle for art books or coffee table books. I use the Kindle for travel. It's far more portable than a stack of books, and I like to travel as light as I can. The built-in dictionary is really nice, as is the ability to make notes, highlight, etc. I love the battery life, weight, size, all that stuff.”
Jill Hannum: “I haven't used Kindle, or even seen it. If it's like the computer screen, it's toast in my pantheon (is that mixing a metaphor?). Paper, print -- good. Glare, electronics -- pretty hard to endure for more than an hour... Good books are everywhere -- in friends' (homes), at the library, flea market, second hand store. I've paid virtually nothing for that two-foot stack of really good reads. Remind me why I'd spend good money to buy a new device to access good words... Does Kindle automatically power off if you fall asleep on the couch while reading?”
(MUSIC) There is much more to say about the future of books, electronic or otherwise, yet no more time. We’ll continue this discussion next week. In the meantime, if you have an opinion, please send a note to amiksak@gmail.com. I'm blogging at www.wordsonbooks.blogspot.com and I also enjoy reading your comments there.
NOTES:
USA Today has a good recent article on the e-reader question... And if you search you’ll find many, many more articles from numerous sources.
Some readers sense a serious threat to paper-and-ink. Others believe electronic book reading devices are not very important; simply one more format in a long line of formats, from mud to papyrus, vellum to paper, now electrons encased in plastic.
In other words, The book is dead – long live the book... Again!
My brother bought an Amazon Kindle for his wife’s birthday last month. “I love it, I absolutely love it,” she told me over the Thanksgiving table. Aha, I thought, how do other readers feel about these things? I sent out a set of questions and received back a veritable torrent of responses.
Questions and responses were sent and read electronically. Already we read and write in electrons and hardly notice it anymore.
One of the most informed responses came from Christie Olson Day, owner of Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino. She wrote, “As for the Kindle, I have only one problem with it: amazon.com. Amazon is the Wal-Mart of the internet -- and I mean that in the worst possible sense. The relentless downward pressure on prices (for books, for woks, for everything) has brought a slew of hidden costs to the public. Amazon is selling e-books at well below cost in order to capture the audience, and once you buy a Kindle you are well and truly captured, since you can't get your content anywhere else. It costs between $3 and $4 to print and ship a hardcover book, and that should be the price difference. If publishers allow Amazon to establish the market for e-books at $9.99, they simply won't be able to afford to publish. Who wins?”
Two major publishers did announce this week they plan to withhold electronic versions of new books for four months after publication in hard cover. This is a first attempt to separate in customer’s minds the printed book from its electronic version.
Christy continued, “I expect that some of our customers will want to read e-books some of the time, and I'd like to be able to meet that need while keeping a gorgeous selection of paper books in the store. So as a bookseller, I don't have a problem with e-readers. The Sony Reader is a nice gadget ... and I may use mine some day. I can visualize the e-book as a helpful addition to the already-successful formats offered on paper: hardcover, trade paperback, mass market paperback, e-book. The digital version should be priced almost like a hardcover upon release, then be reduced to the trade paper cost, then the mass market. This system would keep the markets for paper books and e-books healthy.”
Deb Kvaka wrote, “Just like with newspapers, there is something gratifying about holding the printed paper in my hands to read. I do not have Kindle, nor have I ever tried it; I really don't even want to. I do use a computer, an internet radio, and other new-fangled contraptions. ...Browsing in the bookmobile or a small bookstore is one of the true pleasures in life. Carrying an engaging book with me to read in those spare moments, or cuddling up in front of the woodstove with a cup of tea and a good book......ahhhh.”
Tess Albin Smith: “I can't fathom reading a book on the computer, or watching TV on the computer either, for that matter. I use the computer
for too many other things... What I do with current technology is rent (audio books) free from the online county library, download them to my mp3 player, and play them for my walks and long drives. It gets me out of the house for lots of exercise, since I can't wait for the next installment. I still read 'real' books too once in awhile.”
Susan Lowery: “I have a Kindle, and admit to being somewhat ambivalent about it... It's nice to be able to change the type size when it feels too small – or large, for that matter. Not so great on illustrations, but then, one doesn't think of Kindle for art books or coffee table books. I use the Kindle for travel. It's far more portable than a stack of books, and I like to travel as light as I can. The built-in dictionary is really nice, as is the ability to make notes, highlight, etc. I love the battery life, weight, size, all that stuff.”
Jill Hannum: “I haven't used Kindle, or even seen it. If it's like the computer screen, it's toast in my pantheon (is that mixing a metaphor?). Paper, print -- good. Glare, electronics -- pretty hard to endure for more than an hour... Good books are everywhere -- in friends' (homes), at the library, flea market, second hand store. I've paid virtually nothing for that two-foot stack of really good reads. Remind me why I'd spend good money to buy a new device to access good words... Does Kindle automatically power off if you fall asleep on the couch while reading?”
(MUSIC) There is much more to say about the future of books, electronic or otherwise, yet no more time. We’ll continue this discussion next week. In the meantime, if you have an opinion, please send a note to amiksak@gmail.com. I'm blogging at www.wordsonbooks.blogspot.com and I also enjoy reading your comments there.
NOTES:
USA Today has a good recent article on the e-reader question... And if you search you’ll find many, many more articles from numerous sources.
How do you like your e-reader?
Questions for a new Kindle user...
1. Are you happy with the thing?
2. How are you using it in real life and what are you reading now?
3. Best thing(s) about it?
4. Aspect(s) you don't like?
5. Are you concerned about going obsolete?
6. Some report a drawback not being able to share Kindle books with
friends. What do you think?
7. Have you tried reading a book on a computer? How was the experience
compared to an e-reader?
8. How & why did you pick Kindle over other e-readers? Have you been
able to compare with other e-readers?
9. Are you comfortable with the tech features and how to use them?
11. Is the screen too small? Big? Just right? Howabout the font(s)?
Happy with black and white?
14. Anything else you'd want me to know?
1. Are you happy with the thing?
2. How are you using it in real life and what are you reading now?
3. Best thing(s) about it?
4. Aspect(s) you don't like?
5. Are you concerned about going obsolete?
6. Some report a drawback not being able to share Kindle books with
friends. What do you think?
7. Have you tried reading a book on a computer? How was the experience
compared to an e-reader?
8. How & why did you pick Kindle over other e-readers? Have you been
able to compare with other e-readers?
9. Are you comfortable with the tech features and how to use them?
11. Is the screen too small? Big? Just right? Howabout the font(s)?
Happy with black and white?
14. Anything else you'd want me to know?
03 December 2009
It all started with the first book my mother suggested: One look at “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” and I was hooked.
Were these goats all gruff, or did they each HAVE a gruff? Why were all three named Billy? What’s a gruff? Mom read the book to me, over and over and over again, she once sadly said, because I kept asking and I couldn’t read it myself. And over again.
In first grade I was frustrated when Miss Cooney handed out copies of “Dick & Jane.” By then I was way beyond Look! Look! See! See! with its exclamation points and capitalized words. I had mastered the Billy goats. I was reading “The Ballad of Stewey Stinker” and I chafed having to wait for my classmates to tweeze out what S-P-O-T spelled.
By fifth grade, girls had become impossibly smart, with their straight A report cards and all, and the boys had gotten correspondingly dumber, with our kick ball and our running and our general moping around. They read Nancy Drew. We traded Uncle Scrooge for two Little Lulus and thought we were in heaven.
One boring summer I must have stumbled into the public library because I discovered the adventure books of Howard Pease. His now-forgotten heroes were all named Todd and worked second mate on tramp steamers. Then came the adventures of Dr Doolittle, a total gas.
Dr Doolittle of course set me up for “Freddy the Pig” which in turn prepared me for the assigned books of private high school English, such as “Fortitude” by Horace Walpole. “Fortitude” was so old-fashioned we laughed at it, and at Madam Ovary, I mean “Madame Bovary.” We struggled with Somerset Maugham, skipped through Voltaire’s “Candide,” read the non-technical chapters of “Moby Dick” and finally grew old enough for the smutty sections of “The Catcher in the Rye.”
Years went by and then I bought a bookstore in Mendocino and I was soon asked for book recommendations but of course I never had time to read, which was OK because I learned to say, “Well, I haven’t read that one yet, but a lot of people have said they liked it” which was often true.
As recipient of a pre-Prop 13, shallow-as-a-rain-puddle liberal arts education, I had learned many useless bits of knowledge on a wide variety of subjects, perfect for my role as bookseller. In any given half-hour I might discuss Diderot and Voltaire, compare Robert Heinlein to Frank Herbert, and recommend “Mushrooms Demystified” over the Audubon Guide. No one ever did ask my opinion on Billy goats, or “Fortitude,” and I doubt I ever sold a book by Somerset Maugham.
Now I’m on the far side of the bookselling adventure, in a good place where the alarm clock rarely rings. Friends once again feel free to suggest books. Sometimes I pay cash for a book someone mentioned, and sometimes that book turns up in review here.
The other lunchtime I was finishing up a Thai burrito when the café owner, Meredith Smith, paused for a chat. She had a book to recommend.
She was excited about Extremely Something & Incredibly Something Else by Jonathan Safran Foer, how great it was, how I’d like it even if I don’t read much fiction. I walked across town trying to remember the title: Extremely Something And Very Close, Very Loud and Extremely Close, Very (something) and Incredible (something else)...
A friend/employee at the bookstore told me I wanted “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” by the author of “Everything Is Illuminated” and we have one copy in the fiction section, and by the way, Meredith over at the café recommends this book to everyone.
That’s OK. I’m enjoying the book, and you’ll read about it here one day. And I could use some more suggestions.
NOTES:
“The Three Billy Goats Gruff” is out of print currently in the Golden Books edition I remember. You can find it used for very little, however. It was originally a Norwegian fairy tale, who knew. Wikipedia: “De tre bukkene Bruse” is a famous Norwegian fairy tale in which three goats cross a bridge, under which is a fearsome troll who wants to eat them. The fairy tale was collected by Peter Christen Asbjornsen and Jorgen Moe in their Norske Folkeeventyr. It has an ‘eat-me-when-I'm-fatter’ plot (Aarne-Thompson type 122E).”
“Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer. Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin paperback $13.95. ISBN 0618711651.
Were these goats all gruff, or did they each HAVE a gruff? Why were all three named Billy? What’s a gruff? Mom read the book to me, over and over and over again, she once sadly said, because I kept asking and I couldn’t read it myself. And over again.
In first grade I was frustrated when Miss Cooney handed out copies of “Dick & Jane.” By then I was way beyond Look! Look! See! See! with its exclamation points and capitalized words. I had mastered the Billy goats. I was reading “The Ballad of Stewey Stinker” and I chafed having to wait for my classmates to tweeze out what S-P-O-T spelled.
By fifth grade, girls had become impossibly smart, with their straight A report cards and all, and the boys had gotten correspondingly dumber, with our kick ball and our running and our general moping around. They read Nancy Drew. We traded Uncle Scrooge for two Little Lulus and thought we were in heaven.
One boring summer I must have stumbled into the public library because I discovered the adventure books of Howard Pease. His now-forgotten heroes were all named Todd and worked second mate on tramp steamers. Then came the adventures of Dr Doolittle, a total gas.
Dr Doolittle of course set me up for “Freddy the Pig” which in turn prepared me for the assigned books of private high school English, such as “Fortitude” by Horace Walpole. “Fortitude” was so old-fashioned we laughed at it, and at Madam Ovary, I mean “Madame Bovary.” We struggled with Somerset Maugham, skipped through Voltaire’s “Candide,” read the non-technical chapters of “Moby Dick” and finally grew old enough for the smutty sections of “The Catcher in the Rye.”
Years went by and then I bought a bookstore in Mendocino and I was soon asked for book recommendations but of course I never had time to read, which was OK because I learned to say, “Well, I haven’t read that one yet, but a lot of people have said they liked it” which was often true.
As recipient of a pre-Prop 13, shallow-as-a-rain-puddle liberal arts education, I had learned many useless bits of knowledge on a wide variety of subjects, perfect for my role as bookseller. In any given half-hour I might discuss Diderot and Voltaire, compare Robert Heinlein to Frank Herbert, and recommend “Mushrooms Demystified” over the Audubon Guide. No one ever did ask my opinion on Billy goats, or “Fortitude,” and I doubt I ever sold a book by Somerset Maugham.
Now I’m on the far side of the bookselling adventure, in a good place where the alarm clock rarely rings. Friends once again feel free to suggest books. Sometimes I pay cash for a book someone mentioned, and sometimes that book turns up in review here.
The other lunchtime I was finishing up a Thai burrito when the café owner, Meredith Smith, paused for a chat. She had a book to recommend.
She was excited about Extremely Something & Incredibly Something Else by Jonathan Safran Foer, how great it was, how I’d like it even if I don’t read much fiction. I walked across town trying to remember the title: Extremely Something And Very Close, Very Loud and Extremely Close, Very (something) and Incredible (something else)...
A friend/employee at the bookstore told me I wanted “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” by the author of “Everything Is Illuminated” and we have one copy in the fiction section, and by the way, Meredith over at the café recommends this book to everyone.
That’s OK. I’m enjoying the book, and you’ll read about it here one day. And I could use some more suggestions.
NOTES:
“The Three Billy Goats Gruff” is out of print currently in the Golden Books edition I remember. You can find it used for very little, however. It was originally a Norwegian fairy tale, who knew. Wikipedia: “De tre bukkene Bruse” is a famous Norwegian fairy tale in which three goats cross a bridge, under which is a fearsome troll who wants to eat them. The fairy tale was collected by Peter Christen Asbjornsen and Jorgen Moe in their Norske Folkeeventyr. It has an ‘eat-me-when-I'm-fatter’ plot (Aarne-Thompson type 122E).”
“Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer. Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin paperback $13.95. ISBN 0618711651.
25 November 2009
Eating History
All over Facebook this week people were wishing Happy Thanksgivings on each other. At the same time I was reading “Eating History” by Andrew F. Smith. In America it’s all about the food, and the football, but mainly the food.
We had the son of a vegetarian over to our house for Thanksgiving, because his mother doesn’t serve turkey and he likes turkey. Come to think of it, that was the only meat of our feast: every other dish, from the baked stuffed mushrooms to the sponge cake with almond flour and caramelized pears on top would suit a vegetarian just fine. Not a vegan, not a fruitarian, but a plain ordinary vegetarian.
“Eating History” is a great read, a thorough, verging on textbook-like story of how we got to where we are today, food-wise. In short and engaging chapters food historian Andrew Smith covers “30 turning points in the making of American cuisine.”
Beginning with Oliver Evan’s automated mill, which transformed flour production from a medieval, back-breaking exercise into a kind of Rube Goldberg-style automation, Smith covers representative topics that include the Erie Canal, Delmonico’s, the McCormick reaper, Thanksgiving, Gail Borden’s Canned Milk, the transcontinental railroad, and that’s just up to the Civil War.
There are discussions of canned food, the calorimeter, Cracker Jack, Fannie Farmer and Julia Child, Corn Flakes and Upton Sinclair (not in the same chapter, of course), radar, and much, much more. Alice Waters is in there, and McDonalds, the Flavr Savr, plus mergers, acquisitions and spin-offs and the fact “the agricultural system uses about 30 per cent of the oil consumed in the United States.”
Indeed because of this careful documentation the book never ceases to be pointedly entertaining. It’s one big historical story, with startling developments and surprising connections between them.
With its much heralded opening in 1825 (it included a three-hour-long rolling cannonade) the Erie Canal showed Americans that food could be transported long distances; it also replaced the habit of buying locally.
Cyrus McCormick, “a southerner by birth who owned slaves and opposed the Civil War, became one of the major contributors to the success of the North.” His revolutionary harvester “freed up an estimated two or three farmworkers (per farmstead), many of whom enlisted in the Union cause, contributing an estimated half of the Union’s million-man army and navy.”
Readers accustomed to books that uncover the horrors and ethical compromises of American food production may find Smith’s approach too mild. In the hot house context of current food issues, Smith stands alone not only for his judicious tone, but his fairness to all sides.
Smith explains in a preface that his book is “mainly explanatory and descriptive... For those who believe that the modern American approach to food is on the right track, this book offers a partial history of how we arrived at a system that has emphasized convenience, superabundance, low cost, and consumer choice. For those interested in changing the current system, (“Eating History”) offers insight into how we ended up where we are today, and perhaps will suggest alternative approaches for the future.”
On speaking tours, Smith will ask the audience questions related to food: Do you prefer organic food to food grown with petrochemical fertilizers and synthetic pesticides? Do those of you who eat meat prefer that the animals be free-range, organic, and slaughtered humanely, or doused with hormones and steroids and raised in highly concentrated animal feeding operations?
“By far, he reports, most people want the homemade, the organic, the locally grown. He finds this fascinating: “I’m a culinary historian, and the system that most (people) say they favor is pretty much what existed in America two centuries ago.”
We all say we want the good stuff, yet most Americans buy and eat the not-so-good stuff. How did we get here? Read “Eating History” and ponder what’s on your plate.
NOTES:
“Eating History, 30 Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine” by Andrew F. Smith. Columbia University Press hard cover $29.95. ISBN 9780231140928.
On the Columbia U site the author is featured in a short video, plus you can download a .pdf of his chapter on Thanksgiving.
Smith’s own website...
We had the son of a vegetarian over to our house for Thanksgiving, because his mother doesn’t serve turkey and he likes turkey. Come to think of it, that was the only meat of our feast: every other dish, from the baked stuffed mushrooms to the sponge cake with almond flour and caramelized pears on top would suit a vegetarian just fine. Not a vegan, not a fruitarian, but a plain ordinary vegetarian.
“Eating History” is a great read, a thorough, verging on textbook-like story of how we got to where we are today, food-wise. In short and engaging chapters food historian Andrew Smith covers “30 turning points in the making of American cuisine.”
Beginning with Oliver Evan’s automated mill, which transformed flour production from a medieval, back-breaking exercise into a kind of Rube Goldberg-style automation, Smith covers representative topics that include the Erie Canal, Delmonico’s, the McCormick reaper, Thanksgiving, Gail Borden’s Canned Milk, the transcontinental railroad, and that’s just up to the Civil War.
There are discussions of canned food, the calorimeter, Cracker Jack, Fannie Farmer and Julia Child, Corn Flakes and Upton Sinclair (not in the same chapter, of course), radar, and much, much more. Alice Waters is in there, and McDonalds, the Flavr Savr, plus mergers, acquisitions and spin-offs and the fact “the agricultural system uses about 30 per cent of the oil consumed in the United States.”
Indeed because of this careful documentation the book never ceases to be pointedly entertaining. It’s one big historical story, with startling developments and surprising connections between them.
With its much heralded opening in 1825 (it included a three-hour-long rolling cannonade) the Erie Canal showed Americans that food could be transported long distances; it also replaced the habit of buying locally.
Cyrus McCormick, “a southerner by birth who owned slaves and opposed the Civil War, became one of the major contributors to the success of the North.” His revolutionary harvester “freed up an estimated two or three farmworkers (per farmstead), many of whom enlisted in the Union cause, contributing an estimated half of the Union’s million-man army and navy.”
Readers accustomed to books that uncover the horrors and ethical compromises of American food production may find Smith’s approach too mild. In the hot house context of current food issues, Smith stands alone not only for his judicious tone, but his fairness to all sides.
Smith explains in a preface that his book is “mainly explanatory and descriptive... For those who believe that the modern American approach to food is on the right track, this book offers a partial history of how we arrived at a system that has emphasized convenience, superabundance, low cost, and consumer choice. For those interested in changing the current system, (“Eating History”) offers insight into how we ended up where we are today, and perhaps will suggest alternative approaches for the future.”
On speaking tours, Smith will ask the audience questions related to food: Do you prefer organic food to food grown with petrochemical fertilizers and synthetic pesticides? Do those of you who eat meat prefer that the animals be free-range, organic, and slaughtered humanely, or doused with hormones and steroids and raised in highly concentrated animal feeding operations?
“By far, he reports, most people want the homemade, the organic, the locally grown. He finds this fascinating: “I’m a culinary historian, and the system that most (people) say they favor is pretty much what existed in America two centuries ago.”
We all say we want the good stuff, yet most Americans buy and eat the not-so-good stuff. How did we get here? Read “Eating History” and ponder what’s on your plate.
NOTES:
“Eating History, 30 Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine” by Andrew F. Smith. Columbia University Press hard cover $29.95. ISBN 9780231140928.
On the Columbia U site the author is featured in a short video, plus you can download a .pdf of his chapter on Thanksgiving.
Smith’s own website...
05 November 2009
on Cornwell...
I've been indulging myself recently with easy readers. Not Dick and Jane or John Grisham, but something like that: the historical adventure novels of Bernard Cornwell.
For many people, reading all the time is simply what they do, no matter how hard they labor at other things. A friend of mine who works full time is forever recommending books she’s actually read. She must read several a week. And she remembers what she reads. Amazing. For me it’s always been a struggle to put aside distractions and focus on the simple joy of reading.
I’m always conscious that sooner or later I’ll be reporting on what I’ve read. This creates a kind of internal dialog where I’m taking notes for the next radio show rather than enjoying the pages in front of me. Challenging and rewarding as that can be, it also takes away some of the fun. So a couple of weeks ago I ate dessert first because life is short. I dove into a pile of books I’d been saving for fun, not for review. No pressure cooker. All fun, as reading should be.
Bernard Cornwell is a so-called “genre” author of historical novels. He’s not reviewed much in prestigious journals or newspapers, but he is read prodigiously by a large band of fans. I’m one of them.
On vacation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean I hauled out “The Nathaniel Starbuck Chronicles” and pondered the American Civil War between bouts of snorkeling. I then turned to Merry Olde Before-There-Ever-Was-An-England and read the “Saxon Novels,” four of them so far.
And when those weren’t quite filling enough, I also read “The Spies of Warsaw” by Alan Furst, “The 25th Hour” by David Benioff and John Marsden’s young adult novel, “Hamlet.” Gems, all of them.
Back to Mr Cornwell. After devouring several servings of his books I discovered they follow a pattern. The stories are told from the point of view of a fighting outsider hero. It may be Nathaniel Starbuck, a displaced Northerner fighting for the Confederacy. In Ninth century Britain it’s Uhtred of Bebbanburg, a displaced Northumbrian fighting for the southerners of Wessex. Or Richard Sharpe, a common soldier raised to officer status during the Napoleonic wars, or the protagonist may be Thomas of Hookton, a skillful archer during the Hundred Years War seeking not just the Holy Grail, as if that isn’t enough, but also revenge for the massacre of his family. All of these characters are involved in various aspects of revenge, come to think of it, plus the occasional manly love affair.
Simply, these are ripping tales that don’t stop. Cornwell never bogs down in literary description or gratuitous subplots. Although the scenery’s often lovely, there’s very little of it.
He brings alive a far-off time and place as few others are able. If you time-traveled me to, say, Northumberland in the year 891, I could tell a Dane by his arm rings, a Viking by his dragon ship, and a Saxon by his stink. I have learned the old place names and fought the old battles. It’s like studying history with the most entertaining teacher you could imagine.
Now and then Cornwell does get all poetic: “...and so I turned south and rowed away from the shore, while in the west the sun leaked red fire through rifts in the cloud so that the whole sky glowed as if a god had bled across the heavens.” (from “The Pale Horseman”).
But the adventure never falters: “And next day the eight dark horsemen came.” (from “Lords of the North”). He begins well: “Darkness. Winter. A night of frost and no moon. We floated on the river Temes, and beyond the boat’s high bow I could see the stars reflected on the shimmering water.” (from “Sword Song”) and of course he ends well, too: “...but in the end he had pulled the trigger because he had to live with himself. Though God alone knew where that would take him. Night fell. The smoke of a broken city vanished in the dark. And Sharpe sailed home, a soldier.” (From “Sharpe’s Prey”).
Cornwell sets up the reader to crave more: “While at Bebbanburg, where the gray sea never ceases to beat upon the long pale sands and the cold wind frets the wolf’s head flag above the hall, they dreaded my return. Because fate cannot be cheated, it governs us, and we are all its slaves.”
Ahh. History for dessert. Delicious!
You too, can receive WOB scripts in your email and review episodes you may have missed. To be on the list, please send a note to amiksak@gmail.com. I'm blogging at www.wordsonbooks.blogspot.com and I enjoy reading your comments here.
NOTES:
Pick up any of Cornwell’s novels and you’ll find a current list of all his works, by series, and sometimes by chronological order within series. He’s written at least 42 novels, probably a few more than that, and he’s only 28 years old (I made that up. Born in 1944, he lives with his wife on Cape Cod, where the adventures roll in like the Atlantic tides).
Cornwell's home on the web.
The American publisher of all these books is HarperCollins.
A fascinating exchange on Cornwell’s site:
Hello Mr. Cornwell, I am curious about your process for developing (and writing) a story. Stephen King says that he gets the idea for a situation--say, a crazed fan holds her favorite author hostage--and lets the story develop however it happens. Do you do the same, or (for example) do you have the climax of the story mapped out inside your head in advance, and just have to figure out the way to get there? Do you outline story before beginning to write? Also, when you are in the process of writing, do you try to write a certain amount every day (like King), and do you try to write the first draft through all the way without edits, and then go back and make changes when you are finished? Anything else you can share about your process would be welcome. Thanks and best wishes, Warren Firschein Safety Harbor, FL
A: An outline? No, I don't. I have a very broad idea of where I want the book to go, then just let the characters sort it out amongst themselves. I'm not saying this is the right way to do it - some writers plot very carefully, and their books are great, but others, like me, leave it to instinct. I write maybe eight, nine hours a day? That includes daydreaming. I always start with a stick figure . . but there ain't no rules. I like to get the story straight so I write fast, pushing the story line ahead, but I revise constantly. I always think that writing a novel (for me! not for everyone!) is like climbing a mountain - I get a quarter of the way up, look back and see a better route, so it's back to the beginning and start again and that better route takes me halfway up, I look back, and so on and so on. Once that 'first' draft is finished I rewrite the whole thing maybe two times, and it's then that I add lots of detail. (B.Cornwell)
For many people, reading all the time is simply what they do, no matter how hard they labor at other things. A friend of mine who works full time is forever recommending books she’s actually read. She must read several a week. And she remembers what she reads. Amazing. For me it’s always been a struggle to put aside distractions and focus on the simple joy of reading.
I’m always conscious that sooner or later I’ll be reporting on what I’ve read. This creates a kind of internal dialog where I’m taking notes for the next radio show rather than enjoying the pages in front of me. Challenging and rewarding as that can be, it also takes away some of the fun. So a couple of weeks ago I ate dessert first because life is short. I dove into a pile of books I’d been saving for fun, not for review. No pressure cooker. All fun, as reading should be.
Bernard Cornwell is a so-called “genre” author of historical novels. He’s not reviewed much in prestigious journals or newspapers, but he is read prodigiously by a large band of fans. I’m one of them.
On vacation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean I hauled out “The Nathaniel Starbuck Chronicles” and pondered the American Civil War between bouts of snorkeling. I then turned to Merry Olde Before-There-Ever-Was-An-England and read the “Saxon Novels,” four of them so far.
And when those weren’t quite filling enough, I also read “The Spies of Warsaw” by Alan Furst, “The 25th Hour” by David Benioff and John Marsden’s young adult novel, “Hamlet.” Gems, all of them.
Back to Mr Cornwell. After devouring several servings of his books I discovered they follow a pattern. The stories are told from the point of view of a fighting outsider hero. It may be Nathaniel Starbuck, a displaced Northerner fighting for the Confederacy. In Ninth century Britain it’s Uhtred of Bebbanburg, a displaced Northumbrian fighting for the southerners of Wessex. Or Richard Sharpe, a common soldier raised to officer status during the Napoleonic wars, or the protagonist may be Thomas of Hookton, a skillful archer during the Hundred Years War seeking not just the Holy Grail, as if that isn’t enough, but also revenge for the massacre of his family. All of these characters are involved in various aspects of revenge, come to think of it, plus the occasional manly love affair.
Simply, these are ripping tales that don’t stop. Cornwell never bogs down in literary description or gratuitous subplots. Although the scenery’s often lovely, there’s very little of it.
He brings alive a far-off time and place as few others are able. If you time-traveled me to, say, Northumberland in the year 891, I could tell a Dane by his arm rings, a Viking by his dragon ship, and a Saxon by his stink. I have learned the old place names and fought the old battles. It’s like studying history with the most entertaining teacher you could imagine.
Now and then Cornwell does get all poetic: “...and so I turned south and rowed away from the shore, while in the west the sun leaked red fire through rifts in the cloud so that the whole sky glowed as if a god had bled across the heavens.” (from “The Pale Horseman”).
But the adventure never falters: “And next day the eight dark horsemen came.” (from “Lords of the North”). He begins well: “Darkness. Winter. A night of frost and no moon. We floated on the river Temes, and beyond the boat’s high bow I could see the stars reflected on the shimmering water.” (from “Sword Song”) and of course he ends well, too: “...but in the end he had pulled the trigger because he had to live with himself. Though God alone knew where that would take him. Night fell. The smoke of a broken city vanished in the dark. And Sharpe sailed home, a soldier.” (From “Sharpe’s Prey”).
Cornwell sets up the reader to crave more: “While at Bebbanburg, where the gray sea never ceases to beat upon the long pale sands and the cold wind frets the wolf’s head flag above the hall, they dreaded my return. Because fate cannot be cheated, it governs us, and we are all its slaves.”
Ahh. History for dessert. Delicious!
You too, can receive WOB scripts in your email and review episodes you may have missed. To be on the list, please send a note to amiksak@gmail.com. I'm blogging at www.wordsonbooks.blogspot.com and I enjoy reading your comments here.
NOTES:
Pick up any of Cornwell’s novels and you’ll find a current list of all his works, by series, and sometimes by chronological order within series. He’s written at least 42 novels, probably a few more than that, and he’s only 28 years old (I made that up. Born in 1944, he lives with his wife on Cape Cod, where the adventures roll in like the Atlantic tides).
Cornwell's home on the web.
The American publisher of all these books is HarperCollins.
A fascinating exchange on Cornwell’s site:
Hello Mr. Cornwell, I am curious about your process for developing (and writing) a story. Stephen King says that he gets the idea for a situation--say, a crazed fan holds her favorite author hostage--and lets the story develop however it happens. Do you do the same, or (for example) do you have the climax of the story mapped out inside your head in advance, and just have to figure out the way to get there? Do you outline story before beginning to write? Also, when you are in the process of writing, do you try to write a certain amount every day (like King), and do you try to write the first draft through all the way without edits, and then go back and make changes when you are finished? Anything else you can share about your process would be welcome. Thanks and best wishes, Warren Firschein Safety Harbor, FL
A: An outline? No, I don't. I have a very broad idea of where I want the book to go, then just let the characters sort it out amongst themselves. I'm not saying this is the right way to do it - some writers plot very carefully, and their books are great, but others, like me, leave it to instinct. I write maybe eight, nine hours a day? That includes daydreaming. I always start with a stick figure . . but there ain't no rules. I like to get the story straight so I write fast, pushing the story line ahead, but I revise constantly. I always think that writing a novel (for me! not for everyone!) is like climbing a mountain - I get a quarter of the way up, look back and see a better route, so it's back to the beginning and start again and that better route takes me halfway up, I look back, and so on and so on. Once that 'first' draft is finished I rewrite the whole thing maybe two times, and it's then that I add lots of detail. (B.Cornwell)
30 October 2009
pricing update....
An update on the predatory pricing, from today's Publishers Weekly Daily newsletter (30 October 09)
Wal-Mart, Amazon Limiting Discounted Purchases
Plans by independent booksellers to buy the 10 November titles being offered at steep discounts by Wal-Mart, Target and Amazon have been foiled by the big box retailers who are limiting the number of books one customer can buy. According to the Wall Street Journal, Wal-Mart is limiting purchases to two copies per customer, Amazon has a three-copy limit and Target five. There has been lots of discussion in bookseller forums about buying quantities of titles at the big box retailers as a protest to the discounting policies, but also as way to get a better margin since the 10 books would be cheaper to buy from the stores than from the publishers.
Wal-Mart, Amazon Limiting Discounted Purchases
Plans by independent booksellers to buy the 10 November titles being offered at steep discounts by Wal-Mart, Target and Amazon have been foiled by the big box retailers who are limiting the number of books one customer can buy. According to the Wall Street Journal, Wal-Mart is limiting purchases to two copies per customer, Amazon has a three-copy limit and Target five. There has been lots of discussion in bookseller forums about buying quantities of titles at the big box retailers as a protest to the discounting policies, but also as way to get a better margin since the 10 books would be cheaper to buy from the stores than from the publishers.
29 October 2009
Bill Petrocelli on the Price War
Under the title “Not a Simple Price War -- It's a Fight Over What You Get to Read” Marin bookseller Bill Petrocelli of Book Passage in San Francisco and Corte Madera has published an absolutely right-on screed about the current price war on books.
I mentioned the situation here two weeks ago, and was planning to say more. Writing for the Huffington Post, Bill said it for me and for all fans of good books. I’ll devote the rest of this Words on Books to excerpts from Bill’s article:
“What looks like a simple price war between Amazon, Target, and Wal-Mart over a handful of bestsellers is symptomatic of a much deeper problem in the book business. The larger fight is really over what you get to read.
“The price war began October 15 when Walmart.com dropped its prices drastically on several bestsellers. Amazon.com and Target.com quickly followed suit, and within a couple of days the prices were down to $8.99 and heading lower... these behemoths were clearly selling those books below cost and engaging in an illegal form of predatory pricing.
“The authors affected by this price slashing were not amused. James Patterson said, "Imagine if somebody was selling DVDs of this week's new movies for $5. You wouldn't be able to make movies." John Grisham's agent added, "I think we underestimate the effect to which extremely discounted bestsellers take the consumer's attention away from emerging writers." The American Booksellers Association saw things the same way, saying in a letter to... (the) Anti-Trust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, that these companies are using books as loss leaders to sell other kinds of merchandise. ‘The entire book industry is in danger of becoming collateral damage in this war.’
“Predatory pricing is a means of driving other booksellers out of business. When this happens, the choice of books is one of the first things to suffer.
“... the literary life of America has to go through two very narrow choke points: publishing and bookselling. Both of these choke points have become more and more constricted in recent years as a result of economic concentration and market manipulation.
“Publishing is now consolidated in the hands of a few large conglomerates that control most of what is published in America. There are, to be sure, many booklovers in the publishing divisions of these giant corporations, but they are outnumbered and out-maneuvered by the bean counters... It is not an atmosphere that favors innovation or literary discoveries...
“... The chain stores had been doing their best to squeeze out the independent stores over the last 20 years or so, and now they in turn are being squeezed by the mass merchandisers... Big-box mass merchandisers, like Wal-Mart, Target, and Costco, have taken over 30 percent of the book market. These mass merchandisers are now selling as many books as Barnes & Noble and Borders combined.
“It's hard to exaggerate the consequences of this mass-merchandiser dominance. These (big-box) outlets carry, at most, a few hundred titles at any given time. This means that a handful of books -- far less than one percent of all the books published -- are probably accounting now for more than 30 percent of all sales in America. Price wars in this segment of the market... (are) driving more customers to these merchandisers in search of quick bargains on a handful of big-name books.
“Publishers are under more and more pressure to subsidize these new, ruinous prices, and they will probably end up pushing more and more of their resources in that direction. But it's a devil's deal...
“...There's a big difference, say, between 500 buyers all buying for their own stores and one chain-buyer purchasing for 500 outlets... ...when the system is dominated by a small handful of powerful buyers, their decision can make or break a book... One of the dirty little secrets of the book business is that publishers often check in advance with the buyers for the chain stores and mass merchandisers before agreeing to publish a book. If the answer they get is no, the book may never see the light of day.
“One of the ironies of the current price war is that it includes ‘The Lacuna,’ the latest novel by Barbara Kingsolver. But Kingsolver wasn't always a bestselling author. When her first novel, ‘The Bean Trees,’ was published in a modest print-run in 1988, independent booksellers recognized it as a literary treasure and sold thousands of copies. After that the chain stores climbed on the bandwagon, but without that first push from independent booksellers Kingsolver's career might never have taken off.
“Anyone who loves books should worry that the doors seem to be closing on the Barbara Kingsolvers of tomorrow.”
NOTES:
"Not a Simple Price War -- It's a Fight Over What You Get to Read" was published on the Huffington Post on October 28. Read the entire posting here, with references and attributions to document his points:
From the bookseller newsletter Bookselling This Week: “William Petrocelli is an author, a bookseller, and a former attorney. He spent a few years as a Deputy Attorney General for the State of California and then as a poverty lawyer in Oakland, California, before going into private practice. For the past 30 years or so, he has been the co-owner with his wife, Elaine, of Book Passage in San Francisco and Corte Madera, California.
Petrocelli is the author of ‘Low Profile: How to Avoid the Privacy Invaders’ (McGraw-Hill) and co-author of ‘Sexual Harassment on the Job: What It Is and How to Stop It’ (Nolo Press). He is also the author of the forthcoming novel ‘The Thirteen.’ ”
I mentioned the situation here two weeks ago, and was planning to say more. Writing for the Huffington Post, Bill said it for me and for all fans of good books. I’ll devote the rest of this Words on Books to excerpts from Bill’s article:
“What looks like a simple price war between Amazon, Target, and Wal-Mart over a handful of bestsellers is symptomatic of a much deeper problem in the book business. The larger fight is really over what you get to read.
“The price war began October 15 when Walmart.com dropped its prices drastically on several bestsellers. Amazon.com and Target.com quickly followed suit, and within a couple of days the prices were down to $8.99 and heading lower... these behemoths were clearly selling those books below cost and engaging in an illegal form of predatory pricing.
“The authors affected by this price slashing were not amused. James Patterson said, "Imagine if somebody was selling DVDs of this week's new movies for $5. You wouldn't be able to make movies." John Grisham's agent added, "I think we underestimate the effect to which extremely discounted bestsellers take the consumer's attention away from emerging writers." The American Booksellers Association saw things the same way, saying in a letter to... (the) Anti-Trust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, that these companies are using books as loss leaders to sell other kinds of merchandise. ‘The entire book industry is in danger of becoming collateral damage in this war.’
“Predatory pricing is a means of driving other booksellers out of business. When this happens, the choice of books is one of the first things to suffer.
“... the literary life of America has to go through two very narrow choke points: publishing and bookselling. Both of these choke points have become more and more constricted in recent years as a result of economic concentration and market manipulation.
“Publishing is now consolidated in the hands of a few large conglomerates that control most of what is published in America. There are, to be sure, many booklovers in the publishing divisions of these giant corporations, but they are outnumbered and out-maneuvered by the bean counters... It is not an atmosphere that favors innovation or literary discoveries...
“... The chain stores had been doing their best to squeeze out the independent stores over the last 20 years or so, and now they in turn are being squeezed by the mass merchandisers... Big-box mass merchandisers, like Wal-Mart, Target, and Costco, have taken over 30 percent of the book market. These mass merchandisers are now selling as many books as Barnes & Noble and Borders combined.
“It's hard to exaggerate the consequences of this mass-merchandiser dominance. These (big-box) outlets carry, at most, a few hundred titles at any given time. This means that a handful of books -- far less than one percent of all the books published -- are probably accounting now for more than 30 percent of all sales in America. Price wars in this segment of the market... (are) driving more customers to these merchandisers in search of quick bargains on a handful of big-name books.
“Publishers are under more and more pressure to subsidize these new, ruinous prices, and they will probably end up pushing more and more of their resources in that direction. But it's a devil's deal...
“...There's a big difference, say, between 500 buyers all buying for their own stores and one chain-buyer purchasing for 500 outlets... ...when the system is dominated by a small handful of powerful buyers, their decision can make or break a book... One of the dirty little secrets of the book business is that publishers often check in advance with the buyers for the chain stores and mass merchandisers before agreeing to publish a book. If the answer they get is no, the book may never see the light of day.
“One of the ironies of the current price war is that it includes ‘The Lacuna,’ the latest novel by Barbara Kingsolver. But Kingsolver wasn't always a bestselling author. When her first novel, ‘The Bean Trees,’ was published in a modest print-run in 1988, independent booksellers recognized it as a literary treasure and sold thousands of copies. After that the chain stores climbed on the bandwagon, but without that first push from independent booksellers Kingsolver's career might never have taken off.
“Anyone who loves books should worry that the doors seem to be closing on the Barbara Kingsolvers of tomorrow.”
NOTES:
"Not a Simple Price War -- It's a Fight Over What You Get to Read" was published on the Huffington Post on October 28. Read the entire posting here, with references and attributions to document his points:
From the bookseller newsletter Bookselling This Week: “William Petrocelli is an author, a bookseller, and a former attorney. He spent a few years as a Deputy Attorney General for the State of California and then as a poverty lawyer in Oakland, California, before going into private practice. For the past 30 years or so, he has been the co-owner with his wife, Elaine, of Book Passage in San Francisco and Corte Madera, California.
Petrocelli is the author of ‘Low Profile: How to Avoid the Privacy Invaders’ (McGraw-Hill) and co-author of ‘Sexual Harassment on the Job: What It Is and How to Stop It’ (Nolo Press). He is also the author of the forthcoming novel ‘The Thirteen.’ ”
22 October 2009
That Cow Came Home
It started with a challenge from an author friend, Lewis Buzbee. He posted this on Facebook: “I just finished reading ‘Cow Across America’ by Dale Neal, and if you want to be reminded of how good novels can be, why we need them, and how they can, yes, make you laugh out loud and cry at the same time, read it. I guarantee it. You buy it and don't like it, I'll refund your money.”
So I went out and purchased the book from my friendly helpful local independent bookstore, and then I read it, and Lewis definitely does not owe me a cent.
I can’t say I’m quite as all-out enthusiastic as Lewis, but the book is excellent. It’s a first novel, it’s a grabber of a story, it’s multi-generational, specific to the Carolina mountains and at the same time universal as Homer.
Not to get all highfalutin about it, because the book is anything but high brow: Dwight Martin is a kid bored with visiting his grandparents in the country, but surprisingly intrigued by his grandfather’s stories. The stories may be true, or maybe not, but they’re good stories and one of the kids in the story also is named Dwight, and Pop has a story about that, too.
The title “Cow Across America” refers to a group of connected stories Pop tells about himself and a boy named Dwight and a cow named Daisy who one summer decided to walk west, all the way west, coast to coast. Pop’s stories are spread over years and many summer visits by the young Dwight to Pop’s isolated hill farm. Turns out the boys and the cow got home again. At least the way Pop tells it, they did.
The reader wonders, while wandering through these delicious tales, who, finally, is the narrator of the book, and what is HIS story? Stories about Dwight and Wylie and Daisy are set far in the past. Then there is Dwight Martin growing up in the present and learning about love and life.
In the opening scene: “Two weeks shy of turning ten, Dwight Martin wrote his first novel. It took most of the morning, far longer than he would have believed, and his finger hurt where the pencil had pressed a saddle-shaped callous against the knuckle, but he kept writing, filling the blue-ruled pages of a wire-bound notebook, nodding slowly as his sentences raced toward the red margins.”
In the last pages Dwight is grown up, waiting for a plane in an airport lounge, still wondering about things: “(He) never understood why travelers read novels in airports, noses pressed to the latest best-seller about serial killers or lawyers, while real life streamed about them in the terminal, a thousand and one stories on their way to different destinies and unforseen fates.”
This is excellent stuff, playing with our sense of time and place, moving backwards into myth and forward into the unknown, all the while staying centered on a boy’s life.
Author Dale Neal lives in Asheville and writes for a local newspaper. “Cow Across America” is his first novel, and it won the Novello Literary Award, intended to promote Carolina writers.
Lewis Buzbee dropped me a follow-up note: “Dale is a friend of mine, a writer friend. I've known him for 15 years probably. I had no involvement in the making of this book, other than being his pal... with this book, I really lost track when I was reading it, forgot that it was Dale. I was just reading a wonderful book... really glad you liked it, Tony.”
NOTES:
“Cow Across America” by Dale Neal. Novello Festival Press hard cover $21.95. ISBN 9780981519234.
Novello Festival Press announces publication of Dale Neal’s first novel.
Fascinating essay by the author on how he came to write this book.
There is a connection here with the novel “Cold Mountain” by Charles Frazier. Charles and his wife Katherine in 2004 founded the Cold Mountain Foundation to promote and support other writers from the Carolinas. Their funds helped subsidize publication of “Cow Across America.”
“H.L. Mencken, in his famous book The American Language, mentions highfalutin as an example of the many native U.S. words coined during the 19th-century period of vigorous growth. Although highfalutin is characteristic of American folk speech, it is not a true regionalism because it has always occurred in all regions of the country, with its use and popularity spurred by its appearance in print. The origin of highfalutin, like that of many folk expressions, is obscure. It has been suggested that the second element, -falutin, comes from the verb flute-hence high-fluting, a comical indictment of people who think too highly of themselves.” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright c 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
So I went out and purchased the book from my friendly helpful local independent bookstore, and then I read it, and Lewis definitely does not owe me a cent.
I can’t say I’m quite as all-out enthusiastic as Lewis, but the book is excellent. It’s a first novel, it’s a grabber of a story, it’s multi-generational, specific to the Carolina mountains and at the same time universal as Homer.
Not to get all highfalutin about it, because the book is anything but high brow: Dwight Martin is a kid bored with visiting his grandparents in the country, but surprisingly intrigued by his grandfather’s stories. The stories may be true, or maybe not, but they’re good stories and one of the kids in the story also is named Dwight, and Pop has a story about that, too.
The title “Cow Across America” refers to a group of connected stories Pop tells about himself and a boy named Dwight and a cow named Daisy who one summer decided to walk west, all the way west, coast to coast. Pop’s stories are spread over years and many summer visits by the young Dwight to Pop’s isolated hill farm. Turns out the boys and the cow got home again. At least the way Pop tells it, they did.
The reader wonders, while wandering through these delicious tales, who, finally, is the narrator of the book, and what is HIS story? Stories about Dwight and Wylie and Daisy are set far in the past. Then there is Dwight Martin growing up in the present and learning about love and life.
In the opening scene: “Two weeks shy of turning ten, Dwight Martin wrote his first novel. It took most of the morning, far longer than he would have believed, and his finger hurt where the pencil had pressed a saddle-shaped callous against the knuckle, but he kept writing, filling the blue-ruled pages of a wire-bound notebook, nodding slowly as his sentences raced toward the red margins.”
In the last pages Dwight is grown up, waiting for a plane in an airport lounge, still wondering about things: “(He) never understood why travelers read novels in airports, noses pressed to the latest best-seller about serial killers or lawyers, while real life streamed about them in the terminal, a thousand and one stories on their way to different destinies and unforseen fates.”
This is excellent stuff, playing with our sense of time and place, moving backwards into myth and forward into the unknown, all the while staying centered on a boy’s life.
Author Dale Neal lives in Asheville and writes for a local newspaper. “Cow Across America” is his first novel, and it won the Novello Literary Award, intended to promote Carolina writers.
Lewis Buzbee dropped me a follow-up note: “Dale is a friend of mine, a writer friend. I've known him for 15 years probably. I had no involvement in the making of this book, other than being his pal... with this book, I really lost track when I was reading it, forgot that it was Dale. I was just reading a wonderful book... really glad you liked it, Tony.”
NOTES:
“Cow Across America” by Dale Neal. Novello Festival Press hard cover $21.95. ISBN 9780981519234.
Novello Festival Press announces publication of Dale Neal’s first novel.
Fascinating essay by the author on how he came to write this book.
There is a connection here with the novel “Cold Mountain” by Charles Frazier. Charles and his wife Katherine in 2004 founded the Cold Mountain Foundation to promote and support other writers from the Carolinas. Their funds helped subsidize publication of “Cow Across America.”
“H.L. Mencken, in his famous book The American Language, mentions highfalutin as an example of the many native U.S. words coined during the 19th-century period of vigorous growth. Although highfalutin is characteristic of American folk speech, it is not a true regionalism because it has always occurred in all regions of the country, with its use and popularity spurred by its appearance in print. The origin of highfalutin, like that of many folk expressions, is obscure. It has been suggested that the second element, -falutin, comes from the verb flute-hence high-fluting, a comical indictment of people who think too highly of themselves.” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright c 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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