Although I have been avoiding the NBCC, I haven't avoided the diminishing print reviews issue since lots of commentary on it appears all over the Internet. Thankfully, not everyone is as ill-equipped as they are at rational discourse.
Book bloggers and print reviewers are, in fact, natural allies against a common antagonist: media executives who think that the only thing people want to read about in the newspaper is what they see on television and that the only way to attract younger readers is to try to cover the bands they listen to. But I recently saw an overflow crowd of people under 30 (900 of them for a 300-seat auditorium) come to hear Chuck Palahniuk read. And I suspect those people were more likely to read about books online than in the newspaper - especially since newspapers are providing fewer and fewer reviews.
And:
One thing I’m pretty sure of: if the print reviewers can get the book bloggers behind them, they have a better chance than they would otherwise of getting the attention of those media execs.
Damn straight. And I'll tell you this much. If I got word that Frank's position was being eliminated, I'd gladly sign a petition and drive down to Philly for a read-in at the Inquirer's office. Why? Because he gets it.
Of course, I'd also sign a petition if it would force Richard Schickel into retirement. Why? Because he's an elitist burro.
And if there are fewer quotable parts? It means fewer reasons for publishers to take out an ad--there's just less to crow about--and fewer ads mean fewer book review sections will survive because many of them rely quite heavily on their advertising revenue. A vicious circle, to be sure. And don't even get me started on the fact that, if fewer books are being reviewed, a bad review hurts more since there will be fewer good ones to offset it.
I can certainly see the potential for a deeper cut from a pan in a future reality containing fewer, shorter reviews. However, I'm not sure I follow the logic behind the vicious circle, mainly because I rarely see print ads for books in my local paper. I see plenty of movie ads, and some of them quote only one or two words out of ginormous reviews and whole phrases from tiny ones—including pans.
Look, publishers are cheap. (I have the pay stubs to prove it.) Very little money is budgeted for advertising individual titles because publishing is like gambling. Out of 100 books, one or two big hits bankroll the next several plays. If you don't know how strong your hand is, it's not worth betting $500 on a single print ad when it might not return even money. Of course, sometimes bluffs win—like Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. But a small publisher with a small pile of chips isn't going to bluff. I also doubt any struggling house would be willing to go all in, even with two aces in the hole.
Anyone, who has ever worked in publishing, will probably relate to this scene from Will Ferguson's Happiness. I know I can:
Edwin de Valu pulled the first manuscript out from the top of the pile. A stack of rejection letters was on hand, ready to go.
The first submission was from a writer in Vermont, and the cover letter began: "Hello, Mr. Jones!" (Jones was the fake name they gave out when writers phoned asking for the acquisitions editor. Having something arrive marked URGENT FOR MR. JONES! was a tipoff to reroute it to the slush pile.)
"Hello, Mr. Jones! I have written a fictional novel about—" and that was as far as Edwin got.
On behalf of Panderic Inc. I would like to thank you for your very interesting proposal. Unfortunately, after careful consideration...
Edwin took the next manuscript from the pile. "Dear Mr. Jones: Enclosed is my novel, The Moons of Thoxth-Aqogxnir. This is the first of a three-part trilogy that will—"
...and much editorial debate, we have regrettably concluded that your book does not meet our current editorial needs.
"Mr. Jones! My blockbuster book, Lawyer on the Lam, is a guaranteed bestseller, and is certainly much better than the kind of stuff Mr. Big Shot John Grisham writes and everyone thinks is so hot. P.S. I single-spaced the manuscript to save on paper. Hope you don’t mind. :-)"
...We wish you the best of luck placing your work with another publisher, and we are deeply sorry we weren’t able to offer you a contract at this time.
"Dear Sirs: How little we know about refrigerator repair maintenance, and yet what a long and fascinating history this field has."
...Have you considered submitting your manuscript instead to HarperCollins or perhaps Random House? (Panderic had been feuding with HarperCollins and Random House for years, and they kept redirecting their slush pile to each other on a regular basis.)
"Dear Mr. Jones: 'Watch out! Watch out! Watch out! Get down! Duck!' The red-hot bullets sprayed around Agent McDermit's head, trained to kill with his bear hands...That is the beginning of my action-packed adventure novel, To Kill a Killer! If you want to find out more, you'll have to ask me for the full manuscript and see for yourself." But Edwin inserted another standard "after careful consideration" letter, and that was the last he ever heard of Agent McDermit.
Mind you, Edwin did make note of the "bear hands" line to add to the bulletin board in the staff room, the one filled with odd clips and outrageously bad writing. The collection was known as The Wall of Bad Writing. Also known as, Gems from the Unsolicited and Unagented. Also known as, It Came from the Slush Pile!
Update: I have just caught up with last week's posts on Petrona, where the lovely Maxine points us to this real life tale of unsolicited woe: "The shocking truth about the slush pile." The comments—and there are a lot of them—reveal how little some "writers" know about publishing and how much bad writing assaults the unfortunate slush pile readers.
Last week, for our discussion of Remainder, I slapped up a post and just left it while I barely touched the computer. It doesn't surprise me that no one participated. We generally do better when someone else hosts a book because it's a guarantee of at least two people talking. The thread will stay open for a while if anyone still intends to drop by and add a few late thoughts. In any case, I encourage everyone to read this book because I really enjoyed both its tone and originality.
Although I'm behind on responding to previous discussions, comments continue to come in on both The Wasp Factory and Things Fall Apart. I need to go back to those thread and add some comments. I also have copies at hand for our upcoming discussions. I'm currently plugging away at Happiness and have caught myself chuckling aloud because its satire of the publishing industry is a whole lot more real than made up.
Summer has officially kicked off here and we've seen nothing but absolutely gorgeous weather. From hours and hours of gardening, I have already gotten a significant amount of sun and am sporting a set of very bright flip flop tan lines on both feet. This morning, the first thing I need to do is mow the very long grass. Then it's back to business starting with going through a bottomless pile of email.
If you're returning to the grind after enjoying a long holiday weekend, don't work too hard today.
For this month's discussion, let's begin at the beginning:
About the accident itself I can say very little. Almost nothing. It involved something falling from the sky. Technology. Parts, bits. That's it, really: all I can divulge. Not much, I know.
It's not that I'm being shy. It's just that—well, for one, I don't even remember the event. It's a blank: a white slate, a black hole. I have vague images, half-impressions: of being, or having been—or, more precisely, being about to be—hit; blue light; railings; lights of other colours; being held above some kind of tray or bed. But who's to say that these are genuine memories? Who's to say my traumatized mind didn't just make them up, or pull them out from somewhere else, some other slot, and stick them there to plug the gap—the crater—that the accident had blown? Minds are versatile and wily things. Real chancers. (p. 3)
As you read, did you make note of the punctuation? Did it help or hinder your understanding of the narrator and his story? Do you think it serves a purpose other than making the text readable?
When I began reading Remainder, the first thing I noticed was the punctuation. Take another look at these first two paragraphs. There are periods, question marks, apostrophes, commas, semi-colons, colons, and em dashes. I'm amazed McCarthy failed to work in an ellipsis and an exclamation point. As I continued reading, I noticed that the punctuation played an important part in helping to establish the tone of the prose. Em dashes, for example, are often used to indicate breaks in thought, and our unnamed narrator has certainly suffered from scattered thoughts since the accident.
What do you think of the narrator? Is he reliable or unreliable? Is he a hero or an anti-hero?
Near the end of the third chapter, the narrator goes to a coffee shop and observes two groups of people. The first, media types with sharp clothes and colorful cell phones, remind him of a television ad showing beautiful people having fun. The second group consists of homeless people, and he decides that they are genuine. "That they really did possess the street, themselves, the moment they were in. (p. 56)" He tells us he takes one of the homeless for a meal—to find out more about his genuineness—but we quickly learn that he's lying. He hasn't spoken to anyone and has drawn a new conclusion: the homeless are usurpers and only pretend to own the space around them.
Initially, I didn't know what to make of this scene. It took many more pages before beginning to think that the narrator uses it to set us, the reader, up. He lies then fesses up in order to make us believe he's incapable of lying even though he began with a perfectly believable lie in the first place. Although I spent most of the book liking the narrator, it took me all the way to the concluding scene on the airplane before deciding he is an anti-hero. As he searched for genuineness, I sympathized with his plight because I often feel like I act a part as I go through life. However, as his search turned more frantic, his reenactments became increasingly beyond reason: a murder, a bank robbery, a hijacking. The ending snuck up on me, and I didn't realize the level of his disconnect until after I finished the book.
What of the reenactments? Are they surreal? Hyper-real? What is the narrator trying to accomplish? What is he searching for?
Although the beginning of the book spends a fair amount of time setting up the rest of the book, I'm still not exactly sure about the narrator's purpose. Since the accident, he clearly feels like a second-hand version of himself. He says he is looking for authenticity, the mysterious thing that makes a moment real. At first, the reenactments seem like his way of recapturing his memories. Yet, he does things like obsessively practice having his shirt brush against woodwork and slows down the reenactments so that the actors are barely moving. He leaves reenactments in "on" mode even when he isn't present and has actors work in shifts to run around the clock. He watches a scene in real life while simultaneously recreating the same scene using a miniature architectural model. For me, his search for authenticity became more and more unauthentic as the book progressed.
What is the remainder?
After having a tire repaired, the narrator also asks for a fill-up of his car's window washing fluid. Two liters are poured into the reservoir but:
They'd vaporized, evaporated. And do you know what? It felt wonderful. Don't ask me why: it just did. It was as thought I'd just witnessed a miracle: matter—these two litres of liquid—becoming un-matter—not surplus matter, mess or clutter, but pure, bodiless blueness. Transubstantiated. (p. 171)
At the above moment, he believes he has seen something amazing and wants to understand it, down to the fraction of a second and to the tiniest molecule. He wants to experience the remainder, whatever is left over after matter is stripped away. Of course, such a feat is impossible as is clearly demonstrated seconds later when the blue fluid squirts out the dashboard and onto his pants. I'd have given up at this point (maybe sooner), but the narrator is undeterred. What is with this guy?
I hope it's a technical glitch. If it isn't, then it's more confirmation of my thoughts from yesterday: "it appears as though they care more about expressing one-way opinions than engaging in dialogue, can't take our criticism, and have no regard for their site's audience." I can't help but feel censored and am thankful I have a forum for my opinions, even if Critical Mass finds them less valid than their own.
Here's a copy of the comment I left:
Although I'm sorry you've been the undeserving recipient of angry emails, I am frankly, as a blogger, tiring of what I read here. You say that what's posted does not represent the views of the NBCC, but this is the NBCC's blog. It represents your organization to the blogging world, whether or not the opinions expressed are held solely by each individual poster.
Besides being word play on your occupation, "critical mass" refers to the sum total of many things needed to fuel momentum. From what I read here, your momentum is headed toward alienation from the very people you need in your corner if you truly want to save newspaper book reviews.
Many of you are editors, and some editing here would do you good. The frequent vitriol against bloggers does not earn sympathy for your cause, especially since we likely comprise the majority of your readers. One reason often cited for the decline of book reviews in newspapers relates to them being out of touch with the books most people want to read. I'm inclined to believe it, considering how out of touch this blog is with its audience.
Although I wasn't paid for my opinion and have now self-published it in a lesser medium than print, I still think I have a right to it. Of course, those of you not reading this—since no one reads blogs—might think otherwise.
Update: The comment thread to the post mentioned above has reappeared. Whew.
I have just unsubscribed from the NBCC's Critical Mass feed because, frankly, I am tired of them and their efforts save their jobs while continuing to dump on blogs. And, really, that's all their "campaign" is about. From my end, it appears as though they care more about expressing one-way opinions than engaging in dialogue, can't take our criticism, and have no regard for their site's audience.
Despite repeated pleas from bloggers to lay off, items like the following have been posted to Critical Mass in recent days:
Seriously, though, blogs are kind of like parasitic microorganisms which feed off of a primary host. For the sake of this discussion, the host is clearly print media. Some are the good bacteria and some are transient and viral. Or maybe I can upgrade blogs to the status of some sort of interstitial or synovial fluid, buffering the vital organs of the media (newspaper, television, radio, the Internet)? But, c’mon, if newspapers are dying, then blogs are the maggots come to feast upon their corpses. —Shannon Byrne, publicist for Little, Brown
And:
Another impression: I would take issue with the notion that blogs will somehow replace newspaper book reviews. During a recent visit with a local book club, a group of 16 well-read, highly intelligent women, I asked how many of them had recently read a book review on a blog. The answer was, nobody! Then I asked if any of them had EVER gone to a blog to read book reviews. Again, nobody. The average reader---the average person---just doesn’t do this yet. Maybe we read reviews on Amazon, but that’s it. Readers read book reviews because they happen upon them in the newspaper. —Lee Smith, novelist
First of all, calling blogs "parasitic microorganisms" from a posting on a blog is beyond hypocritical. And, um, did I just read that no one reads blogs on a blog? Let's say there are a million—just to keep it simple—active bloggers out there. Bloggers naturally read other blogs, so it's not hard to generalize that at least a million people read blogs. Asking 16 book club members who don't blog whether or not they read blogs is not much of a revealing survey, no matter how well-read or intelligent they are.
Yesterday, Rebecca Skloot, the Critical Mass blogmistress, posted yet again that the opinions represented do not belong to the NBCC. She is clearly and understandably frustrated at being the recipient of angry emails. I sympathize, but I also left a comment to point out that Critical Mass "represents [the NBCC] to the blogging world, whether or not the opinions expressed are held solely by each individual poster." In other words, it makes the NBCC look bad. I also suggested they put their editing skills to some good use before they alienate their entire audience, most of whom are probably bloggers.
Rebecca responded with:
I understand why this can be confusing, but Critical Mass is actually not the blog of the NBCC. It's the blog of the board of directors, which is entirely different.
Oh. But this makes me wonder. Isn't it the job of the board of directors to represent the organization? Don't they care about image? And:
I've said many times that I'm with all the people who are annoyed by the nasty anti-blogger statements in some of the posts, so I won't go into that again here.
She certainly shouldn't be a punching bag just because she handles the technical side of the site. Yet:
But I will say, when reading any any group blog, it's a mistake to conflate all posters as one.
Matt at A Variety of Words has tagged me with the "8 Things" meme. Hmm...
My parents were at a wrestling match when my mother went into labor with me. Mil Máscaras, the famous Mexican luchador, was in the ring at the time. If the circumstances of my birth had any influence on my life, it might explain why I rarely back down from a fight and eventually went on to learn Spanish (even though I'm half Italian and half Vietnamese).
Although I was born in California while my father completed his naval service in Long Beach, we moved to his home state of New Jersey when I was 19 days old. My first residence here was the Lincoln Motel (back then it was a Holiday Inn) in Newark's de facto red-light district. I am not going to even speculate on what kind of influence it had on my future.
I went to parochial school from kindergarten to 8th grade. The nuns were frightening and the other kids were mean, so I spent a lot of time reading. Sometime in the middle of 6th grade was when I decided I was an atheist. As a result, my parents had to send me to a private high school because I was dead set against more nuns and they had no confidence in the local public school. They made a lot of sacrifices for my education.
In 1991, I graduated from Northwestern University with a bachelor's in history. My concentration was in British history—specifically, the Tudors (I share my birthday with Elizabeth I.)—but I wrote my senior thesis on James VI/I's acquisition of the throne and the birth of the United Kingdom under Stuart rule.
Clearly, I am an anglophile. However, I am conflicted because I have family living in France due to scattering after the Vietnam War. I also did study abroad in Grenoble and speak much better French than Spanish. Because I knew three languages, I went on to an international job with a publishing company. I've been to the Frankfurt Book Fair six times, and never want to see the inside of a book trade show again.
When I was in my mid-twenties, I had an ovariectomy due to a grapefruit-sized benign tumor. The first painful symptoms appeared while in Frankfurt, and I remember thinking how horrible it would be to drop dead on the bathroom floor of the Marriott on Hamburger Allee. I obviously lived, had surgery back in the States a few weeks later, and was told that the only way I'd ever conceive would be to have an egg rendezvous with a sperm on a petri dish. I'm okay with it now since the last four years of teaching elementary school has been excellent birth control.
My half brother is 27 years younger than I am. I like him a lot and tutor him on weekends, but, seriously, it's more birth control.
I left teaching at the end of last school year because I was exhausted from a monster commute and needed to reevaluate where I was going in life. Currently, I rely on freelance writing and BookBlog for money (hence the advertising and sponsored posts). Working from home is a pleasure, but being self-employed and scratching for dollars is incredibly hard. I have recently stepped up a job search and hope to rejoin the non-self-employed labor force soon.
So, there it is.
8 Things - The Rules
1: Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
2: People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post these rules.
3: At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names.
4: Don’t forget to leave them a comment and tell them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
Now I'm supposed to tag 8 people:
Clyde at Recycled Sip - One of the first blogs I read.
Mulenga at Mulenga's Blog - He needs a shove back into blogging.
Debra at The Deblog - Despite her past unhappiness with my critical nature and big mouth, I have no hard feelings toward her personally and would enjoy learning more.
Frank at Books, Inq. - In my humble opinion, the smartest book editor/reviewer working today.
Steven at Stevenhartsite - I enjoy his posts and am looking forward to reading his book.
When book renting ala Netflix first came to my attention, I wasn't exactly sure if it would ever be a service for me. I mean, I have a book buying addiction and also try to use my library card whenever I can. However, I can certainly understand the appeal for frequent travelers plowing through tons of titles, people who are exceptionally busy, or those who are unable to leave home very often. Renting probably also works well someone who reads a lot but doesn't want to have books cluttering up the house.
I have just taken a closer look at Booksfree and realized that—in addition to paperbacks—they also offer audiobooks. Now that's a service I could go for, especially since I spend a lot of time in my car trying to get from nowhere (the place I live) to somewhere (anyplace but here). When I head east, I generally have to wait about 20 minutes before being in range of the NYC radio stations. Rather than sit in silence and wonder if the coffee maker was turned off, listening to a book would be a better way to pass the time.
A few years ago, I took a 12-hour road trip to visit a friend in North Carolina. I knew good radio stations could be hard to find, so I bought the audiobook version of Chuck Palahniuk's Lullaby. It cost me about 25 bucks and I finished listening to it before reaching my destination. I knew I probably wouldn't listen to it again, so I left it with the hostess and returned to New Jersey amidst much silence. The ride would have been much more enjoyable if I had another book on tape.
In looking at Booksfree's prices, a two-at-a-time plan costs only $27.49. Considering how expensive most audiobooks are, it seems like a good value for the money. I could have listened to two books during the long ride for just a few extra dollars. And, if I mailed back Lullaby from North Carolina, a new rental would have been waiting for me at home.
I am alive and doing well, just busier and farther away from the computer than usual. If I have time later, I'll be back with a bookish update because I've had a lot of thoughts rolling around in my head about reading, book reviews, and the industry.
Reading continues at a frantic pace because there are so many titles I want to get through. I'm nearing the end of Jeremy C. Shipp's Vacation and wondering how the author gets his protagonist out of the truly bizarre mess he's in right now. He's about to leave a hidden rebel camp with a subversive list of books designed to spread their philosophy around the globe. Hmm. I hope I get to find out what's on the list.
Taking a departure from the usual link-and-run style of blogging, Frank Wilson of The Philadelphia Inquirer has written a meaty post about last night's Chuck Palahniuk and Elmore Leonard appearance. He writes:
The whole event was the literary equivalent of a rock concert. When Chuck announced that he was going to read one his more notorious stories, "Guts," the audience cheered, the way they would if a rock star said he was going to perform a legendary hit.
I kept thinking on the way home how newspapers are desperate to attract younger readers, but haven't a clue as to how popular this guy is with just the people they're looking for. Never have I had a greater sense of just how out of touch newspapers have become.
[Speaking of being out of touch, I wish Critical Mass would stop posting name-dropping lists. It's very nice to see lots of authors protesting the AJC's removal of their book editor. However, it'd be even nicer to read an homage to all the paid subscribers who have signed the petition, like #5377, "a subscriber to the AJC since 1970," or #5312 who writes, "There is no other way to get the regional book coverage. So if AJC doesn't have it, I will need to go back to subscribing to the New York Times."]
Chuck spoke for 2 hours, he was definitely on something, his speech was slurred and he looked a touch unsteady, but it worked for him. He took questions from the crowd and when asked how zombie movies had influenced the rabies plague in his new book, he said he loved zombies. He said that when his friends watch boring movies like "The English Patient" or "Howard's End", they often say how the movie would be exponentially better with some of those fast moving zombies from the "Dawn of the Dead" remake.
You might have seen me, I was in the duct tape wedding dress. (Front row, huzzah. The perks of being early.) I got to talk to Chuck at about 3:30 and he gave me the slip for redeeming the wedding dress...prize...thing. (Of course, they gave me another during the readings, so now I have two. Ahem--scrapbook time!) Which, the only thing I know about the prize is that he told me it "would be too big to hang in a frame on my wall". Yeah, so, that doesn't narrow it down at all, but that's all I have. I never met him before, and was surprised how amazingly warm and friendly he was, not to mention how light and sincere his handshake was. Very personal.
I only have one regret, and that is--stupid me--I didn't ask to get my picture with him while we were talking. My brain was completely fried and I got entirely too nervous, popping my knuckles, turning red and saying really nonsensical things because my thought process just wasn't working.
Here's one more before I head outside. The Book Depository Editor's Corner points us to this interesting book trailer for Quirkology: The Curious Science of Everyday Lives:
I must make a note to pick this one up when it comes out on this side of the pond in September. Even curiouser than the book's science and the card trick in the video is the name change: Quirkology: How We Discover the Big Truths in Small Things. Hmm. What does this say about the American book buying public? Are we turned off by science?
I have a lot (TONS!) of things to do today because I am hosting the family for a Mother's Day BBQ on Sunday. The house is a wreck, flats of flowers need to be planted, a bird's nest in a bad spot in the shed should be relocated, grass must be mowed, and the yard has to be cleared of piles of wood being stored for next winter. There's a chance of rain for this afternoon and tomorrow, so the outside stuff has to be handled ASAP.
While I'm out working my butt off, here are a few bookish things to keep you busy:
Our discussion of The Wasp Factory is still going. If you've read the book, please feel free to drop in and leave a comment. However, the thread contains huge spoilers. I wouldn't recommend reading through it before having finished the book.
I've been meaning to post about Library Thing's UnSuggester, but Bookninja beat me to it. If you hated The Da Vinci Code or wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole, you might want to read some of these books. However, considering its sales numbers, I bet it's on a lot more bookshelves than the 12,000+ Library Thing members who have admitted to it.
Are you a frustrated writer? Maybe a video called "How to Write the Great American Novel" will help. After watching it, I'm now considering becoming a novelist. I regularly have to remind friends/family of my genius and get plenty of sleep, so I must be qualified.
Look. I love Chuck, okay? I'm not a member of the Cult or anything, but I have not yet read a book of his I didn't like. Fight Club blew my mind—enough so that I based BookBlog's rules on it, oh, so many years ago—and chose Invisible Monsters as our inaugural book. Also, I keep hoping Hollywood will get it together and finally move on turning Survivor into a movie.
Palahniuk is currently on tour for his new novel, Rant: The Oral Biography of Buster Casey. I've been debating with myself over whether or not to attempt attending his appearance with Irvine Welsh tomorrow night:
7:00 p.m.
Barnes & Noble Union Square
33 East 17th Street
New York, NY 10003
I have finally decided to stay home because it's likely to be a madhouse. Plus, I hate going into the city. He won't be signing books anyway, and making the super long trip without the reward of a meet & greet isn't inspiring. It's a shame New Jersey got shafted, especially since he'd probably find a lot of material for another book; we do self-loathing yet narcissistic nihilism very well here. If you're interested in finding out if Palahniuk will be near you soon, the dates for the rest of the tour are posted here.
While authors of upcoming discussions are on my mind, I should also mention that Zadie Smith has a short story in this week's The New Yorker: "Hanwell Senior."
To be perfectly honest, I don't get it—mostly because the entire piece seems to be summed up in an aside appearing at the end of the second section. So as not to give it all away, the paragraph that threw me begins with:
Note: I have reconstituted Hanwell’s thoughts for you, as seem likely to me, and as sound nicest. In the novel "Middlemarch," we find the old adage of a man’s charity growing in direct proportion to its distance from his own door.
However, rather than myself or Zadie Smith, my lack of clarity may be the fault of Microsoft. After having several technical problems with Internet Explorer 6 this morning, I finally bit the bullet and downloaded version 7. I'm having some trouble with ClearType. Despite trying each setting in the tuner, every web page looks blurry. (Oh, the irony!)
Maybe I'll read "Hanwell Senior" again in a few days when my vision has adjusted.
Update: I spent most of the day yesterday being disappointed with ClearType and making mental notes about uninstalling it. With reluctance, I turned the computer on this morning and was instantly amazed at the readability of everything on the screen. Holy cow! It looks just like type in a book.
If you can't wait for our September discussion of Set This House in Order, Matt Ruff reports that he is participating in an online discussion of the book with a German reading group. Don't let the German bit scare you; most of the posts are in English. They are working their way through Chapters 4 and 5 right now and, based on the lively discussion, seem to be enjoying what they've read so far. Via Ruff's LiveJournal, A Burning Dog Needs No Chimney.
By the way, Ruff has a new one coming out later this year and is gearing up for a book tour. Bad Monkeys will be released at the beginning of August. The synopsis:
Jane Charlotte has been arrested for murder.
She tells police that she is a member of a secret organization devoted to fighting evil; her division is called "The Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons"—"Bad Monkeys" for short.
This confession earns Jane a trip to the jail's psychiatric wing, where a doctor attempts to determine whether she is lying, crazy—or playing a different game altogether.
I don't know what you've been up to over the last few days, but I have been taking full advantage of the long-awaited arrival of spring weather. With winter lasting until the end of April, I have become very behind on sprucing up the garden. Yesterday was near perfect, so I spent it working grass seed into the bare patches on the lawn and yanking out the dreaded dandelions. In between spurts of digging in the dirt, it was delightful to sit at the patio table with a cool beverage and a good book.
It's time to get ready for summer reading and mark your calendars for our upcoming discussions:
Speaking of Remainder and this month's discussion, I have written a review of the book for thescene, a lifestyle e-zine based in Australia. You can read the review here, but I'll go ahead and let you know right now that I loved it. The writing is just as surreal as the storyline and compliments it well.
There's also a blog dedicated to the work of Tom McCarthy, which I assume was created by a fan, called Surplus Matter. It hasn't been updated since March, but it does contain the full text of many reviews of the book and interviews with the author. If you're interested in finding out more about Remainder, Surplus Matter is an excellent resource.
Next month's title, Happiness will be hosted by Brian of Dispatches from an MFA Seeking Writer. (He's pretty close to graduating, I think. I wonder if he'll change the name of his blog to Dispatches from an MFA Graduate Seeking a Book Deal.) Brian is no stranger to hosting, since each week he leads his visitors on Haiku Saturday. Surely you have a few moments to stop by and haiku with the crew.
I've seen links to The Colbert Report's "Meta-Free-Phor-All" popping up around the Internet, and I finally sat down to watch it this morning. Although Stephen Colbert and Sean Penn are both pretty funny, former U.S. Poet Laureate and New Jerseyan Robert Pinsky has the best lines.
At about 7:30 a.m. this morning, my sister gave me a call and told me to turn on our local Fox News station (WNYW) to watch their "Web Wednesday" segment. To my complete amazement, the Gender Genie was the lead site featured and made me nearly faint from excitement. So, thanks so much to Fox and...
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If you're interested in more information about the algorithm behind the Genie, we've written quite a bit about it. Comments are always welcome, and we hope you enjoy your visit.
A few posts ago, I mentioned being interested in reading Alex Mindt's Male of the Species. The book is a collection of short stories about fathers and their children, and it explores several themes of interest to me. I have a sometimes strained relationship with my father, am often befuddled by men, and identify with the immigrant experience. Recently, I also started paying attention to book trailers.
As I watched the video, I zeroed in on the line: "A Vietnamese immigrant—a boat person, an Elvis impersonator—tells the story of how his father helped him escape Vietnam." The accompanying image is of an Asian man, with an anguished expression on his face, running through a field as an American soldier watches from behind. My first reaction was, "Well, isn't that typical." Most Americans can't tell Asians apart by looking at them, whether they be Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, etc. The photo in the video, of a running Asian dude and an American G.I. onlooker, literally screams Vietnam War thanks to Oliver Stone and the media.
Being the child of a Vietnamese immigrant, I can generally pick my ethnic brethren out of a crowd. However, I was raised in the United States and still have trouble distinguishing between the Japanese and Chinese, for example, since my experience with them is limited. My Vietnamese mother, on the other hand, can sort Asians with 100% accuracy because she innately sees subtle differences in eyelid and bone structure. To this curious child, such an ability seemed like a magical power so guessing ethnicity became a kind of a game between us, with her always being right and me usually being wrong. Even today, I often ask her to use her "power" when we see an Asian on television or in a movie. She amazes me every time.
Anyway, after watching the trailer for Male of the Species, I tore through the book looking for the Vietnamese names. "King of America" is told by Tran Nguyen, a Vietnam War refugee cum American immigrant cum Elvis impersonator in Vegas. He loves a Vietnamese woman, a showgirl who is pregnant by another Elvis impersonator, and offers to raise her biracial child as his own. Intertwined with the present day storyline, Tran shares memories of his father's murder by the Viet Cong and his family's subsequent escape to Malaysia on a fishing boat.
"King of America" is loaded with cliches. Tran Nguyen's name, written surname first in the Vietnamese way, is roughly equivalent to "Bob Smith." The Viet Cong murders an American sympathizer. A family escapes on a fishing boat. Rape and starvation run rampant in refugee camps. Although I would love to read about something other than the usual fare, the sad truth is that such events are the shared Vietnam War experience. Furthermore, some details felt inauthentic. For one, I have never heard anyone refer to the language as "Viet." Tran also names each of his relatives, but the Vietnamese actually use numbers. I call my cousins, the children of Auntie Three, Number Two, Number Three, Number Four, etc. Unlike the fictional Chinese detective Charlie Chan, we Vietnamese have no "Number One Son" so the count always starts at two regardless of gender.
Yet, "King of America" packs a lot of punch into a few pages. Its overarching grand themes make up for slips in the tiny details. Tran's desire to do the right thing for the pregnant showgirl complements his own father's nobility in helping others escape the war. The abject racism of his co-Elvis impersonator contrasts against the American G.I. who carried his father to safety amidst flying bullets. Forbidden by the Viet Cong, the King and his music symbolize freedom, dreaming of a life beyond war, and the endless possibilities of the American experience. Alex Mindt has crafted an ambitious short story, and I look forward to reading the book in its entirety.
. I know I can:
. It cost me about 25 bucks and I finished listening to it before reaching my destination. I knew I probably wouldn't listen to it again, so I left it with the hostess and returned to New Jersey amidst much silence. The ride would have been much more enjoyable if I had another book on tape.
and wondering how the author gets his protagonist out of the truly bizarre mess he's in right now. He's about to leave a hidden rebel camp with a subversive list of books designed to spread their philosophy around the globe. Hmm. I hope I get to find out what's on the list.
. Hmm. What does this say about the American book buying public? Are we turned off by science?
will begin on May 21st. Shouldn't you be reading it instead of this?
blew my mind—enough so that I based BookBlog's rules on it, 
as our inaugural book. Also, I keep hoping Hollywood will get it together and finally move on turning 
into a movie.
. I've been debating with myself over whether or not to attempt attending his appearance with Irvine Welsh tomorrow night:
, Matt Ruff reports that he is participating in an 
will be released at the beginning of August. The synopsis:
so I can return it to its owner. I'm not a 
. The book is a collection of short stories about fathers and their children, and it explores several themes of interest to me. I have a sometimes strained relationship with my father, am often befuddled by men, and identify with the immigrant experience. Recently, I also started paying attention to book trailers.