I've been up to lots of things and haven't had much time for the computer. First, I started temping in order to bring in some extra money and have been going through a little bit of alarm clock shock after not having worked outside of my home for more than a year. I also went to Atlantic City for the weekend and happily came home with all expenses paid and some extra cash in my pocket. Finally, my house has been torn apart to make room for a washer & dryer given to me by a neighbor who moved away. Although I'm not happy about losing a cabinet in the kitchen, I am glad to no longer have to deal with crazies at the laundromat.
Today, though, I'm practically crippled because I spent yesterday digging up a large section of dead lawn. Between my aching back and the drizzly weather, I suspect a lot of time will be spent in front of the computer.
Email
I am also weeks behind on responding to email. If you sent me one about joining BookBlog, please note that no signing up is necessary. Simply read the selection, visit the site during discussion week, and leave a comment. Easy.
Set This House in Order
I guess summer isn't a good time to get people together for a book discussion, but I am glad that I finally managed to read Matt Ruff's Set This House in Order. Many thanks to Daisy for letting us attempt a second shot at the book.
In 1975, on the eve of May Day, secret police dressed in chemical warfare suits sealed off a zoo in a small Czechoslovakian town and orchestrated the slaying of its entire population of forty-nine giraffes, the largest captive herd in the world. No reason for the action was ever given, and the townspeople understood that the were to ask no more about it. This massacre lies at the heart of J.M. Ledgard's haunting first novel, which recounts the story of the giraffes from their capture in Africa to their deaths far away. At once vivid and unearthly, Giraffe is a story about strangeness, about creatures that are alien and silent, about captivity, and about the inhabitants of a middling totalitarian state, sleepwalking through "the Communist moment" in the mid-1970s.
Future Discussions
Despite my constant state of being behind on updating the site, I'm always open for volunteers for future discussions. Anyone interested in October, November, or December?
Hello, all! I was excited to read this book for the third time. It's on my top ten list of all time (and I'll start another thread to discuss that, I think). I hope everyone's done reading; if you're not, don't click on "Show Me More" or the biggest plot surprise will be given away.
My first question is about the big twist -- you know, "The body is female." Did you see that coming? I didn't the first time I read the book; indeed, I gasped with surprise. On this reread, I did see a few tiny clues, but nothing that pointed directly at Andy's having been born a girl.
This leads to two related topics. First, what does Andrew look like? He's biologically a woman, but he passes pretty thoroughly as a man. Does he have breasts? Etc., etc. Second, what does it mean that a plot twist of that magnitude is even interesting? Should the gender of a character matter that much?
Moving on: How realistic did you find it that Andrew didn't know Penny was multiple? He needed Julie and Adam to point it out. Does that make sense?
Gideon had a fatal flaw: he was afraid of knives and pointy objects. It was easy for another person (another soul could do it, but that's harder) to scare him back into the house by waving something sharp at him. Was this too convenient?
What did you think of Mrs. Winslow? I found her to be a really interesting secondary character. We learned about the murders of her husband and son, and how the killer wrote her letters for years, but we never found out how she met Aaron and became so involved in his life. And then near the end, she sweet-talked Chief Bradley into confessing what he'd done to the stepfather and almost done to Andrew and Penny. This is all very mysterious, and then she has a sudden coming-of-age (or something); she decides to stop waiting around for the mail and move to Texas. Hmmm.
Finally, if you're interested in reading more about multiple personality disorder, I've got a short list of books. I became obsessed with the topic the first time I read Set This House in Order. Here's what I read then:
Truddi Chase, When Rabbit Howls: Much of Matt Ruff's description of the abuse suffered by Andy and Penny is derived from this autobiography. It's very graphic and disturbing.
Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Personality: Another memoir, this one much more focused on the therapeutic process. It drags a bit.
Daniel Keyes, The Minds of Billy Milligan: Ruff's characters talk about this one. Billy was a serial rapist that blamed his crimes on one of his souls.
Cameron West, First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple: I don't remember this one very well, but I think West didn't realize he was a multiple until he was an adult.
Shirley Jackson, The Bird's Nest: The only novel on this list. It reads like a typical Jackson book, with the typical fifties economy of language characteristic of her. An office worker (library? museum?) slowly goes crazy and, yes, she's multiple.
Matt Ruff also has a Web site with some deleted scenes and process notes on writing this book. You can find it at www.bymattruff.com.
When Laurie Kenyon, a twenty-one-year-old student, is accused of murdering her English professor, Allan Grant, she has no memory of the crime. But at the scene of the homicide, her fingerprints are everywhere—on the door, on the curtain, and on the knife used to stab him to death. Shocked and bewildered, Laurie is arraigned on a murder charge.
Kidnapped at the age of four and the victim of two subsequent years of abuse and incarceration, Laurie has developed multiple personalities. The host personality, Laurie, is unaware of the others...especially "Leona," who has written crazed love letters to Allan Grant and has secretly entered his home.
Laurie's sister, attorney Sarah Kenyon, takes up her defense and brings in psychiatrist Justin Donnelly to help Laurie unlock the unbearable memories of her lost years. But Laurie's abductor, now a celebrated television evangelist, is still obsessed with her...and determined to avoid exposure.
With a terrifying twist at the climax, Mary Higgins Clark takes us on a breathtaking journey into the minds of a tortured young woman desperate to retrieve her memories, and the mesmerizing preacher whose unsavory past is only a prelude to his final, gruesome plan for her...
Cops and criminals have always been interdependent, but no novel has explored that perverse symbiosis more powerfully than A Scanner Darkly. Bob Arctor is a dealer of the lethally addictive druc called Substance D. Fred is the police agent assigned to tail and eventually bust him. To do so, he has taken on the identity of a drug dealer named Bob Arctor. And since Substance D.—which Arctor takes in mammoth doses—gradually splits the user's brain into two distinct, combative entities, Fred doesn't realize that he is narcing on himself.
This is the story of a woman who embodies in her intense life the mystery of the human personality. Miss Jackson has used her sense of horror, her wit and her truly marvelous ability to characterize, to create Elizabeth and the people who surrounded her so that she becomes one of the unique figures in literature, strange in her multiple personalities, baffling to her friends and doctors, yet to the reader, believable and often as pitiable as she is terrifying...
People don’t usually name tornadoes, but that year, Daddy insisted. “Any twister that beautiful and that dangerous can only be female. Reminds me of a woman I used to know named Sophea.” He laughed. “Sophea, Sophea.”
Dahlia’s life should be perfect. She’s a successful businesswoman with a wonderful husband and a beautiful daughter. But Dahlia senses that something isn’t quite right. More and more often, she has the feeling of being lost in her own body, completely mystified by the simplest things, like traffic lights and car horns. These spells strike at anytime, anywhere. And though aware that she’s off balance, Dahlia has no idea what could be the cause.
As Dahlia’s grasp on reality loosens, the signs lead to a traumatic event from her childhood that has made its way into her adult life. There is someone else lurking in the back of Dahlia’s mind—and she wants out. Now she must revisit the painful past, and the memories of a mother who had her own mental demons. The only problem is: Dahlia might have to lose herself entirely if she wants to discover the secrets of that long-ago day when Sophea came to town.
Robert Louis Stevenson's masterpiece of the duality of good and evil in man's nature sprang from the darkest recesses of his own unconscious—during a nightmare from which his wife awakened him, alerted by his screams. More than a hundred years later, this tale of the mild-mannered Dr. Jekyll and the drug that unleashes his evil, inner persona—the loathsome, twisted Mr. Hyde—has lost none of its ability to shock. Its realistic police-style narrative chillingly relates Jekyll's desperation as Hyde gains control of his soul—and gives voice to our own fears of the violence and evil within us. Written before Freud's naming of the ego and the id, Stevenson's enduring classic demonstrates a remarkable understanding of the personality's inner conflicts—and remains the irresistibly terrifying stuff of our worst nightmares.
Unlike Ed Champion's recent take, this blogging physicist enjoyed Bad Monkeys: "Ruff has written a charming-killer story that ranks right up there with Bradley Denton's Blackburn, with an extra twist of unreality. It'll keep you reading and guessing right up to the end."
I was twenty-six years old when I first came out of the lake, which puzzles some people, who wonder how I could have an age without having a past. But I get puzzled, too: most people I know can't remember being born, and what's more, it doesn't bother them that they can't remember. My good friend Julie Sivik once told me that her earliest memory was a scene from her second-birthday party, when she stood on a chair to blow out the candles on her cake. It's all blank before that, she said, but she didn't seem upset by it, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be missing two years of her life.
I remember everything, from the first moment: the sound of my name in the dark; the shock of the water; the tangle of the weeds at the bottom of the lake where I opened my eyes. The water is black down there, but I could see sunlight on the surface far above me, and I floated towards it, drawn up by my father's voice.
We're having a family emergency at the moment, so I've been away from home and my books while I help out. Yesterday, I put on a chauffeur's cap and took my cousin's daughter to the orthodontist. As I waited in the lobby, I picked up the nearest reading material: I Spy: Ultimate Challenger!
Although I've known about the I Spy series of children's books, this was my first time actually looking at one and I loved it. Loved it! I had no idea how amazing the photography actually is. Hundreds of details melt together to create scenes requiring an eye able to see both the forest and the trees.
Unfortunately, I was slightly disappointed that the appointment didn't last longer since I only made it halfway through the scavenger hunt before we had to leave. Sniffle.
Following my last post, Levi and I had a lively email exchange regarding The Echo Maker's sales and profits. By my guestimate, the publisher made a profit of somewhere around $25,000 on the first print run of 20,000 copies.
Here's how I figured it out, using generous but simplified industry averages:
$25.00 - [list price]
less $3.75 - [15% author royalty*]
less $12.50 - [50% bookseller discount**]
less $5.00 - [20% publisher overhead]
less $2.50 - [10% paper, printing, and binding]
times 20,000 - [print run]
= $25,000 net profit
*Author royalties tend to run from 10% to 15% and can be based on either list price or net price. Considering Richard Powers has been in the biz for a while, I'm giving him the benefit of signing several contracts and having a kick ass agent.
**Some get more, some get less.
So, assuming a book sells through its entire print run, the publisher's profit tends to be about 10%:
$25,000 - [net profit]
divided by $250,000 - [net sales]
= 10% profit margin***
***Some do better, some do worse.
Although $25,000 might not seem like a lot, that 10% profit margin will get bigger with each subsequent printing because the publisher's overhead will decrease. By a second printing, money is saved in lots of places: editing, typesetting, plates, proofs, etc. In addition, a successful hardcover has the potential to sell twice as many (or more) units in paperback. And if a paperback manages to remain on the backlist for a long period of time, well, it's money in the bank.
I've gotten a lot of reaction to my posts about thecluelesswayliterarynovelsarepriced. I've tried to establish that our industry's practice of selling only expensive premium editions for a novel's first year is dysfunctional and self-defeating beyond any reasonable explanation, and at least half of the people who've responded to my posts have told me my argument is flawed. As far as I can see, though, my conclusions remain intact.
He's working on putting together a panel to discuss the issue further, but, ultimately, his goal is to get lots of people on the bandwagon to rally against two-tiered publishing. I understand his position, up to a point, but I'm so conflicted on the issue I can't say exactly on which side of the line I sit. On the one hand, my tenure in the industry has given me an understanding of why publishers do what they do. On the other, I'm an avid book consumer who isn't necessarily willing to shell out big bucks for hardcovers.
Looking more closely at The Echo Maker, a title Levi used as an example in his post, I can unequivocally see why it's only been available in hardcover for so long. Presumably, it sold through its first printing of 20,000 copies after winning the 2006 National Book Award for fiction since the publisher went back to press for another 40,000 copies. No point in killing such robust numbers by rushing out a paperback.
And speaking of the paperback, it's scheduled for release later this month. As a buyer of lots of books, I don't see any reason at this point to spend $16.50 on a hardcover when a $10.20 paperback (both via Amazon) is only days away. After a little bit more waiting, though, both bindings should be cheaply and readily available on the secondary market (remainder, used). Even better.
Just out of curiosity, what factors influence your spending on books?
Take a good look at the title and the cover. We've got dogs and the wilderness. The illustration shows a guy walking through the snow with a rifle, pine trees in the background, and northern lights wafting overhead.
What do you think the book is about?
Go on. Make a prediction.
I'll wait.
...
Upon opening the package and seeing the cover, my first thoughts drifted toward Jack London. Whenever I get a new review copy, I usually skip the back cover and jacket descriptions to go straight to the beginning of the text. The publisher writes both of those things and I'd rather take a look at a few pages of the author's work before deciding which pile it will land on. What I read on the first page was a surprise and made me go right back to the jacket:
Fasten your seatbelt and get ready to go on a one-way ride, from the wild streets of Detroit to the wilderness of northern Michigan and points in between.
Your fellow passengers include Tony the Hatchet, Carmine "Sausages" Burmanzini, Uncle Roman, several cousins named Nick (and a few not named Nick), along with eight dogs named Jack and a stupid one called Duke.
Eight Dogs Named Jack marks the writing debut of Michigan artist Joe Borri. This collection of short stories is inspired by the East Side Detroit neighborhood where he grew up—a mythical place called "Copper Corner"—and its predominantly Italian denizens.
Many of the stories are set in the gritty streets of Detroit, where wise guys and wannabes walk a thin line between good and evil. Some of these characters work their way "up north," where their street smarts are tested against the immutable forces of nature. Ernest Hemingway, meet the Sopranos.
So sit back in your favorite chair, pour yourself a glass of Chianti, light up a cigar, and prepare to be entertained by a new voice in fiction. Salute!
Although I haven't had a chance yet to update the sidebar due to a complete lack of time (sister getting married soon; maid of honor here; bridal shower this afternoon), we have a discussion coming up in a few weeks. Please join in on August 20th for a discussion of Matt Ruff's Set This House in Order, hosted by the very generous Daisy.
Ruff's rotwood prose reads more like bad pulp fiction than convincing conversation. "We need you in the present day," says Bob True, one of the Panopticon superiors. When Jane stakes out one of her victims, she observes a "shopping bag full of soup cans [which] caught him square in the face." I didn't realize it was possible for even Cyrano's proboscis to be elegantly entangled in a web of Warhol, but no matter.
See, this is exactly why I prefer online book discussions to in-person book groups:
Is it acceptable, they debate within and among themselves, to listen to that month’s book rather than read it? Or is that cheating, like watching the movie instead of reading the book?
Because audio enthusiasts generally listen aloud in a private space like their cars or with headphones, they are spared having to publicly defend the format. When they join reading groups, however, they enter what can be enemy territory, where dyed-in-the-wool bibliophiles want to hear nothing of a book but the crack of its spine.
Dain Frisby-Dart, 40, an avid audio book listener from Trempealeau, Wis., told her book group a few years ago that she was listening to the current selection. One of the members, a man in his 70s, reacted as if she had been reading CliffsNotes.
“He said, ‘It doesn’t count if you listened to it. That’s cheating,’ ” Ms. Frisby-Dart said. “I was so floored by the comment that I just kind of laughed it off.”
Isn't the point of a book club to discuss content? And doesn't listening to an audio version deliver said content? And aren't people sometimes too busy to dedicate hours upon hours to reading but can get much food for discussion out of said content by listening while doing other tasks like driving or working?
Keep your wagging fingers to yourselves, holier-than-thous.
, this was my first time actually looking at one and I loved it. Loved it! I had no idea how amazing the photography actually is. Hundreds of details melt together to create scenes requiring an eye able to see both the forest and the trees.
's sales and profits. By my guestimate, the publisher made a profit of somewhere around $25,000 on the first print run of 20,000 copies.
. As a buyer of lots of books, I don't see any reason at this point to spend $16.50 on a hardcover when a $10.20 paperback (both via Amazon) is only days away. After a little bit more waiting, though, both bindings should be cheaply and readily available on the secondary market (remainder, used). Even better.
by Joe Borri.
Take a good look at the title and the cover. We've got dogs and the wilderness. The illustration shows a guy walking through the snow with a rifle, pine trees in the background, and northern lights wafting overhead.