goodbye to all that

and some wickedly good books in 2006. I still don't get how Carol Windley didn't get the Giller this year but old news, I suppose.
I'll be drinking and dancing over the next couple days. I'm late on this, but Echo Maker is as good as its press. It shares a bit with Jennifer Egan's novel from a few years back, which blew me away as well.

Vendela Vida podcast here.

Happy New Year

Posted by Dave

if it's Tuesday this must be...

further evidence of the little store that couldn't. I'm sure it speaks to my search parameters, but was the Interent created as a sort of clearing house of doom for independent bookstores?
I'm as partisan around the independents vs chains dynamic as anyone, but it's draining walking around like William Holden all the time, as others have observed.
But I do question how one merges an environmental awareness with consistent chain store patronage. There's no way the centre holds on that. This is particularly true in Canada given Heather's recent switch. She now has an interesting circle to square.

I think I'll go wash my brain out with soap.

Posted by Dave

and they're off

There's an incredible amount of stuff coming over the transom for 2007; new Lionel Shriver, Mailer, McEwan and how amazing is Doris Lessing?
No one is more jazzed than I am that Joan Didion is finally getting mass adulation. Maybe these fine people could do similar justice for Lessing's remarkable output over the years?
Anyway, all evidence to the contrary, it could still be a stellar year.

Posted by Dave

shiny toys for dull boys

Booksellers hear a lot of variations on the "I don't have time to read" lament from all walks of life, but I've been under the assumption that was a myth. In fact, I was wrong.
"In Montreal, more than 200 people lined up outside a Future Shop outlet in a downtown shopping centre. Some arrived as early as 6 a.m., even though the store only opened its doors at 1 p.m. A nearby movie theatre even tried taking advantage of the long wait by selling water bottles at $4 a pop to restless bargain hunters.
Jason Lops, 24, who arrived at 6 a.m., wasn't surprised by the lineup, but he said the appeal of saving $100 on an X-Box 360 was simply too strong."
"It's the first time I'm here," he said. "It's just because I wanted an X-Box for cheaper, really, and I'm going to get one."
For cheaper.
Sigh.
I wouldn't stand in line for seven hours for it, but this is kind of cool.

and on the 26th day we rested

because on the 27th and through much of January, the shop is shedding books at discount.
Publishers are traditionally scared blind this time of year at the prospect of many unhappy returns as it were, so lets all co-operate and move this stuff outa here.
This is my favourite time of year because the new releases (and news of new releases) will arrive shortly.
I'm in the middle of this and so far the hype (and the National Book Award win) is deserved. I'd have read it sooner, but for the last couple weeks I've come home and collapsed.
There's going to be some damn fine crime stuff shortly and because somebody up there likes me, I've already got this.
If none of this means anything, well chew on this.
And uh, you know, rinse.

hurrah for mediocrity

If you need a few minutes away from the family this Christmas, the
Guardian Year in Books quiz is up.
I got eleven of twenty one and would have gotten better, but I just couldn't accept
that Sharon Osborne's biography "became the fastest selling since records began."
Oops.
Eleven apparently means "Not bad at all. A keen awareness of the literary landscape, with just enough omissions to confirm that you have also managed to retain the semblance of a functioning social life.
They have no idea.

Posted by Dave

Hey, this guy gets it

George Walker, U.K children's author and raconteur, has demanded that Amazon UK remove his book, Tales From an Airfield from their site.
"What they are actually doing is getting the independents to do their market research," said Mr Walker, a passionate advocate of independents. "When a book gets a certain amount of attention, they will attempt to stock it and cut the independents out. Not with my book!"
Deep discounting dries up the pool for everyone in the chain, it certainly doesn't help Amazon's $1.5 billion long term debt.
The Forum of Private Business (FPB) "actively campaigned against Amazon.com, especially in their exploitation of an off-shore VAT loophole which costs the UK economy an estimated £80 million a year. The loophole, which allows single items that are priced below £18 to be imported from the channel islands without VAT, is being used by Amazon and other large retailers to undercut independent retailers."
Seems like a fairly easy loophole to close.

Posted by Dave

Regrets, I've had a few

Every year for as long as I've been in the trade, there are books that I wanted to get to but didn't and whole sections of the shop that best intentions didn't help with.
I rarely read enough poetry, literary biography or criticism, but I only really feel bad about the poetry.
There are always novels/short fiction that I don't get to and by the time I do, there's a hundred other books in line. It's a poor excuse to say there's never enough time; I don't put much stock in movies, old tube or Youtube.
I do like this and this, though.
I rarely give anything more than twenty pages if it's not working. The old rule of thumb was about fifty, but you know..getting older, so it's not like I take up time with books that aren't making it for me.
Therefore, there are only a few books that I gave up on too early this year
Ander Monson's Other Electricities is a book that bloggers everywhere raved about. I knew it was going to be good, but I didn't finish it. I will in early 2007. There's a new book out in a couple months apparently.
I will make some time for Kate Atkinson's Case Histories. Again, I gave up on it early, and I must have missed something. The book and the sequel are still getting good attention and I only reluctantly put Case Histories aside.
I should have read Barack Obama as well as Michael Pollan's book. Didn't get there, but I will.
For now, it's all about getting through the next few days, where predictions are at best, pointless.

Posted by Dave

Uh.. it's blue, I think the word love is in the title

Great stuff over at Bookseller Chick around Christmas stress and the art and scince of customer service. I've gotta say, I rarely have a retail encounter that makes me need to do yoga in our staff room, but then again we really don't have a staff room.
And our floor mats are riddles with gunfire.
In all seriousness, our place thrives because our fellow readers are a classy lot, and we love you all.
Merry Christmas.
P.S: Jennifer, we're out of rumballs.

Posted by Dave

Nice

The San Francisco Chronicle, even with recent troubles at the paper
remains the best book review section in any North American daily.
In their view, the best of 2006.

Link via Bookdwarf

Posted by Dave

Just the thought of Will Ferrell in a fat suit make me want to...

Slate keeps up with the latest musings on the seemingly nonstop attempt to bring this book to the screen.
I recognize the primacy of even mediocre movies over books as cultural touchstones but honestly, the many pleasures of Toole's book will never work on film.
Ever.
The collected talents of everyone in Hollywood will still only serve to turn a comic gem into a wretched, steaming pile of #$!*+#*$!?!.
Just walk away from it and don't look back.
Ever.
Stick to replacing our love affair with penguins.

Posted by Dave

WordsWorthy

I completely forgot this last week but in our estimation, Anita Rau Badami's novel, Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? is the finest Canadian work of fiction for 2006, thus the recipient of the fifth annual Words Worthy Award.
It's a stunner of a novel, that tells the story of three women linked by the British-ordered Partition of of India and Pakistan following the Second World War.
At once a story of familial secrets and repercussion's around good intentions, Nighbird is also a novel that addresses simmering tensions between Sikh separatists and the government of then Indian leader Indira Ghandi. Brinkmanship and sporadic violence lead to a terrible endgame that scarred Canada very profoundly and remains unresolved to this day.
The subject of fictions inability to address the complexities of a post 9/11 world has been widely noted, but Badami has done much more here than pen a damn fine third novel
She has adroitly addressed one of the central complexities of our time. Please pick it up.

Posted by Dave

any of his books are good bets, though

When he was a younger man, George Pelacanos had a little money trouble. Once.

Link via Bookslut

and sitting in for Jerry Springer...

If Rupert Murdoch were to fire Judith Regan, here's how he'd do it.

Posted by Dave

an editor and a makeup artist walk into a bar...

Ah hell, it's petty but I live for stuff like this.
TEV is my favourite blog period, but sometimes the stars (or just space junk?) align in such a way that a solid book review sets off a discussion in which perfectly sane book types turn into Thunderdome mooks, as the comments progress.
Marisha Pessl is a first time novelist who was recently named to the NY Times' Ten Best Books list for 2006. In addition, she's not tough to look at.
Predictably, reviews are all over the map, but in the end the real question is one that Jessa Crispin gets right.
"It happens a few times a year now. An attractive, young writer will come out of nowhere with a debut novel that leaves the publishers salivating. Sometimes it’s not the book itself that causes the commotion, but rather its perceived marketability—maybe the drool-worthy author photo, or the potential connections the book/author represents—that really get the publicity departments going.
It would be easy to dismiss Marisha Pessl as another one of these writers. Her bio, after all, does list her as a model and actress as well as a writer. Her dreamy, airy author photo pretty much guarantees articles in fashion magazines along with snarky reviews by people who may or may not have actually read the book. The difference in this case, however, is that, despite a rocky start, her novel Special Topics in Calamity Physics is really quite good."
As popular culture pollutes most of the rivers scenarios like this will always exist, but isn't it kind of nice that the book world is (still) such that 28 years old is considered young?
When Calamity Physics came out, I gave it a pass and probably won't get to it. More specifically I read this and was convinced it would be on every year end list.
Oh well.
By the time Pessl's second book arrives, publishers will have a press kit from the next hot young zygote to wrap a marketing campaign around and she'll have to get by on talent like everybody
else.



Posted by Dave

Good thing I've got these magic beans

During Potter years, the trade seems to scrape by, if only just. During non-Potter years well, not so much.
Bloomsbury UK is the latest to suffer as a result, as "instead of the more than £20m profits that analysts had pencilled in for this year, it admitted last night that it will make closer to £5m. In the first six months of the year it made £4m, suggesting the latter half of 2006 has been a disaster."
When this is your company's best seller; yeah, you got problems.
Fer Chrissake people, there are other books out there, you know.

Posted by Dave

Step across this line, Kinsley

Slate's Michael Kinsley tears former President Jimmy Carter a new one, calling his new book "moronic" and that,
"comparing Israel to the former white racist government of South Africa is a foolish and unfair comparison, unworthy of the man who won—and deserved—the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing Israel and Egypt together in the Camp David Accords, and who has lent such luster to the imaginary office of former president."
President Carter's book is selling very well, and things like this will help. Being guilty of simplistic writing around the mid-East peace process certainly didn't seem to hurt this goof any.

Posted by Dave

he never mentioned the toys, either

Mark Abley, who knows a thing or two about vanishings, worries about the future of independent bookstores.
On stalwart, Paragraphe Books:
"So, Paragraphe, too, is no longer quite an independent. But it still feels like one. It still hosts readings by writers from Montreal and far beyond. It still sponsors the enormously successful Books & Breakfast series at a downtown hotel. And its managers and staff still know that books are inspirations, not just commodities. When you walk into Paragraphe, you never feel that literature is a sideline to scented candles."
This brings up something I can't square. I've spoken with lots of writers who aren't shy about expressing similar worries about their place in a chain driven trade, and bless them, need to do everything they can on their websites to let it be known that their book is available for puchase. Of course, that means an Amazon or Chapters link. No problem, but would it hurt to put a couple other options on your site?

Link from Sarah

in the know

In the midst of a whole mess of lists from every newspaper, pundit and blogger out there, here's one that I value above all others.
I follow George Pelecanos slavishly and that's a hell of a list. I'll humbly second Woodrell's book as top shelf. He's finally getting some good attention out there and may be able to move some of that excellent back list now.

Posted by Dave

so very tired

A quick look around confirms that my brethren are starting to get pressed for time, and therefore less attention to their respective blogs.
I've had laryngitis for the last few days and it's damn difficult to get across how great things like this are without a working throat. In addition I'm coming home exhausted and not up to anything outside of maintaining house, relationship and self.
Words like maintaining are merely descriptive and not meant to be definitive in any way.
Last night was the first time in about a week that I've been able to do any sustained reading and I feel almost back to something like an old self.
I waste a lot of time at places like this, but that doesn't count.
Without a book on the go, I start to get lazy everywhere else and soon enough nothing gets done.

Posted by Dave

because necessity is the mother of invention,

I'm not a huge Malcolm Gladwell fan. I sniffed at both of his books and just found a number of his observations somewhat pat. But this is a damn good primer on the relativity of idiots out there playing (badly) their respective race cards.
Now it hardly needs to be said that comedy clubs and pro football aren't exactly historically progressive on race, but they likely aren't too far out of step with the times either.
After considering the respective idiots involved, Gladwell notes, "we debase that term (racism) when we apply it to comments or actions indiscriminately. There is a distinction between being a racist and simply saying something dumb."

Link via The Millions

Good stuff, this.

Posted by Dave

at the bottom of the barrel, some rotting wood and a shovel

An old lawsuit against Augusten Burroughs from the family portrayed in his bestselling memoir, Running with Scissors, will be the subject of an article in January's Vanity Fair.
The Turcotte family (called the Finches in Burroughs' book) alleges that the book "not only included harmful inaccuracies and embellishments, but also failed to effectively conceal the family's identity.
The author of the Vanity Fair piece Buzz Bissinger also writes that "the author, with the full complicity of the publisher, literally has fabricated events that never happened and manufactured controversy that never occurred." The Turcottes claim this was done to make the book more sensational and, by extension, more commercial.
The family decided to pursue legal action upon learning that an upcoming film based on the book would mean that their story would "not be slipping into obscurity anytime soon."
It's a pointless chicken or egg argument, but if memoirs are tweaked for commercial purposes, then the reality portrayed in them ceases to hold any power. No matter as long as the checks clear, I guess.
Perhaps some really good deceptive fiction? (also being filmed)
I mean novels are entirely made up, right?

Posted by Dave

Gentiles don't know from music either

I really like the Chicago Review Press. Their lineup feels like a cast off from other outfits, books that are too out there for larger houses. One of their new titles is reviewed in the Boston Globe.
Author Steven Lee Beeber contends that "punk reflects the whole Jewish history of oppression and uncertainty, flight and wandering, belonging and not belonging, always being divided, being both in and out, good and bad, part and apart," and goes as far to say simply, "no Holocaust, no punk"
And now a few words from Lou Reed: (from the New York album (1989)

Good evening Mr.Waldheim
and Pontiff how are you ?
You have so much in common
in the things you do
And here comes Jesse Jackson
he talks of Common Ground
Does that Common Ground include me
or is it just a sound?

Posted by Dave

Tonight, tonight

at the Registry Theatre in Kitchener, Rosemary Sullivan, literary biographer, polemicist and damn near everything else, will be reading and discussing her new book Villa Air-Bel.
The San Francisco Chronicle, one of the few remaining North American dailies to maintain a decent book review section, holds forth here.

Posted by Dave

All hail the Ninjas!

I stole links from them before they were this cool.
One of the locals placed well in a couple spots, too.

Posted by Dave

That would be a yes

Nice piece in the Globe today on Claire Messud's great book, the Emperor's Children.
I'll assume that Adams' question is rhetorical.
"The Emperor's Children is exceedingly well-written and compulsively readable, at once satirical and serious, and shouldn't there be a place for such virtues in a world populated by Danielle Steels and James Pattersons?"

Always low class. Always

Really, nothing says corporate accountability like this.
Anyone who works at a Wal-Mart for twenty years should get guaranteed passage to the afterlife of their choice.
Key grafs:
"Faced with public demonstrations of discontent by its employees, Wal-Mart Stores has developed a wide-ranging new program intended to show that it appreciates its 1.3 million workers in the United States and to encourage them to air their grievances.
The program includes several new perks “as a way of saying thank you” to workers, like a special polo shirt after 20 years of service and a “premium holiday,” when Wal-Mart pays a portion of health insurance premiums for covered employees."
This is a good time to shill for Tom's book.

Posted by Dave

well there are lists and then there are lists....

Great stuff from the Washington Post today. Not only a solid list of the best of '06. (I took particular note of what Ron Charles had to say as well as Stephen Amidon, who is a great storyteller himself. I rarely go wrong on his raves.)
Perhaps more importantly, given that everyone's doing their "years best" lists;
various historians are already weighing in on where George W Bush ranks in terms of best or worst American presidents. He is perhaps the worst, or merely fifth worst, or just a "case study on how not to be president," ie: pretty much near the bottom.
Given that he has two years left and a dissenting view goes hand in hand with fairy dust in the air, a history professor from Boston (natch) bucks the trend.

No word yet on the clash of the titans that is Stephen Harper vs this guy.
As for me, I'm over feeling sick and have a novel that I'm itching to start.

We are the mediocre presidents.
You won't find our faces on dollars or on cents!
There's Taylor, there's Tyler,
There's Fillmore and there's Hayes.
There's William Henry Harrison,Harrison: I died in thirty days!
We... are... the... Adequate, forgettable, Occasionally regrettable
Caretaker presidents of the U-S-A!

Honestly, if there's a better use for the Internet than topically archived Simpson's lyrics, I'm unaware of it.

Posted by Dave

because Gentiles don't know from funny

The NYT Sunday magazine has bagged a short piece by Shalom Auslander.
His book is a delight from start to finish. Jon Stewart is the second funniest Jew in America.

Posted by Dave

aaaaaaaah shit

This is really depressing. I haven't been in either shop in quite some time, (I don't live in Toronto, but I used to make regular trips when I worked in the used trade.)
Abelard is a more scholarly shop, but Annex is everything a good bookshop ought to be.
Janet Inksetter is meticulous, knew everything about Canada's literary life, and could spot up and coming writers with uncanny ease.
I'm dismayed that both booksellers cite the relatively new lack of browsers in their shops, and it's fair to assume they have read the tea leaves correctly.
Real readers are curious by default and that should extend to the stacks. If that changes, then one of the principle building blocks of the book trade, but more importantly of one's uniqueness goes to the curb as well. It's dreary and raining like hell outside, and I know if I think about this too much, I'm going to crawl back to bed with a Scotch bottle, so I'll simply suggest that once browsing for books goes, the attendant curiosity about one's surroundings goes with it. From there it's a short trip to this.

Posted by Dave