It's getting hard to get worked up about the migration of book coverage online as it's clearly becoming a tilting at windmills endeavour.
The Washington Post is the latest to go south as far as a standalone book section goes, but
I'll only be really pissed off if Ron Charles doesn't make it whatever online presence the Post has, as he's the best book reviewer in print in North America, full stop.
If he's good, then I'm good also.
Still...it's nice to remember when.
Posted by Dave
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
A nerd with a huge army is still a nerd
It looks like Barack Obama needs to lend out his comic book collection to his staff.
'"How am I supposed to effectively lead this nation when [attorney general nominee Eric] Holder has to stop the meeting and ask what the story of Taurus using the black lotus powder to kill the five guard lions has to do with increasing broadband Internet connections nationwide?" Obama said while vigorously rubbing his temples.
Added the president, "For the love of Crom, am I the only one here who wants to keep the U.S. technologically competitive?"
link via Bookninja
Posted by Dave
'"How am I supposed to effectively lead this nation when [attorney general nominee Eric] Holder has to stop the meeting and ask what the story of Taurus using the black lotus powder to kill the five guard lions has to do with increasing broadband Internet connections nationwide?" Obama said while vigorously rubbing his temples.
Added the president, "For the love of Crom, am I the only one here who wants to keep the U.S. technologically competitive?"
link via Bookninja
Posted by Dave
Eighty books a year, a dozen years, no problem
The Guardian has put together a list.
A huge list.
It's a wonderful piece of work and they've gone off the beaten path in the crime stuff, throwing in Dostoevsky and Nelson Algren along with the classic American noir guys.
The comic stuff leans heavy on British practitioners like Amis, Bainbridge, Lodge, Waugh and Dickens.
It's a fine antidote for these times, although as they said:
"Comedy is not humour. You shouldn't expect to be laughing all the way through these novels. Sometimes you will be, but at other times you will be crying."
There's finery throughout.
Posted by Dave
A huge list.
It's a wonderful piece of work and they've gone off the beaten path in the crime stuff, throwing in Dostoevsky and Nelson Algren along with the classic American noir guys.
The comic stuff leans heavy on British practitioners like Amis, Bainbridge, Lodge, Waugh and Dickens.
It's a fine antidote for these times, although as they said:
"Comedy is not humour. You shouldn't expect to be laughing all the way through these novels. Sometimes you will be, but at other times you will be crying."
There's finery throughout.
Posted by Dave
A pessimist because of intelligence and an optimist by will
I missed it completely yesterday, but Sara Nelson's last column for Publishers Weekly is especially sad in light of her dismissal.
"Call me gullible or impressionable, but I'm actually feeling kind of hopeful this week. It's not just the new year or the inauguration (which I loved most for its goofs and gaffes) or even that—please, please—publishing business firings are coming to an end, at least for a while.
Then again, maybe I am buoyed by the start of the Obama presidency: While I know change is going to be slow in coming, it's energizing to look at what we've already started, at what we can do now."
Oy.
The tag line above is from Antonio Gramsci, the Italian philosopher and it applies to most of life, the publishing industry in particular.
While it's nice to be mentioned in Sarah's blog I'd much rather have Sara Nelson back with PW.
The tag line above is from Antonio Gramsci, the Italian philosopher and it applies to most of life, the publishing industry in particular.
Another reason to love Nelson is that she's a fan of Zoe Heller. I just got the advance of the new novel and it's a beauty.
The Believers strikes me as inhabiting similar turf to Claire Messud's Emperor's Children, but I'll follow Zoe Heller anywhere.
Her previous novels are perfect reads, a joy to handsell and they occupy a spot that many modern novels seem to run away from. They tend to the here and now, their characters are somewhat difficult to like and the moral failings at the centre of Heller's characters are too finely drawn out and complex to easily dismiss as an entire and irreversible failing.
In short they run counter to too many of Canadian fictions earnest citizenry who have horrible childhood maladies and strive in their adult years to overcome long odds to zzzz....
Of course that's a gross exaggeration, but Zoe Heller writes novels that are just a delight to read, and too often readers both casual and serious pick up the middling stuff that's in the news or in the (shrinking) book review pages and end up dismayed at the wrong turn.
To quote from Nelson's PW piece:
"Zoe Heller’s books aren’t hard to read or pretentious or opaque, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy. What they are is deceptively complex, in the way they wrap a high-concept plot around extremely complicated characters."
Spot on, that.
Posted by David
"Call me gullible or impressionable, but I'm actually feeling kind of hopeful this week. It's not just the new year or the inauguration (which I loved most for its goofs and gaffes) or even that—please, please—publishing business firings are coming to an end, at least for a while.
Then again, maybe I am buoyed by the start of the Obama presidency: While I know change is going to be slow in coming, it's energizing to look at what we've already started, at what we can do now."
Oy.
The tag line above is from Antonio Gramsci, the Italian philosopher and it applies to most of life, the publishing industry in particular.
While it's nice to be mentioned in Sarah's blog I'd much rather have Sara Nelson back with PW.
The tag line above is from Antonio Gramsci, the Italian philosopher and it applies to most of life, the publishing industry in particular.
Another reason to love Nelson is that she's a fan of Zoe Heller. I just got the advance of the new novel and it's a beauty.
The Believers strikes me as inhabiting similar turf to Claire Messud's Emperor's Children, but I'll follow Zoe Heller anywhere.
Her previous novels are perfect reads, a joy to handsell and they occupy a spot that many modern novels seem to run away from. They tend to the here and now, their characters are somewhat difficult to like and the moral failings at the centre of Heller's characters are too finely drawn out and complex to easily dismiss as an entire and irreversible failing.
In short they run counter to too many of Canadian fictions earnest citizenry who have horrible childhood maladies and strive in their adult years to overcome long odds to zzzz....
Of course that's a gross exaggeration, but Zoe Heller writes novels that are just a delight to read, and too often readers both casual and serious pick up the middling stuff that's in the news or in the (shrinking) book review pages and end up dismayed at the wrong turn.
To quote from Nelson's PW piece:
"Zoe Heller’s books aren’t hard to read or pretentious or opaque, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy. What they are is deceptively complex, in the way they wrap a high-concept plot around extremely complicated characters."
Spot on, that.
Posted by David
Monday, January 26, 2009
But she's the franchise!
There's been some contraction in the publishing industry of late, but this doesn't make any damn sense at all.
Firing Sara Nelson from Publisher's Weekly is a bit like firing John Lennon (and only John Lennon) from the Beatles.
Forgive the inside baseball, but Publishers Weekly is the acknowledged bible of the industry and has been for decades.
Whenever anything of importance happens, it was Sara Nelson who was on top of it.
Unbelievable and terribly shortsighted, this.
Posted by David
Firing Sara Nelson from Publisher's Weekly is a bit like firing John Lennon (and only John Lennon) from the Beatles.
Forgive the inside baseball, but Publishers Weekly is the acknowledged bible of the industry and has been for decades.
Whenever anything of importance happens, it was Sara Nelson who was on top of it.
Unbelievable and terribly shortsighted, this.
Posted by David
Friday, January 23, 2009
Eating dessert first
While Random House is partnering with the Globe and Mail to launch a literary festival the Washington Post is looking like the latest major newspaper to mothball their standalone book section.
At the very least, this is just backward.
While the political pundits in the Post are writing about how great it is to have a literate presence in the White House, it's a bit cringe inducing to chop off one of the best book pages in North America.
Sigh.
Posted by David
At the very least, this is just backward.
While the political pundits in the Post are writing about how great it is to have a literate presence in the White House, it's a bit cringe inducing to chop off one of the best book pages in North America.
Sigh.
Posted by David
Everything's bigger in Texas
Great day earlier this week, reacquainting myself with Joe Lansdale, a Texas crime writer I loved back in the mid-90's and kind of forgot about.
I remember loving the Bottoms, his Edgar-award winning novel and now Black Lizard is bringing back the first couple Hap and Leonard novels.
The lads are as longtime friends in their forties, and recuperating from their last misadventure when Leonard's uncle passes away, leaving him a hefty inheritance, a rundown house and a host of loose ends; chiefly the body of a child buried under the floorboards of Chester's home.
Lansdale comes out of the James Cain/Donald Westlake school of noir and he's great squeamish fun. Savage Season is out now and other Hap/Leonard novels are due in May.
Posted by David
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Reader-in-chief
Martin Levin looks at the new guys bookshelf.
"Remember the ado when Obama was photographed with Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World, a book about the decline of the U.S. as world power? The cynical might say: self-promoting photo-op. But I think it's a book he really read and considered.
And when The New York Times asked him for a list of writers and books that were important to him, Obama offered a rainbow coalition of titles black and white, American and foreign:"
Post-American World is a fine primer from a clear-eyed foreign policy wonk, and if Barack Obama has read his Graham Greene, as Levin suggests; then that's a huge plus.
Great Presidency so far.
Posted by David
"Remember the ado when Obama was photographed with Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World, a book about the decline of the U.S. as world power? The cynical might say: self-promoting photo-op. But I think it's a book he really read and considered.
And when The New York Times asked him for a list of writers and books that were important to him, Obama offered a rainbow coalition of titles black and white, American and foreign:"
Post-American World is a fine primer from a clear-eyed foreign policy wonk, and if Barack Obama has read his Graham Greene, as Levin suggests; then that's a huge plus.
Great Presidency so far.
Posted by David
Monday, January 19, 2009
Colson Whitehead-Sag Harbor
Colson Whitehead is one of my favourite American novelists, simply because each book is a departure from the one before it.
His first novel ten years back, the Intuitionist was a tightly controlled look at a sort of diagnostic civil war within the New York City Elevator Inspectors Guild, in which questions of race, justice and history were tackled within the schism over Empiricists vs. Intuitionists within the inspection trade.
Empiricists held that elevator problems had to be looked for in the gears and machinery.
Intuitionists held that mechanical failings gave up their secrets in the carriage.
Lila Mae Watson was the first black female inspector, and an Intuitionist.
Throw in an election in the Guild and it makes for a fine and tightly controlled look at old New York.
John Henry Days is conversely a sprawling look at a group of magazine feature writers on the circuit, covering all manner of soft news and feature articles for every publication under the sun.
The book culminates in a small southern town marking an anniversary of John Henry, the black railway worker who apocryphally took on a steam powered drill in a spike driving race, and won.
African-American history and subplots about lives touched by John Henry fill the novel to twice the size of Whitehead's first effort.
After another novel and a book of essays, Colson Whiteheads new book is "my autobiographical Fourth Novel" according to the cover.
Sag Harbour is a rueful and funny story about a group of black middle class New Englanders who summer (or just weekend) in the storied fishing village turned celebrity playground.
In the summer of 1985 Benji and Reggie are brothers and sons of relative privelege. They are part of a group of friends whose parents are all solidly middle class.
The book is a coming of age tale all the way, full of prideful and sexual firsts common to teenage boys. Dubious and private failures abound as well, as these young men negotiate their place in a transitory playground, and an enclave in which they are not the minority.
Benji is the narrator and the engine of the book.
He's a pop geek through and through, who hides his leanings well enough; but embraces the struggle for authenticity common to all teenagers with gusto and determination.
Anyone who was a teenager in this time period will appreciate the signposts that Whitehead knows so well, but the book is timeless in its look at the minefield that is the teen years.
Benji's secret love of horror flicks, lite FM, and his awkwardness around the emerging mysteries of girls make for both universal and at once new turf as Benji and his crew are both in and apart from most worlds they inhabit.
Whitehead was always very good, always a writer that I admired for his dexterity and wit.
But there's a warmth to Sag Harbor that is in full flower here.
Whitehead was a media critic for the Village Voice and he's a pop culture powerhouse, and his prose is both ad copy sharp and fluid.
This is wonderful stuff, and the book comes out in late April
Sag Harbor
Colson Whitehead
Doubleday $27.95
Friday, January 16, 2009
Things are tough all over
A couple of brands are a bit tattered this morning.
The Globe notes that David Mirvish Books leaves that lovely Mirvish Village space in a couple weeks, and the U.S chains are in trouble.
I feel badly for David Mirvish
Posted by David
The Globe notes that David Mirvish Books leaves that lovely Mirvish Village space in a couple weeks, and the U.S chains are in trouble.
I feel badly for David Mirvish
Posted by David
Tournament of Books
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Finally..books for today's busy idiot
It's an idea whose time has come I guess.
Wiki Summaries of books for those who don't have the time or inclination to read anything longer than a few paragraphs, or who don't need to pass the test.
It bears noting that the summary for Twilight is about three times the length of the summary for Macbeth.
She should have died hereafter, there would have been a time for such a word.
Or...perhaps not.
Posted by David
Wiki Summaries of books for those who don't have the time or inclination to read anything longer than a few paragraphs, or who don't need to pass the test.
It bears noting that the summary for Twilight is about three times the length of the summary for Macbeth.
She should have died hereafter, there would have been a time for such a word.
Or...perhaps not.
Posted by David
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Not spring, but a spring in my step
The NY Times approves of Charlie Huston's new novel, likely the most fun I've had last year was his Joe Pitt series.
Bookforum was something else that I came to way too late, but I feel smarter just having them in my house. The quality and reach of their reviews, the smart coverage of the university presses and their marriage of quirkiness and erudition makes for a great time with every issue of their bi-monthly publication.
With print newspapers chopping their space for book reviews, it's nice to know that all is not lost.
Anyway, chalk up another positive review for the early contender of "must have" novel for Jayne Anne Phillips.
And maybe things aren't so bleak after all.
And he's right about the overly praised Batman thingy, too.
Posted by David
Bookforum was something else that I came to way too late, but I feel smarter just having them in my house. The quality and reach of their reviews, the smart coverage of the university presses and their marriage of quirkiness and erudition makes for a great time with every issue of their bi-monthly publication.
With print newspapers chopping their space for book reviews, it's nice to know that all is not lost.
Anyway, chalk up another positive review for the early contender of "must have" novel for Jayne Anne Phillips.
And maybe things aren't so bleak after all.
And he's right about the overly praised Batman thingy, too.
Posted by David
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Donald Westlake 1933-2008
passed away today.
He was one of the definitive American writers of the late twentieth century and certainly the most versatile, genre or not.
Westlake's novels and characters were funny, savage, sinister, slapstick and entirely unforgettable.
For the first couple years of my time I enjoyed hand selling his stuff above everything else, because the shock and instant widening of the eyes after thumb nailing some of his plots was like what a crack hit must be like; and while I've railed for years that too much of his early stuff, and a couple of beauties are only available in hardcover, but the University of Chicago Press has brought back the early Richard Stark novels (Westlake's best pseudonym).
A sad day, but his work (any of it) can put a smile on your face.
With the New Year the hope around the little blog here is more substantial posting and more frequently.
Some smatterings once a week and more substance in between.
I'm going to make the time for this largely by cutting into the time spent on Facebook (a great thing for a week or so, tedious after that) and more judicious use of web time generally.
Looking back on 2008, I've not done the amount of reading that I've been able to do in previous years, and thus I found myself not as ready for the fall avalanche when all those catalogs came in.
Not so this year.
Still, a bad start.
Posted by David
He was one of the definitive American writers of the late twentieth century and certainly the most versatile, genre or not.
Westlake's novels and characters were funny, savage, sinister, slapstick and entirely unforgettable.
For the first couple years of my time I enjoyed hand selling his stuff above everything else, because the shock and instant widening of the eyes after thumb nailing some of his plots was like what a crack hit must be like; and while I've railed for years that too much of his early stuff, and a couple of beauties are only available in hardcover, but the University of Chicago Press has brought back the early Richard Stark novels (Westlake's best pseudonym).
A sad day, but his work (any of it) can put a smile on your face.
With the New Year the hope around the little blog here is more substantial posting and more frequently.
Some smatterings once a week and more substance in between.
I'm going to make the time for this largely by cutting into the time spent on Facebook (a great thing for a week or so, tedious after that) and more judicious use of web time generally.
Looking back on 2008, I've not done the amount of reading that I've been able to do in previous years, and thus I found myself not as ready for the fall avalanche when all those catalogs came in.
Not so this year.
Still, a bad start.
Posted by David
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