Jan Gardner writes the "Shelf Life" column for the Globe's Books section.
Ask the Globe's book writers a question about local authors, the latest books, or anything else.
|
« May 06, 2007 - May 12, 2007 |
Main
| May 20, 2007 - May 26, 2007 »
May 18, 2007
"Oh the Places You'll Go!'' by Dr. Seuss is a perennial favorite for graduation gifts. In a more practical vein, friends and family of new graduates might want to consider "Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home'' by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe.
People get into trouble all the time with ill-considered and poorly-worded e-mails. Messages forwarded to the wrong person and messages sent to everyone in the company by a careless click on the "Reply to All'' option are just two of the common e-mail offenses.
The essential message of "Send" is as simple as the golden rule: E-mail unto others as you would have them e-mail to you.
Posted by Jan Gardner at 09:58 AM
May 17, 2007
Somerville's Claire Messud has won the 2007 Massachusetts Book Award in the fiction category, given by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, for her novel, "The Emperor's Children." Louise Gluck of Cambridge took the poetry prize for her collection, "Averno." In children's literature, the winner is Alice Hoffman, for "Incantation." The nonfiction winner is Nathaniel Philbrick, for "Mayflower."
The honor books (i.e., runners-up) in fiction were Mameve Medwed for "How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life," and Kim McLarin for "Jump at the Sun." Nonfiction honors went to Globe columnist James Carroll for "House of War," and Noam Chomsky for "Failed States." Poetry honors: Franz Wright for "God's Silence" and Martin Espada for "The Republic of Poetry." In children's, the honor books were "Clementine," by Sara Pennypacker and "Counting on Grace" by Elizabeth Winthrop.
The Massachusetts Center for the Book is the Bay State affiliate of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress.
Posted by David Mehegan at 12:15 PM
May 16, 2007
Justice is something you find in Dorchester District Court, but less so in daily life, and even less than that in book publishing.
Witness, for instance, the case of George Tenet and his new book "At the Center of the Storm," about his long tenure as CIA director. Tenet gained that job under Democrat Bill Clinton, and kept it under Republican George Bush, no small accomplishment in itself. Tenet was in charge of the massive spy agency that didn't see 9/11 coming and didn't share key terrorist information with the FBI in advance. He helped to justify the US invasion of Iraq by saying it was a "slam dunk" that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. On his way out the door, he accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Bush, but now assails the administration's decision-making. And what does Tenet get for this record of problematic achievement: why the No. 1 slot on next Sunday's New York Times bestseller list, of course.
Speaking of books that we may not be ready for, Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, next month publishes "It's Not about the Truth: The Untold Story of the Duke Lacrosse Case and the Lives it Shattered." Written by Don Yaeger and former Duke coach Mike Pressler (who's just down the road now at Bryant University in Rhode Island), it's billed as a "tell-all book."
Now, clearly, the Duke prosecutions were a mess and the students were improperly tarred. But if you put that judicial morass aside, the Duke players were still known for rowdy behavior, drunken tirades, and, yes, hosting parties with strippers. These guys may have been victims, but they weren't innocents. Watch the bestseller list on this one as well.
Posted by Jim Concannon at 05:32 PM
May 16, 2007
SUNDAY: Cammie McGovern reads from “Eye Contact,” at 3 p.m., at the Concord Bookshop, 65 Main St., Concord … Poets Denise Bergman and others read at 2 p.m., in Forsyth Chapel, Forest Hills Cemetery, 95 Forest Hills Ave., Jamaica Plain ($5) … Poets Gail Mazur, Mary Zoll, and Lawrence Academy freshman Stephanie Saywell read at 3 p.m., at the Concord Poetry Center, 40 Stow St., Concord … Winners of the Newburyport Art Association Poetry Contest read at 5 p.m., at the NAA Gallery, 65 Water St., Newburyport.
MONDAY: Mathew Sharpe discusses “Jamestown,” at 7 p.m., at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St., Brookline … Tom Roeper discusses “The Prism of Grammar,” at 7 p.m., at the Harvard Square Coop, Cambridge … Elinor Lipman reads from “My Latest Grievance,” at 7:30 p.m., at the Harvard Public Library, 4 Pond Rd., Harvard.
TUESDAY: Jennifer Belle reads from “Little Stalker,” at 7:30 p.m., at Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut St., Newtonville … Crystal Zevon reads from “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,” at 7 p.m., at Porter Square Books, 25 White St., Cambridge … Vincent Bugliosi discusses “Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy,” at 6 p.m., at the Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St., Cambridge; tickets ($5) available from the Harvard Book Store, 1256 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, 617-661-1515 … David Gessner discusses “Soaring with Fidel,” at 7 p.m., at the Brookline Booksmith … Ben Z. Rose discusses “John Stark,” at 7 p.m., at the Harvard Square Coop … Children’s authors Jacqueline Davies, Mitali Perkins, and others read at 7:30 p.m., in Vanderslice Hall, Boston College, Chestnut Hill … Elinor Lipman reads from “My Latest Grievance,” at 7 p.m., at the Groton Public Library, 99 Main St., Groton.
WEDNESDAY: Elizabeth Hand reads from “Generation Loss,” at 6:30 p.m., at the Harvard Book Store … Libby Jacobs reads from “Wolf Note,” at 7 p.m., at the Harvard Square Coop … Mike Lupica discusses “Summer Ball,” at 12:30 p.m., at Borders Downtown Crossing, 10-24 School St. … William Martin discusses “The Lost Constitution,” at 7 p.m., at the Hingham Public Library, 66 Leavitt St., Hingham.
THURSDAY: Barbara Kingsolver discusses “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle,” at 6 p.m., at First Parish Church, 3 Church St., Cambridge; tickets ($5) available from the Harvard Book Store … Poet Franz Wright reads at 7 p.m., at the Brookline Booksmith … Scott Donaldson discusses “Edwin Arlington Robinson,” at 7 p.m., at the Harvard Square Coop … Susie Davidson reads from her Holocaust book, “I Refused to Die,” at 7 p.m., at Robbins Library, 700 Mass. Ave., Arlington … Poet Carla Schwartz reads at 7:30 p.m., at McIntyre & Moore, 255 Elm St., Davis Square, Somerville.
[no FRIDAY listings]
SATURDAY: Keith Ablow discusses “Living the Truth,” at 7 p.m., at Jabberwocky Bookshop, 50 Water St., Newburyport.
Announcements must arrive at globebookmaking@hotmail.com two weeks before publication date. Events are subject to change.
Posted by Jim Concannon at 05:24 PM
May 16, 2007
Sir Frank Kermode
Colleague Mark Feeney offers a reflection on the contributor's note --the sentence or two, usually at the foot of a book-review or other article, though sometimes on a separate page, which tells the reader something about the writer. Mark writes:
The history of the contributor's note offers few, if any, examples of memorable writing. Situated at the intersection of ego and resume, it serves a very useful function _ but does it so functionally.
Joe Friday presides as tutelary deity over the contributor's note and its just-the-facts imperative: who (the writer's name), what (his or her most recent or best-known book), and, sometimes, where (an academic or journalistic affiliation). That's it. Forget how and why _ or anything that might take up more than two or three lines of type. Even so, the May 10 issue of the London Review of Books suggests the genre actually offers certain imaginative possibilities.
The issue includes the text of a Frank Kermode essay, "Fiction and E.M. Forster" and, of course, his contributor's note. Kermode is one of our most distinguished literary critics, as well as a frequent contributor to the LRB, which means the bare-essentials approach might be dispensed with. So it largely is. Two of Kermode's more than 50 books are mentioned ("The Sense of an Ending," probably his best-known, and "Shakespeare's Language"), but there's no mention of his academic career (he's taught at Manchester, Bristol, University College London, Cambridge, Columbia, and Yale) or his knighthood.
Instead, it's noted that Kermode's text is drawn from his Clark Lectures, at Cambridge, delivered earlier this year. It's further noted that Forster's celebrated book "Aspects of the Novel" originated in his Clark Lectures, delivered 80 years ago. That's a nice touch, a rare factual fillip in the contributor's note canon. But the real flourish is the first sentence. "Frank Kermode's present intentions are not clear." Rarely have forthrightness and whimsy collaborated so succinctly.
Kermode has put himself in that very rare category of writer (it may be a list of one) whose contributor's notes bear future attending to. Will subsequent LRB issues inform us whether his intentions have become any clearer? "Only connect," Forster famously urged in his novel "Howards End." Perhaps "only clarify" will become a comparable injunction in upcoming Kermode contributor's notes.
Posted by David Mehegan at 10:25 AM
May 16, 2007
In this season of literary awards, some of the same authors and books seem to pop up all over the place. Not so with the second annual Lulu Blooker Prizes, devoted to "blooks" -- books based on blogs or Web sites. The awards are sponsored by Lulu, which makes print-on-demand books.
The overall winner (of a $10,000 prize) and nonfiction winner is: "My War: Killing Time in Iraq" by Colby Buzzell (Berkley, $15), which started as a blog that Buzzell, a machine gunner in Iraq, began to "kill time." The popular blog led US Army brass to close down soldiers' blogs.
The fiction winner is "The Doorbells of Florence" (worth a click to see a selection) by Andrew Losowsky (Prandial Publishing/Lulu, $29.85), a British blogger's self-published collection of photographs of Florentine doorbells. Each is accompanied by "a strange story about the people and things that may or may not live inside."
The comics winner is "Mom's Cancer" by Brian Fies (Abrams Image, $12.95), a graphic novel about Fies's mother's battle with metastatic lung cancer. It began life as serialized web comic.
Posted by Jan Gardner at 08:24 AM
May 15, 2007
Amazon.com has cut the price of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the final installment of the J.K. Rowling fantasy series, to $17.99 -- a 49 percent discount off the $34.99 list price. The online bookseller has already taken 1 million orders for the book, to be released July 21. The total includes 620,000 orders from U.S. customers and 250,000 in the U.K. The new cut lowers Amazon's price a dollar below Barnes & Noble.com, a differential which we doubt will last long. Borders.com's price is $20.99.
The size of these discounts will make no small independent booksellers happy. They have the kids' parties on the Friday night before the midnight release, with snowy owls, food, games, characters in costume. But they can't give a 50 percent discount, without taking a loss. Why, they quite reasonably ask, should they have to take a loss on their most beloved and their biggest-selling book? For them, customer loyalty will bring in a lot of kids and parents, even at a higher price, but for most people, it's hard to resist half-off at Amazon or Wal-Mart.
There's already a huge bookseller price war going on in England on the book, with Waterstone's slugging it out with W.H. Smith and Borders. Smith is selling for £10.99 and Waterstones for £8.99 [$17.84 U.S. today]. According to this story in the Times of London, retailers don't expect to make much money, since supermarkets are selling at even steeper discounts, using the book as a loss leader to get people to come in to buy groceries. Simon Fox, CEO of HMV, which owns Waterstone's, told the Times: "It is important that we have big market share and have people into our shops but at half price it is hard to make money."
Posted by David Mehegan at 04:30 PM
May 14, 2007
Talk about yin and yang. David Mitchell and Nora Roberts are the only writers to appear on Time magazine's list of the 100 Most Influential People. Mitchell writes inventive novels, most recently "Black Swan Green.'' Roberts, a romance writer, regularly dominates the bestseller lists with a formula she's perfected over the years.
Posted by Jan Gardner at 10:54 PM
May 14, 2007
OK, so it's not summer yet. But it is on the way, and here's a book that celebrates it: "Summer: A User's Guide" by Suzanne Brown (Artisan, 224 pp., $19.95).
The book is clearly a labor of love, a lavishly illustrated and colorful celebration of the short (oh is it short here) warm season. It contains, for instance, recipes for cooking lobster, rules for horseshoes, formulas for margaritas, barbecue recipes, a seashell glossary, and tire-swing instructions. How can you not like a book that explains how to do a handstand underwater? (I'll try it if you will.)
There, feeling warmer already?
Posted by Jim Concannon at 05:50 PM
May 14, 2007
Following the outrage among some authors, booksellers, and book reviewers about the reduction of newspaper book review space, I can't help but notice the deafening silence from book publishers. The fuss was sparked by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's recent decision to eliminate the position of book editor, though not, the paper says, book coverage. The National Book Critics Circle has led a protest campaign, which included a modest demonstration outside the Journal-Constitution's offices and a petition.
But where are the publishers? Look at the website of the Association of American Publishers, and you mostly find them fighting against overseas piracy and the Patriot Act. They're not up in arms over book review space.
Part of their silence, I suspect, is that publishers know that newspaper reviews don't really drive sales. Take, for example, Jane Smiley's newest novel, "Ten Days in the Hills." Published in February, it was reviewed everywhere, beginning with a strong early review by John Updike. Smiley is a big deal and the book is loaded with explicit sex scenes. A sure bestseller, right? It's ranked at No. 5,181 on Amazon.com, and not to be found on any bestseller list. Then there's "The Castle in the Forest," by Norman Mailer. Norman Mailer, a living legend and national literary monument, with his first novel in 10 years, quite likely his last. It's about Hitler and Satan. It got an enormous lead review in the Jan. 21 New York Times Book Review, but where is it now? No. 7,303 on Amazon.com.
Meanwhile, look at the bestsellers on any fiction list, and what you will see is books that are seldom reviewed in newspapers, except in short-review roundups: the David Baldaccis, the Danielle Steels, the Maeve Binchys. If a publisher believes in an author, it doesn't pray for reviews; it chases off-the-book-page coverage -- interviews and profiles -- sends the writer on a national book tour with local TV and radio gigs, and pays for big displays in stores. National TV is even better: Stephen Colbert, or the Today Show. Even so, as yesterday's New York Times story makes clear, nobody really knows how to make a bestseller.
A publisher once said to me, "Ads don't drive sales, and neither do reviews." I asked what does, and she shrugged and said, "Appearances on NPR." NPR listeners are a literate, book-reading audience. Brian Lies's children's book, "Bats at the Beach," went off the charts when Daniel Pinkwater praised it last year on "Weekend Edition." If you get a sympathetic interview on Terry Gross's "Fresh Air," your book may take off. On the other hand, what happened to Gross's own book, "All I Did Was Ask: Conversations with Writers, Actors, Musicians, and Artists," published last July? On Amazon.com, it's ranked No. 288,566.
Posted by David Mehegan at 12:23 PM
May 14, 2007
For a bit of comic relief from the sorry state of reading in the US today, check out the video of Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central last week and his encounter with Salman Rushdie.
Posted by Jan Gardner at 10:15 AM
May 13, 2007
First, one newspaper writes about the cutbacks at a couple of American book sections. Then, several more papers write about the same topic. (There aren't a lot of original ideas in journalism.) Next, print book reviewers and blog reviewers start squabbling over who's the keeper of the true cross. (That wasn't the original point.)
Now, finally and thankfully, an article in the Los Angeles Times calls for a truce. Here's the link.
And I'll repeat what I've said before: Any newspaper that eliminates books coverage, which is avidly followed by the most dedicated readers it has (as in, when they're done with the paper, they actually keep reading), is asking for tougher times down the road because it's not seeing the forest OR the trees.
Posted by Jim Concannon at 01:51 PM
May 13, 2007
1. Blink
By Malcolm Gladwell. Back Bay.
2. Eat, Pray, Love
By Elizabeth Gilbert. Penguin.
3. A Death in Belmont
By Sebastian Junger. Harper.
4. Mayflower
By Nathaniel Philbrick. Penguin.
5. CrazyBusy
By Edward M. Hallowell. Ballantine.
6. The Tipping Point
By Malcolm Gladwell. Back Bay.
7. A People’s History of the United States
By Howard Zinn. Harper.
8. The Measure of a Man
By Sidney Poitier. HarperSanFrancisco.
9. The Year of Magical Thinking
By Joan Didion. Vintage.
10. Under the Banner of Heaven
By Jon Krakauer. Pan.
From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.
Posted by Jim Concannon at 01:49 PM
May 13, 2007
1. Suite Française
By Irène Némirovsky. Vintage.
2. Water for Elephants
By Sara Gruen. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.
3. The Inheritance of Loss
By Kiran Desai. Grove.
4. The Road
By Cormac McCarthy. Vintage.
5. Intuition
By Allegra Goodman. Dial.
6. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter
By Kim Edwards. Penguin.
7. Love Walked In
By Marisa de los Santos. Plume.
8. Rise and Shine
By Anna Quindlen. Random House.
9. The Kite Runner
By Khalid Hosseini. Riverhead.
10. Anybody Out There?
By Marian Keyes. Avon.
Compiled by Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.
Posted by Jim Concannon at 01:46 PM
May 13, 2007
1. At the Center of the Storm
By George Tenet. HarperCollins.
2. Einstein
By Walter Isaacson. Simon & Schuster.
3. How Doctors Think
By Jerome Groopman. Houghton Mifflin.
4. The Secret
By Rhonda Byrne. Beyond Words.
5. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
By Barbara Kingsolver. HarperCollins.
6. The Dangerous Book for Boys
By Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden. Collins.
7. God Is Not Great
By Christopher Hitchens. Twelve.
8. Jerusalem 1913
By Amy Dockser Marcus. Viking.
9. A Long Way Gone
By Ishmael Baeh. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
10. Death by Meeting
By Patrick Lencioni. Jossey-Bass.
From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.
Posted by Jim Concannon at 01:44 PM
May 13, 2007
1. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
By Michael Chabon. HarperCollins
2. The Children of Húrin
By J.R.R. Tolkien. Houghton Mifflin.
3. Rant
By Chuck Palahniuk. Doubleday.
4. The Good Husband of Zebra Drive
By Alexander McCall Smith. Pantheon.
5. Simple Genius
By David Baldacci. Warner.
6. The Woods
By Harlan Coben. Dutton.
7. Body Surfing
By Anita Shreve. Little, Brown.
8. Nineteen Minutes
By Jodi Picoult. Atria.
9. The Ministry of Special Cases
By Nathan Englander. Knopf.
10. Angelica
By Arthur Phillips. Random House.
From Borders Books & Music, Brookline Booksmith, Concord Bookshop, Harvard Book Store, New England Mobile Book Fair, Newtonville Books, and Porter Square Books.
Posted by Jim Concannon at 01:40 PM
|
