Good morning bookies! Stand by for news and comment.
And the comment part needs an apology in advance. The day is again cold and overcast, downright gloomy, and Seasonal Affective Disorder is not a laughing matter. So if I'm a bit grumpy don't blame me, blame the weather. And then do something about it.
*** As many of you know, or even if you don't, your friendly neighborhood bookseller depends quite heavily on the US Post Office. Make that, completely depends on the USPS. And over the past few years he has noticed the level of service at his local post office plunging. It's not good. That's not to say that the fine people working the counter are to blame, they're not. Some are faster than others, true, but overall they work hard and fast and BBG has no complaints. Except that there aren't enough of them.
My post office has 5 windows and usually only two are manned at any given time, regardless of how long the line may be. Sometimes, if I'm really lucky, there are three. A few weeks ago I walked in, the place was jammed with customers, but all five windows were manned and the employees were flying around like they were possessed. I knew at soon as I walked in that some bigwig must be in the house, and so it was: the local postmaster was paying a visit. Amazing what you can do when the boss is watching.
Anyway, we now learn that the post office wants to cut back on delivery days. Unlike the private sector, where poor service that leads to lower business means somebody gets the axe and somebody else increases the quality of the service provided, the government decides that if they can't serve you in the proper fashion and you take your business elsewhere, instead of improving themselves they will just cut back on the level of service they provide. Brilliant. Instead of delivering mail 6 days a week they want to cut back to 5. Why 5, then? Why not 4, or 3 or 1? That would save lots of money.
The truly ironic part about this linked article is how it would affect ebay sellers. You have to laugh, don't you? Ebay, which should have been flourishing as people try to sell their stuff to makes ends meet, is dying because of gross mis-management by a con man, and now the USPS wants to cut back because of mis-management. Ebay sellers must think they have been forsaken. Glad I'm no longer one of them, although I do depend on the post office.
I think I agree with the commercial: put firefighters in charge and get out of the way.
Post Office is tired from working semi-hard and needs a break
*** Speaking of ebay, their newest, and possibly their one-day-to-be biggest competitor, Bonanzle, topped the 1 million listing mark the other day. Pretty impressive stuff. The site now has over 23,000 members and the page hits are approaching a quarter million.
*** And while we're on the ebay thing again, the con man John Donohoe has a new scheme up his sleeve: Fulfillment by Ebay. Essentially, sellers will ship their items to a central Ebay warehouse, who will them send them to the customers. Oh boy, doesn't that sound like a good idea. The guy who drove the stock from $34 down to the $12-13 range wants sellers to trust him to deliver the goods. Really, you have to laugh. But what's the most humorous is that some people are going to take him seriously and actually debate the merits of this lunacy.
*** The world has changed and I can now admit this: growing up, I was a comics guy. That's right, I read and collected comic books, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I am, however, ashamed to admit that I sold them all off long ago. At one time I had a decent copy of X-Men #1, Spiderman #3 (and up), Conan #1-up, Avengers 1-66...well, I had some great stuff. Anyway, I wish I had been as smart as the guy in the article below, keeping them until I could donate them to a library and take the tax write-off. Not that I need a tax write-off these days.
Old friends in a new home
*** There is a project to digitize the books in the Library of Congress, to make them available to everyone. Assuming that whoever puts together the website where these could be used knows what they are doing, I think this is a fine idea. But, seeing as how I'm feeling cold and snarky today, I have to wonder whether a library maintained for the use of Congress has ever been used by one of the elected leaders in the Congress today. And I have to doubt it. For the Founding Fathers, of course, it was virtually mandatory. Indeed, after the British burned the original library it was re-started by Jefferson giving his personal library to the country. Today's politicians seem too self-absorbed, though, too busy stepping in and out of limousines and giving press conferences, to actually sit down and read something. So if this project makes the rare works in the Library of Congress accessible to those who will read them, I think that's just dandy.
*** Keeping with today's theme, me being cold and tired of winter and overly critical, here's an article on something that just offends the heck out of me: authors as brands. James Patterson and Stuart Woods are two examples of this, writers who don't so much write as disgorge material that is, supposedly, theirs, but which I suspect is thrown together by others from some passing thought the Branded Writer throws out. Maybe that's just me being cynical, but does James Patterson have time to actually write the 40 or 50 (or however many it really is) books that come out every year with his name on them? Is it even physically possible to do this? I know they use about an 18 point font and probably don't have more than 30,000 words per book, but still.
Oh well. Maybe I just know too many worthy authors who either can't get published, or can't get noticed behind the stacks of Patricia Cornwell's latest monstrosity at the chain bookstore. I think of all the good stuff out there lost in the drek and am sad. Or maybe it's just me. I'll let you decide.
Authors as Corn Flakes
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Gaiman, Lee, Updike, Brady and the Z Plan
Good morning bookies! Stand by for news and comment.
There's white stuff on the ground here in Memphis. It's disgusting, let me tell you. I prefer it when that big yellow thing is up in the sky and you can wear shorts and t-shirts without shivering. People ask me if I don't enjoy the change of seasons and the short answer is: no.
*** Neil Gaiman has made a career of creeping out adults and has now set his sights on our kids, writing horror stories for the innocent and unsuspecting. And he must be good at it, or bad, depending on your point of view, because his latest work, The Graveyard Book, has won the Newberry Medal. Talk about prestigious! In case you don't know, winning the Newberry is a pretty big deal, about like winning the lottery, because it virtually guarantees that your book will remain in print in one form or another for years to come.
Gaiman spooks out the kiddies
*** The first of today's obligatory World War II reviews is rather interesting to me, concerning, as it does, a ship that was never finished. As all of you know I'm a real naval enthusiast, always have been. The earliest books that I remember reading were histories of the US Navy in World War II, I have an extensive collection of lead warships, I have read histories of both of Japan's biggest battleships, Yamato and Musashi, as well as their sister ship that was converted to an aircraft carrier, Shinano, I'm a Titanic buff...well, anyway, I like ships. I was mildly surprised, however, to learn that someone is obsessed with and has written a new history about the Graf Zeppelin, the one and only carrier that Nazi Germany launched during its brief history.
Conceived as part of Germany's overall naval buildup, known as the Z-Plan, Graf Zeppelin wasn't meant to be a fighting force in itself, such as the American task forces that roamed the Pacific. It wasn't a particularly impressive ship, despite the breathless hyperbole of the linked article. Although as long as most full-sized carriers, it's air complement gave it the striking power of a light carrier. The planes would have been modified Stukas, with torpedo bombers and fighters designed for use on a ship. ME-109's would not have worked due to their weird landing gear. None of these planes was overly advanced, none carried a big enough payload to really due the damage needed by a lone carrier. Now, had she ever been on the high seas in tandem with, say, either Bismarck or Tirpitz, or convoy raiding on the Murmansk run, then okay, there was a use providing air cover for other ships, scouting duties and maybe chasing away some cruisers or getting a hit or two on a battleship and forcing them back to port. And this was her intended role.
But a monster, she was not. In a carrier-versus-carrier battle Graf Zeppelin would have been kicked around pretty well. So I would like to read the book Without Wings: The Story of Hitler's Aircraft Carrier by Stephen Burke, I'm curious what his conclusions might be, as well as any interesting tidbits he's dug up about Graf Zeppelin's brief history. I might get this one.
Graf Zeppelin and one hyperbolic journalist
*** And next we have yet another new World War II history book article written by yet another breathless journalist who insists on making his subject bigger and more important than is necessary. Dolloping on the hyperbole we are told that a new history of the US 99th Division 'explodes the myth!' of this or that aspect of the war, where the only person who might have believed such a myth in the first place is the writer of the article. I mean, let's face it, does Once Upon a Time in War: The 99th Division in World War II by Robert Humphrey really explode any myths that World War II was glorious, glamorous or easy? Come on. Hollywood told this story as early as 1949, with an all-star cast. Anybody seen 'Battleground' with Van Johnson lately? What about 'Band of Brothers', that ring any bells?
What this book appears to be is actually something I might read, an oral history of the 99th Division from the standpoint of the GIs who did the fighting. That's an interesting and important story. It doesn't need to be hyped with exclamation points of hack phrases like 'explodes the myth.' Any World War II buff knows that the greatest weakness of the US Army in World War II was in its officer corps. Some senior commanders were top-notch, Patton comes to mind, some weren't bad, Bradley and Eisenhower are good examples, and some were grossly incompetent. (Mark Clark, anyone?) What was worse was the leadership void just below that level, and particularly in the supply services. The article indicates that the men suffered from poor logistics; given the corruption in the ETO that's certainly possible.
Anyway, this book looks like my sort of book and I might read it. Despite the article.
The 99th Division in World War II
*** Hoaxes. Let's face it, we all enjoy reading about a good hoax. And while the linked article might not be the Top 10 Hoaxes of all time (are you telling me the Romans or Egyptians didn't have hoaxers too, but history has forgotten them?), they are 10 fascinating examples of gullibility. And since several of them are books it is relevant to this blog. Neat how I make up the rules as I go, isn't it?
Hoaxes
*** John Updike died yesterday. You probably already knew that. I count myself fortunate for having been able to see him a few years ago on the campus at the University of Memphis. He spoke for an hour or so, this was right after the release of Terrorist, and I was first in line for the book-signing afterward. (I don't know how long he was there, but the line was several hundred people in length.) He was quite funny and polished during the talk. I'm told he was paid $50k for showing up, which seems like quite a bit until you consider that he either A) needed the money or B) couldn't turn down such a massive payday. Whichever is the case, I had a great time and I'm saddened that he's gone.
John Updike dead at 76
*** Also gone is novelist/editor James Brady, aged 80. I have never read any of his work but those I trust tell me he was quite good. He seems to have been known mostly as a 'gossip pioneer', what that is. I thought gossip had been around a lot longer than that.
RIP James Brady
*** Gack! Stan Lee is getting sued for $750 million. Double gack! That's a chunk o' change. It seems shareholders in his company are wondering why he, and not they, got the payout from the many mega-hit movies based on Marvel comic characters Lee created. Beats me why not. I do know that when this much money starts floating around, lawsuits are inevitable.
I hope Stan Lee has a good lawyer. 'Nuff said
There's white stuff on the ground here in Memphis. It's disgusting, let me tell you. I prefer it when that big yellow thing is up in the sky and you can wear shorts and t-shirts without shivering. People ask me if I don't enjoy the change of seasons and the short answer is: no.
*** Neil Gaiman has made a career of creeping out adults and has now set his sights on our kids, writing horror stories for the innocent and unsuspecting. And he must be good at it, or bad, depending on your point of view, because his latest work, The Graveyard Book, has won the Newberry Medal. Talk about prestigious! In case you don't know, winning the Newberry is a pretty big deal, about like winning the lottery, because it virtually guarantees that your book will remain in print in one form or another for years to come.
Gaiman spooks out the kiddies
*** The first of today's obligatory World War II reviews is rather interesting to me, concerning, as it does, a ship that was never finished. As all of you know I'm a real naval enthusiast, always have been. The earliest books that I remember reading were histories of the US Navy in World War II, I have an extensive collection of lead warships, I have read histories of both of Japan's biggest battleships, Yamato and Musashi, as well as their sister ship that was converted to an aircraft carrier, Shinano, I'm a Titanic buff...well, anyway, I like ships. I was mildly surprised, however, to learn that someone is obsessed with and has written a new history about the Graf Zeppelin, the one and only carrier that Nazi Germany launched during its brief history.
Conceived as part of Germany's overall naval buildup, known as the Z-Plan, Graf Zeppelin wasn't meant to be a fighting force in itself, such as the American task forces that roamed the Pacific. It wasn't a particularly impressive ship, despite the breathless hyperbole of the linked article. Although as long as most full-sized carriers, it's air complement gave it the striking power of a light carrier. The planes would have been modified Stukas, with torpedo bombers and fighters designed for use on a ship. ME-109's would not have worked due to their weird landing gear. None of these planes was overly advanced, none carried a big enough payload to really due the damage needed by a lone carrier. Now, had she ever been on the high seas in tandem with, say, either Bismarck or Tirpitz, or convoy raiding on the Murmansk run, then okay, there was a use providing air cover for other ships, scouting duties and maybe chasing away some cruisers or getting a hit or two on a battleship and forcing them back to port. And this was her intended role.
But a monster, she was not. In a carrier-versus-carrier battle Graf Zeppelin would have been kicked around pretty well. So I would like to read the book Without Wings: The Story of Hitler's Aircraft Carrier by Stephen Burke, I'm curious what his conclusions might be, as well as any interesting tidbits he's dug up about Graf Zeppelin's brief history. I might get this one.
Graf Zeppelin and one hyperbolic journalist
*** And next we have yet another new World War II history book article written by yet another breathless journalist who insists on making his subject bigger and more important than is necessary. Dolloping on the hyperbole we are told that a new history of the US 99th Division 'explodes the myth!' of this or that aspect of the war, where the only person who might have believed such a myth in the first place is the writer of the article. I mean, let's face it, does Once Upon a Time in War: The 99th Division in World War II by Robert Humphrey really explode any myths that World War II was glorious, glamorous or easy? Come on. Hollywood told this story as early as 1949, with an all-star cast. Anybody seen 'Battleground' with Van Johnson lately? What about 'Band of Brothers', that ring any bells?
What this book appears to be is actually something I might read, an oral history of the 99th Division from the standpoint of the GIs who did the fighting. That's an interesting and important story. It doesn't need to be hyped with exclamation points of hack phrases like 'explodes the myth.' Any World War II buff knows that the greatest weakness of the US Army in World War II was in its officer corps. Some senior commanders were top-notch, Patton comes to mind, some weren't bad, Bradley and Eisenhower are good examples, and some were grossly incompetent. (Mark Clark, anyone?) What was worse was the leadership void just below that level, and particularly in the supply services. The article indicates that the men suffered from poor logistics; given the corruption in the ETO that's certainly possible.
Anyway, this book looks like my sort of book and I might read it. Despite the article.
The 99th Division in World War II
*** Hoaxes. Let's face it, we all enjoy reading about a good hoax. And while the linked article might not be the Top 10 Hoaxes of all time (are you telling me the Romans or Egyptians didn't have hoaxers too, but history has forgotten them?), they are 10 fascinating examples of gullibility. And since several of them are books it is relevant to this blog. Neat how I make up the rules as I go, isn't it?
Hoaxes
*** John Updike died yesterday. You probably already knew that. I count myself fortunate for having been able to see him a few years ago on the campus at the University of Memphis. He spoke for an hour or so, this was right after the release of Terrorist, and I was first in line for the book-signing afterward. (I don't know how long he was there, but the line was several hundred people in length.) He was quite funny and polished during the talk. I'm told he was paid $50k for showing up, which seems like quite a bit until you consider that he either A) needed the money or B) couldn't turn down such a massive payday. Whichever is the case, I had a great time and I'm saddened that he's gone.
John Updike dead at 76
*** Also gone is novelist/editor James Brady, aged 80. I have never read any of his work but those I trust tell me he was quite good. He seems to have been known mostly as a 'gossip pioneer', what that is. I thought gossip had been around a lot longer than that.
RIP James Brady
*** Gack! Stan Lee is getting sued for $750 million. Double gack! That's a chunk o' change. It seems shareholders in his company are wondering why he, and not they, got the payout from the many mega-hit movies based on Marvel comic characters Lee created. Beats me why not. I do know that when this much money starts floating around, lawsuits are inevitable.
I hope Stan Lee has a good lawyer. 'Nuff said
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Book stuff for a cold Monday
Good morning bookies! Stand by for news and comment.
According to Blogger, this is my 150th blog entry. Wordy, aren't I? Never at a loss for words or opinions. You should read my food blog. (Except that I don't actually write a food blog.)
It's overcast and cold in Memphis today. Yippee. Freezing rain tomorrow night. Double yippee. Cold weather is bad enough, snow worse, but ice...ice is punishment. Let's hope the weatherman is wrong.
*** Under the category of 'things I would love to do if I had the time and the motivation' is learning how to bind books and make protective book boxes. Once upon a time I was a fairly craftsy type guy, I did a lot of intricate painting, used small, sharp X-Acto knives, did exacting work...I could have had some real fun learning how to makes books. And who knows, some day I still might. In the meantime I can read articles like the two below and imagine myself as part of the process while admiring those with the patience to learn these skills and the talent to create their wares.
Learning the book binding process site 1
Learning the book binding process site 2
*** Despite my personal vow never again to set foot in San Fransisco, I must admit that if I were close enough for that to even be possible I would consider attending the San Fransisco book fair. Although I have been selling off huge chunks of my personal collection this past year, with lots more just about to follow, book fairs are not something I have a lot of power to resist. There's something genetic about it, I guess, or maybe there is a chemical given off by books that I am powerless to resist, a book pheromone, if you will.
SF Book Fair
*** In keeping with the whole 200th Poe birthday theme this month, Peter Ackroyd has a new biography of the drunken genius that has been getting fine reviews. Really, it's hard to imagine Ackroyd writing something that didn't get fine reviews. He's just good at what he does, and while he may (or may not) bring new material to the story of this most tragic and influential of American writers, there is always room for a familiar story that is particularly well told. I may have to find this one to read for myself.
Ackroyd does Poe
*** In an earlier blog I mentioned the story of winding up on Charing Cross Road at 5 pm on Holy Saturday, gazing at the lineup of wonderful bookstores about to close for the Easter weekend. That was my first real experience with the world's legendary book haunts, those places in the big cities where collectors around the world have always made their pilgrimage. New York had such a section, too, where hundreds and hundreds of book stores once congregated. Now, there are few left.
New York's book store survivors
According to Blogger, this is my 150th blog entry. Wordy, aren't I? Never at a loss for words or opinions. You should read my food blog. (Except that I don't actually write a food blog.)
It's overcast and cold in Memphis today. Yippee. Freezing rain tomorrow night. Double yippee. Cold weather is bad enough, snow worse, but ice...ice is punishment. Let's hope the weatherman is wrong.
*** Under the category of 'things I would love to do if I had the time and the motivation' is learning how to bind books and make protective book boxes. Once upon a time I was a fairly craftsy type guy, I did a lot of intricate painting, used small, sharp X-Acto knives, did exacting work...I could have had some real fun learning how to makes books. And who knows, some day I still might. In the meantime I can read articles like the two below and imagine myself as part of the process while admiring those with the patience to learn these skills and the talent to create their wares.
Learning the book binding process site 1
Learning the book binding process site 2
*** Despite my personal vow never again to set foot in San Fransisco, I must admit that if I were close enough for that to even be possible I would consider attending the San Fransisco book fair. Although I have been selling off huge chunks of my personal collection this past year, with lots more just about to follow, book fairs are not something I have a lot of power to resist. There's something genetic about it, I guess, or maybe there is a chemical given off by books that I am powerless to resist, a book pheromone, if you will.
SF Book Fair
*** In keeping with the whole 200th Poe birthday theme this month, Peter Ackroyd has a new biography of the drunken genius that has been getting fine reviews. Really, it's hard to imagine Ackroyd writing something that didn't get fine reviews. He's just good at what he does, and while he may (or may not) bring new material to the story of this most tragic and influential of American writers, there is always room for a familiar story that is particularly well told. I may have to find this one to read for myself.
Ackroyd does Poe
*** In an earlier blog I mentioned the story of winding up on Charing Cross Road at 5 pm on Holy Saturday, gazing at the lineup of wonderful bookstores about to close for the Easter weekend. That was my first real experience with the world's legendary book haunts, those places in the big cities where collectors around the world have always made their pilgrimage. New York had such a section, too, where hundreds and hundreds of book stores once congregated. Now, there are few left.
New York's book store survivors
A Sunday special
Good Sunday morning bookies! Stand by for news.
A very grateful shout-out to the best-selling children's author who wrote me a nice email over my views of promoting children's reading. If he grants permission I will reprint his email here. It shows the power of the internet that my work can come to the attention of such a well-known author and that he would find value there.
*** Good grief. We all know that forgery is a problem in the book industry, especially when dealing with uber-expensive books, but greed and stupidity only go so far in explaining how a Reading, PA, ebay seller got away with peddling books with forged signatures for years. As the article explains, he had stamps made from authentic signatures. STAMPS! Even your friendly neighborhood booksellers has a lighted high-magnification tool for examining signatures that he did not get in person, and that's all it would take to spot a stamped signature, a cursory look, the barest bit of due diligence.
Forgeries for Dummies
*** Here is today's World War II book review. I know, it does seem that way, doesn't it? For history buffs I'm sure this is great. For those who don't read history, not so much. Well, look at it this way, you're doing research for that next gift you need to buy for a history lover.
Another end of World War II book, and there seems to be a new emphasis on the Allied attitude toward the liberated and conquered people, each with its own agenda. The pro-German writers all dwell on how badly the German population was treated, Nazi or not, and they do have a point. The greatest diaspora in European history was the driving of ethnic Germans from their homelands outside Germany in post-war Europe. On the other hand, anti-German writers take a different tack and emphasize collective guilt. Today's writer of the moment, William Hitchcock, appears to be of the opinion that the French and the Dutch are the aggrieved parties. What is never quite pointed out is that the real aggrieved party is the one whose country wasn't invaded, but showed up to bail everybody out of the predicament they caused, namely, America.
Liberation: The Bitter Road to Freedom
*** This past Monday saw the 200th birthday celebration of a genius, Edgar Allan Poe. When you consider what a deeply trouble man he was it's incredible what he achieved in such a short span of life. Your friendly neighborhood bookseller has been to the University of Virgina and seen his room there, very small, dark, unheated except for the fireplace...to create whole new genres of prose (I am one who credits Poe with having invented the modern detective story) under conditions that modern Man considers primitive, is an amazing accomplishment. Seriously, think about just what a talent this man was.
One of the newer competitions among middle schools these days is Forensics. No, not cutting up corpses, that's forensic pathology. I'm talking about this:
The American Forensic Association
BBG has first hand knowledge of this organization and its wonderful and wondrous activities. Essentially, it's a competition between schools based on public speaking, with categories such as Poetry, Prose, Extemporaneous, Humorous and many others. It promotes and develops public speaking ability among children when they are still quite young and, even if they never win a competition, when they are grown they have no fear of speaking before an audience because they have been trained to do so.
Okay, with the commercial out of the way, what does this have to do with Poe? His work is probably chosen more often for use in Forensics competitions than any other writer. the Tell-Tale Heart I have seen performed by at least five poeple and, when done well, is still a winner. so, 200 years on, Poe is still not only relevant, but downright influential.
Poe turns 200, but doesn't look a day over 150
*** Ah, Florence, Italy. Home of the Uffizi Gallery, David, Brunelleschi's Dome, gypsies begging money from you as you stand in line to climb the steps to the top of that dome, a really cool bookstore across the street from the Uffizi, the Pitti Palace...well, okay, you get the idea. Florence is the home of the Renaissance and, one imagines, embodies the beauty Man can produce. One forgets that Florence is also home to the Monster of Florence, a serial killer in the mold a Jack the Ripper/Hannibal Lechter fusion, a pitiless murderer who has never been caught or identified. What's worse, he's current.
As you would expect there have been numerous books, documentaries, etc., speculating on who is the killer. A man was convicted of the crimes only to have his conviction overturned on appeal. People have been threatened with arrest for their work covering this subject, a notion foreign to Americans, and best-selling crime novelist Douglas Preston has been warned to leave Italy because of his new book. Here's a review:
The Monster of Florence
*** Those who know me know that Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island is near the top of my all-time 'I Hated It' List. Not for the same reason as, say, The Da Vinci Code Or The Third Secret, both of which were dreadful books featuring ridiculous 'research', third-grade level writing and a real passion for Catholic-bashing. No, Shutter Island was beautifully written and highly original. Lehane is the real deal, even if I don't care for his work. In this I am, and should be, in the vast minority. Good. I have met Lehane twice and I really, really like the guy. Very polite, very smart, very dedicated. I just don't like his work.
Anyway, that probably says more about me than about him, so let's post this interview for those who are in the vast majority and love his stuff. And I say, good. I hope he gets even richer than he already is.
Lehane on the line
>>> What I'm reading: "The Six Sacred Stones" by Matthew Reilly.
A very grateful shout-out to the best-selling children's author who wrote me a nice email over my views of promoting children's reading. If he grants permission I will reprint his email here. It shows the power of the internet that my work can come to the attention of such a well-known author and that he would find value there.
*** Good grief. We all know that forgery is a problem in the book industry, especially when dealing with uber-expensive books, but greed and stupidity only go so far in explaining how a Reading, PA, ebay seller got away with peddling books with forged signatures for years. As the article explains, he had stamps made from authentic signatures. STAMPS! Even your friendly neighborhood booksellers has a lighted high-magnification tool for examining signatures that he did not get in person, and that's all it would take to spot a stamped signature, a cursory look, the barest bit of due diligence.
Forgeries for Dummies
*** Here is today's World War II book review. I know, it does seem that way, doesn't it? For history buffs I'm sure this is great. For those who don't read history, not so much. Well, look at it this way, you're doing research for that next gift you need to buy for a history lover.
Another end of World War II book, and there seems to be a new emphasis on the Allied attitude toward the liberated and conquered people, each with its own agenda. The pro-German writers all dwell on how badly the German population was treated, Nazi or not, and they do have a point. The greatest diaspora in European history was the driving of ethnic Germans from their homelands outside Germany in post-war Europe. On the other hand, anti-German writers take a different tack and emphasize collective guilt. Today's writer of the moment, William Hitchcock, appears to be of the opinion that the French and the Dutch are the aggrieved parties. What is never quite pointed out is that the real aggrieved party is the one whose country wasn't invaded, but showed up to bail everybody out of the predicament they caused, namely, America.
Liberation: The Bitter Road to Freedom
*** This past Monday saw the 200th birthday celebration of a genius, Edgar Allan Poe. When you consider what a deeply trouble man he was it's incredible what he achieved in such a short span of life. Your friendly neighborhood bookseller has been to the University of Virgina and seen his room there, very small, dark, unheated except for the fireplace...to create whole new genres of prose (I am one who credits Poe with having invented the modern detective story) under conditions that modern Man considers primitive, is an amazing accomplishment. Seriously, think about just what a talent this man was.
One of the newer competitions among middle schools these days is Forensics. No, not cutting up corpses, that's forensic pathology. I'm talking about this:
The American Forensic Association
BBG has first hand knowledge of this organization and its wonderful and wondrous activities. Essentially, it's a competition between schools based on public speaking, with categories such as Poetry, Prose, Extemporaneous, Humorous and many others. It promotes and develops public speaking ability among children when they are still quite young and, even if they never win a competition, when they are grown they have no fear of speaking before an audience because they have been trained to do so.
Okay, with the commercial out of the way, what does this have to do with Poe? His work is probably chosen more often for use in Forensics competitions than any other writer. the Tell-Tale Heart I have seen performed by at least five poeple and, when done well, is still a winner. so, 200 years on, Poe is still not only relevant, but downright influential.
Poe turns 200, but doesn't look a day over 150
*** Ah, Florence, Italy. Home of the Uffizi Gallery, David, Brunelleschi's Dome, gypsies begging money from you as you stand in line to climb the steps to the top of that dome, a really cool bookstore across the street from the Uffizi, the Pitti Palace...well, okay, you get the idea. Florence is the home of the Renaissance and, one imagines, embodies the beauty Man can produce. One forgets that Florence is also home to the Monster of Florence, a serial killer in the mold a Jack the Ripper/Hannibal Lechter fusion, a pitiless murderer who has never been caught or identified. What's worse, he's current.
As you would expect there have been numerous books, documentaries, etc., speculating on who is the killer. A man was convicted of the crimes only to have his conviction overturned on appeal. People have been threatened with arrest for their work covering this subject, a notion foreign to Americans, and best-selling crime novelist Douglas Preston has been warned to leave Italy because of his new book. Here's a review:
The Monster of Florence
*** Those who know me know that Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island is near the top of my all-time 'I Hated It' List. Not for the same reason as, say, The Da Vinci Code Or The Third Secret, both of which were dreadful books featuring ridiculous 'research', third-grade level writing and a real passion for Catholic-bashing. No, Shutter Island was beautifully written and highly original. Lehane is the real deal, even if I don't care for his work. In this I am, and should be, in the vast minority. Good. I have met Lehane twice and I really, really like the guy. Very polite, very smart, very dedicated. I just don't like his work.
Anyway, that probably says more about me than about him, so let's post this interview for those who are in the vast majority and love his stuff. And I say, good. I hope he gets even richer than he already is.
Lehane on the line
>>> What I'm reading: "The Six Sacred Stones" by Matthew Reilly.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
A small and wonderful world, despite the US Congress
Good morning bookies! Stand by for news and comment.
*** The lunacy of banning children's books as dangerous lurches forward as the US Congress wastes its time on non-issues and allows the important stuff to lie fallow. Seriously, think about this. In an age where we are doing everything we can to encourage kids to read more, the US Congress wants to ban children's books because of their possible lead content! What? Is this some bad joke? Can this even be real?
Unfortunately, it can be and it is. You have to wonder how the world survived before do-gooders were given the power to regulate anything and everything. How long will it be before they regulate the content of the books?
The US Congress wastes time determining whether to ban children's books over a non-issue
*** A new end-of-the-World-War-2- history has been purchased by British publisher John Murray, written by Michael Jones. This one will focus on the end in the east and will be published in 2011.
Okay, I'm a sucker for end of the war histories. Indeed, of the two books I am currently writing, one is an end of the war history focusing on the East. But by and large I have a problem with British historians about this period, because they tend to make the American commanders appear to be more idiotic than they really were, and the English less so. (Let's be clear: there were damned few good Allied commanders in either army, at least at the very top.) Since this seems like it will deal with the Wehrmacht and the Red Army, one assumes there will be some objectivity. Let's hope there's no Montgomery worship.
Another new history coming soon
*** The internet has certainly changed things more than we ever expected, hasn't it? This past Christmas I received a query about a book that I was selling, the customer wanted it for her brother as a Christmas present. She was in Boston, no problem, I had the book, all was well. But her family lives here in Memphis! Wow, small world. And she was coming home for Christmas, could I meet her and deliver the book in person so that there was no risk of it being damaged in shipping? Sure, I've done that a few times. I gave her my phone number to call when she hit town.
Well, when she called to make arrangements, it turned out that we were both, independently, headed for exactly the same food store at exactly the same time. Can you say 'synchronicity?' I met her there, delivered the book, and discovered a new and wonderful website that she recommended (because she works there), one devoted to regional histories, one I had never noticed but instantly fell in love with.
The History Press
Let's face it, if you can't find something here then you aren't trying. And, what's more, there is even a book signing event that I can promote right here and now for one of their titles. John Elkington is signing a history of the rebirth of Beale Street at Davis Kidd this coming Tuesday at 7 pm. As Memphians know, Elkington was in on this from the beginning, long before anyone even remembered that Memphis had a downtown, much less than it could be a tourist destination.
John Elkington signing info
I feel pretty certain that you can find something at History Press for your area and interest. It's one of those sites you bookmark for future reference as the perfect place to find unusual gifts.
*** The lunacy of banning children's books as dangerous lurches forward as the US Congress wastes its time on non-issues and allows the important stuff to lie fallow. Seriously, think about this. In an age where we are doing everything we can to encourage kids to read more, the US Congress wants to ban children's books because of their possible lead content! What? Is this some bad joke? Can this even be real?
Unfortunately, it can be and it is. You have to wonder how the world survived before do-gooders were given the power to regulate anything and everything. How long will it be before they regulate the content of the books?
The US Congress wastes time determining whether to ban children's books over a non-issue
*** A new end-of-the-World-War-2- history has been purchased by British publisher John Murray, written by Michael Jones. This one will focus on the end in the east and will be published in 2011.
Okay, I'm a sucker for end of the war histories. Indeed, of the two books I am currently writing, one is an end of the war history focusing on the East. But by and large I have a problem with British historians about this period, because they tend to make the American commanders appear to be more idiotic than they really were, and the English less so. (Let's be clear: there were damned few good Allied commanders in either army, at least at the very top.) Since this seems like it will deal with the Wehrmacht and the Red Army, one assumes there will be some objectivity. Let's hope there's no Montgomery worship.
Another new history coming soon
*** The internet has certainly changed things more than we ever expected, hasn't it? This past Christmas I received a query about a book that I was selling, the customer wanted it for her brother as a Christmas present. She was in Boston, no problem, I had the book, all was well. But her family lives here in Memphis! Wow, small world. And she was coming home for Christmas, could I meet her and deliver the book in person so that there was no risk of it being damaged in shipping? Sure, I've done that a few times. I gave her my phone number to call when she hit town.
Well, when she called to make arrangements, it turned out that we were both, independently, headed for exactly the same food store at exactly the same time. Can you say 'synchronicity?' I met her there, delivered the book, and discovered a new and wonderful website that she recommended (because she works there), one devoted to regional histories, one I had never noticed but instantly fell in love with.
The History Press
Let's face it, if you can't find something here then you aren't trying. And, what's more, there is even a book signing event that I can promote right here and now for one of their titles. John Elkington is signing a history of the rebirth of Beale Street at Davis Kidd this coming Tuesday at 7 pm. As Memphians know, Elkington was in on this from the beginning, long before anyone even remembered that Memphis had a downtown, much less than it could be a tourist destination.
John Elkington signing info
I feel pretty certain that you can find something at History Press for your area and interest. It's one of those sites you bookmark for future reference as the perfect place to find unusual gifts.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Cons, cons and John Donohoe
Good morning bookies! Stand by for news and comment.
First of all, a big hello to the latest subscriber. I'll do my best to keep you entertained and informed.
*** I haven't mentioned Ebay for a while, despite a plethora of news about that failing company. As of this writing the stock is trading around $11.65. It's 52 wk high is about $34. In other words, the stock has lost 2/3 of its value.
Now, John Donohoe can spin that any way he wants, he can blame the economy, he can blame the site itself, but the stock market has NOT lost 2/3 of its value in the last year. Ebay should be gaining strength in a bad economy as people sell stuff to makes ends meet, but instead it is sinking into the west. As in turns out Donohoe's strategy of insulting loyal customers and overcharging the ones who stay did not result in more people using the site. Who'd a thunk it?
Anyway, I'll post some nice general analysis articles as they appear, but none right now. Most of them are from financial talking heads who haven't really got a clue what's going on with ebay, but are reading press reports and financial statements, as if that says what people will do in the future. Ebay's problem is really very simple: the site thought that it could abuse its best customers and found out that it couldn't.
Okay, okay, I'll post ONE informed article from the financial sector. This one is from the Motley Fool, who have consistently shown a better understanding of the forces at work in ebay's demise.
What's that smell, ebay?
*** Live in Florida and love mysteries? If so, do yourself a favor and check out Mystery Florida in Sarasota, June of this year. Looks like great fun, some A-list authors are already on board, even your friendly neighborhood bookseller would like to be there for this one, if he did not already have a commitment for that time.
http://mysteryflorida.com/
Having attended a great number of cons in my life, I can tell you that if you've never been to one you don't know what you're missing. Very often you can sit with a favorite author and just shoot the breeze for hours on end, preferably over drinks in a bar. This would be an excellent in-country vacation for those living in the southeast.
*** Keeping with the con theme, another really nice looking book festival is the Southern Kentucky Festival of Books in April. Every year I think I would like to go, and every year I cannot, for one reason or another. This year's author lineup is really impressive.
http://www.sokybookfest.org/
*** With brothers like this, who needs enemies? Mark McGwire's younger brother, Jay, is shopping a book about his brother's alleged steroid use. A 58 page proposal, no less. How hard up for money is this guy, anyway? Jeez. Supposedly he claims that he shot Mark up with the drugs, which, of course, makes him equally liable in terms of criminality. (Not that either would ever be prosecuted.)
Jay McGwire willing to betray his brother for the right price
First of all, a big hello to the latest subscriber. I'll do my best to keep you entertained and informed.
*** I haven't mentioned Ebay for a while, despite a plethora of news about that failing company. As of this writing the stock is trading around $11.65. It's 52 wk high is about $34. In other words, the stock has lost 2/3 of its value.
Now, John Donohoe can spin that any way he wants, he can blame the economy, he can blame the site itself, but the stock market has NOT lost 2/3 of its value in the last year. Ebay should be gaining strength in a bad economy as people sell stuff to makes ends meet, but instead it is sinking into the west. As in turns out Donohoe's strategy of insulting loyal customers and overcharging the ones who stay did not result in more people using the site. Who'd a thunk it?
Anyway, I'll post some nice general analysis articles as they appear, but none right now. Most of them are from financial talking heads who haven't really got a clue what's going on with ebay, but are reading press reports and financial statements, as if that says what people will do in the future. Ebay's problem is really very simple: the site thought that it could abuse its best customers and found out that it couldn't.
Okay, okay, I'll post ONE informed article from the financial sector. This one is from the Motley Fool, who have consistently shown a better understanding of the forces at work in ebay's demise.
What's that smell, ebay?
*** Live in Florida and love mysteries? If so, do yourself a favor and check out Mystery Florida in Sarasota, June of this year. Looks like great fun, some A-list authors are already on board, even your friendly neighborhood bookseller would like to be there for this one, if he did not already have a commitment for that time.
http://mysteryflorida.com/
Having attended a great number of cons in my life, I can tell you that if you've never been to one you don't know what you're missing. Very often you can sit with a favorite author and just shoot the breeze for hours on end, preferably over drinks in a bar. This would be an excellent in-country vacation for those living in the southeast.
*** Keeping with the con theme, another really nice looking book festival is the Southern Kentucky Festival of Books in April. Every year I think I would like to go, and every year I cannot, for one reason or another. This year's author lineup is really impressive.
http://www.sokybookfest.org/
*** With brothers like this, who needs enemies? Mark McGwire's younger brother, Jay, is shopping a book about his brother's alleged steroid use. A 58 page proposal, no less. How hard up for money is this guy, anyway? Jeez. Supposedly he claims that he shot Mark up with the drugs, which, of course, makes him equally liable in terms of criminality. (Not that either would ever be prosecuted.)
Jay McGwire willing to betray his brother for the right price
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Rumors, interviews and a death sentence
Good morning bookies! Stand by for news and comment.
First, thank you to all who read yesterday's Top 10 list for 2008. That blog set a record for visitors and I like to think that at least some of them weren't ranting about what I got wrong. It's gratifying to do this and to think someone out there actually enjoys reading it. And now, speaking of reading-
***-Larry McMurtry is not what you would call shy with his opinions and, while I have never had the pleasure of meeting him, I can certainly agree with much of what the says. But I pray that he's wrong in this linked article, in which he predicts the demise of reading by children. And while I understand his point I am encouraged by those rare moments when I attend an event with a children's author, such as T.A. Barron at Southern Festival of Books three years ago, where literally hundreds of kids show up to get their books signed.
Larry McMurtry gives a short, rare interview
*** World War II books remain as popular as ever, as noted by the forthcoming publication of Outbreak by London's Imperial War Museum senior historian Terry Chapman. It centers on the months preceding and just after the coming of war to Britain in 1939, and seems to be something of an oral history. Should be interesting, as my reading indicates most British knew war was coming and were resigned to it.
A new World War II history coming soon
*** Rumors are afoot that BookExpo Canada will be cancelled this year due to the economy. Not that I was going but it seems a shame if this happens.
*** So, I thought that I was fairly well in the loop regarding mystery authors. I mean, I read a lot of crime titles, I write a pretty decent number of reviews, I read blogs, forums, etc. And yet with the publication of this year's Edgar nominees list I realized that I have never even heard of some of these writers. How can that be? Well, for one thing, it shows that for all the doom and gloom about economics and book sales, there are still a lot of books being published. In fact, what I think is happening is that many borderline hack writers-bestsellers, who never were good enough to sell at the top of the bestseller lists but somehow got there anyway, those writers have lost their audience as the casual reader stops buying their books, leaving only the more serious readers who demand a better product.
This is just opinion, of course, just a feeling based on being around a lot of material on crime fiction. But let's face it, there are some very bad writers out there who have sold a LOT of very bad books, and the publishing houses have come to depend on those sales. Does anybody read a new Patricia Cornwell novel and then think 'wow, that was $27.95 well spent!' Probably so. But probably not many. Most probably think 'my God, I spent $27.95 for that crap?'
Edgar is back!
*** Remember the fake Holocaust book I blogged about a while back? Well, Oprah has an opinion about that. However, since this is an Oprah-free blog, I cannot tell you what it is.
*** It has now been 20 years since Salman Rushdie was condemned to death for The Satanic Verses. Not being dead yet, he has given some interviews on the subject which indicate that he has mixed feelings about the whole thing. I can see that. Having people declare you a legitimate target for execution isn't necessarily a good thing, but it is one heck of a marketing tool.
First, thank you to all who read yesterday's Top 10 list for 2008. That blog set a record for visitors and I like to think that at least some of them weren't ranting about what I got wrong. It's gratifying to do this and to think someone out there actually enjoys reading it. And now, speaking of reading-
***-Larry McMurtry is not what you would call shy with his opinions and, while I have never had the pleasure of meeting him, I can certainly agree with much of what the says. But I pray that he's wrong in this linked article, in which he predicts the demise of reading by children. And while I understand his point I am encouraged by those rare moments when I attend an event with a children's author, such as T.A. Barron at Southern Festival of Books three years ago, where literally hundreds of kids show up to get their books signed.
Larry McMurtry gives a short, rare interview
*** World War II books remain as popular as ever, as noted by the forthcoming publication of Outbreak by London's Imperial War Museum senior historian Terry Chapman. It centers on the months preceding and just after the coming of war to Britain in 1939, and seems to be something of an oral history. Should be interesting, as my reading indicates most British knew war was coming and were resigned to it.
A new World War II history coming soon
*** Rumors are afoot that BookExpo Canada will be cancelled this year due to the economy. Not that I was going but it seems a shame if this happens.
*** So, I thought that I was fairly well in the loop regarding mystery authors. I mean, I read a lot of crime titles, I write a pretty decent number of reviews, I read blogs, forums, etc. And yet with the publication of this year's Edgar nominees list I realized that I have never even heard of some of these writers. How can that be? Well, for one thing, it shows that for all the doom and gloom about economics and book sales, there are still a lot of books being published. In fact, what I think is happening is that many borderline hack writers-bestsellers, who never were good enough to sell at the top of the bestseller lists but somehow got there anyway, those writers have lost their audience as the casual reader stops buying their books, leaving only the more serious readers who demand a better product.
This is just opinion, of course, just a feeling based on being around a lot of material on crime fiction. But let's face it, there are some very bad writers out there who have sold a LOT of very bad books, and the publishing houses have come to depend on those sales. Does anybody read a new Patricia Cornwell novel and then think 'wow, that was $27.95 well spent!' Probably so. But probably not many. Most probably think 'my God, I spent $27.95 for that crap?'
Edgar is back!
*** Remember the fake Holocaust book I blogged about a while back? Well, Oprah has an opinion about that. However, since this is an Oprah-free blog, I cannot tell you what it is.
*** It has now been 20 years since Salman Rushdie was condemned to death for The Satanic Verses. Not being dead yet, he has given some interviews on the subject which indicate that he has mixed feelings about the whole thing. I can see that. Having people declare you a legitimate target for execution isn't necessarily a good thing, but it is one heck of a marketing tool.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
2008 Top Ten
Good morning bookies!
Something a little different today. Everybody else does Top 10 lists, so here's mine. It's not genre specific, it's just the 10 best books that I read last year. And no, The Secret Speech doesn't count, I finished it January 1. These are in no particular order, by the way.
Pavel and I by Dan Valeta. Here's the review that I wrote for ILAM: "There seems to be a growing sub-genre, or perhaps even a sub-sub-genre, of noir mysteries set in post-war European capitals. Graham Greene’s ‘The Third Man’ used Vienna as a character as much as it did Harry Lime, Elizabeth Wilson’s ‘The Twilight Hour’ could not happen anywhere except 1947 London, and now Berlin is the setting for its second stylish thriller in as many years, with Dan Vyleta’s ‘Pavel and I’ following Pierre Frei’s brilliant ‘Berlin.’ And really, the allure is obvious. Devastation, desperation, degradation, ingredients just asking for a story to be woven around the rotting corpse of a continent laid waste. A place alive with crime and only because of crime, where anything is possible, perhaps even probable.
‘Pavel and I’ is set in very late 1946 and early 1947 in the one capital more devastated any other, the capital of The Third Reich, Berlin. Life is cheap, sex is cheap, food is expensive, cigarettes are money. Living in a battered flat is Pavel Richter, a former American GI with a shady past, suffering from kidney disease and writing poetry. What is he doing there? Why is a GI slumming in the British sector of a city struggling to come back from the dead? Don’t expect an answer.
Do expect a cast of equally damaged characters weaving through the narrative in ways you will not expect. A boy shows up, Anders, a 12 year old trying to survive in a pack of other children who rob and cheat to eat. Pavel reads to him and the boy likes it. There is Sonia, a piano playing whore who lives on the floor above and is mixed up in spying and intrigue, a virtual slave to the grossly obese British Colonel Fosko. There is General Karpov, the suave, cold Russian who wants to know what Pavel knows. And there is the dead midget, brought to Pavel’s apartment by a soon to be dead friend, whose tiny body is on everyone’s mind. And there is the narrator, a torturer and executioner, who tells the story from the disconcerting viewpoint of First Person Omniscient.
If ‘Pavel and I’ is ever made into a film it should be shot in black and white. There is no color here, no joy, just shades of gray. There are no heroes, not even many likeable characters. But there is fascination and there is talent to spare. A tremendous first novel that will gather accolades like shards of broken glass littering the once-fashionable Kurfurstendamm. ‘Pavel and I’ is not to be missed. A-." Let me just add that this was a very original, partly unsatisfying but overall fabulous book.
Hell's Bay by James W. Hall. Just Jim is an old favorite of mine and this was no exception. My review for ILAM read "Nice guys don’t just finish last, their friends and lovers often wind up dead. That’s reality in the world of Thorn, James W. Hall’s loyal, loner nice-guy fishing guide, who nobody in their right mind would want to stand anywhere near.
‘Hell’s Bay’ is the 10th installment in what is fast becoming the defining series for modern Florida crime fiction. Such a discussion invariably dredges up comparisons to John D. MacDonald’s seminal hero, Travis McGee, but while Hall may have drawn inspiration from his predecessor, in truth he may one day surpass him in the canons of crime fiction. Indeed, it might already be the case. The man with one name, Thorn, with no past after his parents died in a car wreck on the way home from the hospital with their baby boy, an aging beach bum fisherman who knows South Florida like the wrinkles of his own palm and can barely afford to buy himself a beer, this unlikely character has evolved into a metaphor for Florida itself: beaten, battered and badly used, but still alive and still fighting back.
‘Hell’s Bay’ finds Thorn hiding from the world. He has lost yet another love, yet another quirky friend is dead because of Thorn, it just seems better to hide and do what he does best, sit on his porch overlooking the Atlantic and tie fishing flies. Indeed, it has become something of a running joke with Thorn’s (remaining) friends that it’s not healthy to be anywhere near him. The guilt weighs heavily on his soul.
An old flame, however, wants him to get out again, come back to life. Ridge, the only female fishing guide on that stretch of coast, has a dream to build a luxury pontoon boat that would take vacationers deep into some unknown lakes hidden in the Everglades. She has commissioned an aerial map of the area that has never been compiled before and if she is right, there are unfished lakes just waiting to be explored. It’s a lure that not even Thorn can resist. He signs on as first mate is excited again for the first time in a long time. Naturally, this is a very bad idea.
The first passengers are...let’s say people Thorn never knew existed, much less expected to meet. From the very beginning there are ominous signs that this trip isn’t going to be a joy-ride.
The recipe for one classic thriller contains the following ingredients: Four passengers, Thorn and Ridge as crew, two assassins, one dead old lady, Thorn’s best friend Sugarman investigating her drowning, a black, female sheriff of questionable motives, more Machiavellian twists than even Machiavelli could have dreamed up and, most importantly, one absolutely brilliant writer to bring it all together. It’s a typical Thorn novel.
Hall began life as a poet and it has long since blended seamlessly into his work. But unlike other, unnamed southern writers whose prose is beautiful but who write the same book over and over, Hall seems obsessed with re-inventing this character with each book. And be warned, reader: this is the book where you learn everything about Thorn that you ever wanted to know. Miss it at your own peril. The same advice holds true if you have never picked up a Hall book before, because, in truth, there simply isn’t anybody out there who does it better than James W. Hall. Maybe you could argue there are others as good, but there is nobody better. ‘Hell’s Bay’ simply reinforces what his fans already knew. A." Maybe his best, maybe not. Blackwater Sound may stand as his opus.
Black Widow by Randy Wayne White. It's Doc Ford, what more do you need? Again, from my ILAM review: "Doc Ford is fretting, something he never expected. He has resigned from his old job as an operative for a shadowy government agency that often wound up killing bad people and is now working for the bureaucratic CIA. The tidy marine biologist had thought this would be better, only to find that it’s not. Thus the fretting. But for the moment there’s no time for that.
Doc’s goddaughter, Shay, is getting married soon. And before the happy day she and her bridesmaids take one last trip to the Caribbean to party, a girl’s weekend before the commitments of marriage would make such a thing impractical. Only it didn’t work out the way it was planned. Some local boys happened by, the girls had a few drinks with them and the next thing you know, all sorts of embarrassing things happened. Things they would not want their men to discover. Things that wound up on video tape, with bad people asking for blackmail money. Enter Doc.
When people in his life are threatened, Doc Ford knows how to deal with those doing the threatening. Traveling to the island to investigate, Doc finds things are far more complicated than he had ever imagined. He finds a British senior citizen secret agent who could double for James Bond in a pinch, a valuable, entertaining and resourceful ally. There is a witch who runs the island and whose connections are far different than any might have imagined. Lush vegetation, deadly Mastiffs roaming cliffsides covered with orchids and massages guaranteed to make sex the first and only thing on your mind.
As in the best of the series, Doc has to unravel a mystery that is not what it seems at first, and along the way he and we learn much about him and his world. And when he learns that Tomlinson (explaining close friend Tomlinson would take a page in itself) might be right and that he can communicate with whales, it’s not the sort of leap of logic Doc Ford likes to make.
Black Widow is terrific. Most of the books in this series are, of course, with some better than others. But this 15th entry has an easy feel that allows Ford to understand himself more than ever, to figure out his place in the universe, which is not something he does naturally. If you’re a fan, you’ll enjoy it like you have all the rest. If you are just now discovering the pleasures of reading Randy Wayne White, you are to be envied. A-." Nothing to add.
Under Vesuvius SPQR XI by John Maddox Roberts. My review at ILAM is still up, no need to repeat it here. Suffice to say that I love this series. Not only is it accurate, it's also very funny in a cynical, Roman sort of way.
When the Devil Dances by John Ringo. For the sake of accuracy, I'm combining this with Hell's Faire as one book, since that's the way it was written. The third and fourth entries in Ringo's massively entertaining series about a race of carnivorous centaurs invading the Earth. My comments on both books in my journal: "Third in the series about the Galactic War that has brought the ravening hordes of lizard like centaurs called Posleen to Earth. A bit long in spots, with a big cast and lots of familiar faces from the first two books. But fun, fun, fun and a direct lead in to the follow-up, Hell’s Faire. For aliens-on-the-march lovers, this is a must. A-." And for Hell's Faire "The second half of the book that was supposed to be ‘When The Devil Dances’, before 9-11 happened. The Posleen and slogging through the passes of North Carolina and Georgia trying to penetrate to the plains beyond and finally kill the USA once and for all. The President gives the go-ahead to use nukes, the ACS are fighting to the death, Bun-Bun is back in action...great fun, again, compulsively readable. A-."
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith. And, just so you know, yes, I have read the sequel, The Secret Speech, no, I won't give a review here as it will be forthcoming in a later issue of ILAM, but I will say this much: it's at least as good if not better, but also different. From my ILAM review of Child 44: " There is no crime. Not in Stalin’s USSR of 1953. The Soviet society is so perfect, so ideal, that there is no reason for crime and therefore it follows that crime does not exist. Which makes it very hard to catch criminals.
Leo Demidov is an officer of the MGB, the State Security Police, a prestigious job that requires him to hunt down and arrest traitors and spies. And while there might not be crime in the Soviet Union, there are lots and lots of traitors to the Revolution. They can be anyone, anywhere, and treason may be nothing more than a momentary lapse in revolutionary zeal, a thought, a doubt, that betrays independent thought that works against the common good. Protecting the state from such deadly internal enemies is Leo’s job, and Leo is very, very good at his job. Too good, as it turns out.
Two vignettes, seemingly unrelated to the following plot, should not be ignored. A boy disappears in the forest while chasing a cat during the years of collectivization, when millions of Russian citizens were intentionally starved to death. The cat isn’t his pet, it’s to be his dinner. Later, in Moscow, two brothers have a snowball fight that turns ugly.
Like all truly great thrillers, the place and time are as much a character as Leo, or his wife Raisa, or his commander. The paranoia of the times pervades all. A mis-spoken word isn’t necessary to condemn a person; a glance at the wrong moment at the wrong person is plenty to bring a death sentence. Life is lived knowing that no one has rights and at any moment a sinister knock may bring twenty years in the gulag. There is no color here, only gray, bleak and cheerless.
And the criminal that does not exist, the one Leo becomes obsessed with catching, is a serial killer of children. Unless this man is a spy, or perhaps unbalanced or homosexual and therefore outside the norms of Soviet society, unless there is a reason for his actions, then having a criminal in their midst contravenes the rules of the state. In turn, that means the state can be wrong, which is not possible. So it must be subversion.
Child 44 is a riveting story in itself, but it is also a story that teaches while keeping the reader glued to their seat. There is very little dialogue here, and at first it can be annoying. But as the pages turn the reader realizes that in Soviet Russian the spoken word was precious, people never spoke their mind and so speech was innocuous, meaningless. What dialogue there is becomes special, cherished. A neat trick by a new author, from whom one can only expect great things. A."
In the Woods by Tana French. Utterly stunning book. Here' swhat I said about it: "Warning: Readers wanting a fun, fast beach read, something light-hearted that can be put down and picked up in between drinks with little umbrellas in them, should avoid In the Woods like a nude beach infested with sand fleas. On the other hand, readers wanting something highly intelligent, demanding of attention and slightly toxic, should carve out whatever time it takes to read this book.
Adam Ryan was 12 when he and best friends Peter and Jamie all went into the woods of Knocknaree for a typical day of summer play. Adam was found later, clinging to a tree with his shoes filled with blood; Peter and Jamie were never found. He remembered nothing.
20 years later, Robert Ryan is a detective in the Murder Squad of the Irish police, operating out of Dublin Castle. He and partner Cassie Maddox are horsing around in the station one day when a call comes in that a body was found. In Knocknaree. In The Woods. Sure, they’ll take the case, Cassie says. Why not? Why not, indeed.
Knocknaree itself is really little more than a small subdivision near Dublin, a place with grand pretensions that somehow never came true. And just outside the estate is a grandly important historical site, with ruins dating back to at least the druids, a place that could, perhaps, rival Stonehenge in importance. There’s a small castle, too. And, of course, The Woods. The big problem with all of this glorious history is that a highway is being built right over that spot. It is suspected that palms have been greased to run the highway through that small patch of land to make a few people rich, but finding facts and evidence isn’t going to be easy. And the government’s answer is predictable: can’t be moved, sorry, it’s our only choice, bit of a shame but what can you do?
You can fight it, that’s what. Which is exactly what Jonathan Devlin is doing. He’s organizing protests and filing injunctions and doing everything he can to move the roadway. That is, until the body turns up on the site, on an ancient sacrificial stone, the body of his 12 year old daughter Katy. The murder that Adam (now Robert) Ryan is sent to investigate.
He knows he should tell his boss that the missing boy from 20 years ago is the one investigating the new case. He should because there is no way it will stay hidden. But if he does, there is no way he will stay on the case, which may well be tied to the disappearance of his best friends. What’s a man to do? Lie, of course.
This is not a book about murder, per se. This is a pscyhological thriller, meant to tease and tempt you down the wrong path on every page, to make you believe what you want and then show how you went wrong. It does this very, very well.
In the Woods is an intelligent book. It demands your attention because, from page one, the author exhibits a considerable intelligence and story-telling ability that is impressive, if not a bit intimidating. Believe nothing or believe anything, in the end it won’t matter. This is not a perfect novel, far from it, but this is a great novel. The different is that when Rob takes a turn that seems forced by the author to advance the plot, which he does, the reader realizes that to that point the author has been so spot on with everything she has done, that this must be what really happened. It’s willing suspension of disbelief in spades. It’s rare, but it’s In the Woods. A+.
The Likeness by Tana French. The best book that I read last year. The review is at ILAM I still haven't stopped thinking about this one. A++.
Blood Alone by James R. Benn. Review at ILAM, but the third Billy Boyle novel is the best yet. WW2, the mafia, Germans, it's great fun.
Dirty Money by Richard Stark. Presumably the last Parker novel. If so, then Donald Westlake went out on a high note. The direct sequel to Nobody Runs Forever is outstanding.
That's it folks. Anybody care to post their best reads?
Something a little different today. Everybody else does Top 10 lists, so here's mine. It's not genre specific, it's just the 10 best books that I read last year. And no, The Secret Speech doesn't count, I finished it January 1. These are in no particular order, by the way.
Pavel and I by Dan Valeta. Here's the review that I wrote for ILAM: "There seems to be a growing sub-genre, or perhaps even a sub-sub-genre, of noir mysteries set in post-war European capitals. Graham Greene’s ‘The Third Man’ used Vienna as a character as much as it did Harry Lime, Elizabeth Wilson’s ‘The Twilight Hour’ could not happen anywhere except 1947 London, and now Berlin is the setting for its second stylish thriller in as many years, with Dan Vyleta’s ‘Pavel and I’ following Pierre Frei’s brilliant ‘Berlin.’ And really, the allure is obvious. Devastation, desperation, degradation, ingredients just asking for a story to be woven around the rotting corpse of a continent laid waste. A place alive with crime and only because of crime, where anything is possible, perhaps even probable.
‘Pavel and I’ is set in very late 1946 and early 1947 in the one capital more devastated any other, the capital of The Third Reich, Berlin. Life is cheap, sex is cheap, food is expensive, cigarettes are money. Living in a battered flat is Pavel Richter, a former American GI with a shady past, suffering from kidney disease and writing poetry. What is he doing there? Why is a GI slumming in the British sector of a city struggling to come back from the dead? Don’t expect an answer.
Do expect a cast of equally damaged characters weaving through the narrative in ways you will not expect. A boy shows up, Anders, a 12 year old trying to survive in a pack of other children who rob and cheat to eat. Pavel reads to him and the boy likes it. There is Sonia, a piano playing whore who lives on the floor above and is mixed up in spying and intrigue, a virtual slave to the grossly obese British Colonel Fosko. There is General Karpov, the suave, cold Russian who wants to know what Pavel knows. And there is the dead midget, brought to Pavel’s apartment by a soon to be dead friend, whose tiny body is on everyone’s mind. And there is the narrator, a torturer and executioner, who tells the story from the disconcerting viewpoint of First Person Omniscient.
If ‘Pavel and I’ is ever made into a film it should be shot in black and white. There is no color here, no joy, just shades of gray. There are no heroes, not even many likeable characters. But there is fascination and there is talent to spare. A tremendous first novel that will gather accolades like shards of broken glass littering the once-fashionable Kurfurstendamm. ‘Pavel and I’ is not to be missed. A-." Let me just add that this was a very original, partly unsatisfying but overall fabulous book.
Hell's Bay by James W. Hall. Just Jim is an old favorite of mine and this was no exception. My review for ILAM read "Nice guys don’t just finish last, their friends and lovers often wind up dead. That’s reality in the world of Thorn, James W. Hall’s loyal, loner nice-guy fishing guide, who nobody in their right mind would want to stand anywhere near.
‘Hell’s Bay’ is the 10th installment in what is fast becoming the defining series for modern Florida crime fiction. Such a discussion invariably dredges up comparisons to John D. MacDonald’s seminal hero, Travis McGee, but while Hall may have drawn inspiration from his predecessor, in truth he may one day surpass him in the canons of crime fiction. Indeed, it might already be the case. The man with one name, Thorn, with no past after his parents died in a car wreck on the way home from the hospital with their baby boy, an aging beach bum fisherman who knows South Florida like the wrinkles of his own palm and can barely afford to buy himself a beer, this unlikely character has evolved into a metaphor for Florida itself: beaten, battered and badly used, but still alive and still fighting back.
‘Hell’s Bay’ finds Thorn hiding from the world. He has lost yet another love, yet another quirky friend is dead because of Thorn, it just seems better to hide and do what he does best, sit on his porch overlooking the Atlantic and tie fishing flies. Indeed, it has become something of a running joke with Thorn’s (remaining) friends that it’s not healthy to be anywhere near him. The guilt weighs heavily on his soul.
An old flame, however, wants him to get out again, come back to life. Ridge, the only female fishing guide on that stretch of coast, has a dream to build a luxury pontoon boat that would take vacationers deep into some unknown lakes hidden in the Everglades. She has commissioned an aerial map of the area that has never been compiled before and if she is right, there are unfished lakes just waiting to be explored. It’s a lure that not even Thorn can resist. He signs on as first mate is excited again for the first time in a long time. Naturally, this is a very bad idea.
The first passengers are...let’s say people Thorn never knew existed, much less expected to meet. From the very beginning there are ominous signs that this trip isn’t going to be a joy-ride.
The recipe for one classic thriller contains the following ingredients: Four passengers, Thorn and Ridge as crew, two assassins, one dead old lady, Thorn’s best friend Sugarman investigating her drowning, a black, female sheriff of questionable motives, more Machiavellian twists than even Machiavelli could have dreamed up and, most importantly, one absolutely brilliant writer to bring it all together. It’s a typical Thorn novel.
Hall began life as a poet and it has long since blended seamlessly into his work. But unlike other, unnamed southern writers whose prose is beautiful but who write the same book over and over, Hall seems obsessed with re-inventing this character with each book. And be warned, reader: this is the book where you learn everything about Thorn that you ever wanted to know. Miss it at your own peril. The same advice holds true if you have never picked up a Hall book before, because, in truth, there simply isn’t anybody out there who does it better than James W. Hall. Maybe you could argue there are others as good, but there is nobody better. ‘Hell’s Bay’ simply reinforces what his fans already knew. A." Maybe his best, maybe not. Blackwater Sound may stand as his opus.
Black Widow by Randy Wayne White. It's Doc Ford, what more do you need? Again, from my ILAM review: "Doc Ford is fretting, something he never expected. He has resigned from his old job as an operative for a shadowy government agency that often wound up killing bad people and is now working for the bureaucratic CIA. The tidy marine biologist had thought this would be better, only to find that it’s not. Thus the fretting. But for the moment there’s no time for that.
Doc’s goddaughter, Shay, is getting married soon. And before the happy day she and her bridesmaids take one last trip to the Caribbean to party, a girl’s weekend before the commitments of marriage would make such a thing impractical. Only it didn’t work out the way it was planned. Some local boys happened by, the girls had a few drinks with them and the next thing you know, all sorts of embarrassing things happened. Things they would not want their men to discover. Things that wound up on video tape, with bad people asking for blackmail money. Enter Doc.
When people in his life are threatened, Doc Ford knows how to deal with those doing the threatening. Traveling to the island to investigate, Doc finds things are far more complicated than he had ever imagined. He finds a British senior citizen secret agent who could double for James Bond in a pinch, a valuable, entertaining and resourceful ally. There is a witch who runs the island and whose connections are far different than any might have imagined. Lush vegetation, deadly Mastiffs roaming cliffsides covered with orchids and massages guaranteed to make sex the first and only thing on your mind.
As in the best of the series, Doc has to unravel a mystery that is not what it seems at first, and along the way he and we learn much about him and his world. And when he learns that Tomlinson (explaining close friend Tomlinson would take a page in itself) might be right and that he can communicate with whales, it’s not the sort of leap of logic Doc Ford likes to make.
Black Widow is terrific. Most of the books in this series are, of course, with some better than others. But this 15th entry has an easy feel that allows Ford to understand himself more than ever, to figure out his place in the universe, which is not something he does naturally. If you’re a fan, you’ll enjoy it like you have all the rest. If you are just now discovering the pleasures of reading Randy Wayne White, you are to be envied. A-." Nothing to add.
Under Vesuvius SPQR XI by John Maddox Roberts. My review at ILAM is still up, no need to repeat it here. Suffice to say that I love this series. Not only is it accurate, it's also very funny in a cynical, Roman sort of way.
When the Devil Dances by John Ringo. For the sake of accuracy, I'm combining this with Hell's Faire as one book, since that's the way it was written. The third and fourth entries in Ringo's massively entertaining series about a race of carnivorous centaurs invading the Earth. My comments on both books in my journal: "Third in the series about the Galactic War that has brought the ravening hordes of lizard like centaurs called Posleen to Earth. A bit long in spots, with a big cast and lots of familiar faces from the first two books. But fun, fun, fun and a direct lead in to the follow-up, Hell’s Faire. For aliens-on-the-march lovers, this is a must. A-." And for Hell's Faire "The second half of the book that was supposed to be ‘When The Devil Dances’, before 9-11 happened. The Posleen and slogging through the passes of North Carolina and Georgia trying to penetrate to the plains beyond and finally kill the USA once and for all. The President gives the go-ahead to use nukes, the ACS are fighting to the death, Bun-Bun is back in action...great fun, again, compulsively readable. A-."
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith. And, just so you know, yes, I have read the sequel, The Secret Speech, no, I won't give a review here as it will be forthcoming in a later issue of ILAM, but I will say this much: it's at least as good if not better, but also different. From my ILAM review of Child 44: " There is no crime. Not in Stalin’s USSR of 1953. The Soviet society is so perfect, so ideal, that there is no reason for crime and therefore it follows that crime does not exist. Which makes it very hard to catch criminals.
Leo Demidov is an officer of the MGB, the State Security Police, a prestigious job that requires him to hunt down and arrest traitors and spies. And while there might not be crime in the Soviet Union, there are lots and lots of traitors to the Revolution. They can be anyone, anywhere, and treason may be nothing more than a momentary lapse in revolutionary zeal, a thought, a doubt, that betrays independent thought that works against the common good. Protecting the state from such deadly internal enemies is Leo’s job, and Leo is very, very good at his job. Too good, as it turns out.
Two vignettes, seemingly unrelated to the following plot, should not be ignored. A boy disappears in the forest while chasing a cat during the years of collectivization, when millions of Russian citizens were intentionally starved to death. The cat isn’t his pet, it’s to be his dinner. Later, in Moscow, two brothers have a snowball fight that turns ugly.
Like all truly great thrillers, the place and time are as much a character as Leo, or his wife Raisa, or his commander. The paranoia of the times pervades all. A mis-spoken word isn’t necessary to condemn a person; a glance at the wrong moment at the wrong person is plenty to bring a death sentence. Life is lived knowing that no one has rights and at any moment a sinister knock may bring twenty years in the gulag. There is no color here, only gray, bleak and cheerless.
And the criminal that does not exist, the one Leo becomes obsessed with catching, is a serial killer of children. Unless this man is a spy, or perhaps unbalanced or homosexual and therefore outside the norms of Soviet society, unless there is a reason for his actions, then having a criminal in their midst contravenes the rules of the state. In turn, that means the state can be wrong, which is not possible. So it must be subversion.
Child 44 is a riveting story in itself, but it is also a story that teaches while keeping the reader glued to their seat. There is very little dialogue here, and at first it can be annoying. But as the pages turn the reader realizes that in Soviet Russian the spoken word was precious, people never spoke their mind and so speech was innocuous, meaningless. What dialogue there is becomes special, cherished. A neat trick by a new author, from whom one can only expect great things. A."
In the Woods by Tana French. Utterly stunning book. Here' swhat I said about it: "Warning: Readers wanting a fun, fast beach read, something light-hearted that can be put down and picked up in between drinks with little umbrellas in them, should avoid In the Woods like a nude beach infested with sand fleas. On the other hand, readers wanting something highly intelligent, demanding of attention and slightly toxic, should carve out whatever time it takes to read this book.
Adam Ryan was 12 when he and best friends Peter and Jamie all went into the woods of Knocknaree for a typical day of summer play. Adam was found later, clinging to a tree with his shoes filled with blood; Peter and Jamie were never found. He remembered nothing.
20 years later, Robert Ryan is a detective in the Murder Squad of the Irish police, operating out of Dublin Castle. He and partner Cassie Maddox are horsing around in the station one day when a call comes in that a body was found. In Knocknaree. In The Woods. Sure, they’ll take the case, Cassie says. Why not? Why not, indeed.
Knocknaree itself is really little more than a small subdivision near Dublin, a place with grand pretensions that somehow never came true. And just outside the estate is a grandly important historical site, with ruins dating back to at least the druids, a place that could, perhaps, rival Stonehenge in importance. There’s a small castle, too. And, of course, The Woods. The big problem with all of this glorious history is that a highway is being built right over that spot. It is suspected that palms have been greased to run the highway through that small patch of land to make a few people rich, but finding facts and evidence isn’t going to be easy. And the government’s answer is predictable: can’t be moved, sorry, it’s our only choice, bit of a shame but what can you do?
You can fight it, that’s what. Which is exactly what Jonathan Devlin is doing. He’s organizing protests and filing injunctions and doing everything he can to move the roadway. That is, until the body turns up on the site, on an ancient sacrificial stone, the body of his 12 year old daughter Katy. The murder that Adam (now Robert) Ryan is sent to investigate.
He knows he should tell his boss that the missing boy from 20 years ago is the one investigating the new case. He should because there is no way it will stay hidden. But if he does, there is no way he will stay on the case, which may well be tied to the disappearance of his best friends. What’s a man to do? Lie, of course.
This is not a book about murder, per se. This is a pscyhological thriller, meant to tease and tempt you down the wrong path on every page, to make you believe what you want and then show how you went wrong. It does this very, very well.
In the Woods is an intelligent book. It demands your attention because, from page one, the author exhibits a considerable intelligence and story-telling ability that is impressive, if not a bit intimidating. Believe nothing or believe anything, in the end it won’t matter. This is not a perfect novel, far from it, but this is a great novel. The different is that when Rob takes a turn that seems forced by the author to advance the plot, which he does, the reader realizes that to that point the author has been so spot on with everything she has done, that this must be what really happened. It’s willing suspension of disbelief in spades. It’s rare, but it’s In the Woods. A+.
The Likeness by Tana French. The best book that I read last year. The review is at ILAM I still haven't stopped thinking about this one. A++.
Blood Alone by James R. Benn. Review at ILAM, but the third Billy Boyle novel is the best yet. WW2, the mafia, Germans, it's great fun.
Dirty Money by Richard Stark. Presumably the last Parker novel. If so, then Donald Westlake went out on a high note. The direct sequel to Nobody Runs Forever is outstanding.
That's it folks. Anybody care to post their best reads?
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Splice and Rice
Good morning bookies! Stand by for news and comment.
*** Forensic bookology. That's the field for me. Books and archeology, how much better can it get?
Books written in the days before the printing press have always presented problems when trying to determine who wrote them and when, much less the where. But it seems that science is on the case, using advances in genetic technology to figure out where the parchment most were written on came from. Just slice and splice. It's pretty fascinating. I suspect we will discover that some books are much, much older than we had previously thought.
CSI: Books
*** Condi Rice will soon be out of a job, but I wouldn't start weeping for her just yet. As you might expect, the highest ranking African-American ever in the US government, before next Tuesday, is already negotiating a two book deal, including a memoir of her time in the Bush Administration. No surprise there, most politicians get some sort of book deal, but Rice isn't your average politician. Articulate, highly intelligent and modest (three qualities few politicians have or want), she was a pathfinder and will no doubt have much to say and the talent to say it well.
Rice signing up to write at least two books
*** Forensic bookology. That's the field for me. Books and archeology, how much better can it get?
Books written in the days before the printing press have always presented problems when trying to determine who wrote them and when, much less the where. But it seems that science is on the case, using advances in genetic technology to figure out where the parchment most were written on came from. Just slice and splice. It's pretty fascinating. I suspect we will discover that some books are much, much older than we had previously thought.
CSI: Books
*** Condi Rice will soon be out of a job, but I wouldn't start weeping for her just yet. As you might expect, the highest ranking African-American ever in the US government, before next Tuesday, is already negotiating a two book deal, including a memoir of her time in the Bush Administration. No surprise there, most politicians get some sort of book deal, but Rice isn't your average politician. Articulate, highly intelligent and modest (three qualities few politicians have or want), she was a pathfinder and will no doubt have much to say and the talent to say it well.
Rice signing up to write at least two books
Friday, January 16, 2009
This, that, the other and more
Good morning bookies! Stand by for news and comment.
When I said I might miss a few blogs this week, I didn't think it would mean the whole week. Sorry about that. I was in Arlington, VA., for the funeral of my uncle, a most solemn and moving experience. It's hard to express how you feel when you realize that someone you thought of as merely 'uncle so and so', a nice man who was there your whole life wearing his cherished but heavily worn jacket, his baggy pants, paying you to wrap his Christmas gifts when you were a kid, growing his own vegetables and pickling them for Christmas gifts, that seemingly ordinary man who was your uncle earned through his career the honor that brought 40-50 men and women of the United States Army to venture out into the January cold for his funeral, people he had never met but who honored him as one of their own. There was a band, an honor guard, a horse-drawn caisson, the riderless horse with the boots backward in the stirrups. There was the shooting guard firing its salute, and an honest-to-goodness bugler to blow Taps. He was buried less than 200 yards from his oldest brother, both in the shadow of the Pentagon. From five brothers born to a middle class family, two are buried at Arlington.
I guess I always knew my uncle was special, just not special in this particular way.
Now I'm back, so let's get to blogging.
*** Okay, someone has my ideal life. Or one of my ideal lives, anyway. Running a bookstore on the high seas. Yep. If we can have a ship that is a floating condo complex, why not one that is a giant bookstore? This is one of the neatest things I've ever seen, I wonder if it could navigate the Mississippi River up to Memphis? I have to assume that the books are all new, unless the public brings in their used books to sell (trade?) while the ship is in port, which would really be kind of neat. The link is to an older story about the ship, there are newer stories but this one had the best pictures.
Floating bookstore
*** During the 60's and 70's there was a flurry of activity surrounding Japanese soldiers who were left behind and forgotten on various islands scattered around the Pacific during World War II, men who didn't know the war had ended and were still fighting (or, mostly hiding from) US forces. I have read the autobiography of one such man, Onoda, who was trapped on a small Phillippine Island until 1974 but who was accused of cowardice on his return to Japan. (The Japanese of the pre-war period weren't big on forgiveness) Now here's the story of another such man who, for some inexplicable reason, lived a similar story but was NOT thought of as a coward on his return to Japan. I think to know the reason one was thought a coward and the other was not, you would need to be Japanese.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/KA17Dh01.html
*** I know, you're going into withdrawal. It's been more than a week without a story bashing ebay. Well, this is a Bonanzle story, not an ebay, exactly. Of course, without ebay's momentous choke job last year there would not BE a Bonanzle, not one growing so fast as the 2009 version, anyway, so the following story from CNN shows just how far the little-site-that-could has come. More than 20,000 members now and you can only think it will grow exponentially from his point.
*** Bonanzle gaining steam and members
*** The demise of the independent bookstore is rather an old story by now, but there is still room to mourn when a good one goes under. I never shopped at Cody's, but it seems like the sort of store that I would have liked. Our local independent small-chain seller, Davis-Kidd books, is terrific, the personnel irreplaceable, but one can only hope they are in this for the long run. Losing them would hurt very badly, so I understand the sense of loss for Cody's loyal customers.
A good one bites the dust
*** There was a time when I took historian David Irving seriously. As did many other people, I might add. He was British, he was a historian, he sounded good and had the right credentials. His opinions were a bit different than most, but so what? Mine are too. Of course, this was before he wound up in jail in Austria for denying the Holocaust. (As an American this seems bizarre, that someone could be thrown in jail for espousing a political view, even one as awful as this. But if I am ever in Austria again, and I hope that I am, you can be sure I won't be denying the Holocaust or Sieg Heil-ing down Kartnerstrasse, even if I were so inclined, which I'm not. I mean, how stupid can you be?)
Anyway, Irving lost pretty much all credibility when he went about saying the Holocaust wasn't real and didn't happen, but this has lead to a most interesting turn: Irving, it seems, was chosen by Hitler himself to be his biographer. Not that the two ever met, of course. Irving spent part of his childhood dodging bombs dropped by the Luftwaffe and was still a child when Hitler ate the end of a Walther. But, no matter. Hitler somehow knew Irving would come along one day and appointed him the task of writing his 'true' biography. How could he know such a thing? don't think about it, you'll get a headache. Instead, read the attached article, it's fascinating and eerie and you'll hope you're never sitting next to Irving on a long plane flight.
David Irving is even stranger than you thought
*** I note that Patrick McGoohan died Tuesday in L.A. 'The Prisoner' was one of those fleeting moments of remembered greatness in one's youth, so transitorily wonderful that you never forget it. During one of my two years at UT Knoxville there was a marathon of 'The Prisoner's' one and only season that I sat through until my backside ached. The series was one of those that was so uniquely English that it could never have been made anywhere else, and efforts to try would have failed miserably.
A legend has passed.
*** Not merely one legend, however. I see where sir John Mortimer has died and this is truly a loss that I will feel. For those who haven't discovered Rumpole of the Bailey, I feel sorry for you. Second only to PG Wodehouse in my estimation of the great 20th century British humorists, Mortimer could seemingly will laughs from even the most dour reader. 'She Who Must Be Obeyed' is something all husbands can relate to and none would admit to doing so. Sigh...
No more Rumpole
When I said I might miss a few blogs this week, I didn't think it would mean the whole week. Sorry about that. I was in Arlington, VA., for the funeral of my uncle, a most solemn and moving experience. It's hard to express how you feel when you realize that someone you thought of as merely 'uncle so and so', a nice man who was there your whole life wearing his cherished but heavily worn jacket, his baggy pants, paying you to wrap his Christmas gifts when you were a kid, growing his own vegetables and pickling them for Christmas gifts, that seemingly ordinary man who was your uncle earned through his career the honor that brought 40-50 men and women of the United States Army to venture out into the January cold for his funeral, people he had never met but who honored him as one of their own. There was a band, an honor guard, a horse-drawn caisson, the riderless horse with the boots backward in the stirrups. There was the shooting guard firing its salute, and an honest-to-goodness bugler to blow Taps. He was buried less than 200 yards from his oldest brother, both in the shadow of the Pentagon. From five brothers born to a middle class family, two are buried at Arlington.
I guess I always knew my uncle was special, just not special in this particular way.
Now I'm back, so let's get to blogging.
*** Okay, someone has my ideal life. Or one of my ideal lives, anyway. Running a bookstore on the high seas. Yep. If we can have a ship that is a floating condo complex, why not one that is a giant bookstore? This is one of the neatest things I've ever seen, I wonder if it could navigate the Mississippi River up to Memphis? I have to assume that the books are all new, unless the public brings in their used books to sell (trade?) while the ship is in port, which would really be kind of neat. The link is to an older story about the ship, there are newer stories but this one had the best pictures.
Floating bookstore
*** During the 60's and 70's there was a flurry of activity surrounding Japanese soldiers who were left behind and forgotten on various islands scattered around the Pacific during World War II, men who didn't know the war had ended and were still fighting (or, mostly hiding from) US forces. I have read the autobiography of one such man, Onoda, who was trapped on a small Phillippine Island until 1974 but who was accused of cowardice on his return to Japan. (The Japanese of the pre-war period weren't big on forgiveness) Now here's the story of another such man who, for some inexplicable reason, lived a similar story but was NOT thought of as a coward on his return to Japan. I think to know the reason one was thought a coward and the other was not, you would need to be Japanese.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/KA17Dh01.html
*** I know, you're going into withdrawal. It's been more than a week without a story bashing ebay. Well, this is a Bonanzle story, not an ebay, exactly. Of course, without ebay's momentous choke job last year there would not BE a Bonanzle, not one growing so fast as the 2009 version, anyway, so the following story from CNN shows just how far the little-site-that-could has come. More than 20,000 members now and you can only think it will grow exponentially from his point.
*** Bonanzle gaining steam and members
*** The demise of the independent bookstore is rather an old story by now, but there is still room to mourn when a good one goes under. I never shopped at Cody's, but it seems like the sort of store that I would have liked. Our local independent small-chain seller, Davis-Kidd books, is terrific, the personnel irreplaceable, but one can only hope they are in this for the long run. Losing them would hurt very badly, so I understand the sense of loss for Cody's loyal customers.
A good one bites the dust
*** There was a time when I took historian David Irving seriously. As did many other people, I might add. He was British, he was a historian, he sounded good and had the right credentials. His opinions were a bit different than most, but so what? Mine are too. Of course, this was before he wound up in jail in Austria for denying the Holocaust. (As an American this seems bizarre, that someone could be thrown in jail for espousing a political view, even one as awful as this. But if I am ever in Austria again, and I hope that I am, you can be sure I won't be denying the Holocaust or Sieg Heil-ing down Kartnerstrasse, even if I were so inclined, which I'm not. I mean, how stupid can you be?)
Anyway, Irving lost pretty much all credibility when he went about saying the Holocaust wasn't real and didn't happen, but this has lead to a most interesting turn: Irving, it seems, was chosen by Hitler himself to be his biographer. Not that the two ever met, of course. Irving spent part of his childhood dodging bombs dropped by the Luftwaffe and was still a child when Hitler ate the end of a Walther. But, no matter. Hitler somehow knew Irving would come along one day and appointed him the task of writing his 'true' biography. How could he know such a thing? don't think about it, you'll get a headache. Instead, read the attached article, it's fascinating and eerie and you'll hope you're never sitting next to Irving on a long plane flight.
David Irving is even stranger than you thought
*** I note that Patrick McGoohan died Tuesday in L.A. 'The Prisoner' was one of those fleeting moments of remembered greatness in one's youth, so transitorily wonderful that you never forget it. During one of my two years at UT Knoxville there was a marathon of 'The Prisoner's' one and only season that I sat through until my backside ached. The series was one of those that was so uniquely English that it could never have been made anywhere else, and efforts to try would have failed miserably.
A legend has passed.
*** Not merely one legend, however. I see where sir John Mortimer has died and this is truly a loss that I will feel. For those who haven't discovered Rumpole of the Bailey, I feel sorry for you. Second only to PG Wodehouse in my estimation of the great 20th century British humorists, Mortimer could seemingly will laughs from even the most dour reader. 'She Who Must Be Obeyed' is something all husbands can relate to and none would admit to doing so. Sigh...
No more Rumpole
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Supplement to the supplement
As stated a few days ago, the ludicrous new US law making it illegal to sell just about anything that is/was intended for kids has spawned a bunch of legalese from government agencies. Here's one:
http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml09/09086.html
It seems we are now lucky enough to still be able to sell our used children's books. Isn't that sweet of those nice government bureaucrats? Good thing I don't own or sell any antique lead soldiers, though.
Oh, wait. I do own some. Jeez, does that mean I can't let kids under 12 in my house to visit with their parents? Is some government watchdog agency monitoring my lead Papal Guards brought to me by my uncle 40 years ago to make sure I don't let some poor, unsuspecting child hold them?
Wouldn't it have been easier just to tell people not to buy crap made in China, at least until they pass and enforce some consumer safety laws? Or, better yet, just buy stuff made in the USA.
http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml09/09086.html
It seems we are now lucky enough to still be able to sell our used children's books. Isn't that sweet of those nice government bureaucrats? Good thing I don't own or sell any antique lead soldiers, though.
Oh, wait. I do own some. Jeez, does that mean I can't let kids under 12 in my house to visit with their parents? Is some government watchdog agency monitoring my lead Papal Guards brought to me by my uncle 40 years ago to make sure I don't let some poor, unsuspecting child hold them?
Wouldn't it have been easier just to tell people not to buy crap made in China, at least until they pass and enforce some consumer safety laws? Or, better yet, just buy stuff made in the USA.
Sunday supplement
Good morning bookies! Stand by for news and comment.
I don't normally blog on Sundays, but since there may or may not be something early this week I did what I could to provide manna for the masses. Hope you like it.
*** Ebay.
Again.
I know, I'm sorry, it's so repetitive. Can't this company just die already, you ask? They are trying, but these things take time. Not even John Donohoe can bring down a massive site like ebay just by snapping his fingers.
Ebay wants their sellers back, or so they say. The cynicism comes becomes ebay knows exactly how to get their sellers back: reverse the repression and outright hostility of the past year. That might, might, do the trick. But they aren't willing to do that, no, they want their sellers to come back without them doing much of anything differently. In other words, they want their sellers to come back so they can kick them around some more.
Fat chance. The longer they leave us adrift in the marketplace, the longer we have to find new homes. Many already have and no longer need ebay. But ebay is just beginning to get an inkling that they actually need those millions of people who have left the site. It's not an actual idea, yet, and flies in the face of Donohoe's avowed mission of having a giant site with absolutely zero hits per day...yet someone, somewhere within ebay seems to have noticed that their stock has lost 2/3 of its value and that this is not a good thing.
Ebay is frustrated they don't have as many sellers to kick around anymore
*** Ian Kershaw is a well known historian of World War 2 and is ideally suited to weigh in on Operation Valkyrie, to lay out the straight story of the German opposition to Hitler as Tom Cruise's movie sparks interest from those who might not have previously known the tale. The Luck of the Devil is a terrific title, snappy and accurate. I haven't read it but Kershaw is one of the more entertaining historians, so it's probably quite good. However, he is English, and tends to see things a bit differently than American historians. Not a caution, I like his work, just an observation. The attached article is a nice overview, should be read, if possible, before seeing the movie, so the casual viewer can have some idea of who was who in the Nazi pantheon.
The Luck of the Devil by Ian Kershaw.
*** One of the more important figures to emerge from World War II was Josip Tito, the leader of post-war Yugoslavia, the communist who broke with Moscow and defied Stalin. During the war, of course, Tito was a very important cog in the Allied wheel, forming a partisan effort inside of Yugoslavia that was so large and so well disciplined that the Germans eventually had to form an Army Group just to fight them. For those who don't know, an army group means at least two armies. A German Army of the era was formed around two Corps, and a Corps would have, as an absolute minimum, about 25,000 men. Doing the math, then, an Army Group would have no fewer than 100,000 men, although the numbers were usually in the range of 250,000. So, the Germans were forced to use a huge number of men who were badly needed elsewhere to fight the population in lands they had already conquered. And much of this was Tito's doing. (Not all, Tito had a rival who supported the monarchy, but that's another story)
Anyway, the new book Tito’s secret years in Moscow 1935-1940 by Silvin Eiletz, uses newly de-classified Soviet era documents to reveal just how close Tito was to Stalin's secret service (presumably the NKVD) and how close he claim to being killed (he was denounced as a Trotskyite, which meant a summary death with perhaps some torture thrown in for good measure). And we in the West may be very glad that this did not happen. After all, if it wasn't for Tito, we would never have had the Yugo.
Tito and Stalin were cozy before the war
*** It's funny how things can be going on in your city and you don't even know it. Shadowcon is happening in Memphis even as I type this, and apparently it has happened many times before. Who knew? Not me. But that's what this blog is for, discovering this sort of thing an dgiving it life, and hopefully at time goes by I will find more of this. In the meantime, here's a nice look at one author who is new to all of this, discovering new life in his older years.
Older but new
I don't normally blog on Sundays, but since there may or may not be something early this week I did what I could to provide manna for the masses. Hope you like it.
*** Ebay.
Again.
I know, I'm sorry, it's so repetitive. Can't this company just die already, you ask? They are trying, but these things take time. Not even John Donohoe can bring down a massive site like ebay just by snapping his fingers.
Ebay wants their sellers back, or so they say. The cynicism comes becomes ebay knows exactly how to get their sellers back: reverse the repression and outright hostility of the past year. That might, might, do the trick. But they aren't willing to do that, no, they want their sellers to come back without them doing much of anything differently. In other words, they want their sellers to come back so they can kick them around some more.
Fat chance. The longer they leave us adrift in the marketplace, the longer we have to find new homes. Many already have and no longer need ebay. But ebay is just beginning to get an inkling that they actually need those millions of people who have left the site. It's not an actual idea, yet, and flies in the face of Donohoe's avowed mission of having a giant site with absolutely zero hits per day...yet someone, somewhere within ebay seems to have noticed that their stock has lost 2/3 of its value and that this is not a good thing.
Ebay is frustrated they don't have as many sellers to kick around anymore
*** Ian Kershaw is a well known historian of World War 2 and is ideally suited to weigh in on Operation Valkyrie, to lay out the straight story of the German opposition to Hitler as Tom Cruise's movie sparks interest from those who might not have previously known the tale. The Luck of the Devil is a terrific title, snappy and accurate. I haven't read it but Kershaw is one of the more entertaining historians, so it's probably quite good. However, he is English, and tends to see things a bit differently than American historians. Not a caution, I like his work, just an observation. The attached article is a nice overview, should be read, if possible, before seeing the movie, so the casual viewer can have some idea of who was who in the Nazi pantheon.
The Luck of the Devil by Ian Kershaw.
*** One of the more important figures to emerge from World War II was Josip Tito, the leader of post-war Yugoslavia, the communist who broke with Moscow and defied Stalin. During the war, of course, Tito was a very important cog in the Allied wheel, forming a partisan effort inside of Yugoslavia that was so large and so well disciplined that the Germans eventually had to form an Army Group just to fight them. For those who don't know, an army group means at least two armies. A German Army of the era was formed around two Corps, and a Corps would have, as an absolute minimum, about 25,000 men. Doing the math, then, an Army Group would have no fewer than 100,000 men, although the numbers were usually in the range of 250,000. So, the Germans were forced to use a huge number of men who were badly needed elsewhere to fight the population in lands they had already conquered. And much of this was Tito's doing. (Not all, Tito had a rival who supported the monarchy, but that's another story)
Anyway, the new book Tito’s secret years in Moscow 1935-1940 by Silvin Eiletz, uses newly de-classified Soviet era documents to reveal just how close Tito was to Stalin's secret service (presumably the NKVD) and how close he claim to being killed (he was denounced as a Trotskyite, which meant a summary death with perhaps some torture thrown in for good measure). And we in the West may be very glad that this did not happen. After all, if it wasn't for Tito, we would never have had the Yugo.
Tito and Stalin were cozy before the war
*** It's funny how things can be going on in your city and you don't even know it. Shadowcon is happening in Memphis even as I type this, and apparently it has happened many times before. Who knew? Not me. But that's what this blog is for, discovering this sort of thing an dgiving it life, and hopefully at time goes by I will find more of this. In the meantime, here's a nice look at one author who is new to all of this, discovering new life in his older years.
Older but new
Friday, January 9, 2009
Congress protecting our children from evil and dangerous books
Good morning bookies! Stand by for news and comment.
So you know, I'll be MIA a few days next week. No big deal, just something else on the calendar, so I might miss a day or two of this blog.
If today's blog seems bitter I don't mean for it to. It's just that I have a low threshold for pomposity combined with grand-standing and buffoonery. So sue me.
*** Sales forums the internet wide are abuzz with the latest idiocy from the US Congress, in the form of The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. I have said that this blog will be non-partisan, and it will, but sometimes politicians will do something that drastically impacts the book industry and must be dealt with. And so it is with this latest piece of nonsense.
Supposedly this latest act was to protect us from ourselves, in other words, to make sure that products meant for kids were safe. Okay, fine, who can really debate that? In the wake of last year's Made in China disasters, and with more of those sure to come, it's hard to argue the big idea behind the law. But as usual, the actual people involved are so blind, so incredibly stupid, that one wonders how they ever got elected. As it currently stands, this law may wipe out an entire industry, just as happened with the once-thriving US yacht building industry; tens of thousands of jobs lost because the people writing our laws have the collective IQs of a street light.
No doubt this will come to nothing, the government will scramble and throw something together to cover their latest embarrassment but, and mark my words on this one, the patch will not fix everything and somebody is going to get hurt from this.
Latest Congressional foolishness threatens kid book publishers and sellers
*** Books-A-Million managed to outperform both Borders and B&N over Christmas, with sales down about 2.5%. That's not good, but it's nowhere near as bad as B&N, which was down 5.6%. I haven't been in a Books-A-Million is quite some time, but unless things have changed drastically I much prefer their spacious layout to B&N's cramped aisles.
*** If you know someone who pooh-pooh's any idea that comes along, then maybe they have been waiting for October, when the authorized sequel to The House at Pooh Corner is being released. That's right, Winnie, Tigger and the crew are all coming back for another go-round, and you just know that if this sells, and it will, there will be plenty more to follow.
Many people hate it when a classic series is taken over by another author, but not me. What's to lose? If it's bad, don't read it. If it's good, then how can you object to reading a good book? There are far more 'Conan' stories written by people other than Robert E. Howard, however, if that bothers you, then just read the ones he wrote. I have a feeling that Return to the Hundred Acre Wood by David Benedictus will sell quite well indeed.
Assuming, of course, the US Congress doesn't outlaw it first.
Winnie is back!
*** Finally, the highest performing area of book sales over Christmas was children's books, with the UK reporting an 8.5% increase over last year. Which is ironic, of course, given the above discussed law that might make selling those books illegal in the USA. One almost wonders if Congress is trying to stamp out reading altogether. At least that way nobody would know what they were up to.
So you know, I'll be MIA a few days next week. No big deal, just something else on the calendar, so I might miss a day or two of this blog.
If today's blog seems bitter I don't mean for it to. It's just that I have a low threshold for pomposity combined with grand-standing and buffoonery. So sue me.
*** Sales forums the internet wide are abuzz with the latest idiocy from the US Congress, in the form of The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. I have said that this blog will be non-partisan, and it will, but sometimes politicians will do something that drastically impacts the book industry and must be dealt with. And so it is with this latest piece of nonsense.
Supposedly this latest act was to protect us from ourselves, in other words, to make sure that products meant for kids were safe. Okay, fine, who can really debate that? In the wake of last year's Made in China disasters, and with more of those sure to come, it's hard to argue the big idea behind the law. But as usual, the actual people involved are so blind, so incredibly stupid, that one wonders how they ever got elected. As it currently stands, this law may wipe out an entire industry, just as happened with the once-thriving US yacht building industry; tens of thousands of jobs lost because the people writing our laws have the collective IQs of a street light.
No doubt this will come to nothing, the government will scramble and throw something together to cover their latest embarrassment but, and mark my words on this one, the patch will not fix everything and somebody is going to get hurt from this.
Latest Congressional foolishness threatens kid book publishers and sellers
*** Books-A-Million managed to outperform both Borders and B&N over Christmas, with sales down about 2.5%. That's not good, but it's nowhere near as bad as B&N, which was down 5.6%. I haven't been in a Books-A-Million is quite some time, but unless things have changed drastically I much prefer their spacious layout to B&N's cramped aisles.
*** If you know someone who pooh-pooh's any idea that comes along, then maybe they have been waiting for October, when the authorized sequel to The House at Pooh Corner is being released. That's right, Winnie, Tigger and the crew are all coming back for another go-round, and you just know that if this sells, and it will, there will be plenty more to follow.
Many people hate it when a classic series is taken over by another author, but not me. What's to lose? If it's bad, don't read it. If it's good, then how can you object to reading a good book? There are far more 'Conan' stories written by people other than Robert E. Howard, however, if that bothers you, then just read the ones he wrote. I have a feeling that Return to the Hundred Acre Wood by David Benedictus will sell quite well indeed.
Assuming, of course, the US Congress doesn't outlaw it first.
Winnie is back!
*** Finally, the highest performing area of book sales over Christmas was children's books, with the UK reporting an 8.5% increase over last year. Which is ironic, of course, given the above discussed law that might make selling those books illegal in the USA. One almost wonders if Congress is trying to stamp out reading altogether. At least that way nobody would know what they were up to.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Excuses, excuses
Good morning bookies! Stand by for news and comment.
Three days since a blog entry...I'm sorry about that. Your friendly neighborhood bookseller is having some sort of problem with his foot, a sprain, maybe, hopefully nothing worse, but it limits his hobbling about and everything seems to take more time.
Yeah, I know. Excuses are like...
*** Barnes & Noble is expected to report lower holiday sales, no doubt blaming the downturn on the economy, the catch-all excuse used by such under-performers as ebay. Well, I say posh! That's right, you read correctly: posh!
I'm sorry to use such harsh language, but it can't be helped. I am on just about every email and snail mail list in existence and I can tell you that B&N's marketing efforts over Christmas were dreadful, just awful. And their post-Christmas marketing did not exist. Let's contrast them and Borders, shall we?
Just before Christmas, BBG decided that he would get Mrs. BBG an audiobook, although he didn't know which one. There was no time left for online shopping, he wanted it in his hand. Well, B&N had sent out specific coupons for specific items, but not something BBG wanted. Border's, on the other hand, sent out a 40% off, your choice coupon. So that's where he wound up, even though Border's is 10 miles from his house and B&N less than 2. While there, he bought two additional items.
Marketing. B&N tells you what they want you to buy, Border's gives you the choice. There might even be a political message there but we'll leave that for another blog.
After Christmas, BBG had two nice B&N gift certificates to spend online. He was hoping for a nifty after Christmas coupon and browsed their site, settling on 8 books that were over his certificate levels, meaning he would have to spend some of his own money. But with a nice discount, he would have done this. Except B&N never sent an after-Christmas coupon, so that extra money stayed in BBG's pocket and all B&N got was his certificates, for no additional revenue. Stupid.
So don't listen to that nonsense about the economy being responsible for some of the lack of business out there. Yes, perhaps in some cases it's true, but at least two companies have brought this on themselves through bad marketing and/or management: ebay & B&N.
Barnes & Noble chokes at Christmas
*** Although dead for nearly 40 years, Professor John Robert Tuell Tolkien continues publishing books, and I'm damned glad of it. Coming in May is The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, written long before The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings and having nothing to do with Middle Earth. Mark this one down as being a must read for anyone who loves ME, because whether or not its part of the canon, it is surely part of the influence.
Tolkien's newest old work
*** In the 'please don't insult my intelligence' category, the author of the popular Conversations With God series, Neal Donald Walsch, admits now that an essay he wrote wasn't actually his, that he plagarized it from Candy Chand who published it 10 years ago in a small magazine named Clarity. His excuse? "Mr. Walsch now says he made a mistake in believing the story was something that had actually come from his personal experience."
Huh? He thought it was his memory but it was really something that he read? And even if that's true, how could his memory then match an essay almost word for word?
Rubbish. Although one must sense a certain bit of irony in the New York Times reporting a story about plagarism, given their nickname 'All the News That's Fit to Invent".
Godly writers goes unGodly
Three days since a blog entry...I'm sorry about that. Your friendly neighborhood bookseller is having some sort of problem with his foot, a sprain, maybe, hopefully nothing worse, but it limits his hobbling about and everything seems to take more time.
Yeah, I know. Excuses are like...
*** Barnes & Noble is expected to report lower holiday sales, no doubt blaming the downturn on the economy, the catch-all excuse used by such under-performers as ebay. Well, I say posh! That's right, you read correctly: posh!
I'm sorry to use such harsh language, but it can't be helped. I am on just about every email and snail mail list in existence and I can tell you that B&N's marketing efforts over Christmas were dreadful, just awful. And their post-Christmas marketing did not exist. Let's contrast them and Borders, shall we?
Just before Christmas, BBG decided that he would get Mrs. BBG an audiobook, although he didn't know which one. There was no time left for online shopping, he wanted it in his hand. Well, B&N had sent out specific coupons for specific items, but not something BBG wanted. Border's, on the other hand, sent out a 40% off, your choice coupon. So that's where he wound up, even though Border's is 10 miles from his house and B&N less than 2. While there, he bought two additional items.
Marketing. B&N tells you what they want you to buy, Border's gives you the choice. There might even be a political message there but we'll leave that for another blog.
After Christmas, BBG had two nice B&N gift certificates to spend online. He was hoping for a nifty after Christmas coupon and browsed their site, settling on 8 books that were over his certificate levels, meaning he would have to spend some of his own money. But with a nice discount, he would have done this. Except B&N never sent an after-Christmas coupon, so that extra money stayed in BBG's pocket and all B&N got was his certificates, for no additional revenue. Stupid.
So don't listen to that nonsense about the economy being responsible for some of the lack of business out there. Yes, perhaps in some cases it's true, but at least two companies have brought this on themselves through bad marketing and/or management: ebay & B&N.
Barnes & Noble chokes at Christmas
*** Although dead for nearly 40 years, Professor John Robert Tuell Tolkien continues publishing books, and I'm damned glad of it. Coming in May is The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, written long before The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings and having nothing to do with Middle Earth. Mark this one down as being a must read for anyone who loves ME, because whether or not its part of the canon, it is surely part of the influence.
Tolkien's newest old work
*** In the 'please don't insult my intelligence' category, the author of the popular Conversations With God series, Neal Donald Walsch, admits now that an essay he wrote wasn't actually his, that he plagarized it from Candy Chand who published it 10 years ago in a small magazine named Clarity. His excuse? "Mr. Walsch now says he made a mistake in believing the story was something that had actually come from his personal experience."
Huh? He thought it was his memory but it was really something that he read? And even if that's true, how could his memory then match an essay almost word for word?
Rubbish. Although one must sense a certain bit of irony in the New York Times reporting a story about plagarism, given their nickname 'All the News That's Fit to Invent".
Godly writers goes unGodly
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Bookselling, battleships and bookmen
Good morning bookies! Stand by for news and comment.
*** The new issue of ILAM has posted, the best mystery/thriller review site on the internet, mostly because my reviews are featured there. What's that you say? Why, yes, it's true, I am a humble man. Some truly great books are reviewed in this issue and the editor, Sally, does her usual fantastic job, although my photo is still not used as part of the sites' official logo. Which is probably smart.
iloveamysterynewsletter
*** Okay, I get it. Normal folk don't get excited by histories of ships that were sunk more than 65 years ago, at Pearl Harbor, no less. But I do. What that says about me I 'm afraid to ask.
As a boy these sorts of books were coming out all the time, but now, with timing passing, it's infrequent. So I note the publication of Battleship Oklahoma BB-37 by Jeff Phister with Thomas Hone and Paul Goodyear, University of Oklahoma Press, with excitement and sadness, knowing such books will be unlikely in the future. Oklahoma was docked outboard on December 7, 1941, and rolled over (turned turtle in the parlance of the day) after being torpedoed on her starboard side. Hundreds were trapped below decks, some were rescued by cutting holes in the ship's bottom, some weren't. Eventually she was re-floated and was being towed mainland when she sunk in the open ocean.
New history of the USS Oklahoma
*** Laura Bush has signed a book deal to publish her memoirs, including her time in the White House. Whatever you may think of her husband, love him or hate him, Laura was and is one great lady. It is thanks for her that we have the annual Washington D.C. Book Fair, she has always been a friend to readers and writers and I wish her all the best.
Laura signs for the big bucks
*** I don't know O.J. Brisky, but I have a feeling that I would like him if I met him. He runs my kind of bookstore in my kind of climate: warm and sunny Florida. If I get the chance I'm going to have to drop in and pay him a visit.
A Florida book man
*** We have all been reading about bookstores closing for a while now, and while that is always a sad thing it doesn't really hit home until it happens to a store we know. And so it's with ennui that I mention the closing of a London bookstore that I have actually visited, Murder One on Charing Cross Road. The story goes like this:
On our first trip to England our tour group had the world's most incompetent guide. For a variety of reasons, BBG and Mrs. BBG found themselves wandering London on Holy Saturday. With Easter next day, most shops were closing up. About 4 pm, having absolutely no idea where we were, we exited a tube station at Charing Cross Road and I observed, like a vision from Heaven, shop after shop with the neat little sign 'Books' out front. Most were about to close and we were leaving London first thing Sunday morning. Aaaieee!
Frantically shopping at a dead run, the one shop that did NOT close at 5 pm was Murder One. I'll never forget wandering the shop, marveling at all of the British editions of favorite authors, wondering just how much room I had in my suitcase for books. (In the end, I crammed 56 hardbacks into my two suitcases, both of which weighed about 80 lbs. Fortunately, this was before weight limits and surcharges.) I wound up buying a number of books there and wishing I could afford/carry more.
And now it's closing. One more life event faded to memory, never to be relived.
Another good one bites the dust
*** The new issue of ILAM has posted, the best mystery/thriller review site on the internet, mostly because my reviews are featured there. What's that you say? Why, yes, it's true, I am a humble man. Some truly great books are reviewed in this issue and the editor, Sally, does her usual fantastic job, although my photo is still not used as part of the sites' official logo. Which is probably smart.
iloveamysterynewsletter
*** Okay, I get it. Normal folk don't get excited by histories of ships that were sunk more than 65 years ago, at Pearl Harbor, no less. But I do. What that says about me I 'm afraid to ask.
As a boy these sorts of books were coming out all the time, but now, with timing passing, it's infrequent. So I note the publication of Battleship Oklahoma BB-37 by Jeff Phister with Thomas Hone and Paul Goodyear, University of Oklahoma Press, with excitement and sadness, knowing such books will be unlikely in the future. Oklahoma was docked outboard on December 7, 1941, and rolled over (turned turtle in the parlance of the day) after being torpedoed on her starboard side. Hundreds were trapped below decks, some were rescued by cutting holes in the ship's bottom, some weren't. Eventually she was re-floated and was being towed mainland when she sunk in the open ocean.
New history of the USS Oklahoma
*** Laura Bush has signed a book deal to publish her memoirs, including her time in the White House. Whatever you may think of her husband, love him or hate him, Laura was and is one great lady. It is thanks for her that we have the annual Washington D.C. Book Fair, she has always been a friend to readers and writers and I wish her all the best.
Laura signs for the big bucks
*** I don't know O.J. Brisky, but I have a feeling that I would like him if I met him. He runs my kind of bookstore in my kind of climate: warm and sunny Florida. If I get the chance I'm going to have to drop in and pay him a visit.
A Florida book man
*** We have all been reading about bookstores closing for a while now, and while that is always a sad thing it doesn't really hit home until it happens to a store we know. And so it's with ennui that I mention the closing of a London bookstore that I have actually visited, Murder One on Charing Cross Road. The story goes like this:
On our first trip to England our tour group had the world's most incompetent guide. For a variety of reasons, BBG and Mrs. BBG found themselves wandering London on Holy Saturday. With Easter next day, most shops were closing up. About 4 pm, having absolutely no idea where we were, we exited a tube station at Charing Cross Road and I observed, like a vision from Heaven, shop after shop with the neat little sign 'Books' out front. Most were about to close and we were leaving London first thing Sunday morning. Aaaieee!
Frantically shopping at a dead run, the one shop that did NOT close at 5 pm was Murder One. I'll never forget wandering the shop, marveling at all of the British editions of favorite authors, wondering just how much room I had in my suitcase for books. (In the end, I crammed 56 hardbacks into my two suitcases, both of which weighed about 80 lbs. Fortunately, this was before weight limits and surcharges.) I wound up buying a number of books there and wishing I could afford/carry more.
And now it's closing. One more life event faded to memory, never to be relived.
Another good one bites the dust
Friday, January 2, 2009
RIP Donald Westlake
No! Donald Westlake has died of a heart attack, aged 75. This really, really stinks. Westlake was one of the best, if not THE best. I just reviewed Dirty Money (under the Richard Stark alias) for ILAM and that won't be out for months. Awful news. I never had the pleasure of meeting him but I will miss him all the same. What a dreadful way to start 2009.
Donald Westlake is gone
Donald Westlake is gone
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Margaret Walker- Notes from a long gone tour
In the category of 'look what I found inside of this book' comes a fascinating insight into what an influential author was thinking more than 30 years ago, and how an astute reader viewed that writer during a book signing event.
I have a copy of Jubilee by Margaret Walker, a 19th printing mass-market paperback that, in and of itself, has no particular value. However, this copy is inscribed and dated, not a common thing. What makes this special, though, is what's inside: 7 small pages of notes from the book-signing event that took place on 1/23/78, in Memphis, TN. I am going to quote these notes directly, however, their use in other blogs is by permission only. It's a straight stream-of-consciousness exercise and some of the handwriting is hard to read, I'll do my best.
"1/23/78. Margaret Walker Alexander. Thoughts while waiting- I guess there are 45-50 in this room- What a pity. Billy Graham draws 10,000 and someone like this so few.
Father Meth. Minister born in Birmingham. -So mas 2? "For My People" was result (?). Mrs. Johnson thought- assumes blacks good- others bad- not so.
Written when she was 22. Written in 15 min.- all compared to Whitman, Robinson Jeffers but last stanza- working on Writer's Project in Chicago. Last stanza what she wants for her people. Creative writing program at Yale . Jubilee represents 30 years of her life, creative forces, thinking.
Diff. between writing poetry, fiction. She knew many writers. Richard Wright, Nelson Algren, Bontempo, Langston Hughes, Yerby, Sterling Brown, Ellison , Robt. Frost, Sandburg, Harriet Monroe-Certain facts about writing you have to be taught. Yes- you can teach creative writing- not art. Teach structure, lang. control, character, plot, dramatize, create scenes
Can't teach style, tone, philosophy- has to have his own.
She learned technique-novel. How to write at Univ. of Iowa + Northwestern(?). Teachers- Hungerford- season. Engel.- even terr.
Paul Knowles
Character- You know how to create character-
1. tell how looks - describe
2. tell how he talks- dialogue
3. how act
4. how think (20th- c) stream of consciousness
5. react to other people. Ch. Must be consistent. (edit note: Ch. here probably means character)
How to dramatize material + make it come alive
Hear music + rhythm in Jubilee- prose rhythm does it consciously.
Being sued by Roots (edit note: it was actually she who sued Alex Haley for copyright infringement. The case was dismissed)
Roots copies 3 bks. Haley is a rewrite journalist
Jubilee another bk of hers (?) (unintelligible)
Haley says he did 12 yrs. research- has testified he doesn't know how to do research.
Intensify reality- exaggerate. Can't be concerned w/critic. Satisfies herself. To what extent do black writers listen to white critics.
Bl. writer in Am(erica)- has been here since 1773- Phyllis Whatley. bl. writers status rocky + bad- estranged.
Rachel Lindsay-Langston Hughes.
Dunbar- Wm. Dean Howells
M. Walker- Stephen Vincent Benet
Creative Writer never concerned w/critic. Critics function- help develop taste.
3 sources of writers
1. Journalism
2. Bohemians
3. Universities
She prefers 2."
That's the end of the notes. Some are hard to read, I've done my best transcribing them.
I have a copy of Jubilee by Margaret Walker, a 19th printing mass-market paperback that, in and of itself, has no particular value. However, this copy is inscribed and dated, not a common thing. What makes this special, though, is what's inside: 7 small pages of notes from the book-signing event that took place on 1/23/78, in Memphis, TN. I am going to quote these notes directly, however, their use in other blogs is by permission only. It's a straight stream-of-consciousness exercise and some of the handwriting is hard to read, I'll do my best.
"1/23/78. Margaret Walker Alexander. Thoughts while waiting- I guess there are 45-50 in this room- What a pity. Billy Graham draws 10,000 and someone like this so few.
Father Meth. Minister born in Birmingham. -So mas 2? "For My People" was result (?). Mrs. Johnson thought- assumes blacks good- others bad- not so.
Written when she was 22. Written in 15 min.- all compared to Whitman, Robinson Jeffers but last stanza- working on Writer's Project in Chicago. Last stanza what she wants for her people. Creative writing program at Yale . Jubilee represents 30 years of her life, creative forces, thinking.
Diff. between writing poetry, fiction. She knew many writers. Richard Wright, Nelson Algren, Bontempo, Langston Hughes, Yerby, Sterling Brown, Ellison , Robt. Frost, Sandburg, Harriet Monroe-Certain facts about writing you have to be taught. Yes- you can teach creative writing- not art. Teach structure, lang. control, character, plot, dramatize, create scenes
Can't teach style, tone, philosophy- has to have his own.
She learned technique-novel. How to write at Univ. of Iowa + Northwestern(?). Teachers- Hungerford- season. Engel.- even terr.
Paul Knowles
Character- You know how to create character-
1. tell how looks - describe
2. tell how he talks- dialogue
3. how act
4. how think (20th- c) stream of consciousness
5. react to other people. Ch. Must be consistent. (edit note: Ch. here probably means character)
How to dramatize material + make it come alive
Hear music + rhythm in Jubilee- prose rhythm does it consciously.
Being sued by Roots (edit note: it was actually she who sued Alex Haley for copyright infringement. The case was dismissed)
Roots copies 3 bks. Haley is a rewrite journalist
Jubilee another bk of hers (?) (unintelligible)
Haley says he did 12 yrs. research- has testified he doesn't know how to do research.
Intensify reality- exaggerate. Can't be concerned w/critic. Satisfies herself. To what extent do black writers listen to white critics.
Bl. writer in Am(erica)- has been here since 1773- Phyllis Whatley. bl. writers status rocky + bad- estranged.
Rachel Lindsay-Langston Hughes.
Dunbar- Wm. Dean Howells
M. Walker- Stephen Vincent Benet
Creative Writer never concerned w/critic. Critics function- help develop taste.
3 sources of writers
1. Journalism
2. Bohemians
3. Universities
She prefers 2."
That's the end of the notes. Some are hard to read, I've done my best transcribing them.
A New Year already?
Happy New Year's, bookies! Once your bleary eyes get focused, stand by for news and comment.
First, I want to thank all of you who have read this bit of doggerel throughout this blog's first year. I have asked before that if you wish to see anything in particular, just let me know and I'll do what I can to make it so.
I've never written a daily blog before so it's been a pretty steep learning curve. I usually start in the morning during my second cup of coffee, when the neural synapses are beginning to fire but before they tire. It's fun, it's keeping me up to date with my industry and it's allowing me to maybe do a little educating, too. But without loyal readers it's nothing but narcissism, so to each and every one of you, thanks.
*** Ebay's year in review is given a pretty good treatment by e-commerce, touching on the low-lights of a dying company. No need for me to say more, read as you wish.
The Year Ebay became terminally ill
*** By and large your friendly neighborhood bookseller does not highlight articles about mega-booksellers, dealing in millions of books that are usually badly described or outright deceptive. However, this particular article seemed interesting, because while I'm not personally familiar with the seller, a lot of other sellers are. He seems to illustrate both the best and worst of booksellers, a 'book person' who has now warehoused his operations, uses automated pricing that is almost never correct, hires people who don't know books and pretty much fits perfectly with sellers who cater to people who don't care about the books they receive as long as they are cheap. But for buyers who DO care that what they are getting is what they thought they were getting, he seems to be in that classification known as 'mega-seller', those who employ people who don't know or care about books, they only know how to stuff things into the mailbox.
Or, put another way, we are we and they are them.
A perfect example
*** Paul Hoffman has died, aged 96. If you never heard of him, click the link and read a little. He was a fascinating man, most known for this travel books, although by the time he wrote them he had already lived a full life.
Paul Hoffman
*** For someone like me, what could be better than a book about books? Of course, it's a collecting sub-genre all its own, one I have, thankfully, not yet set my mind to collecting, but who wouldn't like to spend a few hours studying one of the great book collections in the world via a book of photographs?
The Princeton University website puts it this way: "A new book, "Biblio" by photographer Natasha D'Schommer, offers a rare close-up look at many of the exceptional books and manuscripts that belong to the Scheide Library, one of the most significant private book collections in the United States, which is housed in Princeton's Firestone Library. "
See, while I hate cold weather with a passion, good lighting, a roaring fire and a book such as this makes winter almost bearable.
A rare delight
*** I have met a knight. I didn't know it at the time, and neither did he, but it's true nonetheless. Terry Pratchett is on the list to be knighted and it couldn't happen to a nicer guy. I guess everyone knows he is battling early onset Alzheimer's, doing so in a very public way, but this will no doubt bring even more publicity to his battle and the need to do everything possible to find at least an effective treatment.
It won't hurt Discworld sales, either, and with a series as brilliant and innovative as this, well, that's all to the good. I know I've told the story before, but for those who missed it, Sir Terry was Guest of Honor at Midsouthcon a few years back and I attended to get some books signed. I waited in line for almost 3 hours, but before he got to me he had to attend a panel. I was told to return that night to get my allotment (2 books per person) signed. I did and he did. He looked exhausted. It wasn't much after this that he was given his diagnosis. I got lucky.
The First Knight (that I've met)
First, I want to thank all of you who have read this bit of doggerel throughout this blog's first year. I have asked before that if you wish to see anything in particular, just let me know and I'll do what I can to make it so.
I've never written a daily blog before so it's been a pretty steep learning curve. I usually start in the morning during my second cup of coffee, when the neural synapses are beginning to fire but before they tire. It's fun, it's keeping me up to date with my industry and it's allowing me to maybe do a little educating, too. But without loyal readers it's nothing but narcissism, so to each and every one of you, thanks.
*** Ebay's year in review is given a pretty good treatment by e-commerce, touching on the low-lights of a dying company. No need for me to say more, read as you wish.
The Year Ebay became terminally ill
*** By and large your friendly neighborhood bookseller does not highlight articles about mega-booksellers, dealing in millions of books that are usually badly described or outright deceptive. However, this particular article seemed interesting, because while I'm not personally familiar with the seller, a lot of other sellers are. He seems to illustrate both the best and worst of booksellers, a 'book person' who has now warehoused his operations, uses automated pricing that is almost never correct, hires people who don't know books and pretty much fits perfectly with sellers who cater to people who don't care about the books they receive as long as they are cheap. But for buyers who DO care that what they are getting is what they thought they were getting, he seems to be in that classification known as 'mega-seller', those who employ people who don't know or care about books, they only know how to stuff things into the mailbox.
Or, put another way, we are we and they are them.
A perfect example
*** Paul Hoffman has died, aged 96. If you never heard of him, click the link and read a little. He was a fascinating man, most known for this travel books, although by the time he wrote them he had already lived a full life.
Paul Hoffman
*** For someone like me, what could be better than a book about books? Of course, it's a collecting sub-genre all its own, one I have, thankfully, not yet set my mind to collecting, but who wouldn't like to spend a few hours studying one of the great book collections in the world via a book of photographs?
The Princeton University website puts it this way: "A new book, "Biblio" by photographer Natasha D'Schommer, offers a rare close-up look at many of the exceptional books and manuscripts that belong to the Scheide Library, one of the most significant private book collections in the United States, which is housed in Princeton's Firestone Library. "
See, while I hate cold weather with a passion, good lighting, a roaring fire and a book such as this makes winter almost bearable.
A rare delight
*** I have met a knight. I didn't know it at the time, and neither did he, but it's true nonetheless. Terry Pratchett is on the list to be knighted and it couldn't happen to a nicer guy. I guess everyone knows he is battling early onset Alzheimer's, doing so in a very public way, but this will no doubt bring even more publicity to his battle and the need to do everything possible to find at least an effective treatment.
It won't hurt Discworld sales, either, and with a series as brilliant and innovative as this, well, that's all to the good. I know I've told the story before, but for those who missed it, Sir Terry was Guest of Honor at Midsouthcon a few years back and I attended to get some books signed. I waited in line for almost 3 hours, but before he got to me he had to attend a panel. I was told to return that night to get my allotment (2 books per person) signed. I did and he did. He looked exhausted. It wasn't much after this that he was given his diagnosis. I got lucky.
The First Knight (that I've met)
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