Littell's Award-Winner Stirs Controversy

As the US and UK release date approaches, Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones continues to cause controversy. Originally published in France in 2006, this 983-page novel won the Prix Goncourt, France’s most prestigious literary award. The Literary Saloon continues to stay on top of the news, and has a good overview of the various positions important people are taking.

For example, Michiko Kakutani's review in the New York Times is decidedly negative:

The Kindly Ones [] reads like a pointless compilation of atrocities and anti-Semitic remarks, pointlessly combined with a gross collection of sexual fantasies. That such a novel should win two of France’s top literary prizes is not only an example of the occasional perversity of French taste, but also a measure of how drastically literary attitudes toward the Holocaust have changed in the last few decades.

The Literary Saloon could barely stomach the book, awarded it a grade of C-, and deems it "a mess." Most of the reactions to Littell's book, however, have been gushingly positive (see, e.g., Michael Korda's review at the Daily Beast). Beginning March 3rd, you can get your own copyand decide for yourself.

An Optimistic View of American Literature

There's an interesting article in the Guardian by Pankaj Mishra about the dominance of America in shaping international culture, particularly in Western Europe. Mishra credits much of this dominance to America's early adoption of "western modernity":

America, Gertrude Stein once said, was the oldest country in the world since it was the first to be modern. With its wealth, unique inventions and distinctive "way of life", the US had already begun in the early 20th century decisively to shape the experience of western modernity. And when it emerged stronger and richer after the second world war, while Europe lay in ruins, its culture had no rivals anywhere in the world.

Despite signals that America's cultural dominance is evaporating, Mishra remains optimistic about the continuing vitality of American literature:

[T]he outlook for American literature seems brighter than at any time in recent decades. Just as the tragedy of the civil war expedited the maturing of American literature, and the Depression seared its lessons on a generation of writers, so the present crisis will likely incite a fresh re-evaluation of values, styles and genres. Out of widespread turmoil and confusion may come America's greatest novels yet; and we will cherish them not because they evoke America's glamorously singular modernity but because they describe a more universal human condition of public and unremitting conflict.

Literary Death Spiral?

In an NPR story (Literary Death Spiral? The Fading Book Section), Dick Meyer comments that "the disappearance of professional, edited book sections" is a "heavy symbolic blow to readers, writers and publishers. And it is an injury to our collective literacy and, thus, to our wisdom and intellectual agility." Meyer ties the death of book review sections to a general " aversion to long chunks of sentences," which Meyer thinks "are still the best way humans have to express complex thoughts, intricate observations, fleeting emotions — the whole range of what we are."

Meyer has plenty to good things to say about the increasing online coverage of books (including amateur reviews on blogs), but he argues that the decrease of professional reviews in newspapers signals a "a cultural devaluing of books and even formally written words."

The Year of the Short Story

Harper Perennial is publishing six short story collections this year and, in further celebration of the form, has launched a blog--Fifty-Two Stories--that will publish a new short story every week. The stories are a mix of new stories never before published and backlist classics. Harper Perennial is also accepting submissions for new stories from readers.

The blog is nicely designed, and the story selections have been strong so far. In January, Fifty-Two Stories featured stories by Mary Gaitskill, Tony O’Neill, Simon Van Booy, and Tom Piazza. Last week's story was a story from Louise Erdrich’s new collection, The Red Convertible, which Harper published in January. This week there’s a story by Willa Cather from The Bohemian Girl, a forthcoming collection of Cather’s greatest short works. Future selections will include works by Katherine Dunn, Jess Walter, Mark Twain, and Dennis Cooper.

Updike Biography

Just weeks after John Updike's death, HarperCollins has announced it will publish a biography of the famous writer's life by Adam Begley in 2011. Begley, books editor of the New York Observer, has committed to write a comprehensive biography of John Updike's entire life, from his birth in 1932 to his death earlier this year. " Begley has a personal connection to Updike: Begley's father, novelist Louis Begley, and Updike were classmates at Harvard.

As reported by Publishers Weekly, executive editor Tim Duggan stated, "John Updike will surely be remembered as one of the greatest American writers of all time, and I can't think of anyone who could better capture the richness of his life and work than Adam Begley." Begley said, "My principal aim in writing his biography will be to illuminate for the reader the nature of his character and of his greatest accomplishments."

The New Yorker Book Club

The New Yorker is jumping onto the book club bandwagon with a new online book club (or "readers’ coöperative" in New Yorker speak). During it's first non-beta month, the club is reading Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road, which is receiving lots of attention these days thanks to a recent movie adaptation. Here's a rather bizarre explanation of the club from the site:

We plan to approach the books as landscapes for exploration, in which we are the park rangers, if you will, examining the flora and the fauna and fending off the occasional wild animal. (Every good book has one.) We hope you'll join us in this ongoing experiment, and lend your voices to the clamor.

Vilnius Poker by Ričardas Gavelis

Vilnius Poker
4 out of 5: Vilnius Poker is the story of a tragic love affair that unfolds during the 1970s in the Lithuanian capital city of Vilnius, then suffering under the oppression of Soviet rule. The novel is presented from four different points of view. The first 300 pages of this 500-page novel are told from the perspective of Vytautas Vargalys, a brilliant but unstable 53-year-old library clerk in love with a co-worker in her 20's, aptly named Lolita. As a survivor of the Soviet labor camps, Vytautas is troubled by a pervading sense of paranoia that gradually leads to madness and tragedy.

After Vytautas's tragic tale ends, the point of view switches to that of Martynas Poška, Vytautas's co-worker from the library who narrates his story via an “mlog”—a kind of stream-of-consciousness electronic diary. Martynas describes many of the same people and events that appeared in Vytautas's narrative but without the filter of Vytautas's lunacy. This new perspective reveals many of the novel's truths to be relative, and the tragic end to Vytautas's and Lolita's love becomes murkier. The final two narratives, one of which is told in a voice from the afterlife, continue the obfuscation and suggest that life in Vilnius is nothing more than "a giant poker game, played by madmen."

Vilnius Poker is dense with ideas, literary allusions, historic events, mythological references, symbolism, and linguistic and philosophical theories. It invites and rewards careful study. Elizabeth Novickas's nimble translation delivers the stylistic diversity that must have been intended by Gavelis. Just as beautiful and brutal elements coexist in the narrative, the prose is alternately poetic and crude.

The novel's highly constrained physical and temporal scope provides a dramatic contrast to its sweeping intellectual scope. The action involves just a few primary characters acting within a single city over the course of only a month. Despite these limitations, the novel's unique approach to time expands its reach. In Vilnius Poker, time does not progress linearly but instead loops through and over itself, creating worlds within worlds in a space that initially seems small.

Reading Vilnius Poker is a serious undertaking that will not appeal to casual readers. Certain parts of the book, particularly the first 300 pages, are repetitive and sometimes tedious. The resulting effect is a highly believable portrayal of deteriorating rationality, an effect that might drive some readers towards their own kind of madness. Those willing to devote the required mental energy, however, will be rewarded with a supremely interesting literary experience. In the words of Martynas: "Never forget that we are all, in a certain sense a bit Albanian. All of us are just a tad Lithuanian. And worst of all--every one of us, in the depths of our hearts, is a Vytautas Vargalys."

Dubai Literary Festival Off to a Rocky Start

The first Dubai Literary Festival begins this week, and it's already off to a rocky start. The festival was expecting an all-star line-up, including Margaret Atwood, Anthony Horowitz, Kate Adie, Jung Chang, Penny Vincenzi, Ranulph Fiennes, and Louis de Bernieres. Writer Geraldine Bedell was planning to launch her novel, The Gulf Between Us, at the festival. Bedell has stated that her novel is "the only novel I know of in English (but I can’t think there are many in Arabic, either) set in a Gulf emirate.”

As reported by multiple sources, when festival organizers discovered one of the minor characters in Bedell's novel is a gay sheik, Bedell's invitation to the festival was rescinded based on fears that her novel “could offend certain cultural sensibilities.” Outraged by this apparent act of censorship, Margaret Atwood promptly withdrew from the festival. For more details of the controversy, see the full story (with links to sources) at MobyLives. Now, according to a post at the Literary Saloon, it appears that the controversy may have been overstated.

The End of Cultural Authority

Poets & Writers interviewed editors Lee Boudreaux, Eric Chinski, Alexis Gargagliano, and Richard Nash. An interesting excerpt from Chinski (though I don't quite understand the reference to blogs as one of the biggest problems of the industry):

Q: When you look at the industry, what are the biggest problems we face right now?
CHINSKI: I think they're all so obvious. Returns. Blogs.
GARGAGLIANO: And just finding readers.
CHINSKI: The end of cultural authority. That's something we talk about a lot at FSG. Reviews don't have the same impact that they used to. The one thing that really horrifies me and that seems to have happened within the last few years is that you can get a first novel on the cover of the New York Times Book Review, a long review in The New Yorker, a big profile somewhere, and it still doesn't translate into sales.

The Oddest Book Title of the Year

It's that time of year again: the shortlist for the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year has been announced by TheBookseller.com. This is always a fun list, and this year is no different:

• Baboon Metaphysics by Dorothy L. Cheney and Robert M. Seyfarth (University of Chicago Press)
• Curbside Consultation of the Colon by Brooks D. Cash (SLACK Incorporated)
• The Large Sieve and its Applications by Emmanuel Kowalski (Cambridge University Press)
• Strip and Knit with Style by Mark Hordyszynski (C&T)
• Techniques for Corrosion Monitoring by Lietai Yang (Woodhead)
• The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais by Professor Philip M. Parker (Icon Group International)

My vote goes to the last title (the one about 60 mg containers). I'm surprised to see Yang's Techniques for Corrosion Monitoring on the list because title seems perfectly normal to me for a technical book.

Best Translated Book of 2008

Last night at a party in Brooklyn, NY, the Best Translated Book awards were announced for translations published in 2008. The results are reported by Three Percent. For fiction, the winner is Tranquilityby Attila Bartis, translated from the Hungarian by Imre Goldstein and published by Archipelago Books. In an overview of the book, Three Percent calls this "a dark, twisted book, and one that’s incredibly gripping and very well written and well translated." For poetry, the winner is For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnutby Takashi Hiraide, translated from the Japanese by Sawako Nakayasu and published by New Directions.

What Would Philip Roth Do?

In a blog post at Critical Mass, Ellen Heltzel explores Ann Patchett’s decisions about which author appearances to accept based on the answer to the question “What would Philip Roth do?” This test is a useful “measuring stick for Patchett” because Roth is known to be “too big and fine to suffer fools or silly solicitations gladly.”

Heltzel’s point is that the test isn’t working very well for Patchett, who recently shared the stage with Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love) at the Portland Arts & Lectures series where the two women “chatt[ed] in front of hundreds of people like two girls at a slumber party.” For Heltzel, appearances like this are one reason why women writers aren’t taken as seriously as their male counterparts:

For women writers who think they still aren’t taken as seriously as the men in their field, here was Exhibit A for why that might occur: a coupla chicks sitting around talking while an audience pays $26.50 a seat to hear them indulge in a bout of self- and mutual admiration. … [Toni] Morrison would flick off such public familiarity as easily as she would a bad sentence.

Heltzel contrasts the Patchett/Gilbert appearance—where the two women “sat with feet tucked underneath them in two oversized upholstered chairs”—with an earlier appearance by Joyce Carol Oates at the same event. By standing at a lectern and “exud[ing] competence and demand[ing] respect,” Oates “served herself and the cause of literature.”

On top of uninspiring appearances, Heltzel questions whether inherent stylistic differences between male and female writers may fuel the gender gap. Adopting the viewpoint expressed by Lauren Groff (author of The Monsters of Templeton, a finalist for the Orange Prize for New Writers), Heltzel notes that “awards go to fiction that is written from the point of view of a man, concerns war, and has very short sentences—Hemingwayesque, as it were.” Even accepting Haltzel’s scurrilous gender stereotype regarding writing style, she doesn’t provide any support for her conclusion that we respect a Hemingwayesque style more than a more ornate style. In fact, several recent award winners refute her point (e.g., The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry (winner of the 2008 Costa Book of the Year) and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)).

And if one unsupported gender-based stereotype isn’t enough, Heltzel suggests another one—subject matter:

Fiction that deals with the big topics of the day, not the domestic sphere, is more readily imbued with the gravitas of great literature—pace War and Peace, not to mention Don DeLillo.

I suppose Heltzel is implying that women writers are more interested in “the domestic sphere” than male writers, another conclusion that doesn’t hold up for contemporary literary fiction (although it might fairly be applied to 18th and 19th century fiction). These days, the domestic sphere is fertile ground for both male and female writers.

Near the end of her post, Heltzel hits upon a valid point:

Another factor working against women writers is the distractions. … Women still handle the bulk of the job of raising children, not to mention caring for spouses, parents, and friends. They do more housework.

As much as we might hate to admit it, the “distraction factor” likely reduces the quantity of output of some female writers (though certainly not all).

Patchett’s “What would Philip Roth do?” test is not a bad idea, but no matter how faithfully she applies the test, it won’t turn her—or any other female writer looking for more respect—into Philip Roth (whose style, by the way, is not Hemingwayesque).

Translator Faces Potential Death Sentence

From Language Log (via Three Percent):

An appellate court has upheld 20 year prison sentences for Ahmad Ghaws Zalmai, who translated the Qur’an into Dari, one of the two major languages of Afghanistan, and Mushtaq Ahmad, a cleric who endorsed Zalmai’s translation. It appears that no errors have been found in Zalmai’s translation: the objection of Muslim clerics is that the Dari translation does not appear alongside the original Arabic text. The prosecutor had asked for the death penalty. Although the court did not impose the death penalty, Chief Judge Abdul Salam Azizadah agreed that it might be appropriate.

Krakauer's Next Book

Bestselling author Jon Krakauer is finally getting ready to publish his long-delayed next book: Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman. According to Publishers Weekly, the book will be published in September with an initial print run of 600,000 copies. The book is about a football star turned Army Ranger and "draws on Tillman’s journals and letters, interviews with his wife and friends, conversations with the soldiers who served alongside him, and research Krakauer performed in Afghanistan." Krakauer is best known for his books Into Thin Air and Into the Wild.

And as long as we're on the topic of bestsellers, Entertainment Tonight reports that Dan Brown is finishing up a third book in his wildly popular series that started with The Da Vinci Code and continued with Angels and Demons.

Support Interesting Fiction--Paper Egg Books

As reported by Publishers Weekly, Featherproof Books is launching a book subscription program called Paper Egg Books. This small press publishes interesting books, including a lot of experimental fiction. For the bargain price of just $20, you will receive two books per year, one in the fall and one in the spring. According to the PW story:

All Paper Egg titles will be designed by Paul Hornschemeier, the award-winning illustrator and graphic novelist. The first title released under the Paper Egg imprint will be Christian TeBordo’s debut short story collection, The Awful Possibilities, due out in October. TeBordo is the author of three novels: The Conviction and Subsequent Life of Savior Neck, Better Ways of Being Dead and We Go Liquid.

If you're one of the first 250 subscribers (and there's still room in that number), you'll get a bonus book with your subscription price: AM/PM by Amelia Gray, described by Paper Egg as "an incredible, collection of interlocked, mouth-watering short-short stories." That way, you'll have something to read while waiting for your first subscription book to arrive in October.

If you're interested, sign up here.

Before You Buy that Kindle ...

Before committing to the steep $359 price tag of the new Kindle, consider whether it's worth waiting for the new reading device scheduled to be unveiled by Plastic Logic next year. The Plastic Logic e-reader has several notable advantages over the Kindle. For one thing, Plastic Logic's website boasts that its e-reader "is designed to support a range of open document formats. These include such standard and widely available formats as PDF, ePub and Microsoft Office document types." For another thing, Wired reports that the Plastic Logic e-reader "is as wide and long as a sheet of Letter-sized paper (8.5-by-11 inches), measures less than 3/10 of an inch thick, and weighs less than a magazine." Additionally, the e-reader will function via a touchscreen which is in line with other new, successful devices (e.g., the iPhone) and results in a more streamlined appearance.

Amazon.com = Investment Grade

As noticed by GalleyCat, on Friday Standard & Poor's upgraded Amazon.com's rating to "investment grade" based on recent increases in earnings enjoyed by the online mega-retailer. This news is particularly interesting considering the recent economic woes of the major publishing houses and many booksellers, including big box stores and independent stores. If you're interested, GalleyCat has also been "tracking the stock performance of the major companies that influence the bookselling business" and has published some statistics.

My Life in France by Julia Child (a review)

My Life in France
4 out of 5: Alex Prud'homme (Julia Child's husband's great-nephew) wrote My Life in France in the voice of his great-aunt after spending many afternoons interviewing Child, then in her nineties. This "memoir" faithfully captures Child's lively personality and her distinctive voice, down to her idiosyncratic expressions: "Phooey!" "Ouf!" and "Bravo!" The photographs included in the book add further authenticity.

My Life in France is not a complete life story. Rather, the focus is on Child's time abroad with her husband, Paul, who worked in various diplomatic capacities over the years. During this time, Child shed her provincial ideas and discovered her love of gourmet cooking and French food. The book includes a detailed account of the genesis and the sometimes frustrating development of Child's masterpiece, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. This cookbookbrought French cooking within the grasp of American home cooks and is now widely regarded as a catalyst in the development of the appreciation of good food in America. My Life in France will appeal to lovers of French food and will inspire those who enjoy cooking.

Adults Reading Children's Books

I'm curious as to why so many of us adults are reading YA or kids' books these days. I can't count how many fully grown people have told me I MUST READ the Harry Potter books or the Twilight series. I don't think I've ever encountered so much enthusiasm behind a recommendation for a book geared towards adults. What's the source of this mania?

Personally, I don't read kids' books. For me, there are too many amazing books out there for adults that I don't want to give up any of my reading time. For those of you who like kids' books, I'd be interested to hear what you like about them. I'm also wondering if this is a new phenomenon or have adults always read kids books, and I just haven't noticed?

Lit Blogs Drive Purchasing Decisions

The results are in, and they're pretty overwhelming: Literary blogs have a very significant impact on book-related purchases.

A little over 2 weeks ago, I decided to run a survey in an attempt to measure, at least roughly, the influence of literary blogs on book-related purchasing decisions. Thanks to the help of many fellow lit bloggers, thousands of people completed the survey during the two-week period. The results are analyzed in detail below.

Questions 1 and 2
The first two questions of the survey were geared towards lit-blog-reading behaviors in order to get a general sense of the habits of the survey respondents. These questions revealed that lit blog readers are both active and promiscuous. In response to the question "How often do you read a lit blog?", 87% of you replied "daily." 96% of you read a lit blog at least weekly, and only 4% of you read a lit blog only "monthly" or "rarely." These results aren't particularly surprising considering the survey was geared towards lit blog readers and primarily publicized on lit blogs and other on-line sites related to books and reading.

More surprising, at least to me, were the answers to question 2: "How many lit blogs do you regularly read?" 78% of you read 5 or more lit blogs a day, and 59% of you admit to reading 10 or more lit blogs a day. (I'm glad to know I'm not the only one.)

Questions 3 and 4
Questions 3 and 4 asked about primary and secondary influences on book-related purchases. For 56% of you, lit blogs are the primary influence on your book-related purchases. The rest of you split pretty evenly between traditional media (e.g., newpaper book reviews, NPR, Oprah) and family and/or friends. Bookseller recommendations are the primary influence on book-related purchases for only 2% of you.

As for secondary influences, lit blogs won again with 28% of the vote. Assuming nobody claimed lit blogs as both primary and secondary influencers, lit blogs are a primary or secondary influencer for 84% of you. Basically, for those of you who read lit blogs, those blogs exert a strong influence over your book-related purchases.

Question 5
Now that we know lit blogs are a strong influencer over the book-related purchases of their readers, the next step is to quantify that influence. Towards this purpose, question 5 asked, "How often do you make a book-related purchase based on something you've seen on a lit blog?" A whopping 76% of you responded "at least once a month," including 10% of you who answered "at least once a week," and 4% of you who answered "every few days."

These results show that, for those of us reading lit blogs regularly (and there are quite a lot of us these days), those blogs are influencing us to make book-related purchases at least once a month in most cases. In an industry where a work of literary fiction is considered a success if it sells between 4,000 and 7,000 copies, these results demonstrate that lit blogs have the power to exert significant influence on the literary marketplace.

Anecdotal Evidence
The anecdotal evidence, while far from scientific, supports the survey results. Here are just a couple examples:

• Tiago Pavan commented: "I own a bookstore here in São Paulo, Brazil, and also a blog that talks about culture and books. I can say that I had an increase of 70% in sales after blogging! The bookstore is: 30porcento.com.brand the blog, 30porcento.com.br/blog."


• In response to a post about this survey, Evie commented at Three Percent: "You might like to know that your wonderful blog [Three Percent] has resulted in four or five of my recent purchases, one of which was an Open Letter title and all of which were in translation."

Other Interesting Questions
Obviously, this online, lit-blog-administered survey captured a very specific group of respondents. Although an on-line survey is not the proper tool for such an inquiry, it would be interesting to (a) measure the size of the lit-blog-reading population and (b) determine the ratio of lit-blog readers to non-lit-blog readers among the general reading population. It would also be interesting to explore the homogenizing effect of cross-pollination among lit blogs (how long does it take for a major piece of literary news or a word-of-mouth bestseller to hit all the lit blogs). Clearly, there's plenty of room for future exploration.

One final note: The last question of the survey asked, "What's your favorite lit blog (if you have one)?" The most common response was a variation of "too many to name just one" or "all of them."

Read Dating

As reported in Shelf Awareness, the University Book Store in Seattle, Washington tried a new spin on speed dating last week: "Read Dating." Participants were given eight minutes to chat about their favorite books and authors with their "match" before moving on to the next person. According to the store's manager of public relations and events, "a ton of people came, and I think even a few matches were made. We're definitely going to do it again."

More Coetzee on the Way

According to the grapevine, J.M. Coetzee will be publishing his 20th book this September in the UK. The book is titled Summertime, and it has a page on Amazon.uk (but not yet on Amazon.com). On the Wikipedia page for Coetzee, the new book is grouped with Coetzee's previous memoirs, Boyhood and Youth. Conversational Reading speculates Summertime "will be the third installment of Coetzee's reflections on a provincial upbringing."

By the way, I loved Coetzee's most recent novel, Diary of a Bad Year, and gave it a 4.5 out of 5 in my review.

Kindle 2 Controversy

Amazon's announcement of the Kindle 2 is just days old, and controversy is already brewing. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the Kindle 2 includes a new function that "reads text aloud with a computer-generated voice." Paul Aiken, the executive director of the Authors Guild, claims the Kindle 2 doesn't "have the right to read a book out loud" because "[t]hat's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law."

Grisham Goes Electronic

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, John Grisham is "close to wrapping up an agreement" with Random House to make all of his titles available as e-books. Currently, Grisham is one of the few bestselling authors whose work is not sold in electronic format.

Last Chance to Take the Survey

We're in the final days of the survey I've been running to test the influence of literary blogs on book-related purchasing decisions. Thanks to many who spread the word, I've received a large sample size, and the results are looking really interesting. I'll post a full analysis this Friday, Feb. 13th. If you haven't had a chance to take the survey, it's not too late. Here's the link.

30 Books in 30 Days

Leading up to the announcement of the winners of the National Book Critics Circle Awards on March 12th, the NBCC blog Critical Mass is covering the thirty finalists in thirty days. Today's entry is a write up of fiction finalist Home by Marilynne Robinson, a book I loved.

Kindle 2.0

The rumors are true. Amazon just announced the debut of the second generation Kindle, and it looks a lot better than the first edition. The new device, which will be released on February 24th, is much slimmer and will have increased functionality as compared to the first edition. The battery life is longer, and there's more storage capacity. There's a "text-to-speech feature" so, apparently, the new Kindle can read out loud to you. The sticker price is $359. You can pre-order yours here.

Incidental Reading

At Shelf Awareness, Robert Gray discusses "incidental reading." For example, reading a couple stanzas of Emerson's Representative Men on his iPod while waiting in the check-out line at the grocery store:

If I stood in the same place and read my hardbound copy [of Emerson's Representative Men], I'd feel conspicuous and a little pretentious. But I can read anything in public on an iPod and nobody cares, since it looks like I'm checking my phone or performing any of the other blips and bleeps that keep us going these days.

Incidental reading is a great way add a little extra meaning to an otherwise full day. For my incidental reading, I turn to the short stories published by One Story, a non-profit literary organization that publishes one carefully-selected short story every three weeks. Each installment of One Story is compact—20 or so pages printed as a small, monochromatic booklet—and perfect for slipping into a purse or pocket.

A Mercy by Toni Morrison (a review)

A Mercy
3.5 out of 5: This concise novel is set in early colonial America when the concept of slavery was separated from race and where a few privileged landowners owned the labor of slaves and indentured servants of all races. The story examines what it means to be free and unfolds slowly in chapters told from the alternating viewpoints of several characters, including both landowners and their laborers. Among the most striking and attractive elements of this book are its descriptions of early, unspoiled America as it compared to the England the colonists left behind. From the perspective of one landowner:

Rain itself became a brand-new thing: clean, sootless water falling from the sky. She clasped her hands under her chin gazing at trees taller than a cathedral, wood for warmth so plentiful it made her laugh, then weep, for her brothers and the children freezing in the city she had left behind.

Most characters get just one chapter in which to tell their stories, and the resulting patchwork effect leaves the reader to fill in the significant gaps. All of the action takes place within a couple days and only comes to a head at the very end of the book. Everything else leads up to this event, and this severe distillation and compression results in a kind of allegory rather than a conventional novel. Some of the characters even lack names and are meant to represent ideas. The minimalism of this novel is powerful but lacks emotion. A Mercy is a book of ideas, not people.

Morrison's prose is, at times, beautifully poetic:

[The fog] was sun fired, turning the world into thick, hot gold. Penetrating it was like struggling through a dream.

At other times, the oblique language seems needlessly affected:

How long will it take will he be there will she get lost will someone assault her will she return will he and is it already too late? For salvation.

A Mercy is stylistically and structurally interesting but the overall effect is a bit academic and sterile. Critics will like this book but readers may be disappointed by its inscrutability, which sometimes appears to elevate form over function.

V-Day is Coming

Yes, it's an over-hyped holiday revived from Roman times by Hallmark in the early 1900s and now kept alive by manipulative retailers of all kinds, but if you're in a romantic relationship, then it's a holiday you ignore at your peril. If you're still searching for the perfect gift for your valentine, consider a book. It's thoughtful, always classy, and not too over-the-top for these uncertain economic times.

Here are some good ideas:

• My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead, edited by Jeffrey Eugenides. This sophisticated compilation of short stories about love is edited by the Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of Middlesex. I loved this collection when I read it last year and gave it a rare 4.5 out of 5. As I mentioned in my review, however, this isn't a gift for new loves. Given its often dark themes, save this one for a more established relationship so as not to send an ambiguous message. It's available in hardcoverand paperbackeditions. The hardcover edition is particularly beautiful.
  
• Franklin and Lucy by Joseph Persico. If your Valentine prefers non-fiction, Franklin and Lucy by Joseph Persico is a good choice. In this biography, Persico paints an intimate portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt through the lens of his relationships with various women over the course of his life. Persico's treatment is sensitive and highly readable. It's available only in an attractive hardcoveredition.
  
• The Sailor from Gibraltar by Marguerite Duras. This title from Open Letter Books is particlularly well-suited to Valentine's Day, and your gift will support this university press's laudable mission of bringing important international works into English translations. If you order this week, Open Letter will gift wrap your book for Valentine's Day gratis. Get further details here.


• For the reluctant reader or the person with too many books already, consider Jeff Hoke's Museum of Lost Wonder. This "book" defies description. It's a beautifully illustrated curiosity cabinet for adults, complete with paper models and filled with intellectual potpourri.

Video Book?

HarperCollins has published its first "video book" (aka V-Book): a 23-minute video summary of the book What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis. The hardcover title, published by Collins Business, is priced at $26.99, but the video book costs only $9.99 on Amazon. In a statement, HaperCollins CEO Brian Murray explains the concept of video books:

Part of our mission is to help authors find new and complementary ways to present their ideas to consumers through multiple platforms, formats and channels. A video edition of Jeff's book is a terrific example of a product that is both a viral marketing tool and possibly a new revenue stream.

Pilot Loses Library Book in Plane Crash

As reported in Extra TV, the pilot of US Airways Flight 1549 lost a library book when his plane crashed in the Hudson River earlier this month. When Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger called to report the loss, the Fresno State Library not only waived the lost book fee, but also dedicated a replacement copy to the heroic Captain. Although the library is not revealing the title of the book, citing Sullenberger's privacy rights, they have commented that the book was about professional ethics.

Become an Author in 4 Simple Steps

At the Boston Globe, Alex Beam explains how you can become a published author in just four easy steps, and you don't even have to write. Step 1, Writing the Book, involves hiring one of the 86,500 ghost writers available via a simple Google search. Steps 2 and 3 explain how you can get positive blurbs and reviews for your book for a nominal feel. Step 4 is the fun part--book signings. So easy!

French Prize-Winner is "A Mess"

The complete review has reviewed Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones and has given it a C- and called it "a mess." This prix Goncourt-winning book weighs in at almost 1000 pages and has garnered much attention now that an English translationwill be published in early March. The Literary Saloon (the complete review's blog) discusses the review and concludes that The Kindly Ones isn't worth reading:

Littell's is a big, 'serious' book that tackles very serious issues and history -- but there's little here that hasn't been covered before, and the parts that are original -- Littell's fictional padding -- are simply terrible.

Dallas Libraries Charge for Hot Titles

Frequent users of public libraries are familiar with long waits for bestsellers. I use the Houston Public Library quite a bit, and I've faced some long waits recently:

• Dangerous Laughter by Stephen Millhauser (3 months and counting)
• A Mercy by Toni Morrison (about a month)
• The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher (3 weeks)
• The Forever War by Dexter Filkins (about 2 months)

If I'm waiting three months for Millhauser's Dangerous Laughter, imagine what the wait time is for Stephanie Meyer's Twilight.

The Dallas Public Library has started a new program to combat long waitlists: StreetSmart Express. A large number of copies of popular books and DVDs are available for check-out for $5 each. Items that are less in-demand remain free. As reported in the Dallas Morning News, library officials designed the program "to eliminate or shorten wait times for people who want to borrow popular titles rather than pay hefty retail costs." Since the launch of StreetSmart Express in October, library customers have spent $10,405 on 2,081 items. For their $5, StreetSmart users can keep books for three weeks and DVDs for one week, the same time allotted to free items.

Shakespeare's First Folio Recovered

As reported in the Guardian, a 51-year-old man has been arrested in England for stealing a rare first folio edition of Shakespeare's plays, printed in 1623. The "priceless" book (only 200-300 survive) disappeared from Durham University over a decade ago in December 1998. It resurfaced when the suspect, "claiming to be an international businessman who had acquired the volume in Cuba, [] showed the folio to staff at a library in Washington, DC and asked them to verify it was genuine."

Bill Bryson, chancellor of Durham University and author of a book on Shakespeare, commented: "Like Shakespeare himself, this book is a national treasure, giving a rare and beautiful snapshot of Britain's incredible literary heritage. I'll certainly be joining the crowds who will be eagerly welcoming it home."

In addition to the folio, an early English translation of the New Testament, a fragment of a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer, a Beowulf edition printed in 1815, and two rare editions of the Old English epic by the 10th century scholar Aelfric were also taken on the same occasion. A police spokesman has confirmed that, while "a large number of old books and documents" have been discovered, it remains uncertain whether those documents include the other rare documents stolen from Durham along with the folio.

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award

Penguin Group USA and Amazon.com began their second-annual Breakthrough Novel Award contest today. Aspiring novelists have until midnight EST on Feb. 8th to submit their manuscripts. On March 16, Amazon reviewers will cut the list down to 500 quarterfinalists. On April 15, Publishers Weekly reviews will pick the top 100 semifinalists. One month later, Penguin will pick three finalists, and Amazon readers will pick the winner on May 22. Get all the details here.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

If you love Jane Austen but also love a good zombie story, you might be interested in the latest project from Chronicle Books: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Hard as it may be to believe, this is a real book scheduled to be released in mid-April. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, written by Seth Grahame-Smith, includes the original text of Austen's Pride and Prejudice "with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action." The book will also include 20 illustrations in the style of C. E. Brock (the original illustrator of Pride and Prejudice). Chronicle Books hopes this bizarre collaberation "will introduce Jane Austen's classic novel to new legions of fans." If this sounds interesting to you, you can pre-order the book on Amazon.

The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews (a review)

The Flying Troutmans: A Novel
3.5 out of 5: In The Flying Troutmans, a heartsick aunt just back from Paris takes her mentally-unstable sister's kids on a cross-country road trip in search of their father. Along the way, this newly-formed "family" encounters local characters, road kill, a pit bull, and plenty of other adventures. Everyone in this book is quirky and loveable, and Toews's casual (and quotation-mark free) prose streams along at a quick pace, paralleling the group's travels.

The following conversation between Hattie (the aunt) and Logan (Hattie's sister's teenaged son) about shooting hoops is typical of Toews's unique style:

What do you think about when you shoot? I asked him.
Nothing, he said.
Oh, really? I said. You just concentrate entirely on shooting?
Yeah, I guess, he said.
Do you worry that the ball won't go in? I asked him.
No, he said, I always believe that it will. Every time.
Seriously? I said. Even when you've missed a bunch of shots?
Yeah, I think it's gonna go in every time, he said.
And then, so, when it doesn't go in do you feel all disillusioned? I asked him.
No, not at all, he said, 'cause I'm always sure the next one will go in.

Logan's basketball philosophy turns out to be the central message of this book: no matter what bad things have happened to you, keep believing the next thing will be good.

In opposition to this uplifting message, a darker story revolving around the sisters' precarious relationship is revealed through flashbacks and Hattie's regular calls to the mental institution where her sister is staying. Unfortunately, Toews neglects to fully explore this troubled relationship and misses an opportunity to develop something deeper than a novel about an odd roadtrip. The end of the journey, both literally and metaphorically, is unsatisfying, but the trip along the way is charming and occasionally very funny.

Bed-In at Scottish Book Store

What could be better than spending the day in bed surrounded by good books? Throw in "cups of tea, biscuits [I think this means cookies], a cat at the end of the bed, a telephone off the hook, lots of fluffy pillows and a warm duvet," and you're approaching the sublime. That's exactly what Scottish bookseller Jayne Ramage did last week when she climbed into bed in the middle of her Watermill book shop. As reported by Deadline Scotland, Ramage "is urging customers to beat the biting recession and escape the worries of the economy by spending the day in bed with a good book." Customers expressed some surprise ("It's very unusual to see someone in bed when you pop into a book shop.") but were charmed by the idea.