The Face on Your Plate by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (a review)

The Face on Your Plate: The Truth About Food
2 out of 5: In The Face on Your Plate, Masson means to persuade readers to give up eating meat and all animal products, including eggs, dairy, and honey. There’s not enough room in this slim volume for well-supported arguments, so Masson resorts to dogmatic statements like the following:

No animal under domestication, with the possible exception of the cat, leads the life it was designed to lead by nature. All of the changes that humans have managed to create, mainly through selective breeding, are not intended for the benefit of the animal. We benefit; the animals suffer the consequences. Does this mean that if we care about animal suffering and about the quality of their lives, we need to give up eating all animal-derived food? I am afraid so. I see no other conclusion possible for me personally.

The Face on Your Plate is filled with such conclusory and somewhat condescending statements, and, as a result, is not overly informative or persuasive, or, for that matter, particularly enjoyable to read. On the topics addressed by Masson, there are so many better books out there. The one shining attribute of The Face on Your Plate is its exhaustive appendix, which lists books and websites on the topics of animal rights, the industrial food complex and its effect on the environment, and sustainable food choices. This listing is comprehensive and up-to-date and will point you to the right books.

French Price Fixing Good for Independents

In an interview with Hungarian Literature Online, Jean Mattern, an editor representing French publishing house Gallimard, explains the French law that strictly regulates book prices:

For years now, the marketing of books in France has been regulated according to a system of fixed prices. What are your experiences concerning this?

Yes, it is, and this system is extremely important to us. Actually, the government recently emphasized the importance of this law, which was passed in 1981. So this system has been working for the last 28 years. In short, the law we’re talking about basically regulates how the book market works. Without this law, a whole network of independent bookstores wouldn’t be able to survive. As of 1981, there isn’t any difference in price between, say, a book sold by large chains like Fnac and one found in small, independently owned bookstores. Thanks to this system of fixed prices, French publishing has kept its diversity.

A Novel in Real Time

Max Barry is publishing a new novel, titled Machine Man, in real time. Barry explains: "It’s 'real-time' because you read it as I write it. This isn’t a novel that’s been gathering dust in a drawer, pining for a publisher." If you're interested, you can sign up for a live feed.

The novel starts:

One Tuesday afternoon my left leg was severed. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. Well, it was. It was agonizing. There was a lot of screaming and flopping around and trying to tear my shirt into pieces to stem the bleeding. While I was busy with this, my co-workers stared through two-inch polycarbonate security glass and beat on the door. They couldn’t get in. It was sealed for their safety. I had to apply my own tourniquet and try not to pass out for eight minutes. While I lay there, waiting for the time-release, I could see the top of what used to be my leg poking out from between two thick slabs of steel, gently dripping blood to the floor. I felt sorry for it. My leg hadn’t asked for this. It had been a good leg. A faithful leg. And now look at it.

An interesting idea.

Free E-book with Hardcover

Who is Mark Twain? is an anthology of twenty-four of Mark Twain's short fiction and non-fiction pieces, selected by Robert Hirst, general editor of the Mark Twain Project at the University of California, Berkeley. The interesting thing about this particular book is that Powell's is offering a free e-book version of the book to purchasers of the hardcover (and the hardcover is on sale for $14). Powell's explains the details:

Purchase the hardcover edition of Who Is Mark Twain? and you'll immediately receive a link to the PDF eBook version of the book. Download the file (which can be read in any PDF reader, including Adobe Acrobat) and you'll be enjoying the book in moments. Just the thing to tide you over while you wait for your hardcover copy to arrive!

As e-readers become more and more prevalent, I suspect this idea will catch on. You can pay one price to get a book in several formats, allowing you to mix and match your reading experience to fit the circumstances.

Penguin African Writers Series

Penguin recently announced the launch of the Penguin African Writers Series, which will publish "the very best books from the iconic Heinemann African Writers Series ... as well as new books from fresh African voices." Chinua Achebe (Things Fall Apart) will be Editorial Adviser for the new series, and his own collection Girls at War and Other Stories will be one of six inaugural books in the series. Other inaugural titles include Weep Not, Child by Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Black Sunlight by Zimbabwean Dambudzo Marechera, Guyana-born Karen King-Aribisala's Hangman's Game, Neighbours: The Story of Murder by Mozambican Lilia Momple and Cote d'Ivoirian Veronique Tadjo's As the Crow Flies. Achebe comments: "The last 500 years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and now the time has come for Africans to tell their own stories."

The Paperback Original

USA Today reports the views of authors and publishers on the paperback original. The consensus: "paperback is a viable original format for a book," particularly "during tough economic times."

I agree. I've always liked the convenience and value of paperback originals. The format also provides an economic way to publish new works in translation and other non-mainstream books.

Pay-What-You-Want E-book Now Available

As reported by The Bookseller back in February, Faber just launched a "pay what you want" e-book (in PDF format) six weeks ahead of the print-book publication. The book is Ben Wilson's What Price Liberty?, a non-fiction book exploring "four centuries of civil liberty; how it was constructed, and has been re-thought and re-fought in response to new circumstances."

Silvia Novak, Faber marketing executive, comments:

Essentially this is an experiment, and price is one variable that we're really interested in observing. We also think we'll learn a lot about the thirst for books in digital form. ... We're wondering whether a reader's perspective will change from the initial rush of getting something for free - or close to - to an actual enjoyment of a piece of work, and whether that would translate into wanting to pay more for that experience.

2008 LA Times Book Prizes

The 2008 LA Times Book Prizes were awarded at the end of last week, proving you can still award book prizes even if you no longer have a book review section. Marilynne Robinson's Home won in the fiction category, and Zoë Ferraris's Finding Nouf won in the first fiction category. To see the winners in the other categories (biography, current interest, history, mystery/thriller, poetry, science/technology, and YA) along with the runners-up in all categories, go here.

Is Borders Doomed?

The Wall Street Journal predicts "Twelve Major Brands that Will Disappear" before the end of 2010. Borders is on the list with this explanation:

Borders (BGP) has struggled for several years as the No.2 operator of book store behind Barnes & Noble. When Border’s released its last set of earnings it said it would cut the number of Waldendbooks stores from about 300 to 50 or 60. With Border’s losses, that won’t be enough. The pressure from online book operations led by Amazon (AMZN) and new e-book readers is overwhelming Borders. In the fourth quarter of last year, sales at Border’s branded stores dropped 15.3%. For the full year 2008, Borders lost $157 million on revenue of $2.8 billion. Borders recently extended its $42.5 million senior secured term loan with Pershing Square Capital Management, moving the due date to April 1, 2010. That may be the day that Borders goes away. Border’s shares trade at $1.47, down from a 52-week high of $8.02.

Other brands on the list include Palm, Gap, and Crocs.

Obligation to Support Local Bookstores?

Marc Fisher at the Washington Post talks about our obligation, if any, to support local bookstores. Fisher ends his essay with a poll asking: "What's your obligation as a customer to support local bookstores?" Here are the results so far:

• 12% say: "None--they either win me over on price and service or they deserve to die"
• 43% say: "Some--if they create an enriching place, I'll pay somewhat higher prices to support them"
• 31% say: "Serious--great local bookshops are foundations of community, well worth the price to keep alive"
• 11% say: "Don't know--locally-owned bookstores already vanished from where I live"

I fall somewhere between the "some" and "serious" camps. I do believe great local bookstores are worth saving, but not every local bookstore is great.

Celebrating the 60-Year Anniversary of a Great Idea

Walter and Eva Neurath, fleeing Nazi Germany, arrived in London in the late 1930s. They met, fell in love, married, and, most importantly for our purposes, founded art publishing house Thames & Hudson. From the beginning, Thames & Hudson sought to "publish reasonably priced books on art, sculpture and architecture, in which words and pictures were integrated and accessible to all." The Times has a nice history of this family publishing house, which remains "one of Britain’s last family-held publishing dynasties."

In contrast to many of the high-price, glossy art books available these days, T&H publishes high-quality art books at reasonable prices. Personally, I've used many of their books in my studies, and I've never been disappointed. Find something you're interest in (or discover a great gift) here.

Time to Get Rid of the Nobel Prize?

Marie Arana, once a fixture at the Washington Post Book World (now defunct), thinks it's time to eliminate the Nobel Prize in Literature:

I'm not proposing to eliminate the prize because one official branded Americans lumbering ignoramuses. I'm doing it because, since Alfred Nobel, the chemist who invented dynamite, founded his famous prize, the Nobel has shown a breathtaking proclivity for exalting minor literary talent.

Arana dubs last year's winner, J.M.G. Le Clézio, "erratic and treacly." She thinks the choices reveal "a lack of critical judgment and a surfeit of political zeal." In this feisty Arana concludes only 15 of the 115 laureates deserved the Prize.

Dan Brown's Latest

Knopf Doubleday will publish Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol this September. The initial print run of this follow-up to The Da Vinci Code will be an astounding 5 million copies. Brown's editor states: "This book's narrative takes place in a twelve-hour period, and from the first page, Dan's readers will feel the thrill of discovery as they follow Robert Langdon through a masterful and unexpected new landscape."

The Oprah Effect...Not

As I've mentioned in the past, the 'Oprah Effect' is very powerful when it comes to book sales. When Oprah picks a book for her book club, it's pretty much equivalent to winning the lottery for that author. An on-air author interview, or even a quick book mention, also results in significantly increased sales. So what happens when Oprah cancels book coverage?

As reported by GalleyCat, Oprah Winfrey decided to cancel an upcoming episode about the Columbine school shooting, scheduled to recognize the tenth anniversary of the tragedy, because the episode "focused too much on killers." Over at Portfolio, various publishing experts opined about what the cancellation means for Dave Cullen, the author scheduled to talk about his book Columbine. One expert estiamted "that the publisher would most likely have ordered another 50,000 or so copies in expectation of 'The Oprah Effect.'"

2009 Orange Prize for Fiction Shortlist

The 6-book shortlist for the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction was just announced. I’ve read only one of the shortlisted titles, Marilynne Robinson’s Home, and it's a worthy contender. Here's the full list:

• Marilynne Robinson's Home
• Samantha Harvey's The Wilderness
• Ellen Feldman's Scottsboro
• Deirdre Madden's Molly Fox's Birthday
• Kamila Shamsie's Burnt Shadows
• Samantha Hunt's The Invention of Everything Else

This list is a great place to find your next read. The winner will be announced on June 3rd.

The Orange Prize for Fiction is open to any full length novel written in English by a woman of any nationality, provided that the novel is published for the first time in the United Kingdom between April 1st of the year before the prize is awarded and March 31st of the year in which the prize is awarded.

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Random House) won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction earlier this week. The Prize site describes this book as "a collection of 13 short stories set in small-town Maine that packs a cumulative emotional wallop, bound together by polished prose and by Olive, the title character, blunt, flawed and fascinating." Also nominated as finalists were The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich (HarperCollins) and All Souls by Christine Schutt (Harcourt). If you're interested, you can order your copy of Olive Kitteridge here.

World Book Day

Tomorrow, April 23rd, is celebrated in many parts of the world as World Book Day (or The International Day of the Book or Copyright Day) ever since UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) so designated the day in 1995. The holiday originated with the Catalonian tradition for men to give roses to loved ones on St. George's Day (April 23rd) and for women to reciprocate with a book (I think the men get the better half of the exchange). In Catalonia on April 23rd, outside stalls and stands crop up for purchasing books at a discount, authors have book signings, and schools have book-related field days. As a result of this tradition, half of Catalonia's annual book sales are made during this period.

UNESCO chose April 23rd as World Book Day partly because of the Catalonian festival but also because a number of well known authors were either born or died on this date, including Miguel de Cervantes, Vladimir Nabokov, and Shakespeare. In the UK, World Book Day is celebrated on March 6, so as not to clash with St. George's Day (April 23rd) since St. George is England's patron saint.

The U.S. does not celebrate World Book Day.

Espresso Book Machine

Shelf Awareness reports that, beginning in May, Lightning Source (a print-on-demand company) is launching a pilot program to provide about 85,000 titles from 13 publishers on Espresso Book Machines. The machines will soon be installed in 15 locations around the world. The Espresso Book Machine can produce a paperback book in mere minutes.

Participating publishers include Hachette, Simon & Schuster, Wiley, Macmillan, and Norton.

Saving Cologne's Historical Archive

As I mentioned a few weeks ago (here and here), the historical archive in Cologne, Germany recently collapsed unexpectedly, burying countless literary treasures in a pile of rubble. In a recent article, DW-World reports on the ongoing restoration efforts. Over 60 firemen and volunteers have spent the weeks since the collapse uncovering documents. Cologne's deputy fire chief estimates the workers "have already recovered more than half of the historical materials." After recovery, "the mindboggling task of preserving and organizing the recovered materials" begins.

Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser (a review)

Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories
2.5 out of 5: As we've come to expect from Pulitzer-prize-winning Millhauser, the thirteen stories contained in this collection are expertly crafted. Each one, standing alone, is inventive and transporting. When read together as a collection, however, the stories become tedious and predictable.

In an all too recognizable way, each story in this collection is the same. Each story begins with a particular idea--for example, a teenaged party prank, the construction of a very tall tower, or an artist's creation of miniatures. Then, the idea is repeated over and over within the story's narrative in such a way that each repetition moves one step closer to the absurd. Eventually, the teenaged party prank becomes an unhealthy obsession for an entire neighborhood, the tall tower pierces into heaven, and the miniature artist works on a scale invisible to the human eye.

In this characteristic excerpt, the miniature artist is driven to ever greater feats of miniturization:

But even as he sank deeply into his little world he felt at the back of his mind a light itching, as if he knew that his [miniature] palace, even that, could not satisfy him for long. For such a feat, however arduous, was really no more than the further conquest of a familiar realm, the twilight realm of the world revealed by his glass, and he yearned for a world so small that he could not yet imagine it. As he worked on his palace the craving grew in him, and he seemed to sense dimly, just out of reach beyond his inner sight, a farther kingdom.

In this same way, each story in this collection drills deeper and deeper or broadens wider and wider or becomes more and more extreme. This amping up effect is characteristic of Millhauser's fiction, and the effect works quite well in his longer fiction. In this collection of short stories, however, the devolution to the absurd happens with such predictability that the construct becomes mundane and even annoying.

Indies Choice Book Awards Announced

The winners have been announced in seven categories for the first Indies Choice Book Awards, the successor awards to the Book Sense Awards. These winners were chosen by the owners and staff at ABA-member stores during more than four weeks of voting, so I imagine books that sold well are overrepresented. Here are the winners:

• Best Indie Buzz Book (Fiction): The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (The Dial Press)
• Best Conversation Starter (Nonfiction): The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell (Riverhead)
• Best Author Discovery: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski (Ecco)
• Best Indie Young Adult Buzz Book (Fiction): The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins)
• Best New Picture Book: Bats at the Library by Brian Lies (Houghton Mifflin)
• Most Engaging Author: Sherman Alexie

Fanny Howe Wins Poetry Prize

As reported in the LA Times, Fanny Howe was just awarded the $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, awarded each year to a "living US poet whose lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition." Her poetry collections include Gone (University of California Press, 2003), Selected Poems (UC Press, 2000), On the Ground (Graywolf Press, 2004), and The Lyrics (Graywolf, 2007). Howe has also written five novels and two collections of essays.

In announcing the award, the Poetry Foundation said Fanny Howe's poetry "can be elusive and hermetic, and then abruptly and devastatingly candid; it is marked by the pressures of history and culture, yet defiantly, transcendently lyrical. She is a demanding and deeply rewarding artist, and her body of work seems larger, stranger, and more permanent with each new book she publishes."

The Complete Review Turns 10

The Complete Review, an online compilation of thousands of book reviews, is ten years old as of March 31st. Literary Saloon, the companion blog to the Complete Review has a nice retrospective of the site, which is one of the very best sources of online book reviews.

Free Issue of BookBrowse Recommends

As I’ve mentioned in prior posts, I’m a Bookbrowse.com member. Bookbrowse publishes a thoughtful monthly newsletter recommending the month’s best books. Bookbrowse is geared towards serious readers and focuses on literary fiction and non-fiction, so you won’t be bombarded with recommendations for the latest bestsellers. For readers without much time to research their next book, Bookbrowse is a great source for solid recommendations. I’ve found many great books through the site. As an added bonus, members get an opportunity to participate in the First Impressions program, which offers Advanced Review Copies of books once a month.

If you’re curious about Bookbrowse, you may view a free issue of the site’s Bookbrowse Recommends newsletter here.

ABNA Semifinalists Announced

Yesterday, the 100 semifinalists were announced for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) contest. These semifinalists were chosen based on ratings from Publishers Weekly and selected reviewers. On May 15th, three finalists will be chosen by Penguin Group (USA) and will be critiqued publicly by a panel of judges. Amazon customers will then vote for the Grand Prize winner, who will receive a publishing contract with Penguin, including a $25,000 advance.

Can E-Books Replace P-Books?

The e-book versus p-book debate continues. Scott Esposito over at Conversational Reading explains why he thinks e-books will never fully replace p-books:

Obviously I'm a book-lover, so I'll always want some books around me, and I still enjoy the experience of reading a book more than reading an ebook. But even if I imagined a future where I liked reading ebooks better, I could still think of certain things books brought to the table that are unique to them.

My point here is that some media, like CDs, seem to just be clunky delivery systems. That is, downloads are a far better delivery system than CDs, and now that we have downloads I don't see any reason to keep using CDs. There's nothing intrinsic to them that seems worth preserving. This is no doubt partly due to the fact that we've only had CDs for about 25 years now, so they haven't had a chance to become an essential cultural object.

But something like books has a much longer history and has had the time to become woven into the cultural fabric of our lives. It's become more than just a means of elivery, and people seem loath to ditch them for that reason.

I tend to agree with Scott that physical books carry some weight as cultural objects beyond their pure utility as text-delivery devices. People like to have them around on bookshelves, even if they don’t read them. The comments to Scott’s post track an interesting discussion.

Children's Book Author Charged with Child Pornography

Kevin Patrick Bath, the 50-year-old author of the children's books The Secret of Castle Cant and Escape from Castle Cant, was recently charged with multiple counts of trading child pornography via the Internet. A press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon reports that “[a] forensic examination of Bath’s computer and data storage media revealed well over 100 video files and thousands of still images of child pornography. Many of the videos graphically depicted the sexual abuse of very young children.” In addition to writing children’s books, Bath serves as a volunteer at a local children's library.

Bath pled not guilty in response to the charges. Nevertheless, the Oregonian reports that publisher Little, Brown has cancelled the fall 2010 publication of Bath's book Flip Side. During the pendency of the proceedings, Bath is prohibited from “having contact with children pending trial.”

Be a Nose by Art Spiegelman (a review)

Be a Nose!: Three Sketchbooks
3 out of 5: Art Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Maus, presents this 3-volume reproduction of his private sketchbooks. The first volume is the small notebook Spiegelman took to the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1979. It's quite small and filled with black and white drawings. The second volume, dated 2007, is more substantive than the first, but my favorite is the third volume from 1983. Containing more detail and more color than the other two, the third volume is the most interesting to flip through.

Since there's no narrative and very few related images in these sketchbooks, they're best appreciated in small doses. The imagery is interesting but lacks the supporting substance found in Spiegelman's longer works. By far the best thing about these sketchbooks is their clever design. McSweeney's did a beautiful job publishing this "book," which consists of three volumes of different sizes, types, and textures. These really do look like real sketchbooks. If you leave them lying around the house, visitors will mistake you for the artsy type.

Campaign for Reader Privacy Sends Memo to Congress

Under the auspices of the Campaign for Reader Privacy, the American Booksellers Association, American Library Association, Association of American Publishers, and PEN American Center joined together to send a memorandum to Congress urging it "to exempt bookstores and library records from Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act." ABA COO Oren Teicher explains: "We believe the time has come to reassure Americans that the government is not reading over their shoulder."

If you're interested, read the full memorandum here.

Will E-Books Kill Bookstores?

Over at Three Percent, Chad Post has something to say about how e-readers and e-books might effect independent bookstores. He makes a good point about the impulsivity of Americans that I don't think has been emphasized in other similar stories:

I think it’s foolish to overlook the draw of immediacy that e-books/readers will have over the mass readership in America. Americans are pretty impulsive people, and the idea that a book (or album, or whatever) could come up in conversation, and within one minute — without even leaving your barstool — you could purchase and download that book/album/movie is like crack to most of us.

Good point.

Vonnegut Materials to be Published

According to Publisher’s Lunch (an unlinkable source), Delacorte Press has assembled a collection of previously unpublished short stories by the late Kurt Vonnegut. Apparently, the collection compares and contrasts annotated drafts of individual stories. The collection will include illustrations by Vonnegut and is scheduled for publication in November 2009. Additionally, there are plans for a follow-up collection of unpublished Vonnegut "writings" and a book of correspondence to and from the author.

Crichton's Posthumous Work

As reported by the New York Times, when he died of cancer last November, Michael Crichton left an unpublished novel and "about one-third" of a second one. The finished novel, titled Pirate Latitudes, is "an adventure story set in Jamaica in the 17th century" and will be published by HarperCollins this fall. According to a publishing representative, Pirate Latitudes "harks back to the kind of historical yarn that Mr. Crichton wrote in the The Great Train Robbery, first published in 1975."

The unfinished novel is "a technological thriller" set for publication in the fall of 2010. A "co-writer" will finish the book "working from Mr. Crichton's notes."

A Better Angel by Chris Adrian (a review)

A Better Angel: Stories
4 out of 5: This collection of short stories is insanely imaginative. One story unfolds from the perspective of a troubled 9-year-old yearning to bond with his substitute teacher. Another follows the spirit of a dead woman as she shadows the living in a hospital, divining their innermost thoughts. Many of Adrian's stories are darkly humorous, and most of them stretch the boundaries of reality. All of them are full of heart, even if that heart is broken and beyond repair.

Adrian, who is both a pediatrician and a divinity student in addition to a writer, blends the often incompatible medical and spiritual realms to create stories that challenge reality in credible ways. His protagonists inhabit extreme states; they are dying, murdering, possessed by evil spirits, or wallowing in sickness or addiction. Above all, they are interesting. If you're one of those people who believes most contemporary short stories read like class assignments for the Iowa Writers' Workshop, this collection will restore your faith in the power of this literary form.

Reading Reduces Stress

The Daily Telegraph reports on new research showing that just six minutes of reading can reduce stress levels by two-thirds: "Subjects only needed to read, silently, for six minutes to slow down the heart rate and ease tension in the muscles."

The study determined that reading reduced stress more than listening to music, drinking a cup of tea or coffee, taking a walk, or playing video games. The conclusion: "Losing yourself in a book is the ultimate relaxation."

Sounds good, right? Just keep in mind that the study "was commissioned by Galaxy chocolate to launch a campaign to give away one million books over the next six months." Just a coincidence?

The Persian Poem that Became a Victorian Sensation

In the London Review of Books, Marina Warner reviews a new edition of Edward FitzGerald's classic translation of Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, an 11th-century Persian poem. Fitzgerald's translation, first published in England in 1859 to little notice, became a surprising Victorian sensation. Fitzgerald's relaxed view of translation involved a "casual flouting of the integrity of [the] work." In a letter to a friend, FitzGerald explained his methods: "But at all Cost, a Thing must live: with a transfusion of one’s own worse Life if one can’t retain the Original’s better. Better a live Sparrow than a stuffed Eagle." The results of Fitzgerald's work was a strangely compelling translation that captured the Victorian imagination.

The history of Fitzgerald's translation is told in a current exhibition, The Persian Sensation: ‘The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám’ in the West, at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas (through August 2nd), which boasts a collection of more than 400 editions of the poem. Molly Schwartzburg, co-curator of the exhibition comments:

It's difficult for us to understand today just how important a part of Victorian and even Modernist literature this translation was. ... A century ago, the average American and certainly every poet writing in English could quote stanzas of this poem verbatim.

Outcasts United by Warren St. John (a review)

Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town
3 out of 5: Each year, hundreds of refugee families pour into Clarkstown, Georgia, a small town on the outskirts of Atlanta and a designated refugee settlement center. As Clarkstown struggles with its expanding and diverse population, its new residents attempt to adapt to an unfamiliar life in the United States. In Outcasts United, Warren St. John, a New York Times reporter, examines the ongoing cultural clash in Clarkstown through the lens of a soccer team called the Fugees. Luma al-Mufleh, a Jordanian immigrant herself, coaches the Fugees, a team made up of refugee boys and teenagers from Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and other war-ravaged parts of the world. The team becomes a source of stability and discipline for its members, most of whom struggle with traumatic memories and precarious home situations.

St. John deftly mixes the refugees’ personal stories and individual struggles with the larger issues of assimilation faced by the community. At times, however, St. John’s extensive play-by-play commentary of the various soccer matches becomes tedious, particularly because the focus of this book is on the refugees’ prior struggles against tyranny and their adjustment to a new life in America rather than on the outcome of their numerous soccer matches.

Outcasts United ends abruptly and with little sense of resolution. This unsatisfactory ending likely arises out of the ongoing nature of Clarkstown's challenges rather than through any fault of St. John’s, but the book feels unfinished. The book’s brief epilogue does little to mitigate this problem. St. John's account gives us an intimate and worthwhile portrayal of the refugees of Clarkstown but leaves us with little sense of what the future might hold for these refugees or for others in similar circumstances.

The World's Most Beautiful Libraries

Beautiful libraries for your viewing pleasure.

Cake!

At Shelf Awareness, Debra Ginsberg reveiws Let Me Eat Cake: A Celebration of Flour, Sugar, Butter, Eggs, Vanilla, Baking Powder, and a Pinch of Saltby Leslie F. Miller. Ginsberg describes this book as a "light, sweet, and entertaining" blend of "memoir, lore and journalism." Maybe it's because I share Miller's obsession with cake (I've been known to eat it for dinner) or maybe it's because I gave up desserts for Lent (just 3 days to go...), but this one's going on my wish list.

The Morality of Fiction Writing

In the Wall Street Journal, Alexander McCall Smith, author of the well-known No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency mystery series, discusses the moral responsibility of fiction writers:

Writing is a moral act: What you write has a real effect on others, often to a rather surprising extent. ... I suspect that many of us continue to experience fictional characters and events as being, in some way, real. This is because the imaginative act of following a story involves a suspension of disbelief, as we enter into the world it creates. ... Stories have an effect in this world. They are part of our moral conversation as a society. They weigh in; they change the world because they become part of our cultural history. There never was an Anna Karenina or a Madame Bovary, even if there might have been models, but what happened to these characters has become part of the historical experience of women.

Why Ebooks Must Fail

Evan Schnittman, head of Global Business Development at Oxford University Press, explains Why Ebooks Must Fail. After examining the economics of print publishing versus e-publishing, Schnittman concludes:

[U]nless a very different model evolves, ebooks can never become the dominant version of content sold by book publishers. It means that ebooks will always be priced to sell, but sold as an afterthought, not as the primary version of a work. It means that the need for blended e plus p models will evolve, in order to take advantage of all the great qualities of ebooks, while providing the financial support and structure that print offers. It means that consumer ebooks, as a stand-alone version of an intellectual property, must fail.

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry (a review)

The Secret Scripture
4 out of 5: The Secret Scripture is a novel of haunting beauty told through the alternating perspectives of Roseanne McNulty, a centenarian patient in a mental hospital near Sligo, Ireland, and Dr. William Grene, Roseanne's psychiatrist tasked with determining Roseanne’s true history and mental state.

Barry's prose is beautifully meditative, infused with a delicate spirituality and optimism. Long, meandering sentences alternate with sentence fragments and questions, as if directed to an audience, and present tense mixes with past. The result is a free-flowing, lyrical style that defies concise description. Essentially, it's poetry masquerading as prose. In this characteristic excerpt, Roseanne describes her father:

My father’s happiness not only redeemed him, but drove him to stories, and keeps him even now alive in me, like a second more patient and more pleasing soul within my poor soul. Perhaps his happiness was curiously unfounded. But cannot a man make himself as happy as he can in the strange long reaches of a life? I think it is legitimate. After all the world is indeed beautiful and if we were any other creature than man we might be continuously happy in it.

Both McNulty and Grene narrate their lives in this musical, untethered prose, and the effect is quite captivating.

The relationship between patient and doctor is mostly formal--lines aren't crossed, unmentionables aren't discussed, secrets aren't breached. Nevertheless, the two share an unlikely intimacy arising out of their contemplative personalities and common experiences. In large part, The Secret Scripture is an examination of the vagaries of memory. Both McNulty and Grene become less sure of their cherished memories over time as each provides evidence to refute the memories of the other. Ireland's troubled history plays a role in the story as well, particularly in Roseanne's reminisces. In the end, Barry's writing far outshines his plot, which he resolves all too neatly. Fortunately, with such stunning writing, plot is mostly beside the point.

Why Memorize Poetry?

April is Poetry month, and in an essay at the NYT Book Review, Jim Holt makes a good case for memorizing poetry:

The process of memorizing a poem is fairly mechanical at first. You cling to the meter and rhyme scheme (if there is one), declaiming the lines in a sort of sing-songy way without worrying too much about what they mean. But then something organic starts to happen. Mere memorization gives way to performance. You begin to feel the tension between the abstract meter of the poem — the “duh DA duh DA duh DA duh DA duh DA” of iambic pentameter, say — and the rhythms arising from the actual sense of the words. ... It’s a physical feeling, and it’s a deeply pleasurable one. You can get something like it by reading the poem out loud off the page, but the sensation is far more powerful when the words come from within.

The entire essay is well worth reading and will likely send you looking for your favorite poetry anthology.

Cult Favorite Now Available

Once a Runner: A Novel
Today Scribner re-releases Once a Runner, John L. Parker's classic novel about long-distance running. Since its original publication in 1978, Parker's novel has maintained a strong cult following among runners, despite being out of print for years. Indeed, many consider Once a Runner to be the best running novel every written. Last year, Once a Runner topped Bookfinder.com's list of the "top 10 most sought-after out-of-print books in America in 2008."

Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Shortlist

The Arts Council England has announced the shortlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. The Independent describes the shortlist:

Two landmark works from leading literary exiles; two outstanding novels from the same strife-torn Latin American country; one story of love and family from a world-ranking senior author that switches between Africa and the Middle East; and one tale of longing and loneliness from a newcomer that finds it hellishly hard even to leave the Gare du Nord.

The £10,000 prize (£5,000 for the author and £5,000 for the translator) celebrates a work of fiction by a living author, which has been translated into English and published in the UK in the last year. The winner will be revealed on May 14th.

Here's the shortlist (almost all are available in the US):

• Voiceover by Celine Curiol, translated by Sam Richard from the French (Faber) (available in the U.S. here)
• Beijing Coma by Ma Jian, translated by Flora Drew from the Chinese (Chatto) (available in the U.S. here)
• The Siege by Ismail Kadare, translated by David Bellos from the Albanian (Canongate) (available in the U.S. here)
• The Armies by Evelio Rosero, translated by Anne McLean from the Spanish (Maclehose Press)
• The Informers by Juan Gabriel Vasquez, translated by Anne McLean from the Spanish (Bloomsbury) (almost available in the U.S. here)
• Friendly Fire by A B Yehoshua, translated by Stuart Schoffman from the Hebrew (Halban) (available in the U.S. here)

See the 16-title longlist here.

Amazon Customers Boycott Digital Books Over $9.99

Taking matters into their own hands, hundreds of Amazon customers have joined an informal boycott of digital books priced more than $9.99. The boycotters have already tagged nearly 800 books with a "9 99boycott" tag. It will be interesting to see whether this collective action has any effect.