Penguin Design Award

With this design, Peter Adlington took first prize in a contest put on by Penguin UK for the best cover design for Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. The charge: “design a fresh and bold new look for this cult classic in order to bring it to a new generation of readers.” The judges think Adlington’s design is “a bold, beautiful and distinctive cover that mirrored the themes of the book in an imaginative and succinct way.” I think it looks like something you’d see on a mass market series mystery published in the 1970s.

Curiosities of Literature by John Sutherland (a review)

Curiosities of Literature: A Feast for Book Lovers
2 out of 5: Curiosities of Literature is a collection of short musings on literary miscellany, including such topics as “The First Typewriter-Writer,” “The Worst Novelist Ever,” and “Most Misquoted.” I like to read about books, so I was looking forward to this one. Unfortunately, I found Sutherland’s prose, loaded with self-indulgent complexity, to be almost incomprehensible.

Here’s an example from “The Ultra-Literary Biscuit”:

Paterson Arran’s ‘Brontë’ shortbread (so called for entirely inscrutable reasons) is reported to be the top-selling brand among MPs at Westminster’ Portcullis House. Cheering news for the Scottish Nationalists (the maker Paterson Arran is as Caledonian as their product). The biscuit that takes the literary biscuit, so to speak, is Proust’s madeleine, the redolent taste of which inspires the long ruminations of Remembrance of Things Past.

Another example from “Adjectivals”:

The epithets ‘Brontean’ and Thackerayan’ are common in critical and general discourse. I frequently use them myself and very useful they are. But, curiously, some authors’ lives, lifestyles, reputations, and literary works distil conveniently into adjectivality, and others inconveniently resist conversion. Peter Conradi, for example, gets through 500 pages of his authorized life of the novelist without once using ‘Murdochian’. Having read those pages, however, one has a precise idea of what the uncouth term would mean, if anyone, less stylistically scrupulous than Professor Conradi, cared to invent it.

Sutherland’s witty pomposity will either entertain you or drive you mad. Unfortunately, I found myself in the latter category. Consider which camp you belong to before reading this one.

The Last War by Ana Menéndez (a review)

The Last War: A Novel
4 out of 5: In this slim novel, Margarita Anastasia Morales (nicknamed “Flash”) is a photojournalist in her late twenties, living alone in Istanbul while her husband, a war-correspondent, covers the war in Iraq. Flash is planning to join her husband in Iraq until she receives an anonymous letter accusing him of adultery while abroad. The letter knocks Flash’s life off its prior path. Spiraling into a state of self-reflection and loneliness (with the help of plenty of red wine), Flash realizes “that something essential had begun to give way in [her] marriage” and “that the disillusion we had so long been running from had finally come for us.”

The Last War is an introspective meditation on marriage and identity. As Flash meanders around, both literally through the beautiful streets of Istanbul and figuratively through her memories of her husband, she considers whether she was ever happy in her marriage. Very little action in this novel touches Flash, who seems to be trapped in one of life’s out-of-the-way eddies, but Menéndez’s cutting prose, striped of all pretension, keeps a quick pace. The Last War is a masterful tone piece on love and commitment in the face of war.

Books + Dating

Like books? Need a date? Live in the UK? Try Penguin's new online service: Penguin Dating (where book lovers meet). An interesting concept. (Via Publishing Perspectives)

Jonathan Littell on Privacy

Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones (his big French novel about a former SS officer) recently won the Athens Prize for Literature. In lieu of accepting the prize in person, Littell sent a letter addressed "To the Jury of the Athens Prize for Literature." Here's an excerpt (in an English translation):

It has always been my view that literature is a very private matter now, and that what takes place between a writer and his work belongs to a sphere utterly separate from the interaction of that work with those who read it, comment it, praise it or damn it. Privacy, for me, is a fundamental condition of creation, of work. It was so before my book was published, and must remain so now. It is in this spirit that I express my hope that my inability to join you today will be taken for what it is, an expression of our common love for literature.

Read the full letter in English at Literary Saloon.

The ABCs of Amazon

Following Google, Amazon has added “auto-complete” functionality to its search box. As you’re typing, the search box now suggests terms you might be searching for. So, for example, if you type “Dan,” you’ll get the suggestion “Dan Brown.” C. Max Magee at The Millions (via MobyLives) explores this “peek into the reading habits of America” with ”the ABCs of Amazon.” The list begins:

• Angels & Demons
• Breaking Dawn (The first of several Stephenie Meyer appearances)
• Charlaine Harris

Check out the full list here. It’s either interesting or depressing, depending on your point of view.

Sedaris Supports Other Authors

The Louisville Courier-Journal reports on the creative support given by David Sedaris to two of his favorite authors at a recent reading at Carmichael's Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky. Sedaris, author most recently of When You Are Engulfed in Flames, offered front-of the-line book-signing privileges to customers who purchased "the store's five total copies of two of Sedaris' favorite books, Lazarus Project by Bosnian-born writer Aleksandar Hemon and No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July." Since Sedaris signed "signing hundreds of books" that night, getting priority in the line turned out to be a pretty good perk.

Hotels Experiment with E-readers

USA Today reports that some hotels are jumping on the e-reader trend by lending electronic reading devices to their guests. Suzi DeAngelis, New York sales and marketing director for Gansevoort hotels, explains that "having readers (available for complimentary use on a first-come, first-served basis) appeals to carry-on aficionados who don't want to lug lots of reading material." DeAngelis notes that, from a marketing perspective, lending an e-reader "helps set us apart and makes people come back." Gansevoort hotels in Manhattan, South Beach, and Turks & Caicos offer guests use of Sony Readers. Manhattan's Algonquin Hotel offers Kindles "loaded with a variety of books" for guest use.

FTC Targeting Unethical Bloggers

People are beginning to get upset about undisclosed conflicts of interest in the blogosphere. A Yahoo! Tech story notes: "Many bloggers have accepted perks such as free laptops, trips to Europe, $500 gift cards or even thousands of dollars for a 200-word post." What have I been doing wrong?! Seriously, though, this issue has been getting some high-level attention. The Federal Trade Commission is planning to approve new guidelines this summer cracking down on false claims or the failure to disclose conflicts of interest. Under the new guidelines: "The FTC could order violators to stop and pay restitution to customers, and it could ask the Justice Department to sue for civil penalties." Find out more here.

And if you’re interested in my practices here at Literary License, I never accept money, gift cards, trips, or any other perks in exchange for book reviews. I do accept review copies of books. In such cases, I may or may not review the book, and if I choose to review the book, there’s absolutely no guarantee it will be a good review. I’d much rather give up all review copies than lose my integrity as a reviewer.

The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant (a review)

The Clothes On Their Backs: A Novel
2.5 out of 5: In this coming-of-age novel, young Vivian Kovacs, a Hungarian immigrant living with her parents in London in the 1970’s, struggles to escape her sheltered existence. Believing the outside world to be unsafe, Vivian’s parents “chose to be mice-people,” planning their lives around the TV schedule and leaving their flat only when absolutely required. Vivian rejects her parents’ fear, engages with the world, and invents a colorful identity for herself through the eclectic clothes she wears. As if the symbolism isn’t already apparent, Vivian explains:

The clothes you wear are a metamorphosis. They change you from the outside in. … A million imperfections mar us. … So the most you can do is put on a new dress, a different tie.

Most of Vivian’s story is told through flashbacks and stories-within-stories. This nesting of narratives, while structurally impressive, imposes a significant distance between the reader and the emotional core of the story. This backward-looking construct has a muting effect on the action, as if everything happens under cover of a deep fog.

This character-driven novel lacks a protagonist strong enough to sustain the momentum. On the one hand, Vivian is a mousy introvert, but, on the other hand, she develops a love for stylish clothes and marries a “self-confident” and “rather shallow” man who resembles a “young English lord in a white open-neck shirt.” These inconsistencies never coalesce into a coherent identity. Nevertheless, Grant’s undeniable skill as a writer results in a mildly enjoyable book, one that would’ve been terrible in less masterful hands.

More Summer Reading

Almost all of the summer reading lists compiled this time of year ignore anything published outside the U.S. If you'd rather read something a bit more global, check out the summer staff picks from Words Without Borders. There's plenty of good reading on that list.

How Much Truth is Enough

In an LA Times article, Marion Winik, the author of six memoirs, explores “the ethics of personal storytelling.” This is a hotly debated topic these days, in large part because of several high-profile “memoirs” that didn’t check out. On one end of the spectrum lies the opinion of James Frey, author of the (largely false) memoir A Million Little Pieces:

I believe, and I understand others strongly disagree, that memoir allows the writer to work from memory instead of from a strict journalistic or historical standard. It is about impression and feeling, about individual recollection.

In opposition to Frey’s position, most people expect most details in memoirs to be true. But what is truth exactly? Winik asks, “If two people remember something differently, is one of them wrong? Wasn't my memory of a memory also real?”

In my view, a memoirist has a responsibility to the truth, but by “truth” I mean the memoirist’s own personal truth, not the objective truth (if that even exisits). A memoir is the truth as it’s refracted through the prism that is the memoirist. If I wanted the disinterested, objective truth, I’d find a history book.

Form Falls to Function

Like Chad Post, director of Open Letter (the University of Rochester’s newish non-profit publishing house for works in translation), I have a “visceral hatred for dust jackets.” That’s one of the reasons I’ve loved this first season of Open Letter books, most of which have been published in the paper-over-board format. As Chad explains in a post at Publishing Perspectives, “paper-over-board books are hardcovers without a dust jacket.” These books have the heft and the sturdiness of a hardcover book, but the cover design is part of the hard cover itself. This combination results in a wonderfully self-contained, beautiful object—perfect for reading or for gifting. With a good cover design, such a book is quite stunning.

Unfortunately, traditional American marketing and bookselling practices don’t know how to handle paper-over-board books, and, as a result, Open Letter has been forced to move to the more popular paperback format for its next season. While I understand the necessity of the decision, I’m very disappointed. Now Open Letter titles will look like every other press’s titles. Without a doubt, I’ll be renewing my subscription for next season. Whatever the format, I know the books will be amazing, but I probably won’t be ripping open my Open Letter packages with quite so much anticipation next year.

Charting Bolaño

Check out this spreadsheet depicting the second part of Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives. It's a really interesting way to think about a complex work. (Via Conversational Reading)

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (a review)

Let the Great World Spin: A Novel
4 out of 5: At its core, Let the Great World Spin is a novel about a particular city—New York City—at a particular point in time—the summer of 1974. McCann illuminates his subject through a series of stories that overlap in interesting and sometimes unexpected ways. Tying the whole thing together is Philippe Petit's daring tightrope walk between the newly constructed towers of the World Trade Center, representing the idea that the “core reason for it all [is] beauty.” While I generally avoid comparing books to other works, the similarities between this novel and Crash—the 2005 movie about interconnecting stories in L.A.—are too striking to go unmentioned.

The diverse perspectives, voices, and writing styles make this novel an engaging reading experience. As is inevitable, some stories and characters are better than others, but McCann’s writing is strong throughout. With books like this, there exists a danger that the constant shifting will be unpleasantly frenetic, but McCann avoids this pitfall by taking his time to fully develop each story and character. Let the Great World Spin is occasionally messy and unfocused, and the last chapter is a bit of a let-down, but these minor imperfections are easily forgiven. Overall, this vibrant book will appeal to many readers, and I expect it to be one of this summer’s favorites.

Become an Audiobook Narrator

Find your next career as an audiobook narrator in the Share the Experience contest. All you have to do is submit a 3-minute demo by June 30th. More details: "The winner will receive personal instruction from [audiobook maestro Scott Brick], followed by actual recording work from a number of major publishers. The judges will include representatives from some of the biggest publishers in the business, including Random House Audio, Audible.com, Harper Collins Audio, Books on Tape and more." Even more details are here. (Via GalleyCat)

2008/2009 Prizewinners

It's that time of the year: The Millions has updated its tally of literary prizes. This is an annual event undertaken "in the same spirit that one might tally up batting titles and MVPs to determine if a baseball player should be considered for the Hall of Fame." The recent standout is Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. After it was shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, it "has joined the ranks of the most celebrated novels of the last 15 years, making it, along with the other books near the top of the list, something of a modern classic." Even more recent hits include Sebastian Barry's The Scret Scripture and Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge.

Weekend Reading

I'm not one to form an opinion about a book after reading the first chapter, but Carolyn Wall's debut novel Sweeping Up Glass has one of the best first chapters I've read in a long time. In a very short space, Wall introduces us to three key characters living in the Kentucky countryside and kicks off the action with a hike up a snowy mountain to rescue a silver-faced wolf from trespassing hunters. If you've got five minutes to spare, I encourage you to read this (very short) first chapter, available at the Random House website. Look for a review of the book here at Literary License in a couple weeks.

The paperback edition of Sweeping up Glass will be published in early August. The original hardcover edition, published in August of last year, appears to be out of print already, but you may be able to find a used copy or a library copy.

Some Dream for Fools by Faïza Guène (a review)

Some Dream for Fools
2 out of 5: In this slim novel translated from the French, Ahlème, a 25-year-old Algerian woman living in Paris, struggles with finding a stable job, maintaining her immigration status, taking care of her disabled father, and keeping her teenaged brother out of trouble. Guène’s casual and witty first-person prose, along with the scenes involving Ahlème’s inane girlfriends, impart a distinctive Chick Lit flavor to this novel. Fortunately, there’s an added edge to Ahlème’s story that mitigates some of its frivolity. Take, for example, this excerpt where Ahlème describes her job working at a shoe store:

I spend my days among feet and I’m remembering that I really hate that. I think a foot is a truly disgusting thing. … I can’t bring myself to look at them. When I have to help a customer try on a shoe, sometimes I think about the Cinderella story and tell myself that if she had disgusting feet, with dirty nails and toes covered in blisters, the story wouldn’t have turned out the same. The prince would have turned on his heels and run after throwing that dirty glass slipper at the bitch’s face.

While Some Dream for Fools is often funny and occasionally interesting, it’s mostly superficial and unsatisfying.

Knock-Off Titles

In yet another creative attempt to sell books, there’s a new trend in the publishing world: knock-off titles. If Freakonomics was such a huge success, why not Womenomics, Obamanomics, Slackonomics, Invent-onomics 101, and (in the fall) Scroogenomics? As noted in Patricia Cohen’s recent essay in the New York Times, all of these are real examples.

It’s more accurate to label this mimicry as a reawakening of an established practice rather than an altogether new trend. As Cohen points out, Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, first published in 1776, “has inspired variants for more than two centuries.” And there are plenty of other examples. A knock-off title can be an effective way to sell new books by trading on past successes, but it’s critical to recognize when to stop. Eamon Dolan, vice president and editor in chief of the Penguin Press, explains: “Essentially it works until it doesn’t work, and you hope you’re on the right side of that line.”

Smarter Summer Reading

If Oprah’s book picks aren’t your style, take some summer reading advice from Julia Keller at the Chicago Tribune:

The best beach read of all time is To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf’s luminous 1927 novel that is about—aptly—a seaside vacation, although admittedly that's a bit like saying Moby Dick is about a fishing trip. This is the most accessible of Woolf's works, yet many people still shy away from it for casual reading, perhaps because the novel is so closely identified with term papers and stuffy lectures and dreary assignments to find and list all the symbols. …

Once a novel is classified as "literature," something awful seems to happen; people start revering it and stop reading it. The book is placed on a high shelf, maybe even tucked inside a glass-fronted cabinet, and there it sits -- admired to death, in effect. If Woolf still had a say in the matter, I think she'd much prefer glimpsing a copy of To the Lighthouse with a smear of suntan lotion on its crinkled cover or with a bug crushed between pages 101 and 102.

Good advice. The Houston Chronicle also has a list of “smart summer books.”

Oprah's Summer Reading List

Since I've been on the topic of summer reading lists, it's appropriate to mention that O, The Oprah Magazine, has announced its 2009 Summer Reading List, titled 25 Books You Can't Put Down. Say what you will about Oprah's reading tastes, but her recommendations sell books. Lots and lots of them.


I'm currently reading her first pick, Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann, and I'm enjoying it. Look for a review later this week here at Literary License. I've also heard good things about John Burnside's The Glister, though I haven't read it. Other than the McCann novel, I doubt I'll be picking up any of these.

The Seasonality of Books

In this time of summer reading lists, I've been thinking about the seasonality of books. Are books really seasonal, and, if so, what makes a book a good "summer read"? Or are the seasons exploited by publishers and booksellers as merely another way to market books?

I starting thinking about these questions when I ran across a recent advertisement in an electronic newsletter geared towards booksellers marketing Samantha Hunt's The Invention of Everything Else (by all accounts, a great book) as "The Perfect Summer Read." This novel is about an actual historical figure--inventor Nikola Tesla--and his unlikely friendship with a young chambermaid in a New York hotel. There is nothing particularly summery about this book. In apparent recognition of this fact, the original hardcover edition was published in February 2008, and the more recent paperback edition was released in March of this year. In many parts of the world, February and March are decidely un-summery. The only reason I can see to market this paperback edition as a "summer read" is the fact that the calendar says it's June, almost July. The Invention of Everything Else may be the perfect summer read, but that's because it's a good book and not because it's somehow seasonal, like a ripe tomato or a dip in the ocean.

Honolulu by Alan Brennert (a review)

Honolulu
3 out of 5: Honolulu is an epic historical novel about a Korean girl who defies her middle-class family and immigrates to Hawaii as a 17-year-old “picture bride” in 1914. Named “Regret” because “every family in those days desired a son over a daughter,” this protagonist rebels against her strictly limited existence in Korea, renames herself “Jin,” and seeks a better life in the United States. Honolulu is loaded with Hawaiian history and explores the lives of immigrants in many settings, including their work on the vast sugarcane plantations as near-slaves, their prostitution in the infamous red-light district of Iwilei, their experiences during the World Wars and the Depression, and the impact of Hawaii’s deep racial tensions, including race riots and a racially-motivated murder trial. In the end, Regret’s story feels like a contrived vehicle for telling the larger history of Hawaii. While it’s an interesting history, the over-abundant historical events and details don’t allow much room for character development. Even after 350 pages, the characters never acquire much of a presence but, rather, appear to float along on a massive tide of history. Honolulu will appeal to those who like a bit of fiction with their history.

Favorite Translations

Thanks to all of you who entered into the contest to win one of ten galley copies of Filip Florian's Little Fingers. All of the winners have now been notified. Even if you didn't win, I encourage you to check out this book when it's published in July. I'm willing to bet Little Fingers is unlike anything you've read before. I'll be posting my review in a couple weeks, closer to the publishing date.

In conjunction with the contest, some of you answered the question: "Which work in translation has had the most effect on you and why?" I appreciate all the good answers I received. Here's a sampling:

• Elie Wiesel’s Night - "How [Wiesel] goes from being a star Talmudic student before the war to an almost total rejection of a God who could allow all this horror to occur, but still maintains his humanity was not an enjoyable read, but an essential one.


• Roberto Bolano's 2666 - "[R]eading the book [is] like scurrying down a million different rabbit holes with diverging and converging paths. While 2666 is probably a love it or hate it book - to me, it was pure genius."


• Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude "showed me that a novel or story doesn't have to fit into a box, that it can be malleable and cross lines and genres."


• Isabel Allende's books - "You could see the color of things she described, you could hear things she described and taste as well."


• Primo Levi's The Periodic Table - "The fitting of the subject of each chapter to elements in the periodic table is done brilliantly, through luminescent prose."

International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award

Man Gone Down,the debut novel by Michael Thomas, won the €100,000 (US$141,400) International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the world's richest literary prize. The press release reports that "the winning novel, first published by Grove Atlantic, USA, and a New York Times top ten book of 2007, was chosen from a shortlist of eight, which included novels from the USA, France, India, Pakistan and Norway." The book, which was published in the U.K. this year, emerged from an international longlist "145 titles, nominated by 157 public libraries from 41 countries."

The judging panel observed: "We never know his name. But the African-American protagonist of Michael Thomas' masterful debut, Man Gone Down, will stay with readers for a long time. He lingers because this extraordinary novel comes to us from a writer of enthralling voice and startling insight. Tuned urgently to the way we live now, the winner . . . is a novel brilliant in its scope and energy, and deeply moving in its human warmth.”

The shortlist included The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz, The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles by Roy Jacobsen, Ravel by Jean Echenoz, Animal's People by Indra Sinha, The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, The Archivist's Story by Travis Holland, and The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt.

Price Wars

Booksellers and publishers around the globe are struggling to find a business model that works, some with more success than others. Here in the U.S., all brick-and-mortar booksellers are fighting for survival, even the large companies. Physical bookstores must find a way to compete with the lower cost and increased convenience of online retailers, and many are losing the battle. The same scene is unfolding in other countries.

Ed Nawotka at Publishing Perspectives highlights the ongoing price war between Israel’s two largest booksellers. As Steimatzky (170 stores) and Tzomet Sfarim (80 stores) introduce sale after sale in an attempt to undercut each other’s prices, publishers are grumbling. As Ed notes, Legislator Nitzan Horowitz of the New-Movement-Meretz party thinks price fixing might be the answer, and he’s planning to “submit a bill to the Knesset that will fix prices for the first two years after a book’s publication.”

Is price fixing the answer? As discussed in a New York Times article published some time ago:

Germany’s book culture is sustained by an age-old practice requiring all bookstores, including German online booksellers, to sell books at fixed prices. Save for old, used or damaged books, discounting in Germany is illegal. All books must cost the same whether they’re sold over the Internet or at Steinmetz, a shop in Offenbach that opened its doors in Goethe’s day, or at a Hugendubel or a Thalia, the two big chains.

This scheme has superficial appeal, but the ease of procuring books across country lines in this Internet age may undercut the intent of such legislation. And if a government tries to prop up its legislation by imposing import restrictions, such restrictions are likely to be judged illegal. As reported at the Bookseller.com:

A price fixing system for German-language books imported into Austria has been declared illegal by the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The ruling means Austrian booksellers will be able to match the price the books are sold at in neighbouring Germany, or even sell them cheaper, raising fears that Austria could become a back-door for cheap books into Germany.

Without a doubt, we are living in interesting times for the book world.

Thanks

Thanks to Gayle at Every Day I Write the Book for her nice mention of Literary License. Gayle's site is a wonderful resource for book information, and her book reviews are particularly interesting and thoughtful.

Eighteen Challenges in Contemporary Literature

At Wired, Bruce Sterling lists "Eighteen Challenges in Contemporary Literature." It's a really good list because, although each item is very concisely stated, the enormous implications are clear. There's a real sense of a pending apocalypse in this list. Here's a sampling:

• Intellectual property systems failing
• Barriers to publication entry have crashed, enabling huge torrent of subliterary and/or nonliterary textual expression
• The Gothic fate of poor slain Poetry is the specter at this dwindling feast

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa (a review)

The Housekeeper and the Professor: A Novel
4 out of 5: The Housekeeper and the Professor is a sensitive portrait of coincidentally overlapping lives. The nameless housekeeper is hired to work for a mathematics professor who was injured in a car accident in 1975, leaving him with only 80-minutes of short-term memory—an internal tape that constantly overwrites itself. Beyond his 80-minute memory, the professor’s only memories are those that existed prior to 1975. The professor, the housekeeper, and her ten-year-old son form a makeshift family, the professor becoming the father-figure that the son lacks. In the professor’s 80-minute world, mathematics is his anchor, adding beauty, elegance, and a kind of order to his muddled existence:

The mathematical order is beautiful precisely because it has no effect on the real world. Life isn’t going to be easier, nor is anyone going to make a fortune, just because they know something about prime numbers. … The only goal is to discover the truth.

Stephen Snyder’s translation is elegant and unobtrusive. The Housekeeper and the Professor, in its own quiet and delicate way, reveals the unexpected depths hidden below the surface of damaged people and the fragility of memory.

Ulysses Goes for Record Price at Auction

The Guardian reports that “a fabulously rare first edition” of James Joyce’s Ulysses sold at auction in London for £275,000 (US$443,946), "the highest price recorded for a 20th-century first edition." The book is number 45 of the first 100 published copies, all of which were signed by Joyce and printed on fine Dutch handmade paper. This particular copy is an "astonishingly well-preserved and previously lost edition of the book, bought surreptitiously in a Manhattan bookshop despite it being banned in the U.S."

The Patron Saint of Used Cars and Second Chances by Mark Millhone (a review)

The Patron Saint of Used Cars and Second Chances: A Memoir
3.5 out of 5: In this memoir, Mark Millhone confronts the difficulties of marriage and parenting with humor and grace. Millhone frames his story around a cross-country trip he takes with his father to drive a new-ish BMW from Dallas back to New York City. The trip gives Millhone a chance to come to terms with his troubled childhood, including his mentally-ill mother and mostly absent father, as he (quite literally) travels closer to his family. Mixed into the road trip narrative are flashbacks to the year the Millhone family belonged to the "tragedy-of-the-month club."

As a Men's Health columnist and a screenwriting professor, Millhone has plenty of writing experience, and his casual comfort with words is readily apparent. Consider, for example, his description of "the way Texans talk":

They can make conversation out of thin air, about nothing at all. It's conversation in its purest form really: a warm background of syllables, a nice little area rug of consonance to furnish the common space you're sharing with an acquaintance who just became your new best friend.

Occasionally, the book swerves too close to the tedium of complaint, but, in general, Millhone’s sharp and often humorous writing sets this memoir apart from the countless others covering the same ground.

New Selection for Penguin Classics Reading Group

The Penguin Classics Reading Group over at Amazon.com has chosen its next reading selection: Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner, winner of the 1972 Pulitzer Prize. Here is the description of the book from the Reading Group website: "Angle of Repose is a novel about Time, as much as anything--about people who live through time, who believe in both a past and a future. . . . It reveals how even the most rebellious crusades of our time follow paths that our great-grandfathers' feet beat dusty." These discussions, led by Kathy Gursky, are generally pretty good, so if you've read the book or would like to read it, join the discussion the week of June 15th.

Book Blogging: The First vs. the Second Wave

Over at Conversational Reading, guest poster Andrew Seal discusses "two distinct waves of blogging about literature." In Scott's view, the first wave "focuse[s] a great deal on supplementing or correcting the coverage books g[e]t in mainstream media outlets," while the second wave of blogs "tend to function more like forums, with the heavy emphasis on 'community' and 'conversation.'" If you're a book blogger, it's an interesting discussion with plenty of links worth checking out.

Galley Giveaway: Rule Change

I’ve heard from some of you that you’re having trouble answering the question to be entered into the drawing to receive one of ten advanced copies of Filip Florian’s Little Fingers (for more information about the book, see the post immediately below this one). Some of you are having difficulty narrowing down your choice, while others are just having a busy week. I sympathize (I’m having a busy week, too), so I’m changing the rules. If you want a chance to get one of these galleys, just e-mail me your name and address (litlicense AT gmail DOT com). It doesn’t get any easier than that. For those of you who are overachievers (and thanks to those who have already sent me your thoughtful answers), send me your answer to the question, and I’ll enter you in the random drawing twice. Your extra effort will give you a better shot at snagging a copy. Good luck!

Galley Giveaway: Filip Florian's Little Fingers

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has generously offered to send ten galley (pre-publication) copies of Filip Florian's Little Fingers to readers of Literary License. Little Fingers, Florian's first novel, was published in Romania in 2005 to wide acclaim and was awarded Best Debut Novel Award of the Romanian Writers Union, Best First Novel Award of Romania Literara, and Best Debut Novel Award of the National Union of Romanian Employers. Romania Literara calls Little Fingers the "strongest debut novel in Romanian literature of the past decade." On July 23rd, this remarkable novel will be available in English for the first time in a translation by Alistair Ian Blyth.

Book description: In a small mountain town in Romania, a mass grave is discovered in the vicinity of a Roman fort. Are the dead the victims of a medieval plague or, perhaps, of a communist firing squad? Why are there no bullets among the remains? And why are little fingerbones disappearing from the pit each night? Petrus, a young archaeologist, decides to do some investigating of his own.

Meanwhile, the Orthodox monk Onufrie stumbles from religious seclusion into history. A hermit in the mountains, he becomes the father-confessor of a partisan who is trying to bring down Ceausescu’s regime, one handmade grenade and one de-railed train at a time. Not to mention a team of Argentinean forensic anthropologists who arrive in town in a cloud of rock music, shredded jeans, and tequila.

Part García Márquez, part Eugène Ionesco, Little Fingers is a hilarious and moving debut novel about a little town and a big discovery.

If this sounds interesting to you, please e-mail me (litlicense AT gmail DOT com) with your name and address (no PO boxes) and the answer to the question (in no more than 200 words, please): "Which work in translation has had the most effect on you and why?" Undoubtedly, many of you will recognize this question as a slight modification of the question asked by the National Book Critics Circle recently and resulting in some interesting answers. Now's your chance to weigh in.

I'll select the ten winners at random from the qualifying entrants, and I'll also publish the most interesting answers in a future post. Sorry, but the quagmire that is international publishing rights limits this giveaway to those living in the U.S. or Canada.

(I'm about half-way through this slim novel and am enjoying it very much. It's quite unlike anything I've read before. Look for my review here at Literary License sometime later this month.)

Edited to note this giveaway has concluded. Thanks to everyone who participated!

Salinger Sues Over "Sequel"

J.D. Salinger, the author of The Catcher in the Rye and a notorious recluse, filed suit last week in a New York federal court against the anonymous author of 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, the supposed "sequel" to Salinger's classic novel. Salinger's suit also names UK-based Windupbird Publishing, Sweden-based Nicotext, and SCB Distributors (which sells Nicotext books in the U.S.).

As reported in the Courthouse News, the complaint argues that "the sequel is not a parody and it does not comment upon or criticize the original. It is a rip-off pure and simple." Salinger is seeking an injunction against publication of 60 Years Later (currently scheduled for September) along with damages and costs. The cynic in me wonders if the whole affair is a new creative marketing campaign designed to increase sales for The Catcher in the Rye, 60 Years Later, or both.

Summer Reading: DFW's Infinite Jest

Have you always wanted to read David Foster Wallace's postmodern masterpiece, Infinite Jest? Here's your chance. A group of DFW fans have organized an "Infinite Summer" reading program online. They've done the calculation, and it works out to about 75 pages a week. That's easy, right?

From the site:

You’ve been meaning to do it for over a decade. Now join endurance bibliophiles from around the web as we tackle and comment upon David Foster Wallace’s masterwork over the summer of 2009. The festivities begin on June 21st and run through September 22nd.

Orange Prize for Fiction

Marilynne Robinson has been awarded the 2008 Orange Prize for fiction, along with £30,000, for Home, her third novel. Fi Glover, the chair of judges, commented, "We were unanimously agreed – [Home] is a profound work of art." Personally, I loved this beautiful, contemplative novel and gave it a 4 out of 5.

In 1981, Marilynne Robinson published her first novel--Housekeeping, which received the PEN/Hemingway Award for best first novel and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2004, her novel Gilead won the Pulitzer and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

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.

Copyright Protection for the Right Reasons

Via MobyLives:

A Polish publisher who published extracts of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf without the permission of the copyright holder—the German state of Bavaria—has been convicted of copyright infringement and sentenced to three months in prison and a fine of €2,271 ($3,178).

According to an Agence France Presse wire report, Bavaria “keeps a close guard on the book’s copright in an effort to smother attempts to rehabilitate Nazism and have regularly brought cases against publishers.”

Death in Spring by Mercè Rodoreda (a review)

Death in Spring
5 out of 5: Mercè Rodoreda (1908–1983) is widely regarded as the most important Catalan writer of the twentieth century. Death in Spring, her final novel and perhaps her masterpiece, is now available for the first time in English. This strange and beautiful coming-of-age story unfolds in and around a small, isolated village with no apparent connections to the outside world. Because of this abstraction of location, combined with the frequent appearance of symbolic objects, images, and characters, Death in Spring reads more like an allegory than a novel.

In the oppressive world of the village, the dead are stuffed with pink cement and then entombed in trees. Children are locked in cupboards, and young men are sacrificed to the all-powerful river, which inexplicably runs beneath the village. Despite this strangeness, Death in Spring is not an experiment in fantasy or surrealism but, rather, an exploration of a meticulously-rendered alternate reality. The village’s bridges are specifically named, landmarks are pinpointed, and paths are described in detail, as are directions for getting from one place to another. Ultimately, however, this order is illusory. The village is precariously balanced on top of a swiftly moving river, and no amount of topographical precision will protect this troubled society from self-destruction.

Rodoreda’s prose is poetic without sacrificing any of its ferocity. Her powerful imagery often subverts expectations. In the world of this novel, “Spring is sad” and “plants and flowers are earth’s plague, rotten.” The greenness of Spring is “poisonous color." Life is irrelevant and destruction is happiness:

[Y]ou have to believe that it's all the same to have a face or have your forehead ripped away. It's all the same to live or die .... Learn to make fire by rubbing sticks together; learn to start a fire and you'll be happy. A fire that causes damage.

Death in Spring is an unforgettable book. It's purposefully strange in a way that’s not easily worked out. Because the book’s possible meanings are multiple and ever shifting, they will always be relevant. I expect I’ll be thinking about, and perhaps frustrated by, this book for a long time, and this haunting quality is the reason I’ve given this novel my highest rating. This challenging and bizarre novel will not appeal to everyone, but those up to the challenge, will be richly rewarded.

Hiding in the Spotlight by Greg Dawson (a review)

Hiding in the Spotlight: A Musical Prodigy's Story of Survival, 1941-1946
4 out of 5: Hiding in the Spotlight tells the true story of two young Jewish sisters from the Ukraine. When their family is removed from its home and sent on a Nazi death march in the winter of 1941, piano prodigies Zhanna and Frina Arshankaya are spared through an exchange brokered by their father and a Ukrainian guard: the two girls are allowed to escape for their father's pocket watch. Left without family, Zhanna and Frina reinvented themselves as orphans of a Red Army soldier and joined a troupe of entertainers. The sisters survived the war by performing for German soldiers and officers and living in constant fear of discovery of their Jewish ancestry.

After the war, Zhanna and Frina were liberated but homeless. They were sent to a displaced persons camp near Munich where they avoided boredom by staging shows on a "bare stage" and a "creaky piano." The camp's American director, recognizing the sister's prodigious musical talent, committed to adopt the sisters. He sent them to safety in America, where Zhanna and Frina struggled to adapt to a new language, culture, and family on a farm in Virginia.

Perhaps due to his forty years as a journalist, Dawson writes this story with a keen eye for historical accuracy and describes the horrors inflicted by the Nazis in vivid detail. But the narrative is not without a personal connection. Dawson is Zhanna's son, and this link gives him great access to the emotional side of the story. My only wish is that Dawson had continued the story beyond 1946 to cover the sisters' new life in America. I may be a bit biased, however, because the camp director who adopted the sisters, Larry Dawson, was my grandfather. And the grand piano I learned to play during summers spent with my grandmother on her farm in Virginia is the same piano that greeted Zhanna and Frina on their first night in America.

BEA Recap: e-Readers

For my last BEA-related post, I'm going all the way back to a Thursday afternoon panel discussion about e-readers. Representatives from Adobe, Sony, and Stanza (the e-book iPhone application) were present, along with Neil Jones, the CEO of Interead. Notably absent was anyone representing Amazon or the Kindle, and, not surprisingly, the discussion included many anti-Amazon barbs. All the panelists underscored the importance of an open content environment, giving consumers maximum flexibility regarding their e-book sources and use of content on multiple devices.

I've used a Sony Reader and an Amazon Kindle before, so the most interesting part of the discussion for me was the unveiling of the new Cool-er e-reader presented by Neil Jones from Interead (a UK-based company). The Cool-er is less than 6 ounces, making it significantly smaller and lighter than the competing products. It's also available in 8 colors and is marketed as a "lifestyle accessory." Add to all that the relatively low $250 price tag and the open content platform, and the Cool-er becomes quite attractive to a younger, freedom-loving, style-conscious audience. The Cool-er is Mac and PC compatible and has an operating system available in 8 different languages (including two forms of Chinese). With the introduction of the Cool-er, it appears that Sony and Amazon will be facing a hipper, more international competitor in the e-reader market. Check out more details at the Cool-er's website.

BEA Recap: Industry Statistics

In a Friday afternoon session, the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) presented a high-level overview of the results from its 2008 industry study. Essentially, the growth of the book industry slowed dramatically in 2008 and is expected to remain flat for the next several years. On the bright side, small publishers experienced substantial growth in 2008. Publishers reporting $50 million or less in revenues per year now constitute approximately 32% of the total industry revenue (around $40 billion). Religious publishing didn't fare so well and suffered a 10% decrease in revenues in 2008 with further decreases expected in upcoming years.

BEA Recap: The Books

BEA wouldn't be BEA without a bunch of free books, and this year was no exception. There may have been fewer giveaways this year than in years past, but there was certainly no shortage of free stuff. Rather than grabbing everything I saw (and then having to carry it all home), I went with a plan and picked up only those books I'm truly interested in reading. Here's my personal top ten list, in no particular order:

• Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone by Eduardo Galeano, translated by Mark Fried (Perseus): Described on the jacket as "a sometimes bawdy, sometimes irreverent, sometimes heartbreaking unofficial history of the world seen--and mirrored to us--through the eyes and voices of history's unseen, unheard, and forgotten."


• Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery, translated by Alison Anderson (Europa): This is the book Barbery wrote before she wrote the wildly successful The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Gourmet Rhapsody traces the career of food critic Monsieur Pierre Arthens, a character familiar to those who've read The Elegance of the Hedgehog.


• Going Away Shoes by Jill McCorkle (Algonquin): A story collection from a great storyteller.


• Beg, Borrow, Steal: A Writer's Life by Michael Greenberg (Other Press): Greenberg, author of Hurry Down Sunshine, writes "an autobiography in installments, set in New York, where the author depicts the life of a writer of little means trying to practice his craft--or simply stay alive."


• Love Begins in Winter by Simon Van Booy (Harper Perennial): A story collection that's received some really nice praise.


• Little Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco): Described on the jacket as a "searing, vividly rendered exploration of the mysterious conjunction of erotic romance and tragic violence in late twentieth-century America."


• You or Someone Like You by Chandler Burr (Ecco): A "fiercely intelligent and emotionally gripping" novel that grows out of a reading list.


• Stitches by David Small (Norton): A dark graphic memoir about a child with cancer who wasn't told he had cancer.


• Logicomix by Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos H. Papadimitriou, Alecos Papadatos, and Annie DiDonna (Bloomsbury): A graphic novel that "recounts the spiritual odyssey of philosopher Bertrand Russell" and is described on the jacket as "a historical novel and an accessible explication of some of the biggest ideas of mathematics and modern philosophy."


• Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes by Tamim Ansary (Perseus): Described in a review by the San Francisco Chronicle as "[a] must-read for anyone who wants to learn more about the history of the Islamic world. But the book is more than just a litany of past events. It is also an indispensable guide to understanding the political debates and conflicts of today, from 9/11 to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, from the Somali pirates to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict."

BEA Recap: Book Reviewing

In a crowded Saturday morning panel discussion moderated by John Reed, Ben Greenman (The New Yorker), Otis Chandler (Goodreads), Bethanne Patrick (The Book Studio), David Nudo (Shelfari), and Peter Krause (Tactic Co.) debated book reviews, specifically what they will look like next year. The panel agreed that there will be fewer figures of "authority" writing book reviews going forward as book coverage declines in traditional media outlets, but this expected change provoked mixed reactions. David Nudo, formerly of the New York Times commented that "this democratization of voices has led to a lot of clutter" and that user-generated content like that found on Goodreads or Shelfari "means the lowest common denominator." Otis Chandler didn't do much to defend his users' content, but he did mention that, on a few big titles he surveyed, Goodreads has about ten times the number of reviews found on Amazon.

On several occasions, Bethanne Patrick tried to start a discussion about "the standards of book reviewing," and she repeatedly emphasized the distinction between book reviews and book recommendations. Over time, it became fairly clear that Patrick believes the non-"authorities" are doing nothing but recommending books and that we should all be careful to look for the "authorities," whatever that means. I'm disappointed the topic wasn't discussed further.

As reported at Cleveland.com, Steve Wasserman, the former Book Review Editor of the Los Angeles Times, summed up the discussion best when he said the concept of the book review "gets at the heart of democratic culture, populism and elitism.”