Author Archives: bookdwarf

New Books on My Desk

The Winter/Spring publishing season will soon be upon us and I have received some really great galleys:

Fascination: Stories by William Boyd. If you have never read any Boyd, run to the store and grab some. He is one of my all time favorite authors.

Epileptic by David B. A graphic autobiography about growing up with an epileptic brother, the book looks beautiful and meaty.

Spice: The History of a Temptation by Jack Turner. This has been out for a while, but I just managed to get a copy (from our wonderful rep). It’s the history of the spice trade tracing them through history, literature, and myth.

Pinkerton’s Sister by Peter Rushforth. This is out in the UK already and has gotten some good reviews. It’s a sizeable book (729 pages) that follows Alice Pinkerton in turn of the century New York.

And finally The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life by Tom Reiss. This is the story of Lev Nussimbaum’s short life. Born to a wealthy Jewish family in 1905 in Baku, he escaped the Russian Revolution in a camel caravan. His life seems fascinating.

Comments:
TEV says:
I love Boyd, too – especially Any Human Heart. Let us know what you think of the stories …

Harvard Schmarvard

It’s no secret where exactly in Cambridge I work and what famous university I stare at out my office window each day. Working in Harvard square has its advantages and disadvantages just like any other place I imagine. Since I don’t work for the university, I can say what I want about it (biting the hand that feeds you can be dumb). Harvard takes itself very seriously. But I can’t imagine anyone beyond this mile radius actually caring to read a 300 page book about Larry Summers and his exploits. Sure he chased off Cornel West and pissed off a lot of other professors (do I have stories about famous people and their bad behavior in my store—some of them will act like total asses just to get their book in the damn window. But I digress…), but so what? Apparently Richard Blow (teehee) now Richard Bradley is writing a book on Summers—without Summers help. Like Alex Beam says, “I can see maybe 500 copies sold at the Harvard Bookstore; after that, who knows?”

Update: Comments are still broken over here and no one seems to be able to fix it. Until they works again, I am just going to post comments at the end of the original post. So keep commenting!

Edward J. Renehan Jr. says:

Behaving badly in Harvard Square bookstores seems to be something of a tradition. My dear, departed father-in-law, Bill Bartkovick, managed the the Harvard Square Barnes & Noble through the 1960s and into the early 1970s. (That would be the OLD B&N corporation, btw, owned by the Barnes family.) Bill was full of stories about the likes of Van Wyck Brooks throwing hissy fits when books were not featured prominently enough.

Leila says:

I worked in a Harvard Square bookstore for a few years, and I was horrified by the behavior of customers and authors alike. Whether it was drunken college students groping each other in full view of everyone, people shoving dirty diapers under the bookshelves, or authors screaming about the placement of their books, I was constantly surprised at the pure gall of people. I do miss the galleys, though.

Wow! Blogging is Cool!

I know this is true cuz the NYT says so. Sorry for the sarcasm–wait, no I’m not. This is nothing new. Many bloggers are writers as well—blogging is just another form. So I am not surprised about the number of blog writers who have landed book deals. Just like I was not surprised this summer when we all first heard about it. Way to be on top of things NYT.

Great Literary Magazines I’ve Been Reading in 2004

Here are a bunch of Lit Magazines that I’ve been checking out.

Dirt Press features short fiction, poetry, and visual arts. Plus it looks cool.

Dislocate is a new media journal from students in the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin.

I think most people are familiar with Swink by now, the new magazine of fiction, poetry, etc.

Another familiar new magazine is n+1, which delighted many. It comes out only twice a year right now. But they post new stuff on their site fairly often.

I received a copy of Ninth Letter at my office and immediately devoured its glossy pages. It is a collaborative effort between the Department of English and the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

And then there is Monkeybicycle, which I know the Rake loves for its logo alone. Besides the cute monkey, they have tons of interesting fiction and poetry.

These a some of the distractions for me at work this year. I just thought I would share.

Shouldn’t he also win the ‘Most Boring Outfit Award’?

It’s not surprising that Tom Wolfe won the Bad Sex in Fiction Award from the Literary Review. Look at some samples they provided:
“Slither slither slither slither went the tongue, but the hand that was what she tried to concentrate on, the hand, since it has the entire terrain of her torso to explore and not just the otorhinolaryngological caverns.”
Uhm, yeah. Now if only they can pry that damn white suit off him.

The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer

It’s not until I reread the first line of this enchanting novel that I really understood it. ‘We are each the love of someone’s life.’ The entire novel seems to revolve around missed chances and wrong times. Max Tivoli is born an old grizzled man in 1871. He appears wrinkled and white at birth, but ages backwards, appearing younger and younger as time passes. The story is told in 3 parts but with the twist—youth, middle age, and old age are each ‘confessed’ to us. And we realize as we read, that Max is writing this in his old age, but living as a young boy. ‘Be what you are’ is what his mother tells him. Max does just that, playing whatever role his physical appearance imposes on him.

What is remarkable about this book is not the twist, but the melancholic and observant tone. Max is not completely sympathetic—-he does some remarkably selfish things. But so much of Max’s life is observed rather than experienced, since he never feels like a part of the world due to his condition. The one thing Max truly experiences is love. He meets Alice when she is 14 and he is 17, but of course he is living as an older man. In fact, his mother has told the neightbors that he is her brother-in-law. He spends his life loving Alice and writing about Alice. The other character you keep reading about is his lifelong friend Hughie, who plays a major role in Max’s life as well.

The whole thing sounds gimmicky, but Greer makes it work with his wonderful writing. He has a real feel for the period (there are echoes of Proust). This isn’t to say that the novel does not have its problems. I wish Max’s sister was more than briefly mentioned. But all in all the problems fall away with the very human story of a man who loves a woman but doesn’t know how to fit himself into her life.

How Michiko got her groove back

Normally I roll my eyes at the reviews of Michiko Kakutani. She seems to take great pleasure in not enjoying books. Obviously she is entitled to her opinon, but now her opinion seems ‘worth’ more in certain circles. Anyway, I am happy that she trashes the new Michael Crichton today. This is a book that deserves the Kakutani treatment. Granted I have not read the book, but it sounds like nothing more than an barely disguised rant against environmentalists. It’s nice to see a trashy novel get a trashy treatment.

I guess I am not as geeky as I thought.

It must be true cuz the internet told me!

You are 48% geek
You are a geek liaison, which means you go both ways. You can hang out with normal people or you can hang out with geeks which means you often have geeks as friends and/or have a job where you have to mediate between geeks and normal people. This is an important role and one of which you should be proud. In fact, you can make a good deal of money as a translator.

Normal: Tell our geek we need him to work this weekend.

You [to Geek]: We need more than that, Scotty. You’ll have to stay until you can squeeze more outta them engines!

Geek [to You]: I’m givin’ her all she’s got, Captain, but we need more dilithium crystals!

You [to Normal]: He wants to know if he gets overtime.

Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com