Our Pal the Rake, with his splendid looking redone page, shows us that the Gourmet article that DFW wrote on the Maine Lobster Festival is available online at long last. No, the folks at Gourmet did not see fit to provide it. It’s the dearhearts at Lobster Liberation. Here’s the article (it’s a PDF).
Author Archives: bookdwarf
Red state, blue state, we all shop at
Maud posts today that corporations’ political contributions. She names two great sites: BuyBlue, which has a nice chart showing who gives what to whom, and Open Secrets, which has even more information. It’s hard to avoid shopping at places who support things you are against. And I am not sure if me not spending money at Target is really going to make a difference. But it does help just knowing where my money is going politically.
Good Lord, there I am.
So the wonderful Dan Wickett asked me to participate in his Interview with the Bloggers series. And now the results are in finally. Also interviewed are Ed, Michael of the Lit Saloon, MJ Rose, Nathalie Chica aka GalleyCat, Lizzie aka The Old Hag, Mad Max Perkins, Kassia Krozser aka Booksquare, Sam Jones of Golden Rule Jones, and the two women behind the Cupcake series. Don’t we sound like some demented gang?
NYT’s Top 10 Books
It’s list time. I’ve been toying with the notion of doing my own Top 10 Books That I’ve Read in 2004 (inspired by Conversational Reading’s great list), but who knows if I will get to it. I still have not figured out the comments problem either (has anyone else had this problem?). But the NYT has chosen their 10 favorite books. Nothing surprising or shocking in their list:
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, The Master by Colm Toibin, The Plot Against America by Philip Roth, Runaway: Stories by Alice Munro, Snow by Orhan Pamuk, War Trash by Ha Jin, Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow, Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan, Washington’s Crossing by David Hackett Fischer, and Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt.
‘What the Blog’ Results
It’s exciting to see what everyone looks like finally. BrooklynVegan attended the ‘What the Blog’ event on Friday and took pictures. Exciting!
Disturbing trends in America
This article from the NYT Magazine disturbed me a bit today. The article is about word of mouth marketing. This marketing company got the brilliant idea to recruit regular folks to promote things. And they don’t get paid. They just talk up the product to everyone they know. There is something about being elite and knowing more than other people. It’s all just weird. I like to think I wouldn’t fall for that, but I am not so sure. I get to read books before they get out on the shelves and it is fun I admit. Somehow the people, called BzzAgents, recruited by the marketing company don’t see themselves as marketers because they don’t have to talk up products they don’t like and they don’t get paid. But where is the line? It’s not as clear anymore. How can you take a conversation at face value when one of the participants has a hidden agenda?
More on the Top 10 Worst Books of 2004
Over this past weekend, the host of my server upgraded us to Moveable Type 3.something, which is great. But now I can’t get the comments to work. People have been kind enough to comment on their idea of the Worst Books of 2004, but they are not appearing for reasons I can’t figure out. If anyone has an answer, can you email me at bookdwarf at bookdwarf dot com? Thanks. And here is what people have been saying so far:
Scarecrow says:
Oh Yes – that spoiled mess which won this years Booker!!!
Ed says:
Tom Wolfe, “I Am Charlotte Simmons”
Patricas says:
Well, I wouldn’t say it’s one of the ‘Worst Books’, but after all the hype, I gotta say that ‘Fortress of Solitude’ did not meet my expectations. It really fell apart in some areas. But like the Curate’s egg, I will admit that ‘parts of it were excellent.’
Jimmy Beck says:
Little Children by Tom Perrotta. Whiny, 2D narcissistic characters, gratuitous pop culture references (like a fucking billboard) and a pedestrian story add up to a major disappointment. This was supposed to be my mid-life crisis talisman. Instead it’s just sappy dick lit. And comparisons to Chekhov? Blogga please.
and Verbal says:
Well, I think “The Metrosexual Handbook” sucked.
Hopefully, I will get this comment mess worked out soon, but please keep on sending the comments and I will post them.
What the Blog?
Dennis Loy Johnson of MobyLives is hosting a talk show called ‘What the Blog? Literary Blogger Summit at the Housing Works Used Book Cafe tomorrow night at 7 in Soho. On the show will be our friends Maud Newton, Ron Hogan of Beatrice, Jessa Crispin of Bookslut, George Murray of Bookninja, and Laila Lalami of Moorish Girl.
I am assuming they couldn’t get through to me for some reason, which is why I am not on there. Right.
Top 10 Worst Books
Well, everybody is putting out their ‘Top 10 Best Books of the Year’ lists. The Literary Saloon helpfully links to them. But I want to know what are the ‘Top 10 Worst Books of the Year’. And I am not talking about obvious crap here, but books that were supposed to be good—got lots of hype—but were just sucked. Any suggestions?
My skewed vision of books
GalleyCat has an interesting post on the disappearance of Alan Hollinghurst’s Booker Prize winning The Line of Beauty from the bestseller lists. It’s funny to me because here at my store, it is still selling very strongly. Granted, we have it as one of our select books for the holidays and is 20% off, but our market seems different from the one I read about in the papers. Cambridge is weird—most people are liberal and well-educated. Ann Coulter just doesn’t sell well here. But Alan Hollinghurst does. As does Cloud Atlas and other books that people say don’t sell anymore. My point is that I tend to look at the book world in a skewed fashion. We don’t sell some stuff here because there it’s just not the right market. We don’t sell that many mass markets—no Danielle Steele or Nora Roberts. We don’t carry the Left Behind stuff. We do sell almost 20 copies a month of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the U.S.: 1492-Present. Our bestseller list looks nothing like the NYT bestseller list. Anyway, I think it is great that my store puts emphasis on quality and the community. It makes for a great store and a great place to work.
And as for Vernon God Little’s poor sales, maybe that’s because the book is crap.
Bookdwarf 