I picked up Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point in order to see lives completely unlike my own. Americans view the military in various ways. Some view it as a noble cause, serving the country that has given them so much. Others think that the military is nothing more than a bunch og gung-ho conformists, eager to kill in America’s name ( I am somewhere in between I think). The one thing that I came away with when finishing this book, is that the West Point cadets are not that different from you or me. Yes, some of them are the jocks that we all envision, but some of the cadets portrayed in this books, bore a striking resemblance to people I know and I call friends. The author David Lipinksy was given full access to West Point and spent four years following one cadet class. He focuses on several cadest in particular and its their stories that he is telling. West Point is full of uniformity, disipline and regulations, yet the cadets voices emerge over this wall. The more interesting parts are the ones that follow the people who do not blend into the school, such as George Rash. He continually rides the line between staying and being “separated” from the school. He faces each challenge as it comes and you find yourself cheering him on while you read about his years there. This book is by no means a paean to military life and military school. Some of the cadets are only there because the school is free, though you have to serve for at least five years after graduation. Some come for the challenge, some to fulfill family obligation, some come because the army life appeals to them. This book has not made me respect the army an more than before, but maybe I have a newfound respect for those who choose a military career. The most interesting thing that Lipsky observes is that West Point has the happiest people he has seen on a college campus, maybe due to the fact that there is no sarcasm or irony among the cadets. They all look relatively the same and act the same, which leaves little room for that. I am not sure if I believe this, but I am willing to take Lipsky’s word for it. He spent four years on the campus and seems to have absorbed a little of the military polish himself, throwing around acronyms and such. This was a pretty fascinating book.

I am not sure who to attribute this too exactly. I found it in several places: first, Ed mentioned it And then I followed the link to Caterina, who got it from David Chess, who got it from a site called Long Story Short Pier, which I have never read, but looks really interesting. Anyway, the meme is this:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

Well there is a pile of about 10 books in front of me on my desk, but I grabbed the one on top, 60 Stories by Donald Barthelme to find that page 23 only has 2 sentences on it. So I grabbed the one below it, a galley of David Foster Wallace’s new collection of short stories Oblivion. You will not be surprised when I say that the fifth sentence on page 23 does not start until the end of the page and indeed, runs onto page 24. But here it is:
Granted, the facilitator went on, this model he was so rapidly sketching for them was overly simplistic — e.g., it left out advertising and the media, which in today’s hypercomplex business environment sought always to anticipate and fuel these sudden proliferating movements in group choice, aiming for a tipping point at which a product or brand achieved such ubiquitous popularity that it became like unto actual cultural news and-slash-or fodder for cultural critics and comedians, plus also a plausible placement-prop for mass entertainment that sought to look real and in-the-now, and so thereupon a product or style that got hot at a certain ideal apex of the MCP graph ceased to require much paid advertising at all, the hot brand becoming as it were a piece of cultural information or an element of the way the market wished to see itself, which — Schmidt game them a wistful smile — was a rare and prized phenomenon and was considered in marketing to be something like winning the World Series.
Crap, hand cramps!

I flipped through the HarperCollins Spring catalogs today to see what was coming. As the backlist buyer, I don’t get to meet with the sales reps, so its the catalogs that tell me what to expect each season. I know I have said it before, but I am completely biased against chicklit. Its gross, silly, and underestimates women’s intelligence. Sure, its easy to read and might even provide interesting if not trashy stories, but come on. Try to read something else. I am a snob. Anyway, I came across a book by Mark Kay Andrews in the paperback catalog. She is a chicklit writer and I could tell without even reading the description. The cover itself tells you everything—a woman with a figure that cannot exist in real life, seen from the back dropping something in the trash. It has this amost 50’s look to it and of course the colors are pastel green and magenta. Check it out here. And then the blurbs. Even if I wanted to read this book, the blurbs would make me throw it back on the table, maybe even on the floor if no one were looking. Here are two examples:
‘You’ll want to bitch, bond and run through the backyard sprinklers in your underwear with them [the characters].’—Washington Post.

“Witty and sharp…light and frothy as a strawberry daiquiri.”—Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
Gross. I know there is a market for this stuff. I know women want to read about other women’s lives. But do they have to be so fluffy and light? We need to come up with a way to get the industry to change.

Thanks to Ed, I just read a pretty amazing short story by Jim Harrison in the New Yorker. Luckily, it’s available online.

Over at TEV, the guest host this week Scott Handy posted some remarks from an email by Helen Sugrue on the marketing over at Barnes & Noble. She feels that not enough people are into taking risks in reading and they are not being encouraged to either at Barnes & Noble, who have a practice of putting up themed tables. Now, themed tables are not in of themselves evil. At my store, we have a display in the front of the store that changes every two weeks or so and the marketing department does decide what goes there. But for instance, the past two weeks we have featured books from the Hesperus Press, which I know was much discussed in the blogsphere several months ago. They publish lesser known works by major authors with forewords by famous people and beautiful covers to boot. Its a great idea and lots of the books sold. That’s a good marketing idea I think. But what Helen objects to (and I agree) are the more mass produced displays—tables with books that have pink and purple and yellow covers with a leg maybe wearing a spiky high-heel or something like that. Its chick-lit. I hate chick-lit personally. If you like reading it, then I am sorry to offend you, but as Helen says:

All these glossy covers are designed to attract women to read non-threatening, fluffy, Friday night with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s prose. A pox on you Candace Bushnell! I think she used her own well-manicured claws to open the lid on a Pandora’s box of profiteering publishing trolls who are spinning with glee at the potential profit to be had on those books which are little more than Vogue/ Lucky magazines in book form. I can just picture Candy B. and her well-heeled troupe of chick-lit hacks tipping back Cosmo’s and discussing the new hotness in the shallow end of the literature pool.)

Its the thought of an office somewhere with a group of people sitting around thinking stuff up that pisses me off. They don’t care what the book is about, they just want you to buy it. All the pastel colors are supposed to grab your attention and make you feel validated.
The chick-lit thing is an example. Its just that the marketing people are beginning to make me feel a bit crazy. Last night while watching television, the Crest Whitestrips commercial came on. My mother has been badgering me for a while about whitening my teeth. And all these commercials make me feel like I need it. But you know what? My teeth are fucking fine. They are not sparkly white and they never have been. Why should I spend $40 on tooth whitening strips? Because the Crest marketing team says so? That’s just silly. So should I be reading whatever crap Barnes & Noble lays out for you? I don’t know. If it appeals to you.
I suppose all I am really saying is that we should be thinking a bit more before buying stuff. Read the back of the book and maybe the first page or two before grabbing it off the table. I bet they have underestimated your intelligence though and you could find something a bit more challenging with just a few more minutes browsing in the fiction section. Okay, rant done.

One of these days I will figure out how to create a whole new web page devoted to books. But not today. I read a book this weekend that I did not link to on the left hand side. It was A Spectacle of Corruption by David Liss. I wanted to read something fairly easy, but not too dumbed down and this was perfect. A historical mystery, it delves into the world of 18th century Britain from the perspective of a ‘thief-taker’. One of Liss’ previous novels, A Conspiracy of Paper featured the same main character Benjamin Weaver, a Jewish outsider in London. In fact, the first book won an Edgar Award. In this book, you find Weaver just after he has been wrongly convicted of murder. He manages to escape and through his first person narrative, Weaver tells the tale of what exactly happened. The story itself was intriquing and the attention to detail pretty amazing. The characters too seemed true to life—no hookers with hearts of gold or any of that nonsense. The action hinges on the Parliamentary election of 1722 and the presence of Jacobites who support the return of James to the throne, two subjects about which I know very little. Liss really gives you an idea about what politics was like and how much your daily life depended on your station. The charm and evocation of the time make this a fascinating read.