• I’m jealous of Alberto Manguel’s 30,000 volume library.
  

  I have dozens of very bad books that I don’t throw away in case I ever need an example of a book I think is bad. The only book I ever banished from my library was Bret Easton Ellis’s “American Psycho,” which I felt infected the shelves with its prurient descriptions of deliberately inflicted pain. I put it in the garbage; I didn’t give it to anyone because I wouldn’t give away a book I wasn’t fond of.

• Look at this hilarious makeover of the bible. It’s girly! (Thanks VQR for the link!)
• Why are British book jackets often so much better than the North American? They’ve created a centenary set of the entire James Bond collection. I’m not sure if they’re available here in the states. We just get these pulp covers for now.

I referred last week to two books I had read that involved dragons and the Greek gods. The book with the dragons was the new Naomi Novik, due out in July, called Victory of Eagles. It’s the fifth in the Temeraire series. I love this series which marries the Napoleonic wars with dragons. This new entry in the series picks up with the disgrace of Temeraire and Will Laurence after they gave the cure that had been decimating the dragon population worldwide to the French. It adds a surprising level of gravitas to the story. Napoleon has landed in England and everyone is needed for the fight, including the two “traitors”. Another rich adventure which comes out in July, unfortunately in hardcover now. Personally I find it silly that they’re taking a series which has done quite well as paperback originals and now putting them in hardcover. It didn’t stop me from devouring the galley, but I’m lucky. I wonder how many fans will be put off by this.
The Greek gods were in the fourth book of the Percy Jackson series The Battle of the Labyrinth. If you’re unfamiliar with these books, imagine that the Greek gods are real. And Percy Jackson is the son of Poseidon and a mortal woman. He’s one of many half-bloods and as soon as he finds out his heritage, Percy is thrust into a war amongst the gods. The series is funny and exciting. A great read for those who want something after Harry Potter. The fourth one doesn’t disappoint either. This time they have to find a way to prevent Kronos’ army from invading Camp Half-Blood. Percy and his friends set out on a quest through the Labyrinth, built by Daedalus himself. Riordan’s wry humor and gripping plot make this book as good as the last one.

• I am a fan of Anthony Bourdain. I’m still pissed that missed meeting him at BEA three years ago at a dinner thrown by Bloomsbury. Good for him that Ecco, one of my favorite publishers, have picked up his next three books:
  

  The first book, Cooks, is a follow up to Kitchen Confidential, in which Bourdain explores how the industry he loves – and the people in it – have changed (if they’ve changed) since his years in the kitchen, and tracks the bizarre changes in his own life, along with more frank observations on dining, cuisine and the grim/glamorous business of cooking. “More about WHO is cooking in America than WHAT’S cooking,” says Bourdain.

• *Yawn* The NBCC has announced their Spring Good Reads list. The best part of the list is the discussion in the comments about how their list really does echo the mainstream. I’m not trying to bash the NBCC—it’s great that they’re trying something different. It’s just disappointing that 825 people came up with this list. I’m sure there is some sort of mathematical probability thing that explains it all.
• Vote for the best of the Booker, “a one-off celebratory award to mark the 40th anniversary of the Booker Prize”. I voted for JG Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur. Truly an awesome book about Anglo-Indian relations in the 19th century.
• David Sedaris’s take on the truth of memoirs brouhaha:
  

  “What’s interesting to me,” he says, “is that we live in a time when our government is telling us some pretty profound lies. And then James Frey writes a book and it turns out some of it’s not true. No one asked for their vote back, but everyone wanted back the money they’d spent on that book. We’re in the shadow of huge lies and getting angry about the small ones.”

  Of course his publisher is smart, putting a disclaimer in his forthcoming book. With Sedaris, I doubt people will care. We sold out of premium tickets in the first hour for his upcoming event at my store on June 6th.

• I didn’t know that the Believer had a book award. It’s a good list, lots of books that I don’t remember seeing anywhere else.
• Now I have to go to a very late meeting.

The  most exciting things always happen when I’m out of town. Watch this video about a grad student who lost his Amazon order to a thief. Harvard Book Store manages to save the day and gain a new loyal customer. I’d embed the video, but my skills don’t go that far. Don’t worry, it’s only a few minutes long and has a happy ending.

I’m in Atlanta visiting my parents with my sister. It’s nice to get away for a long weekend somewhere hot. It was over 80 yesterday! I finished the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson earlier in the week. I’ve been trying to think about what to say about the three books. They’re so complicated, but so good. I’m onto another book by Robinson, The Years of Rice and Salt. I have the feeling that I’m going to have to read all of his books. I read a few things in between which I’ll post about next week, one involving dragons and one involving the Greek gods. Can you guess what they are? See you all next week!

• The LA Times interviews Mark Sarvas.
• Terry Teachout reports that Elaine Dundy, author of The Dud Avocado, has died.
• Guess who won second place in Narrative Magazine’s Love Story contest? One of my all time favorite bloggers.
• My pal Mike interviews Askold Melnyczuk over at the Meeting House.
• The May issue of Boldtype is available. It includes an interview with A.M. Homes.

This article by John Flinn about being on a 16 hour flight with no reading material made me shudder. I go everywhere with a book. Mr. Bookdwarf makes fun of me. If we’re just going for a walk, I actually decide whether to take one with me or not. What if we get stuck somewhere? Given a few extra minutes, I’ll whip my book out. I even read while brushing my teeth. I can’t remember a day having gone by where I didn’t read anything. I’m a book-a-holic.

What a lovely phrased coined by Rebecca Solnit in this quite powerful essay called Men Who Explain Things. There’s more to it than the title suggests of course.

Men explain things to me, and to other women, whether or not they know what they’re talking about. Some men. Every woman knows what I mean. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence.

The best part is when you’re trying to defend yourself and no matter how calm you remain, they still tell you to settle down and then stop taking you seriously. If they even did in the first place. It’s odd that I work in an industry with many powerful women. Many bookstores, publishing houses, and agencies in the US are run by women. Yet we most often see men winning the prizes, men reviewed in the book pages. I just did a rough count going through stacks of the New York Times Book Review in  my office:

• Seven cover reviews in the last 33 weeks were written by women, two by Liesl Schillinger and two by Kathryn Harrison.
• In the current week of the NYTBR, of the 15 reviews plus five mentioned in the crime roundup, four were books written by women.
• Last week’s NYTBR, four of 16 books were written by women.
• The week before, three of 14 books were written by women.
• In this year’s Pulitzer Prizes, only two women won in any category and none in the Letters, Drama, Music section.
• In this year’s National Book Awards, no women won any of the prizes.

That’s just a quick and dirty search. I’m sure people will come back saying, well, women aren’t writing as many books, or they’re not writing the kinds of books that might be nominated for prizes, or some such thing. Men still seem to dominate the conversation in the book world. Perhaps I need to speak up more.