WORMBOOK

Wonderfully funny, you say?

2012-02-02T08:15:00.001-05:00

My friend Marjorie Hakala has an essay on The Millions right now called "Seven Reasons To Read A Dance To The Music Of Time," referring of course to Anthony Powell's classic 12-book series. (I'm so ignorant, not only have I not read this Modern Library pick, I had been saying until yesterday that it was 10 books. Sad.) I think I'm convinced! And if you don't want to take my word for it, Roger Ebert also recommended the article.

WATCHMEN prequels - are you excited?

2012-02-01T11:45:00.016-05:00

D.C. Comics announced yesterday that it was going to develop a prequel series to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' graphic novel WATCHMEN, apparently without Moore's blessing. There are a few narratives to this story:

Moore is famously opposed to any adaptations of his work, including the 2009 movie.
D.C. owns the characters so he more or less has no recourse as far as that goes. (The Hollywood Reporter quotes artist Dave Gibbons as giving the series his blessing, with reservations.)
WATCHMEN has a cult following if not a large one, so it's inevitable that these characters weren't just going to sit in the metaphorical vault forever.

As a casual fan of WATCHMEN who didn't completely hate the movie (although a lot of things went awry there, a lot) I am actually sort of excited that there are going to be prequels -- I think there is a lot of depth and richness to the story that, if done right, could span a bunch of new works. It's a shame they couldn't do it in a way that garnered Moore's blessing, but if he was never going to give it, then how should D.C. proceed?

January Unbookening

2012-02-01T08:34:00.000-05:00

Checked out 8 books from the library
Received 4 to review
Bought 2 (aforepictured SWEET VALLEY CONFIDENTIAL, not worth it, and yesterday's Kindle Daily Deal for THE BEST AMERICAN NOIR OF THE CENTURY, probably worth it)
Borrowed 1 from a coworker (ROOM, very exciting)
Received 1 belated Christmas present (Bart Yasso's THE LONG RUN, took a detour in the mail somewhere)
16 in

Donated 6
Returned 4 to the library
10 out

I'm kind of stockpiling library books for this Tournament of Books business but I expect this will end. Right now I'm reading a library book I've been waiting months for, Lionel Shriver's WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN. Without spoiling anything, those first hundred pages can really make a person give up all dreams of potential future parenthood, can't they? I'm completely riveted to it though -- I even broke my own rule and read a little while walking to work yesterday. (Don't do this if you're accident prone.)

Spotted on the subway

2012-01-31T13:27:00.000-05:00

Being read by a woman about my age in a white puffy coat, tall-ish with dark circles under her eyes.

Profiling is not right, but I would not mess with someone carrying this book.

2012-01-30T09:21:00.000-05:00

"The technology I like is the American paperback edition of FREEDOM. I can spill water on it, and it would still work! So it's pretty good technology. And what’s more, it will work great 10 years from now. So no wonder the capitalists hate it. It’s a bad business model... Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I’m handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing - that’s reassuring. Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it’s just not permanent enough."

-Grumpus in chief Jonathan Franzen -- though he has a point about the technology -- speaking at a book festival in Colombia over the weekend.

My five years with Marilyn

2012-01-27T08:07:00.000-05:00

The role of Arthur Miller in the Oscar-buzzed biopic "My Week With Marilyn" is one of the most thankless parts in a movie full of them. Miller's job in the script is to show up, look awkward, and then be a real jerk so that Marilyn can seek solace in the movie's real hero, scrappy 3rd assistant director Colin Clark. Dougray Scott's performance as Miller is just stage furniture but that's not his fault.

I wasn't much moved by "My Week With Marilyn" overall because as we all know I hate Hollywood, and America, and sexiness. (Mostly I entertained myself on Kenneth Branagh, who seems to be having a really good time having a really bad time as Sir Laurence Olivier.) But Miller's life is rich enough to furnish its own biopic in which he is allowed to play more than just a nerd whose desire to have his own life is inconvenient to the plot.

Tournament of Books '12: Will you be ready when the rooster crows?

2012-01-26T08:48:00.040-05:00

The Morning News' annual book competition, the Tournament of Books, announced its contenders about a week and a half ago. Check them out:

Nathacha Appanah, THE LAST BROTHER
Julian Barnes, THE SENSE OF AN ENDING
Teju Cole, OPEN CITY
Helen Dewitt, LIGHTNING RODS
Patrick DeWitt, THE SISTERS BROTHERS
Jeffrey Eugenides, THE MARRIAGE PLOT
Chad Harbach, THE ART OF FIELDING
Alan Hollinghurst, THE STRANGER'S CHILD
Jesmyn Ward, SALVAGE THE BONES
Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
Téa Obreht, THE TIGER'S WIFE
Michael Ondaatje, THE CAT'S TABLE
Ann Patchett, STATE OF WONDER
Donald Ray Pollock, DEVIL ALL THE TIME
Karen Russell, SWAMPLANDIA!
Kate Zambreno, GREEN GIRL

The T.o.B. is more fun and transparent than most literary awards for the following reasons:

Inclusion of a "March Madness" style bracket pitting books against each other.
Unabashed celebrity judge included among the authors making the decisions. This year's, Wil Wheaton, is also an author in his own right to be fair. (There's also a reader judge, should you non-famous people feel under-represented.)
Every judge writes an essay defending her or his choice, so if you disagree, you have plenty to chew on in your disagreement. (Or you can print the essay out, ball it up and throw it into the wastebasket shouting No it's not!!! Your choice.)
"Zombie Picks" (voted on by readers) resurrect two picks discarded by the judges in earlier rounds and give them a chance to compete for the big prize.

I have made the questionable decision to try and read as many of the contenders as possible before the tournament begins on March 7. Not only will I be catching up on some of the (possible) best books of '11 I missed, I will have slightly more authority in arguing that the judges' picks are wrong, so wrong. (Uh, if they are, that is.) Taking out the ones I had the foresight to read beforehand, here's my personal reading list:

Nathacha Appanah, THE LAST BROTHER
Julian Barnes, THE SENSE OF AN ENDING
Teju Cole, OPEN CITY
Helen Dewitt, LIGHTNING RODS
Patrick DeWitt, THE SISTERS BROTHERS
Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
Michael Ondaatje, THE CAT'S TABLE
Ann Patchett, STATE OF WONDER
Donald Ray Pollock, DEVIL ALL THE TIME
Kate Zambreno, GREEN GIRL

Granted, I could probably spend all that time on 1Q84 and not read any of the rest, so let's just call this... a noble attempt. I'm kicking it off with Nathacha Appanah's THE LAST BROTHER for the highly scientific reason that it was the first to make it off the library request page and into my hands. Which one of these did you like the most?

Reading on the Road: Martin Amis edition

2012-01-25T07:27:00.002-05:00

"Junk novels were sold in airports. People in airports bought and read junk novels. Junk novels were about people in airports, inasmuch as junk novels needed airports to shift their characters round the planet, and airports served, in junk novels, as the backdrop to their partings, chance encounters, reunions and trysts. Some junk novels were _all_ about airports. Some junk novels were even _called_ things like AIRPORT. Why then, you might ask, was there no airport called Junk Novel? Movies based on junk novels were, of course, heavily reliant on the setting of the airport. So why wasn't one always seeing, at airports, junk novels being made into movies? Perhaps there really was a whole other airport, called, perhaps, Junk Novel Airport, or with a fancier name like Manderley International Junk Novel Airport, where they did them all... Readers of junk novels and people in airports wanted the same thing: escape, and quick transfer from one junk novel to another junk novel and from one airport to another airport."
--from THE INFORMATION

Brooklyn Authorati Gather On Area Woman's Stoop For Some Reason

2012-01-24T08:45:00.027-05:00

But be careful, some of them bite!

For a good time, Photoshop yourself into this Conde Nast Traveler portrait of a number of (though by no means all of) the borough's finest and pretend they all showed up to talk shop with you.

Check out the original via Jami Attenberg. (Also, that's not my stoop, although if you have an inkling of where it is...)

NYC: Free publishing panel Feb. 15

2012-01-23T14:42:00.001-05:00

Q: Do you like social media?
A: Too bad, you're already in it! But while you're there you might as well check out this panel about publishing in the 21st century next month during Social Media Week. Emma Straub will be there, undoubtedly revealing how she can be working at BookCourt and on Twitter and writing books all at the same time. (I suspect a secret twin.)

Obvious headline is obvious

2012-01-23T08:20:00.001-05:00

Impulse mass-market purchase of the month

2012-01-20T08:46:00.000-05:00

Sorry I'm not sorry. I heard it was terrific.

Two new ways to unbooken

2012-01-19T21:30:00.000-05:00

Finding that your New Year's resolution to read the books you have and not buy any more is weakening? Maybe one of these approaches would work for you:

In the spirit of Judith Levine's NOT BUYING IT, Meg Hourihan (who cofounded Pyra Labs, the company that once launched a little web program called Blogger) is tracking her spending openly and making an effort not to make unnecessary stuff purchases in 2012, over on her blog Makeit.do. Per her rules, she can borrow a book from a friend or the library, but not buy it.
For something more literary and less generally minimalist, pay attention to Canadian critic Michael Hingston, tackling his unread books a few tomes at a time in Shelf Defense. (I am a sucker for a good pun.) For each book he addresses it contents and whether he wants to keep or sell it. It's systematic and elegant, particular the hallmark photo he uses to show the progress he's making.

2012-01-19T11:27:00.001-05:00

INTERVIEWER

Did you read as a child?

DeLILLO

No, not at all. Comic books. This is probably why I don’t have a storytelling drive, a drive to follow a certain kind of narrative rhythm.

--I've been reading about Don DeLillo after finishing THE NAMES last week and, I don't really know what to say about this exchange from a Paris Review interview. I want to say "Well, of course you're kidding," but it seems sort of disrespectful. (He does talk about what he read later, though. This interview is also where his quote that I love "The novel’s not dead, it’s not even seriously injured" comes from.)

Even though music was my bag

2012-01-18T15:40:00.001-05:00

This may be too dark for some of you to listen to during the workday, but someone recommended this interview with Meghan Daum to me and I'm finding it really fascinating. Pairs great with her recent Believer essay (although it's not available online now due to the McSweeney's SOPA blackout) "Haterade."

Filmbook: "Hugo" (2011)

2012-01-18T08:31:00.076-05:00

I reviewed THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET for a now-defunct (but trust me it was awesome) geek-culture magazine, more or less on reputation alone. I wasn't sure if Brian Selznick's young-adult Caldecott winner would even appeal to an adult audience, but so rarely does the Caldecott (as an award for artistry in children's books) go to a YA book I thought it was worth looking into. I was taken in by how Selznick's illustrations of Hugo, an orphan in the 1930s who works the clocks in a Paris train station, used cinematic angles and tropes to illuminate the story, and as I got deeper into the plot I understood why: Not only has Hugo been instilled with a love of the movies, he develops a relationship with an old man who works at the station with his own history in film. Maybe I was one of the only people who wasn't surprised that director Martin Scorsese would take on an adaptation like this.

"Hugo" lags a little in its first half, but by the end of the movie, to employ the cliché, I had completely fallen under its spell. The double mysteries of what Hugo has been up to in his room above the train station, and what happened to the embittered old man who takes him on as some kind of apprentice, were completely enthralling, highlighted by a few amazing setpieces. Asa Butterfield as Hugo provided just the right amount of pathos without mugging, and leave it to Scorsese to wring out of Ben Kingsley (as the embittered old man) his best performance since 2000's "Sexy Beast," in a role that could not be more different in terms of overall volume.

When the movie comes to show us some of the old movies Hugo loved, a hush fell over the theatre; imagine how magical these things could be, when they didn't have the tricks to make them look seamless like they do now. The simple delights of camera foolery like making an actor "disappear" by stopping the film, are still delightful now. And speaking of foolery, I'm not sure what the 3-D adds to the element of the film, although in a few instances this really stands out. This is Scorsese's shiniest movie (at least among the ones I've seen) and to be honest I had expected him to insert a little more grit into the story of Hugo. (Though, Scorsese fans, try to spot the Steadicam-Copacabana equivalent sequence early in this film.) I think it's an output of the combination of 3-D CGI that characters often seem to have a glowy aura around them; sometimes I found it fitting, sometimes distracting. As was pointed out by another critic, Scorsese is dabbling in new technology to honor a film innovator who did the same; I'm just not convinced he needed those tricks to bring his marvelous illusion across.

Watching "Hugo" made me think a lot about the other major award contender this season honoring the history of cinema, "The Artist," about the silent-film era and the move to "talkies." For me there's no question that "Hugo" is a better movie, because it doesn't just recreate the art it's trying to honor, it transcends it using the budget and powers that we have. It doesn't just say, "Remember that bygone era? That was awesome." Additionally, I liked "The Artist" but I never bought its characters as truly in danger; they were just figures of whimsy enacting an homage, whereas for all the comedic moments Hugo's nemesis the stationmaster (played by Sasha Baron Cohen, with many echoes of the Childcatcher in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang") gives to the movie, he is a real threat. (Also, really happy for you, gonna let you finish, but "Singin' In The Rain" is the best movie about the end of silent film of all time. Of all time!) If critics aren't taking "Hugo" seriously because it's ostensibly a children's movie, and it didn't screen at Cannes, that's a real shame.

Filmbook verdict: See the movie even if you haven't read the book, but if you have the chance to read the book, also do that.

Forthcoming in this space: Reviews of "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," "We Need To Talk About Kevin" and the 2011 "Jane Eyre."

2012-01-17T13:52:00.001-05:00

Linked without comment: Ten Aspects of THE GREAT GATSBY We Can't Wait For Baz Luhrmann To Film In 3-D

My small SWAMPLANDIA! problem, or the literary lost soul

2012-01-16T17:49:00.000-05:00

I really liked Karen Russell's SWAMPLANDIA! (correct punctuation and all) but I wish I had loved it. I'm looking forward to Russell's next book as well as catching up with her first, a short-story collection entitled ST. LUCY'S HOME FOR GIRLS RAISED BY WOLVES. I was caught off guard by how much magical realism there was in SWAMPLANDIA!, the story of the decline of a family amusement park in Florida after the death of its star attraction, alligator wrestler Hilola Bigtree. (In fact, we begin with a recollection of her performances struck with the unforgettable opening line, "Our mother performed in starlight.")

Russell is a fair author to take on this mantle, particularly if she will address some of the faults of other magical realist writers (ahem long lines of beautiful available ladies in ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE). And in some ways, the narrator she chooses to bear the burden of most of the book, the sheltered yet adventure-seeking Ava Bigtree, is the perfect choice -- still young enough to harbor some illusions, but old enough to be forced to witness some of them being dismantled. Her unique worldview is captivating -- except in the odd moments where it feels like Russell is trying to make it unique, through using metaphors and similes that flower out of control.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good poetic line, and Russell can sling them. (Insert digression here about whether Russell might have been better served as a career poet and my conclusion that, while maybe she leant that way, poets should be able to write novels, because why not. It livens the shelf.) Here's an example of a poetic digression in SWAMPLANDIA! that I loved, about Ava's brother:

"Kiwi and his father could sometimes meet at the intersection of their two angers, like neighbors drawing up to the barbed stars of a fence."

It's a neat simile, it's concrete, and it illustrates a detail about their relationship that you didn't already know. Here's a more elaborate one that I think still works:

"Something about the way [the seaplane] landed, floats first, gave Kiwi the impression of teeth entering the water, the jet floats biting in to the red-dyed water like two bright fangs."

But every so often Russell leans on her metaphors and her ornate command of language and, to my mind, ends up making no sense at all. I feel like my hated eighth grade English teacher pointing this out, but I don't know what to make of a passage like this:

"Moths jumbled tunelessly above our heads, kaleidoscoping in this way that looked like visible music to me -- something that would be immediately audible to an alligator or a raccoon but that we human Bigtrees couldn't hear."

The conflict between tunelessly and music/audible, the needs to clarify "kaleidoscoping" (a verb I don't have a problem with, only I think it's fairly clear as-is) and specify that the humans wouldn't hear it, even though if we follow the path they could see it... see the moths? Do moths even make noise apart from when they brush up against things? It's also puzzling why Ava would pick out this detail of a night sequence (as it happens to come from) and invest it with such particular importance, although there is ample evidence in the rest of the book that she is prone to paying attention to the wrong things.

Reading passages like those I started to understand, when people fault critical darlings like SWAMPLANDIA! for being "too literary" and somehow unapproachable, that this is what they mean. If I had had to close-read that passage I might still be reading the book right now (exaggeration). I would never say everyone has to write like Hemingway or McCarthy, and some of Russell's turns I dearly loved -- like the way her shame for her father, trying to keep Swamplandia from going under, became "like a sword I'd made, glinting and strong." But I have to go with the comment made by Slate's John Dickerson who, exasperated on the Slate Audio Book Club's discussion of the book, finally exclaimed "Everything can't be like everything else!" That is a useful lesson for all of us out there.

Thanks for the assistance!

2012-01-13T11:27:00.004-05:00

I feel slightly more fired up about my resolution to read more biographies after reading about a teenage Lev Grossman's obsession with them. (Bonus points for the Plath biting story. Never goes out of style!) One of my Christmas presents was a copy of the new Vonnegut biography he mentions.

Clutter

2012-01-13T08:25:00.001-05:00

Of all the tchotchkes I've seen sold at bookstores near the front register, I think this is the most pointless:

I get why bookstores sell non-book items, not just from a profit standpoint. I have bought many of them myself. That said, what is this? It's not a game... it's not really a toy. It's a bunch of junk related to an overrated movie, in a box, for $9. Everything in the clearance bin was more useful than this (including those creepy Elf on a Shelf coffee mugs). Someone had to make the decision to sell this and I can only ask: why?

(See, I can get mad about trivial stuff too. [I'm not actually mad.])

Flanagan, Didion and the G-word (and the F-word)

2012-01-12T19:44:00.000-05:00

Caitlin Flanagan puts forth several legitimate criticisms of the work of Joan Didion in her latest Atlantic article, yet for a takedown, it's surprisingly sentimental. Dismantling her argument, though, is as easy as pulling the chord on a parachute thanks to a personal digression that not only goes on far too long but also conveniently reveals her underminer's agenda.

The heart of "The Autumn of Joan Didion" is a painfully detailed description of the time Flanagan actually met Didion when the latter was already two books into her career, and the former was the teenage daughter of a UC-Berkeley professor (one imagines her as the Alex P. Keaton of the house, or whatever the '60s equivalent would be) prompted to make small talk with a stranger. Didion doesn't say much, and despite parental prompting young Caitlin didn't really take a shine to her. Years later, she picks up SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM and is transformed.

Why does Flanagan dwell on this as a starting point to her own Didion experience? By her own admission she and the author swapped few words and began neither a kind of great mentorship nor a bitter feud. This is how Flanagan shows us how, despite the works of art that followed, her opinion hardened against the writer at fourteen and no book, let alone THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING or BLUE NIGHTS, could change it. And somehow, that girl's opinion has enough merit for her to chase down the Didion legacy with a butterfly net and try to preserve it by killing it in flight.

At the core of Flanagan's argument that Didion is overrated and irrationally defended is this concept that fans of Joan Didion are attracted to her as a symbol of eternal girlhood, fragile, in need of protection -- a particularly female attraction. (That the author appeals to women in somewhat greater proportions than men, I will accept, although maybe not to the degree that is described here.) This view is based on her own admitted admiration of Didion's work, and the author must be given some credit for throwing in her lot with the fans she later turns on -- but only a smidge, because the way she goes about it is petty in the short game and nonsensically sexist in the long game. If that long-ago dinner guest had gently nurtured young Caitlin's literary bent, would we-- actually, I don't care, and neither should you.

Flanagan has been flying this protectionist flag over teenage girls, including reaching back into the past for her younger self, for several years, and her new book GIRL LAND (which I haven't had opportunity to read yet) elaborates on this theme. There are a lot of forces these "girls" need to be protected from, but it is understood that the "code of feminism" and the desires of men are among them as I alluded to two days ago. Being a girl means being "someone’s star student and someone else’s star daughter," not someone in yourself; to give up one's agency in favor of the cushiness of belonging. As to which parts of Joan Didion correlate to this behavior, Flanagan cites the author's preoccupation with interior decoration and fashion, and to a series of vacations she took at significant junctures in her marriage that may have offered her solace. Ladies love travel and clothes, am I right?! It is at once something to be desired and something to be feared, but if you can't be one, you seem to owe it to others to help them be one.

In "The Autumn of Joan Didion" Flanagan views Didion fandom (as it were) as a means for grown women to express that they still want to be part of that protected class of girls, but even the way she designates that is problematic: Of what does Flanagan's description of "the eternal-girl impulse" remind us, with its "desire to retreat to our room, to close the door," than Virginia Woolf, who would have bristled at the idea that she needs to be protected? Conflating the desire for solitude and introspection with an essential immaturity, Flanagan infers that only women acting in the spheres she finds appropriate -- implied, full participation in wifehood and motherhood -- are truly self-actualized, and that any woman who wants something different (like, oh, a job at Vogue, a New York apartment and a celebrated book of nonfiction work) is shying away from her real destiny.

Her indictment of Didion as a bad mother comes as a surprise mostly in how clichéd it is; is this not the first line of attack against any public woman? Maybe second to what she looks like and whether the viewer considers her attractive! No worries, Flanagan has covered that too, snubbing Didion for wearing an inappropriate Chanel suit to her parents' dinner party. (This is the only place, ever, where the word "inappropriate" will be used to modify "Chanel suit.")

This liberal usage of the g-word reminds me of a public-service ad my mom had framed in her home office for years, whose full text I am posting here because it took me long enough to dig it up (source: United Technologies):

Wouldn't 1980 be a great year to take one giant step forward for womankind and get rid of "the girl"?
Your attorney says, "If I'm not here just leave it with the girl."
The purchasing agent says, "Drop off your bid with the girl."
A manager says, "My girl will get back to your girl."

What girl?
Do they mean Miss Rose?
Do they mean Ms. Torres?
Do they mean Mrs. McCullough?
Do they mean Joy Jackson?

"The girl" is certainly a woman when she's out of her teens.
Like you, she has a name. Use it.

The reclamation of the word "girls," if it happens, is still a long way off, despite 2011's gift of "girls (who run the world," but striving to avoid the G-word becomes in itself a feminist act. (Well, also, the dodge of using the collegiate "dude" for people of all genders can only function for so long.) I didn't understand that the first, oh, hundred times I saw this ad, hanging in the office where my mom took her consulting projects home, later prepped for the classes she taught; where, when she stopped working outside of the home, she assembled the family Christmas letter and planned our (Girl) Scout meetings; and where she now, having returned to work, transcribes interviews and takes conference calls.

Nowhere does Flanagan underline this treasured image of the protected G-word so much as in, at the end of her tortured introduction featuring a number of other New York critics (none of whom she courteously describes as "girls"), she makes the claim that what Joan Didion is to girls, Hunter S. Thompson is to boys: "He gave the boys twisted pig-fuckers and quarts of tequila; she gave us quiet days in Malibu and flowers in our hair." Not particularly wanting to drag the good Doctor into it, I am still repelled by the expressed polarity, the same kind that says "Sorry, my magazine doesn't care about diversity and I didn't take the TIME to correct it," or more nastily writes in to review outlets and says "Why are you covering this book that is by a woman and has a pair of shoes on the cover?" The kind that is all too ready to take any opportunity, when a woman encourages the pigeonholing of other female writers, to shove all of them into that pigeonhole and say "Be thankful you have shelter at all, why, back in the twenties..."

If girls should be protected from anything, it's from role models like this who teach women writers -- well, all writers, really -- that sniping at manners (“She never took her purse off her lap!”) and armchair diagnosis ("profound—crippling—social-anxiety disorder") carry the same weight as literary criticism. That laments that a woman can get old and write about being old, instead of endlessly re-treading the past. She can sharpen the claws as much as she wants on Didion, who seems aloof to the jabs of mere mortals these days, but it's a curious thing to argue that all teenage girls need to be protected against their lapses in judgment, except yourself at fourteen.

To dislike Didion based on her writing, to say that she has leaned too much on pat phrases and that her "schtick got old" late in her career is one thing, but Flanagan is so knotted up in protecting all the girls (and all the women who would be girls) she just needed to make it personal, to apply the attitude she developed as a fourteen-year-old (in other words, legitimately a girl) to a woman with a storied career and to accuse her of dragging the world back into adolescence. To do so serves the masters who would separate literature by and about women from Great Literature, who don't care about the Bechdel test, who would indeed argue (as Flanagan comes perilously close, on the side of an either/or) that Didion is a narcissist just for writing a memoir at all. This, of course, from a memoirist herself, always attacking from the inside.

Filmbook: "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" (2011)

2012-01-11T08:10:00.183-05:00

Tomas Alfredson's adaptation of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" begins, literally, in darkness, as two British intelligence agents are meeting to discuss a private assignment. There are long pauses, and allusions to things that don't make any sense, and then we get two enduring images: A man felled on a cobblestone street, his arms splayed out like a swastika, and the unreadable face of a man whose boss has just resigned for him from a lifelong career. John le Carre's Cold War conspiracy thriller, beloved by many, is short on conventional action and long on recollections and revelations through deduction -- necessary on the page, but would be impossible onscreen. This film is also long, but well paced, quiet but not monotonous (and when we hear it, well scored), and retro without being cutesy. The more I think about it the more I liked it, but I went in prepared.

Gary Oldman as Smiley, the British former agent who loses his job in the opening minutes of the film but is recruited by some of his old coworkers to help root out a mole among the agents, may well be in the most taciturn role to win the Best Actor Oscar. (Unless there's a heartwarming acclaimed story about a mute that I'm forgetting. There probably is.) My favorite "Smiley moment" is when he visits the former secretary at the Circus who was let go just after him, to see if she remembered anything useful, and nothing that happens during that peculiar social call brings up a reaction in him. Nothing! The man barely blinks let alone talks, but something about his glassed-in stare prompts people to keep talking until they've given him the information they want. From what I've read it seems that his performance is a direct acknowlegment of Alec Guinness's turn in the British "Tinker, Tailor" miniseries, although not a complete recreation. I was reminded of Oldman's cop rule in the rebooted "Batman" franchise as the guy who is wiser and sadder than everyone, and what a terrible burden that can be to a man.

Along with Smiley the movie takes a special interest in Peter Guillam, played by Britishest Named Actor Ever Benedict Cumberbatch, who is a lower-ranking agent in the Circus who assists Smiley (though the book gets into why he does a little bit more than the movie). Cumberbatch is a lanky 35 but looks about 19, and between his blonde '70s shag and his weird blue eyes he looks unearthly, like a space alien, or David Bowie in his cocaine and milk phase. There's a scene where he emerges from behind a door to meet someone, and you don't see the the moment of startle on the other person's face, but you can viscerally feel it like it's happening to you. He's terrific, and I regret that people may give up on this movie based on the first hour and not see the best aspects of his performance.

Which is not to say that Oldman and Cumberbatch are the only good actors here, because this movie is like a showcase for British male actors. Toby Jones is at his sniveling best as one of the Circus top brass, Percy Alleline (who I never liked, for the record), and Colin Firth sheds some of his charm as another, Bill Haydon. If we want to talk about people disappearing into roles, let's talk about Tom Hardy, with none of the bravado of his character in "Inception," nor any of the brawn he packed on to play an MMA fighter in "Warrior," as the rogue agent who tries to expose the mole in his own way. Mark Strong is essential as Jim Prideaux, and keep an eye out for Swedish actor David Dencik who is all shifting eyes and flop sweat as Esterhase.

Purists will probably mind, and why shouldn't they? A fair amount of chronology has been shifted from the novel, with le Carre's opening scene of a schoolteacher (the forcibly retired Jim Prideaux, as it turns out) befriending a lonely kid pushed well into the first hour of the film. Even having no great love for the book (which I read about six weeks ago and was startled by the lack of action in it) I was irritated by some of the minor changes made to the book, and one major change I'm not positive of but is still confusing me a little. Here's where I think the adaptation may be a double-edged sword: While I didn't get lost in "Tinker Tailor" I was confused enough, particularly at the beginning, to wonder whether people who hadn't read the book would be lost. On the other hand, familiarity with the source material may interfere with other viewers' enjoyment. My test case (the friend I went with, familiar with neither book nor movie) reported that the first hour was confusing, and then it all fell into place for him, but your mileage may vary. (He did also point out that the trailer makes this look like more of an action thriller than it actually is... sic semper Hollywoodis?)

Yet I have to give the movie credit for its strongest scene, delivered in flashback, that I'm almost certain was not in the original material but should have been -- snippets of a Christmas party, before the secret mission, before Smiley got fired and as the doubts are setting in. I could watch an entire movie of just that party, but what I was shown was enough. Between that scene and the goosebump-inducing closing montage*, I was reminded that a great adaptation transcends the weaknesses of its source while employing its strengths to make something new and memorable. It can give you chills.

Filmbook Verdict: Read the book, then see the movie. And after you see the movie, you should listen to this great interview with Tomas Alfredson from the Filmspotting podcast.

*Note: While not the last movie I saw in theatres, there are a lot of parallels between this and the Fincher "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" I just sat through. A somewhat spoilery, disorganized list:
David Dencik has a small role in "Dragon Tattoo" and a larger role here
Symbolic emphasis placed on a woman who is hardly in the movie (Ann Smiley, George's wife, vs Harriet Vanger in "Dragon Tattoo")
Directors known for horror (Alfredson's last movie was the vampire thriller "Let The Right One In")
The yellow wash on the flashbacks, for that nostalgic tint
Device of flipping through old photos/ microfilm in order to "see" a clue from the past
Importance to the plot, and specifically the denoument, of a cabin in the woods
Character isolating himself to go back decades to uncover something [yeah, I realize that's pretty general]
Looming shadow of World War II as glory days
Surprising juxtaposition of song + scene near the end

With extra hatesauce please

2012-01-10T17:18:00.000-05:00

And lo, on the tenth day of that new year, the Atlantic did bring forth Caitlin Flanagan calling Joan Didion "a triumph—and a disaster," and there was much rejoicing. And the BHDs cackled and rubbed their palms together waiting for the printer to spit the article out, and they commuted back to their home boroughs eagerly awaiting the crackling fire of Flanagan's surely inaccurate* summation of her fellow writer according to her straw woman arguments. (Via PWK.)

*Here are a few Caitlin Flanagan arguments (paraphrased for time) I have disagreed with:
1. "The purpose of all teenage girls is to fall in love and that is all they are suited for and but so something about TWILIGHT"
2. "All women should be stay at home mothers because that is the purpose of womanhood, even though I have nannies so I can write full-time but I don't see how that is relevant"
3. "No women truly want to hook up, they just all want boyyyyyyyfriends and I am basing that belief on a YA book I saw in a store once, and also Taylor Swift..."
4. "... And if a woman says otherwise she has clearly been brainwashed by evil cultural forces! And we have to protect her! By telling her what to do."

2012-01-10T14:42:00.008-05:00

This week, in Meetup invites that probably went to the wrong person...

What it's like to read books on an iPad

2012-01-09T08:55:00.056-05:00

The first book I finished in 2012 was Matt Bondurant's THE NIGHT SWIMMER (liked it!) Because I had an e-galley it was also the first book I started and finished on my new-to-me iPad.

I love gadgets but had held off on buying myself an iPad for the usual reasons -- cost, wariness of what the first few generations would be able and unable to do, lack of pressing need for another consumptive media device. I'm also not a huge touchscreen person, as the last person in New York to voluntarily get a Blackberry (and you know what it does really well? It makes phone calls ahem). Playing with it has definitely reignited that sense of fun I had when I got my first mp3 player, and I haven't even gotten addicted to Angry Birds yet -- but, as everyone warned, it is better suited to consuming media than creating, as I struggle through composing an email longer than three sentences.

Kindle books on an iPad can be accessed through the free Amazon app and downloaded manually one-by-one from your existing Kindle library. So far I haven't bought any books through the Kindle app on the iPad or iBooks, just taught myself how to sync the app and the Kindle (a process in itself). Once I did that I was able to ping-pong back and forth between both with the same book, a trick that probably delighted only me, but if both devices are on and connected to wireless internet, one will alert you if you are on a further location with the other and prompt you to jump ahead. It only gets confusing if you remember a paragraph being at a particular location on one page, and then find it in a different place on the other device.

The major advantage I see so far in reading in Kindle for iPad over Kindle itself is the backlit screen, making it unnecessary to turn another light on; the major disadvantage, the attraction that an iPad might have to people on the subway who would not consider a Kindle worth stealing. Being able to flip back and forth while reading to my email or Google Reader is a draw; I don't need the interruption, although it was nice to manage both in one device.

I haven't done a really thorough exploration of the literary or reading-related apps out there, so I'd welcome your suggestions. I will say that the Goodreads app is lovely and so easy to refresh I almost wished that I had more Goodreads friends.

Besides being white and male, obvs

2012-01-06T12:45:00.002-05:00

Michael Chabon, John Irving, Tom Wolfe, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen. What do these five guys have in common?

ETA - Sunday afternoon - really, no one had a guess? Is it because there was no giveaway? Well anyway, they all have new books due out in 2012. Fall, May, fall, May and I think April, respectively.

Next year in Dublin

2012-01-06T08:47:00.038-05:00

On Tuesday night I met some friends at The Ginger Man, a pub in midtown I see that there are many pubs the world over named The Ginger Man, appropriate for a book about the lighter side of drinking yourself into oblivion. I appreciated that the bar's Twitter feed (of course it has one) pays tribute to the protagonist of J.P. Donleavy's book in its identity.

I didn't find it terribly authentic to the book, as I am sure you are surprised to find out. The impressive array of taps behind the bar are undoubtedly appreciated by its present-day clientele but would probably be seen as a frill in post-World War II Dublin. The bar is very well lit in places, a terrible place to hide from your creditors. It was playing kind of a downtempo mix of music better suited to staring out the window than enjoying happy hour (unless you normally clink glasses to Grizzly Bear and/or the Postal Service).

In the end I think the most GINGER MAN-esque aspect of the Ginger Man was the indifference of the waitstaff to my desire to get a drink. I eventually gave up trying because I was attempting to interact more with them than I was with my actual-factual friends. If I want to be ignored by bartenders I'll just go to Murray Hill. (There's one for my fellow New Yorkers!) On the other hand, Sebastian Dangerfield would probably just fall over the bar and serve himself, and maybe that's the lesson.

2012-01-05T12:31:00.001-05:00

Christopher Hitchens' last column pays tribute to Charles Dickens.

Unbookening with the help of Jonathan Ames

2012-01-05T06:03:00.018-05:00

"Anthony Powell once titled one of his novels BOOKS DO FURNISH A ROOM. In my case, it’s more like BOOKS DO OVERWHELM A ROOM. I have a thousand or more novels and works of nonfiction, but not enough shelves, so I have uneven stacks of tomes everywhere, all teetering in an intoxicated manner. But I don’t care. I’m a middle-aged old fart who steadfastly refuses to ever read on an electronic device, if for no other reason than I’m a frightened, small-minded technophobe. Also, these gadgets are going to change the way novels are written and conceived, and I’m against change when it comes to things I do." --Jonathan Ames, "The Mess I'm In"

Never mind that we came to opposite conclusions on the matter. Anyway:

Checked out 4 books from the library
Bought 1 book on Kindle
Received 3 to review
Had 1 I loaned out returned to me (THE ASTRAL, so who wants it next?)
Got 13 books for Christmas
22 in

Returned 8 books to the library -- I started the new year with none borrowed, although that changed quickly
Deleted 5 off the Kindle
Donated 3
16 out

2012-01-04T14:26:00.002-05:00

One thing in James Franco's dubious favor on the sale of his first novel ACTORS ANONYMOUS? The acquiring editor is Ed Park, who will hopefully put his wordsmithery powers to work to convince Franco to go for a title besides ACTORS ANONYMOUS. I mean, seriously, now.

"Portlandia" shows how not to handsell

2012-01-04T08:25:00.019-05:00

I've been catching up on the IFC hipster-mocking sketch show "Portlandia" before the second season premieres on Friday. I haven't found their feminist bookstore skits set at the fictional "Women and Women First" to be the best of Armisen, Brownstein et al's material -- and sometimes I get the creeping feeling that people enjoy them because there's something inherently funny about a feminist bookstore, not because of the Actual Jokes -- but this one provides a solid example of how not to make a customer for life.

A recent article about the show in the New Yorker mentioned that Brownstein's long-lost memoir THE SOUND OF WHERE YOU ARE will be published (Ecco/ HarperCollins) in 2013.

2012-01-03T12:07:00.001-05:00

Following in the footsteps of its successful album flash sales, Amazon has 100 Kindle books on sale for $3.99 or less right now. My pick: the creepy grown-up-Nancy-Drew suspense novel A FIELD OF DARKNESS.

The first books I bought from Amazon were...

2012-01-03T08:29:00.000-05:00

This blog post, The last 13 years of my life in Amazon orders, made me want to track down what my first Amazon purchase was. Now, in my case the stat is slightly misleading because it wasn't the first time I had ordered from the site -- just the first time I did so using my own account. Prior to, looks like, fall of 2001, I would decide what I wanted and give the right amount of babysitting money to my dad, who was The Person Who Used Amazon In The House, and then he would order it.

Anyway:

These were for an independent study I did in high school. If we had a foreign-language bookstore (or even a section) in Milwaukee at the time, I didn't know where it was. (I could have tried the UWM bookstore, although I remember it as being kind of light on non-course books.) I'm not a huge Alberti fan, but I think I was encouraged to not just read Lorca for a full year and call it done. I later lent that biography to a tour guide based in southern Spain; I can't remember whether he mailed it back to me or I gave in and ordered another copy.

Now go look up yours and tell me what you found.

All the books I read in 2011

2012-01-02T11:34:00.030-05:00

Well, creepy. I read exactly the same number as last year. Again, I took a few out before I posted the list (for secrets) but this is about as complete as it's going to get.

January

David Foster Wallace, THE BROOM OF THE SYSTEM

David Vann, CARIBOU ISLAND

Kathrine Switzer, MARATHON WOMAN

Diana Spechler, SKINNY: A NOVEL

Hannah Pittard, THE FATES WILL FIND THEIR WAY

Brooke Berman, NO PLACE LIKE HOME

Reread: Margaret Atwood, THE BLIND ASSASSIN

Kevin Brockmeier, THE ILLUMINATION

Ted Conover, WHITEOUT

Urban Waite, THE TERROR OF LIVING

February

Kristin Gore, SWEET JIMINY

Benjamin Hale, THE EVOLUTION OF BRUNO LITTLEMORE

Louise Dean, THE OLD ROMANTIC

Neal Pollack, STRETCH

Tom Holt, LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF SAUSAGES

Anonymous, O: A PRESIDENTIAL NOVEL

Dan DeWeese, YOU DON’T LOVE THIS MAN

Glen David Gold, CARTER BEATS THE DEVIL

March

J.P. Donleavy, THE GINGER MAN

Laura Kasischke, THE RAISING

Reread: David Mitchell, CLOUD ATLAS

Daniel Akst, WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY

Sarah Vowell, UNFAMILIAR FISHES

Lee Martin, BREAK THE SKIN

Georges Simenon, THREE BEDROOMS IN MANHATTAN

Charles Portis, TRUE GRIT

Susan Yager, THE HUNDRED-YEAR DIET

William Lychack, THE ARCHITECT OF FLOWERS

Cara Hoffman, SO MUCH PRETTY

Manuel Munoz, WHAT YOU SEE IN THE DARK

Elaine Dundy, THE DUD AVOCADO

April

Jen Trynin, EVERYTHING I’M CRACKED UP TO BE

David Foster Wallace, THE PALE KING

Teddy Wayne, KAPITOIL

Sara Gruen, WATER FOR ELEPHANTS

Steven Levy, IN THE PLEX

Tina Fey, BOSSYPANTS

Jim Knipfel, THE BLOW-OFF

Jennifer Egan, A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD

Gary Taubes, WHY WE GET FAT

Arthur Phillips, THE TRAGEDY OF ARTHUR

Jen Lancaster, IF YOU WERE HERE

May

Chris Adrian, THE GREAT NIGHT

Hilary Winston, MY BOYFRIEND WROTE A BOOK ABOUT ME

Marcelo Figueras, KAMCHATKA

Diana Abu-Jaber, BIRDS OF PARADISE

Douglas Kennedy, THE MOMENT

Delphine de Vigan, UNDERGROUND TIME

Jancee Dunn, WHY IS MY MOTHER GETTING A TATTOO?

Manisha Thakor, MY OWN TWO FEET

Dean Bakopoulos, MY AMERICAN UNHAPPINESS

Alison Espach, THE ADULTS

James Hynes, NEXT

William Lychach, THE WASP EATER

Eleanor Henderson, TEN THOUSAND SAINTS

June

Jon-Jon Goulian, THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SKIRT

Jesse Ball, THE CURFEW

Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly, ALL THINGS SHINING

Kate Christensen, THE ASTRAL

Vera Brittain, TESTAMENT OF YOUTH

Patton Oswalt, ZOMBIE SPACESHIP WASTELAND

David Kaiser, HOW THE HIPPIES SAVED PHYSICS

Libba Bray, GOING BOVINE

Gary Shteyngart, SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY

Joseph Conrad, LORD JIM

Greg Hrbek, DESTROY ALL MONSTERS

July

Bonnie Jo Campbell, ONCE UPON A RIVER

Edie Meidav, LOLA, CALIFORNIA

J. Courtney Sullivan, MAINE

Kathryn Stockett, THE HELP

Bella Pollen, THE SUMMER OF THE BEAR

Tom Rachman, THE IMPERFECTIONISTS

Stephen Kelman, PIGEON ENGLISH

Laura Lippmann, THE GIRL IN THE GREEN RAINCOAT

V.S. Naipaul, A BEND IN THE RIVER

Molly Birnbaum, SEASON TO TASTE

John O’Hara, A RAGE TO LIVE

Jennifer Weiner, THEN CAME YOU

Kurt Vonnegut, BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS

Tom Scocca, BEIJING WELCOMES YOU

Richard Ford, THE SPORTSWRITER

Eva Gabrielsson, THERE ARE THINGS I WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT STIEG LARSSON AND ME

Caitlin Shetterly, MADE FOR YOU AND ME

Tom Perrotta, BAD HAIRCUT

Reread: Daniel Quinn, ISHMAEL

Amy Waldman, THE SUBMISSION

August

Anita Desai, THE ARTIST OF DISAPPEARANCE

Rick Moody, THE BLACK VEIL

Jason Mulgrew, EVERYTHING IS WRONG WITH ME

Max Barry, MACHINE MAN

Richard Russo, THAT OLD CAPE MAGIC

Tom Perrotta, THE LEFTOVERS

Drew Magary, THE POSTMORTAL

Misha Glouberman and Sheila Heti, THE CHAIRS ARE WHERE THE PEOPLE GO

Tea Obreht, THE TIGER’S WIFE

Joseph Heller, CATCH-22

Chad Harbach, THE ART OF FIELDING

Ernest Hemingway, THE GARDEN OF EDEN

September

Nicholson Baker, HOUSE OF HOLES

Kevin Mitnick, GHOST IN THE WIRES

Jesmyn Ward, SALVAGE THE BONES

Guy Vanderhaeghe, A GOOD MAN

Anne Enright, THE FORGOTTEN WALTZ

Suzanne Collins, THE HUNGER GAMES

October

Alan Hollinghurst, THE STRANGER’S CHILD

Suzanne Collins, CATCHING FIRE

Susanna Daniel, STILTSVILLE

Jennifer Egan, THE INVISIBLE CIRCUS

Jeffrey Eugenides, THE MARRIAGE PLOT

Susan Orlean, RIN TIN TIN

Benjamin Buchholz, ONE HUNDRED AND ONE NIGHTS

Jeanne Darst, FICTION RUINED MY FAMILY

David McRaney, YOU ARE NOT SO SMART

Kelly Cutrone, NORMAL GETS YOU NOWHERE

Karen Russell, SWAMPLANDIA!

Howard Jacobsen, NO MORE MR. NICE GUY

Colson Whitehead, ZONE ONE

Charles Seife, ZERO: THE BIOGRAPHY OF A DANGEROUS IDEA

Suzanne Morrison, YOGA BITCH

November

Lily Tuck, I MARRIED YOU FOR HAPPINESS

Laura Lippmann, I’D KNOW YOU ANYWHERE

Raymond Beauchemain, EVERYTHING I OWN

Suzanne Collins, MOCKINJAY

Peter Nadas, PARALLEL STORIES

Roberto Bolaño, 2666

Rashad Harrison, OUR MAN IN THE DARK

Jennifer Close, GIRLS IN WHITE DRESSES

Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi, THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE

Audrey Schulman, THREE WEEKS IN DECEMBER

Kaui Hart Hemmings, THE DESCENDANTS

John Le Carre, TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY

Michael Ondaatje, THE ENGLISH PATIENT

December

Lan Samantha Chang, ALL IS FORGOTTEN, NOTHING IS LOST

Luis Alberto Urrea, QUEEN OF AMERICA

Donald Miller, A MILLION MILES IN A THOUSAND YEARS

Jacques Steinberg, YOU ARE AN IRONMAN

Jennifer Egan, LOOK AT ME

Craig McDonald, EL GAVILAN

Jen Miller, BOOK A WEEK WITH JEN

Alex Gilvarry, FROM THE MEMOIRS OF A NON-ENEMY COMBATANT

Graciela Limon, THE MADNESS OF MAMA CARLOTA

Paula Fox, THE COLDEST WINTER

2012-01-01T15:38:00.001-05:00

"Be regular and ordinary in your habits, so that you can be violent and original in your work."
-Gustave Flaubert

2012 Resolutions for Reading

2012-01-01T11:46:00.044-05:00

For once, setting realistic resolutions really paid off in 2011:

~~Read 2666.~~ Yes! I started it in July and read it on and off till November, but I finally did it.
~~Knock 3 books off the Modern Library list.~~ How about four?! And two of them were books I would gladly recommend to others (CATCH-22, A BEND IN THE RIVER).
Read the 3 David Foster Wallace short-story collections. All right, I didn't do this. I didn't even read one, although I now own one. Maybe I'll do this this year, but I won't resolve to do it, because I don't know if short-story collections are my favorite thing in general. (That awkward moment when!)

Here's what I will resolve to do in 2012:

Read more nonfiction. I own plenty and I'm interested in it, but it wasn't until looking through my entire list of books in 2011 that I found a hole there. Most of the nonfiction I did read, although I enjoyed it, was fairly niche. I think this one will complete itself without a problem.
Knock 6 books off the Modern Library list. Aiming higher.
Continue to strive to actually read the books I own. Not surprisingly, there are still a lot! Christmas was really good to me in this regard, not that I'm complaining, but now I'm going to read those books.
Change my blogging process a little. Just going to leave this here since I'm sure the minutiae will just put to sleep. But, see if you notice anything!

Best Books of 2011

2011-12-31T11:28:00.002-05:00

Best Fiction

Anne Enright, THE FORGOTTEN WALTZ

Chad Harbach, THE ART OF FIELDING

Roberto Bolaño, 2666 [not 2011]

David Foster Wallace, THE BROOM OF THE SYSTEM [not 2011]

Jennifer Egan, A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD [not 2011]

Edie Meidav, LOLA, CALIFORNIA

Tom Perrotta, THE LEFTOVERS

Joseph Heller, CATCH-22 [not 2011]

Michael Ondaatje, THE ENGLISH PATIENT [not 2011]

Arthur Phillips, THE TRAGEDY OF ARTHUR

Best Fiction With An Asterisk

Jeffrey Eugenides, THE MARRIAGE PLOT

Best Nonfiction

Tom Scocca, BEIJING WELCOMES YOU

Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly, ALL THINGS SHINING

Susan Orlean, RIN TIN TIN

Best Unfinished Work

David Foster Wallace, THE PALE KING

Best Memoir, Just One This Year

Vera Brittain, TESTAMENT OF YOUTH

Page-Turners of Awesome: The Stieg Larsson "Failed To Finish GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST" Memorial Category

Glen David Gold, CARTER BEATS THE DEVIL

Douglas Kennedy, THE MOMENT

Modern Library of Yes, We're Still Doing This Thing

JP Donleavy, THE GINGER MAN

Joseph Heller, CATCH-22

Joseph Conrad, LORD JIM

V.S. Naipaul, A BEND IN THE RIVER

Best Books With Not-The-Best Endings

Manuel Munoz, WHAT YOU SEE IN THE DARK

Teddy Wayne, KAPITOIL

John O'Hara, A RAGE TO LIVE

Saddest Ending

Stephen Kelman, PIGEON ENGLISH

Best Book Endings

James Hynes, NEXT

Roberto Bolaño, 2666

Tom Scocca, BEIJING WELCOMES YOU

Creepiest Premise

Drew Magary, THE POSTMORTAL

Best Villains, Maniacal Laugh, Maniacal Laugh!!!

Italian law enforcement and magistrates in Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi's THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE (even the potential killers weren't as menacing!)

Most Surprising

Hannah Pittard, THE FATES WILL FIND THEIR WAY

Jim Knipfel, THE BLOW-OFF

Bella Pollen, THE SUMMER OF THE BEAR

Michael Ondaatje, THE ENGLISH PATIENT

A reading regret we regret was left out of the original regrets

2011-12-30T10:32:00.000-05:00

We're clearing out ALL the regret before 2012 begins.

Blockbuster book I really wanted to get to, but just couldn't make the time
Haruki Murakami, 1Q84. I willed myself to finish 2666 first (and did!) My BHD priorities, let me show you them.

While you were out

2011-12-29T15:59:00.022-05:00

The city of Milwaukee near where I grew up recently got a nightclub called The Library. I'll just point you to its website because it is the most epic ridiculous set of illustrations, yet giving no clue as to why one would want to make a nightclub themed after a silent place known to be the hangout of nerds. Sure, I've been to library-themed bars before, but at least it was conceivable there that the place could be empty and reading-amenable at some hour...

I didn't actually go when I was home (lack of time, mostly!) but I hear it has bottle service and waitresses dressed like schoolgirls. Oh, lord. My reviewer on the scene said it was decent, but here is another disgruntled patron's opinion.

Reading Regrets of 2011

2011-12-29T09:58:00.001-05:00

Months in which I read the fewest books
September, followed by February

Books I didn't have time to finish before I had to return them to the library

Christopher Bollen, LIGHTNING PEOPLE

Andrew Ross Sorkin, TOO BIG TO FAIL

Randy Shilts, AND THE BAND PLAYED ON

Adam Ross, MR. PEANUT

Hunter S. Thompson, THE RUM DIARY

Nicholson Baker, THE ANTHOLOGIST

A book I paid too many library fines on relative to how much I enjoyed it

Gary Shteyngart, SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY

Authors I wanted to get more into, but didn't have time
Kate Christensen
John O'Hara
Vera Brittain
James Hynes
Jim Knipfel

Most overused pronoun in titles this year
"My"

A book I liked only slightly less than most people I know, but which gave me a complex about it
Karen Russell, SWAMPLANDIA!

A book by an established author that lacks what makes the others great
Jennifer Weiner, THEN CAME YOU

A tell-all that doesn't tell much
Eva Gabrielsson, THERE ARE THINGS I WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT STIEG LARSSON AND ME

A hipster treasure I expected to like but did not
Misha Glouberman and Sheila Heti, THE CHAIRS ARE WHERE THE PEOPLE GO

A funny memoir that didn't get enough credit
Hilary Winston, MY BOYFRIEND WROTE A BOOK ABOUT ME (she writes for that show you like, what's it called, "Community." And I just found out who the titular boyfriend is! Thank you Internet!)

The book that makes other books about talking animals look bad
Benjamin Hale, THE EVOLUTION OF BRUNO LITTLEMORE

Books I finished in one sitting and then was sad that there wasn't more
Patton Oswalt, ZOMBIE SPACESHIP WASTELAND
Stephen Kelman, PIGEON ENGLISH
Amy Waldman, THE SUBMISSION

Digital divide getting divide-ier (also water wet, sky blue...)

2011-12-28T10:41:00.000-05:00

"In [publishers'] eyes, borrowing an e-book from a library has been too easy."

Don't you just love it when people who have no idea what they're talking about set e-book lending policies? I refer you to this post from 2009. This process is still the same (as I discovered, infuriatingly, a few weeks ago trying to borrow an audiobook to listen to at work). This is why I never borrow e-books from the library, because it's too frustrating even for me. And I work in the Internet. (You know, down in the mines. Heigh-ho, heigh-ho...) Better just to say as Maja Thomas of Hachette eventually gets around to, that profits are at stake.

Most commented-on posts of 2011: Argue about them again, for the first time

2011-12-27T08:28:00.028-05:00

January: Scoff, on the necessary punishment of D.H. Lawrence who I am done with on the Modern Library list, and possibly forever?
February: You heard it here first, about my most regrettable read of 2011. Pray tell what book was that? I'll name it in the next few days!
March: Tie, Bookfilm: Charles Portis, TRUE GRIT, in which I read the Western that inspired the Coen Brothers' latest movie, and Unbookening... goes digital? in which I pondered whether making space on your Kindle's hard drive is the same as making space on your shelf. Still haven't decided for sure.
April: Wallaceblogging: Jonathan Franzen, "Farther Away" which New Yorker essay will be included in Franzen's forthcoming book of essays in 2012, also called FARTHER AWAY.
May: By your tote bag shall we know ye, whose examination of tote culture somewhat prefigured the New York Times Style Section examination of same in December.
June: Guardian's 100 best nonfiction books: What do you have?
July: Tie, Modern Library Annual Suggestion Box (again, thank you!) and Free Advice Friday: How not to name your daughter. If more advice columnists would address book-related dilemmas, maybe Free Advice Friday could become a thing! Just putting it out there.
August: Music video by The Decemberists invokes INFINITE JEST's Eschaton Still exciting.
September-October: Joan Didion is tiny and cute Hilariously, a tipster alerted me to the fact that this post was quoted in New York magazine. Ma, I'm famous! For being Joan Didion's Chris Crocker. But in fact, that was pretty amazing.
November-December: Nerds (Who Run The World) Because in the future, that post title won't make any sense.

Filmbook: "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" (2011, dir. David Fincher)

2011-12-26T15:25:00.000-05:00

What you really need to know about David Fincher's adaptation of "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" is that it effectively brings the scares. That's not the last word on the movie, nor is it necessarily the paramount concern, but it was one of mine. Merry Christmas to me (and in fact, I did see this movie on Christmas Day, with family, and we wouldn't have it any other way. "Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows" will just have to wait.)

In case you still haven't gotten around to either the Stieg Larsson book or its vast fields of spoilers, a quick summary: Disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist (played here by Daniel Craig) takes a private job allegedly working on a family biography for industrial baron Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) but actually investigating the disappearance of his niece (played in flashback by Moa Garpendal, listed about 27th on IMDb for this movie), which Vanger believes to have been a murder; in his research Blomkvist enlists the help of Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara, double football legacy and girl who dumps Mark Zuckerberg at the beginning of "The Social Network"), a professional hacker and ward of the state.

Discerning whether this version could effectively bring the scares was important to me because I've already experienced "Dragon Tattoo"'s chain of events twice, once on the page and once onscreen. I saw the Swedish "Dragon Tattoo" two years ago, but luckily had one of my sisters (who had seen it more recently) to remind me of the stylistic differences between the Swedish version, which in retrospect looks like an episode of "SVU," and Fincher with full artistic guns blazing. He shoots the flashbacks to 1960s Sweden in a yellowy wash reminiscent of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", but underlined with notes of malice to keep viewers from wanting to linger in those seemingly idyllic pictures. The present scenes are often washed in blue, echoing the distance Blomkvist is putting between himself, his professional failures, his lover and his Stockholm life as he delves back into the past. There is a retread of the famous "Zodiac" into-the-basement sequence, chased by an unforgettable sound cue that makes a creepy moment even more chilling; the rest of the Trent Reznor/ Atticus Ross soundtrack is effective without being intrusive.

That scene-setting is important, but sometimes it overwhelms the performances -- particularly Daniel Craig as Blomkvist, already muted in efforts (I assume) to make his character more sympathetic. We've seen Craig as "blunt instrument" James Bond, but here he's turned down so far that the occasional outburst looks out of place on him. I would never have thought that he would bring less sex appeal to his role than his Swedish counterpart, being both younger and better-looking, but there you go. Plummer is underused (I read that in deference to his age, he shot on set for just 2 weeks), although part of that is related to the source material and how it employs Henrik Vanger as another hammer in the plot's mechanism. Mara is great -- her Salander, more avoidant than Noomi Rapace's aggressive characterization, shifts uneasily between modes of behavior in just the right ways -- but she's being given too much credit for bringing a great character to life. (Also, true or false: Is it easier for a mostly-unknown actress to lose herself in a role?) In a more conventional thriller tale this wouldn't be a problem, but we linger on characterization long enough -- the super first meeting between Blomkvist and Salander coming to mind -- for it to pull away a bit.

There's another troublesome sequence in "Dragon Tattoo" I can't quite let go of, which I don't want to spoil but it involves a series of very violent images, rapidly processed, and one that the camera lingers on that almost belies the point the movie's trying to make. For that, but for a few other reasons, I'd like to catch it again in a few weeks to either confirm or overturn my initial impressions -- and decide whether the Steven Zaillian script collapses the 800-plus pages of the source as efficiently as possible (as it originally seemed). I can only guess that the reason this movie didn't do better over the holiday weekend is because of its graphic violence and sex, both of which wouldn't come as a shock to the many moviegoers who read DRAGON TATTOO first. How anyone can prefer the torture of "Chipwrecked" is beyond my understanding.

Here are some books I gave (sorry, Santa)

2011-12-25T11:33:00.030-05:00

For the lucky study-abroad-bound. I know, it's a regressive piece of techology, but WiFi isn't quite as widespread as we'd all like to think.

And for one of my own 2012 travel buddies.

I like everything about this paperback except that cover line. Hork. So undeniably cheesy.

Because some people are actually into books that sound like Dr. Seuss books but aren't!

Crossover recommendation: If you're in New York City or planning to go soon, check out the de Kooning retrospective at the MoMA.

From the coauthors of 2 Birds 1 Blog... then I turned around and bought it on Kindle for myself. I mean, I've been fairly good this year.

2011-12-24T13:13:00.004-05:00

Happy holidays from the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library (via Mediabistro)

2011-12-23T13:19:00.002-05:00

I'm really happy for you and I'm gonna let you finish, Jeffrey Eugenides getting beat up and Salman Rushdie breaking up with some woman on Facebook, but Jennet Conant had the most bonkers author story of 2011. Via Johanna Cox on Twitter.

Filmbook: "The Descendants" (2011)

2011-12-23T08:57:00.000-05:00

Instead of drawing together in crisis, the King family seems to be drifting apart: Father Matt (George Clooney) has just found out that his wife Elizabeth, who has been in a coma since a sailboat accident a few weeks earlier, is not improving and her doctor is bound to the Do Not Resuscitate order she signed before she died. Matt must now break the news to family and friends, as well as to his daughters, troublemaker Alex (Shailene Woodley) and the just-tipping-toward-rebellion Scottie (Amara Miller).

Having let his wife take the lead with their daughters throughout their marriage, Matt finds himself performing the motions of parenting without any idea of what he's being called to do. At the same time, he's managing the sale of his extended family's ancestral parcel of land, a small decision that comes to overlap with his family crisis in an unexpected way.

This movie kind of snuck up on me with its greatness. I was expecting it to be good, but I wasn't expecting to be still thinking about it weeks after I saw it. Clooney, Woodley, Miller and Nick Krause as Alex's dopey friend Sid (Krause must have been created in a lab exactly to play Sid, he's just exactly right) are unquestionably the ensemble cast of the year. I think the kids were actually toned down somewhat from the novel to be less obnoxious, but it works here. (And no motherfucking Mr. Mom jokes. It has to be said! Thanks for not going there!)

I wouldn't agree with people who are saying this is Payne's most mature film -- but it holds a few punches in some key moments, although it delivers on others. (The confrontation on the bungalow porch is just so brutally well done, but well counterbalanced by the scene with Judy Greer's character in the hospital.) It's his most family-centric movie, which is not to say it's family-friendly, but puts the whole clan under the same microscope where he stuck Tracy Flick and Miles Raymond. Clooney anchors it extremely well, though; this is his best performance in years, and it's almost a shame he'll probably be crowded out at Oscar time.

I had never heard of Kaui Hart Hemmings' debut novel THE DESCENDANTS before Alexander Payne (of "Election" and "Sideways" fame) was trotting out his adaptation of it, and the book proved somewhat hard to find in stores, so much so that I gave up and bought the movie tie-in. The adaptation is funnier and less introspective, but the novel isn't at all ponderous -- just a little more reflective in ways that might have been conveyed over more voiceover than Payne employed. If anything, the book digs a little deeper into Matt and his wife's marriage, and to Matt's consciousness as a several-generation Hawaiian who as gone, in his words, "haole as fuck," but I appreciated that Payne's film didn't lean too far into flashback.

Filmbook Verdict: Read the book and see the movie.

2011-12-22T16:48:00.003-05:00

"People think that when you’re the star of a film, your time must be chock-full with endless minutia—appearances, conversations, getting 'into character,' and so on. But when you’re the star, you end up just sitting around a lot. For a single shot to take place, for instance, a whole series of organized events have to be set in motion: The 3D crew has to gauge the shot, the cinematographer has to line up the camera, the lighting crew has to arrange its lights and shades, the set has to be rearranged or otherwise moved into place, the wardrobe and hair departments have to prepare the actors—and through all of this, the actor just sits and waits. In fact, actors will often sit and wait so for so long that "body doubles" will sometimes be hired just to sit and wait in the appropriate place for the actors. So when you see James’s character with his arm trapped under a rock in 127 Hours, what you don’t see is that there was an assigned reading under the rock with it. When he’s playfully wrestling with a genetically-enhanced chimpanzee in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, just off to the right of the shot was a stack of books.

"The truth is, if you’re an A-list Hollywood star like James Franco, and are willing to put the time into earning a Ph.D, you may actually have more time to read than many of your colleagues. Heck, you don’t even have to worry about the grocery shopping, laundry, and other sundry tasks that every other poor graduate student in the country has to worry about. After visiting Detroit, the thing I found myself wondering was not 'How does James do it?' but rather 'Why aren’t more Hollywood actors earning Ph.Ds?'"

--Yale professor R. John Williams on James Franco, actor and scholar.

Reading on the Road: Wish LaGuardia would do this edition

2011-12-22T08:09:00.011-05:00

The Fort Collins airport has a leave-one-take-one book shelf. How long have I been saying airports should do this?!? So if you're anywhere near there for the holidays, check it out.

Source: S.U.A.R.

2011-12-21T14:33:00.005-05:00

I enjoyed the spreadsheet repurposing in this piece by the Hairpin, What Old Book Do I Read If...? There's also an earlier installment, but sans spreadsheet.

Some jerk decided to go through airport security with weapons hidden in a book

2011-12-21T10:22:00.000-05:00

If the TSA keeps me from bringing books on a plane because of this jerkstore I will personally start a protest. Ugh!

Did you miss any of my excellent gift suggestions?

2011-12-20T13:23:00.002-05:00

Hurry up and finish your shopping so we can work on that mulled wine recipe together. (Not that I'm judging, I only bought my office Secret Santa present yesterday for presentation... today.)

Filmbook Extra: "Young Adult" (2011)

2011-12-20T08:06:00.040-05:00

Jason Reitman's new movie isn't actually based on a book, but I had to throw up a mention of it because it's about a YA author. In fact, at one point main character Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) harshly corrects someone who says she writes "children's books," just as she corrects everyone who (innocently enough) refers to her as a "writer."

Perhaps there is a bit of Mavis Gary in all of us. We know from the movie (mild spoiler, I guess?) that Mavis has been ghostwriting a high school-based series called "Waverly Prep" that is about to end its run. The poster (at left) quotes visually from the chapter books of my youth, at least until they threw it out and started using another one that wasn't nearly as unique, and that makes more sense when you know how much of an influence her book-in-progress has on the structure of the movie.

Also, at one point she visits a local Borders (RIP) and has a conversation with an employee that is painful and that paints her in a fairly negative light -- but no more so than the rest of the movie.

For those of you who have seen "Young Adult," I'm wondering if you thought her career choice was at all realistic based on presented evidence. I felt so while leaving the theatre, but now I'm teetering. This is not a standard most mainstream movies hold their characters up to, but given that Mavis is presented as being kind of in a slump (precipitating the trip back to her hometown that "Young Adult" covers) we don't see a lot of her doing the kind of work that might precede getting such a prime job. At the same time, when people expressed amazement about her job, I didn't feel like chiming in and saying "Yeah, how does that work exactly?"

I liked but didn't love Jason Reitman's last movie, "Up In The Air"; still, this exceeded expectations by a fair amount for me. Theron's portrayal of Mavis is harsh, but fair, and Patton Oswalt as perhaps the only sympathetic character (apart from the baby? Maybe?) As to the script, if I hadn't known going in that Diablo Cody wrote it, I likely wouldn't have been able to guess; the dialogue is a lot more natural, without the cutesy turns we've all heard quoted a million times.

Don't worry, we'll be doing more grammar in 2012 (but the same amount of Justin Bieber)

2011-12-19T21:32:00.001-05:00

One of the students I volunteer teach tried to tell me tonight that "Justin Bieber" was a verb. Sorry, dear, you can only bring the Bieber into 85 percent of our in-class writing assignments, and this is not one of them.

That said, if "to Bieber" were a verb we all recognized... what would it mean?

To be discovered on YouTube? To be discovered by Usher?
To rise out of Canadian obscurity? (I feel like Dan Aykroyd or Joni Mitchell might have to say something about that. But neither "to Aykroyd" nor "to Joni" would mean that, for obvious reasons.)
To be accused of fathering a child before you turn 18?
To cause a preteen wave of marriage proposals from girls who are not actually allowed to date yet?
To popularize a very unflattering haircut?
To create a cult of personality around yourself inexplicable to most grownups?

I would have worked on that with the student, but we were in the middle of Mad Libs.

Treat Yourself 2011: What More Can I Give?

2011-12-19T08:21:00.075-05:00

So maybe you don't need more reading material, much less reading material packaged up in pretty boxes. Maybe your intended recipient has enough knicknacks and blank books. Why not make a donation in her or his name to some kind of reading-related charity to show that your love of books is more than just between the two of you? There are thousands of options, but here are just five:

FirstBook: I'm a huge booster of FirstBook (not that I can find the last time I wrote about them, so maybe it's time to make another donation myself?) but I think the pitch is pretty irresistible. Chances are if you're reading this you grew up in a house of books, and it's hard to imagine that there are kids out there who don't have any books to call their own. First Book takes your donations and buys books wholesale so kids can have their own to read a billion times over. If I can't convince you, perhaps Nick Kristof will. Charity Navigator, a nonprofit grading other nonprofits on their financial health and transparency, gave this organization three stars.

Donors Choose: If you know any k-12 school teachers, you've probably been exposed to this online charity where teachers put up their "projects" and what they plan to buy with donations -- from projectors to lab equipment to craft supplies. Classroom sets of books are a popular choice -- you can even find out if they're still teaching your old favorites by running a search (although hey, look, THE HUNGER GAMES is trending!) Charity Navigator gave this organization four stars.

Reading Partners: Especially for those of us in New York, Washington D.C. and California, but expanding to Baltimore and other cities next year, this group recruits adult tutors for kindergarten through fifth grade students who have fallen behind in reading to offer them some extra help behind the scenes. It's a great program to support financially if you aren't able to volunteer during the school day when tutoring happens (no judgment here). Charity Navigator gave this organization four stars.

Books for Soldiers: While you're fulfilling the wish lists of family and friends, sign up for this site and send an active-duty member of the military a book that he or she wants. (Just because we're at the end of combat operations in Iraq... you know what I'm saying.) Charity Navigator didn't rate Books for Soldiers; I'm including it here because it does have nonprofit status, although it is church-affiliated if that information is important to you.

Your local library. I assume if the New York Public Library is asking for donations all the time, if even a city with a lot of rich people isn't turning out its pockets fast enough for the public library, then they probably could all use the help. And again, as with FirstBook: Dig around for your formative experiences in public libraries. Chances are you have a few. Everybody deserves that. (And that's how she demonstrated why she doesn't write fundraising campaigns for a living.)

Treat Yourself 2011: Scribble, scribble, scribble

2011-12-18T11:27:00.000-05:00

The short answer for where I write my book-related thoughts is "Everywhere." I used to keep a proper reading journal with a page for each book, and then I fell behind on it for some reason, and then I started blogging more... and I never picked the habit back up.

If you want to get into the habit of writing things down again, either about books or on a broader range of topics, here are some writing materials I like:

Any paper notebook can be a reading journal and there are a lot out there, but I liked the craftsmanship of and recommendations in Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Journal ($12.95, Sasquatch) Pearl is a librarian and overall reading booster, and I believe wrote a book called BOOK LUST to those ends... this is a handsome little piece though. She also sells a journal for kids called Book Crush in case you, I don't know, can't find a PG way of explaining what lust is to your kids, or something.

As far as Moleskines go, I am the stereotype. I love them and tell myself that if I use them, it's okay to pay slightly too much for notebooks that are good but don't actually make me write any better. (But I'm using a spiral notebook right now, for throwback value.) My substitute obsession are the Moleskine knockoffs at Staples, in black leather, brown leather or even a sort of nifty plaid. They're listed on the website at $12.99 but usually I see them on sale for $6-$8, probably because there's a tiny scuff mark on them rendering them Business Unsuitable (don't care).

The environmentally friendly alternative to both of those are the Ecosystem notebooks, which I remember Borders plugging fairly heavily just before its demise (RIP). They're marked out by "architect" (gridded), "artist" (blank) or "author" (lined) and they're quite pretty, although in line with Moleskine pricing at $14.95 for a medium.

An idea that's been around for centuries but resurfaced in 2011 is that of writing shorter entries but maintaining consistency. Credited for bringing this back: Gretchen Rubin, author of the blockbuster THE HAPPINESS PROJECT (a book I liked! and even own) who committed to writing a sentence a day in her journal to remember those things that would otherwise go unnoticed. She has since come out with a HAPPINESS PROJECT-branded one-sentence journal designed to take you through 5 years, though there are others on the market already. It's a cute idea as long as you're not prone to losing things (ahem).

But if you really really want to start writing on paper again, my advice would be to keep the stakes low. Buy a plain notebook or even one of those two-column steno books and save the fancy stuff for later. All you have to do is start.

Caption this photo, part 2

2011-12-17T12:19:00.021-05:00

CAREY MULLIGAN AS DAISY: Think Oscar. Think Oscar. Think Oscar.
LEO DICAPRIO AS GATSBY: I have taught her well.
TOBEY MAGUIRE GOT THIS JOB SOMEHOW: Ladies.
CAREY MULLIGAN AS DAISY: Now you listen to me Hollywood Foreign Press. I didn't get this far in my film career to be upstaged by Michael Fassbender's... Fassbender.
LEO DICAPRIO AS GATSBY: I put a dress on and no one even noticed. Can I have another drink? It'll help me stay in character.
TOBEY MAGUIRE GOT THIS JOB SOMEHOW: You know, if you think about it, Nick Carraway really is the romantic hero of THE GREAT GATSBY. You could even argue that Gatsby... is part of him.
CAREY MULLIGAN AS DAISY: For real Tobey, have you read this book? Have you read anything since THE CIDER HOUSE RULES?
TOBEY MAGUIRE GOT THIS JOB SOMEHOW: I'm surprised you were allowed to read it considering that you were born that year.
CAREY MULLIGAN AS DAISY: Still taller than you.
TOBEY MAGUIRE GOT THIS JOB SOMEHOW: Way harsh, Tai.
LEO DICAPRIO AS GATSBY: Will you stop talking. You're both in my light.
THE OTHER GUY, WHO IS PLAYING TOM BUCHANAN ACCORDING TO WIKIPEDIA: I gained all this weight. It better be worth it.

Also, since a release date was officially announced:

Some of you may feel like the end of the Mayan calendar will be a blessing!

Photo credit: Daily Mail (UK)

2011-12-16T11:22:00.008-05:00

RIP Christopher Hitchens, who passed away last night after battling esophageal cancer:

"I can remember thinking, of testing moments involving love and hate, that I had, so to speak, come out of them ahead, with some strength accrued from the experience that I couldn’t have acquired any other way. And then once or twice, walking away from a car wreck or a close encounter with mayhem while doing foreign reporting, I experienced a rather fatuous feeling of having been toughened by the encounter. But really, that’s to say no more than 'There but for the grace of god go I,' which in turn is to say no more than 'The grace of god has happily embraced me and skipped that unfortunate other man.'" --Vanity Fair, Jan '12 issue

Treat Yourself 2011: Knicknacks You Don't Need (But Probably Want Anyway)

2011-12-16T08:41:00.000-05:00

Before I got hooked on writing in the books I owned, I went through a Post-It note phase and I still go through way too many for this so-called paperless society. Novelty Post-Its are the kind of stocking stuffer I actually use, particularly when they're funny -- like these floppy disk sticky notes (MoMA Store, $9.95). For a standalone gift, maybe pair them with some sushi notepads (MoMA Store, $18.95) -- fitting, as earlier, for that coworker you drew in Secret Santa but who you don't actually know.

For when you run out of charity address labels (or move)... set your library apart with a personalized embosser (Neiman Marcus, $26). Impossibly classy. I don't even think libraries use these any more.

It won't do anything to assuage your guilt about going digital, but a Kindle cover that picks up on a classic book cover (like ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST or THE GREAT GATSBY) is mighty clever. You can also design your own literary-themed case on the site. (M-Edge, $30).

This might actually cross the border into need: On one of my flights over Thanksgiving I was stuck in a seat whose overhead light was broken, and me with a stack of books I was dying to get into. I thought longingly of all the book lights I had owned over the years... where were they now? This is one area where you don't really need to spend more to get something better (see: SE Clip-On Light, Amazon.com, $3.20) unless you're design-finicky, in which case I suggest The Really Tiny Booklight (MOMA Store, $14).

Love: A fully charged Kindle. Hate: Tripping over its cord (and the 800 others to which I seem to be constantly attached) when trying to charge up. For making sure my Kindle (or, for your Kindle-app-enabled device) has enough juice to make good on its dozens of books, I'm looking for a charging station like this whimsical Kikkerland Grass Charging Station (Amazon.com, $25).It's one of those gifts that other people will actually take an interest in when your recipient unwraps it. (Also something I assume you could make if you're handy with an X-Acto knife, which I am not.)

Treat Yourself 2011: Paperbacks For Days!

2011-12-15T09:10:00.110-05:00

I love paperbacks as gifts. I think all the books I'm giving as gifts this year are paperbacks (don't worry, I won't spoil them in case anyone from my family is reading), and most of them hearken back to experiences I and the recipient have shared, jokes we have made or topics we both generally enjoy. In that sense it's really as fun to pick them out as to go down on Christmas morning and see what they've picked out for me. Because, while not materialistic in general, I really enjoy looking for gifts.

Here are some paperbacks I enjoyed in 2011 that you may find useful for your gifting needs:

For the current events addict taking a busman's holiday: I never get tired of talking about Leslie Chang's great investigative book FACTORY GIRLS, on China's marketing boom and its effects on young members of the population leaving their homes to chase new opportunities. I thought of it even more after reviewing (and liking) Tom Scocca's BEIJING WELCOMES YOU this August, in case you want to splurge on a hardcover and a paperback (for that special someone). Potential 2011 hooks: The death of Steve Jobs and the controversy over worker deaths in Apple factories abroad; the fact that three women were named as sharing the honor of the Nobel Peace Prize; American unemployment rates and the Republican presidential field's solutions (or, depending on the relative, failure to come up with solutions).

For anybody obsessed with THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO: Symptoms include desire to read about mysterious murders constantly, supernatural motive assignation, inability to stop talking about DRAGON TATTOO, and the fruitless purchase of other novels whose authors bear vaguely Scandinavian last names. Try Laura Kasischke's THE RAISING, which brings the creepiness crossed with some SECRET HISTORY-style coverup on a college campus -- but no lessons. No hugging and no learning!

For friends who are girls, or possibly girlfriends: I didn't realize how well Elaine Dundy's THE DUD AVOCADO went over as a pick at my book club until we were going over the year in pints 'n' discussions. Originally published in 1958, it's a kind of zany travelogue anchored by Sally Jay Gorse, an American wannabe actress in Paris who gets herself into a variety of scrapes and to me was reminiscent of the plucky Lucy Maud Montgomery heroines of my youth -- though not without consequences.

For fellow Top 10 list junkies: One of the problems with end-of-the-year best-of book lists is that keeping up with them can be so pricey, and if you can drop $200 on the New York Times best books of the year without blinking, I envy your resolve. So I'm happy to highlight two books making frequent appearances on these lists that also just came out in paperback, Tea Obreht's THE TIGER'S WIFE (also a National Book Award finalist) and Karen Russell's SWAMPLANDIA -- as examples of a trend I would like to see more of in the future.

For your younger cousin who is planning to major in English just like you and wants to talk about how theories are blowing his/her mind all the time: Yeah, I don't know anyone like that here... but if I did I would definitely go back in time and give that girl a copy of THE BROOM OF THE SYSTEM for that inevitable moment when Winter Break feels completely claustrophobic and the ol' thinking muscles are starting to atrophy.

Additionally two of the new books I put on my Top 10 of 2011 So Far list, THE BLOW-OFF and THE MOMENT, are available in paperback -- read and love them, please! (And BOSSYPANTS is out Jan. 3, in case you are planning to swap presents late enough to make that information useful.)

(While we're on that topic, I recently read a Salon op-ed by an author who made one of these interim lists, only to feel completely destroyed when she didn't make the top 10 of the year on Amazon. What I would like to say to this author, and I don't mean to downplay her achievement, but: No one is going to assume that your book lost greatness from now until then. No one's going to remember! And only a real jerk would point out that you were on the list "for a while" -- in part because Amazon's internal layout is so confusing that said real jerk would have to spend a long time rebutting you. So disregard that real jerk! Here's what you're going to do, you're going to put a screenshot of your achievement on your website, and then you are going to drink some champagne and it's going to be fine.)

John Waters in a submarine

2011-12-14T18:34:00.001-05:00

From Publishers Lunch today:

Film director, actor, writer, and visual artist John Waters's untitled "undercover travel adventure," to Jonathan Galassi of Farrar, Straus, who published Waters' memoir Role Models last year, by Bill Clegg at William Morris Endeavor (NA).

I don't know why I first read this blurb as "underwater travel adventure," but somehow I want to read that book more now. Sigh.

"At first I did not know it was your diary"

2011-12-13T07:41:00.008-05:00

Seven of the top 10 films of 2011 according to the American Film Institute are book adaptations.

Dept. of Don't Even Know Which Side I'm On Anymore

2011-12-12T13:27:00.001-05:00

I would like to know how independent booksellers think they can keep people from "showrooming," that is, browsing in a bookstore and then buying a book elsewhere. Will all cell phone users in bookstores be looked at with suspicion? Can admission be charged? Is there a statute of limitations on this purchase -- say, if I think of a book 6 months after I see it in a store, do I have to go back to that particular store in order to buy it? Am I the enemy just because I don't always go into a bookstore intending to buy something? (Yes, apparently!)

If you think about it, every brick-and-mortar store welcomes browsers under no obligation to buy. Just because the biggest competitor in the space has a name doesn't mean the game is any different. How do independent clothing stores compete with Wal-Mart and Target? (Or, I don't know, Banana Republic if you feel that the price differential is too much.) How does a farmer's market compete with Safeway or Whole Foods? Not by letting it be known that casual shoppers are unwelcome, or (as one commenter on the above-linked blog post mentions) "stealing." I would suspect that the story is more like: People who buy books from independent bookstores probably buy more books on average than other consumers, whether it's from online stores, indies or chains. There has to be a better way than alienating those buyers, likely the most loyal customers, on behalf of some of their purchases.

One-Star Revue: THE HUNGER GAMES

2011-12-12T08:09:00.012-05:00

For the record, I would give this book: 3 stars. (CATCHING FIRE and MOCKINJAY, each 2 stars.)

"I was left with a dark, yucky feeling at the end."
"Like a bad Michael Bay movie, the plot is all action."
"I love this book, I would absolutely rate it five stars if it was not a blatant rip off of several Japanese stories I already know."
"I got tired of reading about the emotions Katniss felt about her father. Over and over the same emotions were reviewed." (Ed. Someone send this person a copy of THE PSYCHOPATH TEST.)
"My 7th grader is required to read this for her language class, and wanted me to read it so I could discuss some of her homework questions with her. I spent 4 hrs. last night reading it. Then I spent a sleepless night having nightmares related to the plot."
"Yes, Suzanne Collins has typed an entire book onto page, yes. I give her a hi-5 because I have never written a book."
"THE HUNGER GAMES is like a violent version of a Nicholas Sparks novel." (!!!!!!!)
"I wish I could have read a review discouraging me to read this book." (Ed. Uh...)

2011-12-11T12:38:00.002-05:00

Having brunch alone and need something to geek out over forever? The Millions' A Year In Reading 2011, featuring Ayelet Waldman, Jennifer Egan, Chad Harbach, Colum McCann...

Treat Yourself 2011: Gift Sets For The Very Good

2011-12-10T10:41:00.045-05:00

I'm starting with the extravagant gift books for no other reason than that it's kind of nice to play J.C. Penney Catalog 1989 sometimes with the 800,000 gift guides out there, while acknowledging that they may not be in your budget or mine.

(Links are to publishers where I could find them; sure, use Amazon, and I do, but don't forget your local independent bookstore.)

For the aesthete: Whenever I see these Penguin Hardcover Classics with their old-timey printed cloth covers, the craftsmanship to them is just amazing. Single volumes are $20, or splurge on the Major Works of Charles Dickens (GREAT EXPECTATIONS, HARD TIMES, OLIVER TWIST, A CHRISTMAS CAROL, BLEAK HOUSE and A TALE OF TWO CITIES) for $125.

For the budding chef: Julia Child, you're so 2009. Raise the stakes with THE ESSENTIAL THOMAS KELLER ($63), a two-volume cookbook by the madman behind French Laundry and Bouchon. For the hipster chef at hipster pricing, look to Christina Tosi's MOMOFUKU MILK BAR ($22), purported to offer the secrets behind the East Village bakery. Compost cookies for everyone (note: much more delicious than it sounds).

For the fashion-minded (fashionista is kind of sexist, do you think?): Patrick Demarchelier's DIOR COUTURE ($70) for the old avant-garde; ALEXANDER MCQUEEN: SAVAGE BEAUTY ($45) for the new.

For those who can take a joke: By the time I got my first issue of MAD Magazine it was already in its sunset years (down to 6 issues/ year right now, from what I can find). Soon there will come a generation of kids who don't understand how a fold-in joke panel works... but by God, not this one. Chronicle Books just published THE MAD FOLD-IN COLLECTION, 1964-2010 ($125), whose digital reproductions mean you won't actually have to fold in the pages to get the joke.

For your favorite bartender, friend in imbibing, uncle or party host: It takes a university press to do service to such a serious subject as THE OXFORD COMPANION TO BEER ($65). Also consider for your recently-of-age sibling who could stand to learn a thing or two about the finer points of not drinking from kegs any more, ahem.

From player to winner: THE HUNGER GAMES and MOCKINGJAY

2011-12-09T12:45:00.000-05:00

982: That's the number of words I used in Monday's post about THE HUNGER GAMES without remotely getting to the point I wanted to address when I decided to read the popular young-adult series. I feel that my curiosity was satisfied by the first two books in the series, but called into question a little by the third, MOCKINGJAY.*

For me the appeal of THE HUNGER GAMES lies in the hands of its stubborn, prickly, at times decidedly unlikeable protagonist Katniss Everdeen. Katniss doesn't like you, she doesn't like the attention brought on by the Games and what she sees as the falseness of the enterprise. As a preteen I devoured books where the protagonist discovers that s/he is somehow special and elevated, but Katniss harbors no such illusions; she always knows what she is and isn't capable of, and it's only the rest of the world that's catching up to her. That's why her performance in THE HUNGER GAMES isn't unbelievable or improbable. She resists that Mary Sue-ish necessity of suffering from self-doubt; what people tell her she is doesn't make an impact. She doesn't have to be "special" to be exceptional.

Her self-determination allows her passage through some of the perils of the Games; she doesn't seem specifically tempted to play the heroine, and when she does, it's an impulsive decision. (More on that in a bit.) I'm not well read enough in YA to say that she's the first nihilist in the field, but she's probably not in much company there. I would have quit the series much earlier if accompanied by a chirpy Pollyanna down into the depths.

Before I get into spoiler territory, a word: I haven't been able to confirm my suspicion that the HUNGER GAMES trilogy began life as one self-contained book (that is, CATCHING FIRE and MOCKINGJAY were the brainchildren of the publisher after reading THE HUNGER GAMES, not what the author had originally envisioned). It is my suspicion that this is the case. But even that would not fully explain why THE HUNGER GAMES is taut, well paced from the opening of the Games on -- I could have done without some of the costuming and pageantry, frankly -- CATCHING FIRE is better paced, but performs the classic middle-book-of-the-trilogy deus ex machina, and the ultimate volume in the series is an overstuffed mess.

Spoiler discussion through MOCKINJAY will now commence.

No, seriously.

Get out.

At the end of CATCHING FIRE (told you! Turn back now!), as you know or are resigned to finding out, on the point of certain death, Katniss is yanked out of the Quarter Quell (a Very Special Anniversary Hunger Games) by the resistance forces who have amassed in District 13. Because of the defiance she showed in the first book, she's being elevated to play a role in their reality television, the on-camera leader of the resistance -- although in practice, Katniss will have to defer to President Coin. The name they give her is the Mockinjay, the hybrid creatures that ironically can only copy poor human singing, not sing or speak for their own the way that Katniss is scripted into promos for the rebels. (Shades of "Wag the Dog" here -- and that was much appreciated in this quarter.)

Trouble is, the way that Katniss has been defined runs at odds to the task she and the fellow rebels are facing up to -- of taking over the Capitol -- and if her adventures up to this point have changed her, it's mighty difficult to tell. She still doesn't play well with others, she still doesn't take criticism, and her resistance to the role that the movement wants her to play starts to take their valuable time away from, oh, I don't know, military strategy? And her character starts to roll downhill from stubborn and self-determined to bratty and dangerous. Risking the security of the compound for Prim's cat, for example, may not be strictly a selfish act, but it seems out of character for her.

All of these are challenges Katniss could work through if given more room on the page, but MOCKINGJAY is forced to run those conflicts double-time against the war with the Capitol and the forthcoming invasion. At the risk of sounding like the ivory-tower litsnob we all know I am, too much happens in this book! The events compressed into MOCKINGJAY should have spooled out over two books, not only to salvage the abruptness of the ending -- really, an epilogue? -- but to keep building Katniss as a character in the same realistic way the first two books did. She's our portal into this place, and mostly I cared about the political upheaval of MOCKINGJAY through her eyes. So the conflict isn't fruitful because it elides things that I as a reader wanted to see, and pushes through the changes in Katniss in an unrealistic manner.

I'm not saying I didn't enjoy parts of MOCKINGJAY, but I should have been staying up late reading it; instead I put it down for weeks between starting and finishing it, so the one truly shocking twist -- the President Snow double-crossing revelation -- didn't pack the punch it needed. (Which is not to say I don't want to talk about it, because clearly I do.) I can't say definitively that this book was lost in editing, because no one can see that who isn't directly involved, but I could have used more room. As I understand that the "Mockingjay" movie will be a two-parter (a la "Breaking Dawn" or "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows"), this may afford an opportunity to correct it onscreen -- if more aspects of the series aren't broken in order to get there.

*I just discovered in stirring up this post that I have been spelling MOCKINGJAY wrong all this time. All this time! But it just looks wrong with that added G!

2011-12-08T11:14:00.007-05:00

Today I'd like to thank the Internet for creating Hey girl. I like the library too. a Fuck Yeah! Ryan Gosling for a niche audience.

(Nerds) Who Run The World

2011-12-07T16:12:00.001-05:00

Wow, you'll really know Lev Grossman is ascendant at Time Magazine when you check out its #1 fiction book of the year. Not that I'm complaining (though I haven't read the book in question).

Filmbook: "Moneyball" (2011)

2011-12-07T13:12:00.001-05:00

One of the reasons book people hold books above the movies based on them is a matter of complexity. The effective delivery of information simply looks different on page and onscreen, and a wholly moderate level of exposition can be overwhelming when transferred to images or dialogue. It's probably for the best that the film adaptation of Michael Lewis' MONEYBALL largely glosses over the statistics the book labors to explain, because it brings across the sense of them fairly well. It's the simplification of the themes that gets this movie in trouble.

"Moneyball" chronicles the end of the Oakland A's 2001 season and the 2002 season, as general manager Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) struggles to implement a new system for finding the best players to fill out his roster. Beane decides to do this after losing three of his best players, losing a close postseason series and failing to get more money from the team owner -- and hires a young econ major from Yale (Jonah Hill) who recommends players based on generating wins for the team, not simply standout stats on their own. Everyone thinks Beane is crazy (including his manager, who resists implementing his ideas about who ought to play and in what order) and the A's seem to start the season proving that this new approach will never work. Then... they start winning.

The sense I got when I read MONEYBALL was that Beane and his right-hand man Paul DePodesta (fictionalized in this movie in Hill's character -- also, I notice he works for the Mets now, so good luck with that!) were the young, brash new guys trying to come up with a solution to an old problem, unafraid to fail. This is preserved in the movie, but with an added layer of emotional conflict wherein Beane's sabermetrics approach could destroy the game of baseball as we know it -- and when he decides to implement that, it comes at a terrible price. There are soundbites from old men calling baseball "the children's game" (a phrase I had never heard before), romantic shots of empty stadia, and talk of the intangibles that will be jeopardized forever by the A's and their spreadsheets. Maybe this is meant to add resonance, but it just confused me when all other elements are pointing toward the heroic GM in his lonely weight room because he can't bear to watch his own team from the stands. It moves in the opposite direction from everything else. It all really comes to a head at the end of the movie, when Beane has to make a choice -- and I could feel the tug of a Big Emotional Moment, but it didn't move me at all. (And it didn't justify at all why he makes the choice he does.)

"Moneyball" was enjoyable enough, but not a standout movie for me, in part because I feel like this movie prodded me to root against my own self-interest. It's not as simple as calculator vs. heart, because if it were, I wouldn't have been that interested in Beane's story in the first place, because my own personal connection to baseball stubbornly falls on one side of that line as long as we're falsely dichotomizing.

I'm not sure who to fault for this, given how labored over this project was before hitting the big screen. Director Bennett Miller brings some of the space and silence he used so well in "Capote" (along with Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is slightly underused here as the A's manager) but gets caught up in scoring and underlining some of those moments he might have let lie. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin was brought in in the middle, and snuck at least one walk-and-talk in there -- but he's hardly the only one to be bit by the mythology bug.

Would I have liked it better if Steven Soderbergh (who allegedly wanted to incorporate interviews from the real players rather than actors playing them, and why a studio would balk at that I have no idea) and screenwriter Steven Zaillian had stayed on? It's hard to say at this point. But "Moneyball" lacked something for me -- maybe one of those intangibles it is claimed will be lost should its hero get what he wants.

Filmbook verdict: Read the book, maybe see the movie.

2011-12-06T08:58:00.002-05:00

Today's Times features the forthcoming "Cloud Atlas" adaptation in an article about global financing for American independent movies. Spoilers for the movie abound, but crucially: This sounds awesome, and yes, David Mitchell was involved in the screenplay to a certain extent.

Repent, for the end of 2011 is nigh!

2011-12-06T08:33:00.033-05:00

I had to submit my pick for the best book of the year yesterday. Just like last year, I am slightly below 100% absolutely sure of my pick, although when I wrote it down I couldn't think of anything else to go in that box. So I just let a computer choose for me instead. How we critique books in 2011!!!

Just kidding. It is a frustration and a joy to go through every year, and also reminds me (as I look back) of how much my reading is shaped by forces outside the actual pages -- like how what I read for pleasure colors what I'm reading to evaluate, which in itself is a fairly blurry line. Maybe I should remember that before snap-judging another critic's choices... just because it looks ill-considered doesn't mean that it is.

Anyway, I won't put together my full best-books list together till the end of December in a feeble attempt at reaching some semblance of perspective. But I have so much other stuff to write about:

More on THE HUNGER GAMES, after I belatedly realized that I failed to make the point I really wanted to make, and something about MOCKINJAY. (Unintentional Blog Sweeps Week 2011! All your clicks are belong to me!)
The onslaught of prestige film season and the adaptations you should care about, starring George Clooney as the anti-Ryan Bingham, young Marty Scorsese, Brad Pitt's bangs...
The Return of the Ghost of the Holiday Gift Guide -- for people who are going to get books whether they want them or not, and also for the book-loving people in your life who already have everything. Or so they think.

In the meantime, I would be interested to know: What, in your opinion, should I absolutely make time to read before the end of the year? I can't guarantee I'll actually get to it, but if you've picked your favorite, or at least one you think people should try above all others, let's hear it.

Not here for your entertainment: on THE HUNGER GAMES

2011-12-05T07:48:00.155-05:00

Living in the totalitarian post-apocalyptic state of Panem, the setting of Suzanne Collins' HUNGER GAMES trilogy, improves marginally after you turn 18. You still don't get to vote, thanks to a long-ago uprising that converted the country into 13 districts that orbit an all-powerful Capitol district, and depending on whether you live in one of the richer or poorer districts your day-to-day life might be pretty hard. But at least you don't have to fight a bunch of other teenagers to the death on live TV! That's the gist of the Hunger Games, the annual event purported to mark the uprising, in which two "tributes" from each of 12 districts are taken to the Capitol and forced to kill each other for sport. Sort of like the Killer Olympics if all the contestants were drawn from youth-favoring sports like gymnastics or swimming. How Roman!

We the readers experience the Hunger Games through contestant Katniss Everdeen, of District 12 (mine country, one of the poorest). Katniss' name wasn't drawn originally, but she volunteers to spare her 12-year-old sister Primrose from the Games, betting on the fact that her years of hunting illegally to feed and support her mother and Prim after their father was killed in a mining accident would afford her a better chance when it came to surviving in the Games arena and (if necessary) killing another contestant.

Like Harry Potter, Katniss is the product of circumstance, pulled into this barbaric ritual by chance, who becomes a flashpoint for other people in Panem to recognize just how monstrous the reality they've been accepting really is. Surely, Voldemort would not have just gone away had baby Harry Potter perished, and the degree to which Katniss becomes a figurehead But there's no "Boy Who Lived" magic around Katniss. She goes into the Games seeing through all the fanfare, unable to enjoy the attention, and convinced that she will be dead sooner or later -- probably knocked off by some of the better fed and trained tributes, or even her own fellow District 12 tribute, baker's son Peeta Mellark. Although she regards him fondly for once giving her bread from his family's trash heap, Katniss distrusts Peeta thoroughly, and more so when she discovers his strategy for the Games is to make everyone believe he's in love with her.

And that's the surprise at the heart of THE HUNGER GAMES -- a trenchant and stinging critique of reality TV, disguised as YA survivalist fiction (or a totalitarian torture-adventure, if you prefer). While the citizens of Panem would probably vote to abolish the Hunger Games if they could vote, and mourn the children -- let's not even call them teenagers anymore -- who go, they all tune in to the annual event as if it's a combination of the World Series and the Super Bowl. (Not that there are professional sports in the post-apocalypse.) It's not established for sure, but one supposes the Capitol has adapted to cater to this interest by airing interviews with each player, featuring pre-Games makeovers and costumes, and -- later -- by flashing daily memorials to all the tributes who have fallen during the games, while the few contestants who are left hope the others aren't watching for them.

As Katniss prepares for the Hunger Games, she thinks back to previous "episodes" she's seen and the strategies that helped previous "players" "win" the Games. Make yourself vulnerable gathering supplies at the start, or make yourself scarce? Form alliances, or play alone knowing that they'll end? Complicating her choices is the ability of "viewers" to send her aid -- medical supplies or food, for example -- if she plays to their sympathies in some way, adding an additional unreal layer to an already surreal situation. It gives her no solace to be reminded, as Katniss is frequently, that her mother and sister can see every injury she sustains during the Games. If she pretends she's in love with Peeta too, will that give her any chance of survival (in a situation where even a little advantage is significant) or just make her last few days on earth disingenuous as well as dangerous?

The winner of the annual Hunger Games gets a PR tour, a paid-for house and freedom from want for the rest of her life, but will always be known to the victims' families as the one who made it out at the expense of everyone else. And, as becomes clear deeper into the series, the champion is trotted out to justify each year's Games, the unwilling success of one traded on for the glory of all. No wonder Haymitch, the previous District 12 champion assigned to mentor Katniss and Peeta, is a drunken mess.

The high-contrast horror of the Hunger Games (inspired, Collins has said, by watching Iraq war footage, although a better parallel might be the child soldiers of Africa) makes the short-lived CBS reality show "Kid Nation" look like "Captain Kangaroo." And to the best of my knowledge no one is yet forcing people to participate in the various humiliations of reality TV. But as a mechanism that's built to shock, it works. At one point in the Games, Katniss forms an alliance she doubts will even help her with a 12-year-old from District 11, simply out of pity because the girl reminds her of her sister, with predictably tragic results. We don't learn a huge amount about how the Panem rulers keep all the other districts in line, which I see as a nod toward the fact that our narrator probably wouldn't know that -- certainly not as she prepares to travel to the Capitol for the first time. Still, something about Katniss' "performance" shakes the system loose, or at least loose enough to throw the future of the Hunger Games in doubt -- maybe the best news to the people watching at home, who may actually be hungry, and have no hope.

2011-12-04T12:24:00.000-05:00

"To Smiley, his stoicism had something awesome about it."
- John le Carré

One-Star Revue: THE ENGLISH PATIENT

2011-12-03T12:44:00.016-05:00

All real 1-star Amazon customer reviews. No spoilers.
I would give this book: four stars.

"It was a cold and godless kind of story from beginning to end."
"This book is like a mix between David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive," Jhonen Vasquez's "Happy Noodle Boy" strips, and "Crossroads" (with Britney Spears!)." (Ed. note: What?)
" I couldn't identify with any of the characters (thank God)."
"I too can conjure up beautiful cliches." (Ed. note: Good for you!!!)
"Elmore Leonard says that he leaves out the parts which the reader skips over. If Ondaatje had done that here, he could have ended up with quite a tantalising short story."
"It's quite obvious from the tone of the book that the only character this author cares about is himself! Soooo tedious that every time I sat down to read, I found myself thinking about watering my tomato plants, which would have been a LOT more interesting. I could write more, but that would just give this book free advertising, which is something I DEFINITELY DON'T want to do."
"This book does not pose any questions I care to have answered. Period"

2011-12-02T16:22:00.002-05:00

Photo: graziedawero

God bless us, everyone

2011-12-01T11:06:00.000-05:00

Aw hooray! Housing Works Books is bringing back the CHRISTMAS CAROL readathon they did last year. Don't miss it! I'll be in the back with the wine.

Unbookening's gonna make it through this year if it kills me

2011-12-01T08:16:00.008-05:00

Checked 6 books out from the library
Bought 5 (1 on Kindle)

Returned 2 to a friend
Returned 2 to the library
Donated 8

I didn't like you either, November, so let's just move on.

It's the most wonderful time of the year

2011-11-30T16:08:00.001-05:00

The New York Times Best Books of 2011 list is out. Five quick thoughts:

4 for 10! Probably the best I've done on this in years! (Last year I was 2 for 10 at press time.) But I'm fairly sure I disagree with 2 off the top, so it didn't help.
THINKING, FAST AND SLOW is the greatest book title Dr. Seuss never had the chance to use (RIP Theodor Seuss Geisel)
Surely someone else here has read THE TIGER'S WIFE and can back me up when I say that the summary provided is titanically inaccurate. I can only assume all of them were boiled down from longer blurbs for space, but something went awry there.
I can't wait to purchase a gag gift of ARGUABLY for a friend who's on an adverb crusade. This has nothing to do with the list, I just remembered and it fills me with delight. Maybe I'll even mock up a second cover with the title BASICALLY -- in his view, the worst offender of adverbs -- just to pile on. I'd use this author photo, found by Google searching "young hot christopher hitchens" because I live my life without regrets.
It was only last year FREEDOM came out? So great, now time is slowing down.

Spotted on the subway

2011-11-30T09:14:00.000-05:00

The surveillance continues, only the posts have slowed. On one of my flights out for Thanksgiving the woman next to me was reading UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN. Apparently, people still do that?! On the way back I saw a woman who was watching back-seat TV but had a copy of THE MARRIAGE PLOT planted on her tray table.

I know a lot of people who own this book and not many who have read it cover-to-cover like this guy on the train was. Sandy brown hair, plaid shirt under a peacoat, corduroys. He was totally engrossed, more so than I was in my book (clearly).

Also take note of the Better Book Titles version of this cover.

Headline speaks for itself

2011-11-29T18:43:00.001-05:00

From Gothamist.com: Introducing The Caulfield, A Phony New Bar Holden Would Have Hated

Why the birds and pigs hate each other

2011-11-29T10:15:00.000-05:00

"We just loved that they wanted to share something so essential to their culture with us and other fans - the pigs try to steal the eggs because they are hungry and these recipes are a huge part of that tale." -- Rovio VP Sanna Lukander on the first Angry Birds book, BAD PIGGIES' EGG RECIPES. Really, an essential bit of backstory.

2011-11-28T08:10:00.006-05:00

There are some odd synergies. The two met years after their wars, onstage at a literary festival in 1968, and became great friends and eventually neighbors. Heller’s war was up in the air, as a bombardier in the nose cone of a B-25. Vonnegut’s was at ground level, as an infantryman in the Battle of the Bulge, and ultimately beneath ground level, in the basement of Schlachthof-Fünf during the firebombing.

Both men were profoundly, and with respect to their war novels, specifically influenced by the French author Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Both their novels were numerically titled — Heller had to retitle his original “Catch-18” when Leon Uris brought out his “Mila 18.”

In a detail that struck me as, well, weird, Vonnegut’s breakthrough moment while he was trying to get a handle on how to write his novel came during a visit to a war buddy — in Hellertown, Pa. More ironic is that both World War II novels ended up being Vietnam novels.

--Christopher Buckley on Vonnegut and Heller in the New York Times Book Review this week.

Didn't expect it to be that easy! (That's what she said.)

2011-11-27T12:36:00.000-05:00

Normally when the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Literature finalists are announced every year I recognize one, maybe two of the titles under review. Well, this must be my lucky year because I can speak to two closely and one with a fairly high level of probability. Hooray? Who knows, next year I could end up a panelist! Great, let me clear some space on my résumé of questionable life experiences.

Regarding PARALLEL STORIES by Peter Nadas: There are a lot of sex scenes in this book and I was unable to find which one was up for the blue ribbon here. If it's the epic hundred-pager interrupted by a Budapest drawing room with a bunch of middle-aged biddies clucking over it, then no, that should be up for the Most Audacious Sex Award. If it's 10 pages in the same pair of pants, then no.
Regarding THE GREAT NIGHT by Chris Adrian: Since this is an adaptation/ updating of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," the sex in this book tends toward the dreamy fairy orgy variety. It's not particularly graphic, but a little tiresome in the overwhelming Meaning Of It All.
Regarding THE LAND OF PAINTED CAVES by Jean M. Auel: I'm only noting this because if this woman wrote a book every year she would make this list and win every year. Just keep that in your pocket the next time you see your great-aunt reading this in hardcover. And that's where my vote would go. Anecdotal evidence in 2011 has revealed to me that there ought to be a support group for past readers of this series.

Among the other nominees: Stephen King for 11/22/63, Simon Van Booy's EVERYTHING BEAUTIFUL BEGAN AFTER (a little quirky) and James Frey for THE FINAL TESTAMENT OF THE HOLY BIBLE (oh I just bet).

One-Star Revue: 2666

2011-11-26T12:27:00.015-05:00

All real 1-star customer reviews on Amazon. No spoilers.

"I feel like I lost time and I don't want my money back (only because I borrowed it from the library)."
"I wish he was alive so that we could ask him, 'Why Roberto? Why?'"
"Guess I'm destined not to get Bolano, like I don't get Jean-Luc Godard... " [Ed. note: *~~*SAD TROMBONE*~~*]
"There are many reviews here that are way more specific than the ones I had heard/read, and I appreciate that some people really like this book. I am fascinated to meet one of them live some day and have a conversation."
"As to comparisons with Kafka's unfinished masterpieces, The Trial and The Castle, that only makes me angry."
"I can see how this might have been written by a very ill man."
"This book would make a great table leg, coaster, or booster seat for a small child."
"I would prefer to be boiled alive in oil."

Earlier (a long time ago): One-Star Revue: MOBY DICK

Black Friday haul

2011-11-25T17:28:00.001-05:00

Books purchased at independent bookstore: 2
Books purchased at independent bookstore as gifts: ...0.

Inscription in my secondhand copy of THE ENGLISH PATIENT

2011-11-24T13:53:00.001-05:00

In gold marker pen:
"This is the first book
I've really read in
years. Enjoy,
love L...... (x)"

There's also a bit either in French or some other Romance language I don't recognize. And a bookmark from the Longhouse Bookshop, 497 Bloor Street West, Toronto.

Reading on the Road: For this relief, much thanks

2011-11-23T08:14:00.056-05:00

This is my third weekend of travel in November and my fourth out of the last five. It's been a busy few weeks over at HQ -- I wonder if my roommates remember who I am? (Kidding! I'm the one who got them hooked on homemade espresso! It's a gift that keeps on giving.) I'm packing a stack of paperbacks that have been sitting around including THE RISK POOL, THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS and THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE.

Would you characterize your holiday family breaks (that's for all of you who may not celebrate American Thanksgiving) as high-downtime or low-downtime? I guess "it depends on the holiday" would be the prevailing answer, in any case, but Thanksgiving in my family has been fairly high-downtime in recent years. I feel I have to establish this before you paint this picture in your mind of me hiding in a corner while the rest of my family carves the bird in order to read more. (But at age 6, sure!) The downtime is not only how we roll, it's how the 3 members of my family who are in education (2 in college, 1 teaching) get caught up so they, too, can actually enjoy some of their time off. And if I end up spending my entire vacation laughing at cheesy holiday displays and talking my sister out of dragging me to see "Happy Feet 2"? There's always the flight time.

2011-11-21T16:21:00.000-05:00

I love writing about giant unapproachable novels, so the news of a forthcoming 27-volume novel should be right up my alley... but, every three months? And Mark Z. Danielewski? That first vol better be a grabber.

Hot Guys As/ In Literature

2011-11-21T12:13:00.000-05:00

This list of the Top 10 Literary Hunks (Classical) (in other words, Shut Up, TWILIGHT) is fairly solid, despite the placement of movie screenshots in such a way as to invite a person to judge according to those and not the associated books. Florentino Ariza is a particularly inspired choice. I think most of you will have problems with #6 (valid), but I would initially dispute #10, Queequeg (MOBY DICK) and #9, Yossarian (CATCH-22) as being, well, not that discriminating of their bedfellows. Ironically, this is a great quality to have if you're a sailor or in the military, but not so high in what the article calls "hunk qualities." (When did the word hunk go out of style? Just wondering.)

I humbly suggest replacing them with Nick Carraway, as played by Paul Rudd in the lost TV adaptation no one but me ever watched, but which I swear is real, and Vronsky from ANNA KARENINA (see 1997 adaptation), of course.

As a question of order, I would hold that you either put Heathcliff at #1, or Darcy at #1, and in either case you think the other side is crazy and should probably go back and read the related books again. I would put Darcy at #1 and accept that that is a predictor of my personality in some way. Hey, I see a new line for those Team [Whatever] shirts! (Ugh, just kidding.)

Thanks to Orrin for having my best interests at heart in sending this in.

Incomplete bibliography of Benno von Archimboldi

2011-11-20T12:02:00.007-05:00

1. LUDICKE
2. THE ENDLESS ROSE
3. THE LEATHER MASK
4. RIVERS OF EUROPE
5. BIFURCARIA BIFURCATA
6. INHERITANCE
7. SAINT THOMAS
8. THE BLIND WOMAN
9. THE BLACK SEA
10. LETHAEA
11. THE LOTTERY MAN
12. THE FATHER
13. THE RETURN

Other books written (unsure as to chronology): THE KING OF THE FOREST, THE GARDEN, D'ARSONVAL, RAILROAD PERFECTION, THE BERLIN UNDERWORLD, BITZIUS

Reading on the Road: I was unrecognizable to myself

2011-11-19T05:57:00.045-05:00

I'm off to Philadelphia today to run a half-marathon tomorrow. I will endeavor to move as little as possible in order to wake up fresh -- this is called "strategy" -- so of course some quality reading material had to make the luggage cut. I'm taking my library copy of Jennifer Close's GIRLS IN WHITE DRESSES, much praised by friends for its realistic depiction of the lives of city-dwelling late-20-something women. I should say, some friends -- I mentioned I was about to start it yesterday on Twitter and got a few people who said, actually, they wouldn't recommend it. (And then I said to myself, "I'll be the judge of that!" No offense, everyone. And I'm hoping to catch up on the insidery-media Kindle singles I bought ages ago, THE JUNKET and VANITY FAIR'S HOW A BOOK IS BORN.

If anyone has recommendations of good independent Philly bookstores, I would extra appreciate them, particularly if they are centrally located. I know the airport there used to have a well stocked Barbara's Bestsellers, but that seems to have turned over -- not that I'll be in the airport anyway.

Caption this photo

2011-11-18T19:18:00.002-05:00

CAREY MULLIGAN AS DAISY: You guys I am so excited to be in this movie!!! You guys!!!
LEONARDO DICAPRIO AS GATSBY: Look at how mysterious I am. That has "Oscar bait" written all over it.
CAREY MULLIGAN AS DAISY: Leo! I used to have posters of you on my wall, Leo! Okay, I can totally focus for this shot!
LEONARDO DICAPRIO AS GATSBY: Maybe I won't even need this 3-D piece of ridiculousness if J. Edgar takes off. Never mind, practicing my Oscarface anyway.
CAREY MULLIGAN AS DAISY: My hair is so pretty!
LEONARDO DICAPRIO AS GATSBY: She came so well-regarded. I don't know what's going on here. Was Gwyneth not available?
CAREY MULLIGAN AS DAISY: I have read this book like 500 times you guys! But I never thought I was going to play Daisy! I mean, Daisy, right! In your face Knightley, in your face!
TOBEY MAGUIRE AS NICK CARRAWAY: Derp derp derpy derp! Derp.

Source. And before you start, I'm sure Carey Mulligan is plenty smart and Leonardo DiCaprio has done a lot of movies that did not directly lead to Oscarville. And I still like Baz Luhrmann even though it is definitely not cool to do so right now.

How about "Occupy n+1" ?

2011-11-18T07:17:00.008-05:00

Keith Gessen (ALL THE SAD YOUNG LITERARY MEN) was arrested at an Occupy Wall Street protest yesterday. Girlfriend Emily Gould commented incorrectly, "Also your sad young lit man jokes are not now/ have never been funny."

Speaking of the NBA

2011-11-17T11:29:00.001-05:00

BookPerk is banking on the fact that you are still mad at LeBron James, but are also not bitter about the doubtful future of this basketball season. The drink coasters are a funny touch. I wonder where those came from.

NBA News from Last Night (Not That One, The Other One)

2011-11-17T08:11:00.000-05:00

Your National Book Award 2011 winners are (drumroll, please):

Jesmyn Ward, fiction
Thanhha Lai, young adult literature
Stephen Greenblatt, nonfiction
Nikky Finney, poetry

John Lithgow hosted, there were some Occupy Wall Street jokes (fitting, I guess? given that the award were held at a restaurant near Zuccotti Park), and the awards were also webcast for the first time this year. I preferred to watch people watching them on Twitter, but GalleyCat also has a liveblog if you want to feel like you were really there.

Some are calling Ward's award a major upset because it didn't go to Tea Obreht (whose novel THE TIGER'S WIFE I'm fairly sure was the top seller in the bunch), but the predictions I read were fairly split between them.

There will be feasting and dancing in Jerusalem next year

2011-11-16T18:43:00.001-05:00

I wonder what people who don't read do when they need a quick hit of accomplishment. Just, that little taste to remind them that they are not on autopilot, that ground is being gained. Obviously, there are a lot of options, but this one (for the most part) is mine.

This book at left ruled my life for about, hmm, two weeks not counting the days when I just goggled at it and said to myself "Got to review that book. Definitely getting around to it. Definitely going to pick it up off the floor and start it." 1152 pages later, I'm free! (Until edits get back.) Free! And able to say definitively that you are probably not in its target audience. Well, one out of two is not bad. I'm going to go stare down some more tomes right now.

Uh huh.

2011-11-16T09:55:00.003-05:00

Steal from the best!

2011-11-15T08:19:00.004-05:00

Kirkus Reviews' best of 2011 fiction list included (I assume it will be removed soon?) the plagiarized thriller ASSASSIN OF SECRETS. (Excited for the inclusion of THE FORGOTTEN WALTZ, though.)

Filmbook-to-Be: Trailer for "The Hunger Games" (2012)

2011-11-14T10:23:00.000-05:00

High hopes for Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen. (I did finally finish this series and will probably post about it a few times, once as a guide for those of you who don't know what the big deal is, and once to talk about third volume MOCKINJAY and its issues. For now, suffice to say if you've been shelving these books in the TWILIGHT category, I think you're mistaken.)