Why we can't be friends

May 25 marks the end of Oprah's daily talk show as we know it, and the Associated Press reported this morning that disgraced author James Frey will appear on two episodes next week. You know, to talk about his feelings.

First impression: This trick worked way better with Franzen six months ago.

Second: It's not even that I'm mad at James Frey in particular (although in part I am, and in part particular; I suffered through BRIGHT SHINY MORNING for your sins didn't I?) It just smacks of the weirdest audience-pandery quasi-sweeps week agenda cooked up by a programming department who thinks America has a vested interest in seeing this thing resolved. Do we need the laying on of Oprah's hands? Is that just what we deserve? Surely no one was waiting for Frey to be officially forgiven.

(I say that, but I'm not at all sure.)

Third: Remember when Conan O'Brien was going off "Tonight" and he did those running gags about how much of their money he could spend in one gig, like the racehorse (fake) wearing the priceless fur coat (fake I assume) watching sports highlights for exorbitant rights fees (possibly real)? Why can't we just do some of those? Oprah already gives away stuff; why not just more stuff to mark her last week on network TV before jumping to her own channel?

Fourth: I probably won't tune in, but I would read a recap or a pause-laden transcript. Use that to gauge my interest. I still haven't read all of A MILLION LITTLE PIECES, and I still have no plans to now.

Earlier

• My thoughts on James Frey from 2006, The Importance Of Being Earnest?
• Three Bad Book Trends For Which We Have The Noughties To Thank
• Greg Mortenson, The James Frey of 2011?

Your Assistance, Please: "But I was at the keyboard the whole time!"

What's your favorite method of writerly procrastination? What is your position of last resort when you're down to the wire and you have to get something finished, but once you have your hands on the keys, instead you're...

I'll tell you mine even though it's kind of gross. It's a habit I've carried with me since college, before YouTube was even a twinkle in Steve Chen and Chad Hurley's eyes. (Uh... anyway.) When push comes to shove you'll often find me cleaning underneath the keys in my keyboard. Have you seen the stuff that lurks under there? Unspeakable. Back in college I had a PC whose keys I could pop off one by one to clean, before I spilled coffee on it (I could star in a PSA about what not to do with your laptop) and had to get that keyboard swapped out.

I'll be back when I'm done with my cleaning I MEAN writing.

First impressions of Bookperk: A deal site too far

Bookperk aims to be a Groupon or LivingSocial for book-related deals, but so far it's served me mostly as fodder for forwards. Free YA book with lip gloss! Sci-fi cats! Flask included with purchase! I did come mildly close to buying a ticket to this Shakespeare book party, but I was otherwise occupied (and also $20 is a bit steep when the book isn't included).

Here's what I think the site is missing: Deals. People don't just buy Groupons because they're fun, they buy them either to save money on something they already buy, or something they wouldn't otherwise have bought. They bought the record-breaking Gap Groupon because they needed pants, but they bought the kickboxing Groupon because they wanted a free pair of boxing gloves.

Bookperk seems to target obscure pockets of fans of certain books or authors, rather than people looking to save money and get some wingdings. It's hard to assume profitability with such odd niches. Is it that hard to make books exciting? Those of us who buy books in volume (pun not intended [just kidding, it totally was]) don't need the wingdings, but occasionally we like the wingdings. A book by Prince Charles is not a wingding in which I have interest.

Today's deal almost gets there, but the price is too high. I love A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN, and after several fruitless searches at my parents' house have concluded that I will be buying another copy sooner rather than later.; List price ($14.95) is not a great deal, though, even with shipping included, and the paperweight doesn't add any value for me. (You know what makes a great paperweight? A coffee mug.) Yet it sold out, so what do I know? And no kidding, just as I was writing this I get an email about a signed book by Sammy Hagar. Sigh. Don't think so.

There's a great book about creativity and the artist hiding in this ultimately unsurprising rock memoir. Holding down a few part-time jobs and tired of being pigeon-holed as a female singer (and held thus to showcases of earnest, acoustic work), Trynin created her own record label out of her apartment and recorded a demo anyway, after which: major-label flirtation, a six-figure deal, tours, sleeping with a bandmate, music videos, depression, disappointing sales...

I read a comic memoir a while back by a former A&R executive whose primary note seemed to be shock that the filthy lucre was driving everything, that great artists weren't getting the great deals they deserved and that no one cared about The Art. In the key of naivete, and pretty winceworthy coming from the other side of the desk. Trynin's point of view is subtler, and sadder: All those trappings of success didn't help her get closer to her craft -- they only took her further away, but she had to go through all of it to know that. She sets it down for the next artist, the next band, even as she knows they'll disregard her advice.

Here's the video for Trynin's first single (discussed extensively in the book), "Better Than Nothing":

Today I had an early Mother's Day brunch and talked my mom into picking up mail with me so I could see whether a book I needed had come in yet. It had. I told her who the author was and she got really excited. I opened the envelope right out on Second Avenue and handed the galley to her for inspection.

She clutched it to her chest and said "Ooh, look at me! I'm fabulous! I have a book that's not out yet!" Then she asked how soon I could lend it to her.

Happy early Mother's Day, Mom. I'm glad all the sleep deprivation I caused you didn't kill you, so you had time to catch up on your reading later.

Read ALL the things?

Well, thank God: Allie Brosh of Hyperbole and a Half fame is writing and illustrating a book, due out next fall from Touchstone.

What They're Reading in the Missed Connections

• Lizzie Collingham, CURRY: A TALE OF COOKS AND CONQUERERS (Metro-North to Poughkeepsie)
• David Mitchell, BLACK SWAN GREEN (N train to 36th St.)
• Kurt Vonnegut, SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE (Queens bound G) -- "Pretty sure I saw you walking in SoHo on Monday as well. This is silly, you are the most beautiful man."
• Madeleine L'Engle, A WRINKLE IN TIME (on the L) ed. note 100 bonus points to this
• Jerilou Hammett, Kingsley Hammett and Martha Cooper, THE SUBURBANIZATION OF NEW YORK (1 train, Harlem/Morningside)
• Tina Fey, BOSSYPANTS (Brooklyn-bound F train and 5 train, Midtown East)

Book-related post of the week: So Roger Ebert wrote a cookbook, eh? - m4w - 22 (Midtown)

Quirk Classics' latest chilling tale

Special delivery from Regular Commenter Elizabeth (who is also on Blogspot now, did you know?)

"We 'decide' how to write by doing it over and over, all the while trying to avoid nauseating ourselves."
- George Saunders in BOMB

What kind of man you are, if you're a man at all

KAPITOIL has such a great premise that it took me weeks to realize it basically collapses in on itself. The novel purports to be the transcribed audio diary of Karim Issar, who has come to New York from Qatar on a programming assignment tied to the Y2K bug at a financial services firm -- a job he takes to support his shopkeeper father and make sure his younger sister can go to college. Living in the city allows Karim to be exposed to forms of debauchery not available in Qatar, like sexy Halloween parties (a very funny scene) and Leonard Cohen, but before he has a social life he finds the time to invent an algorithm that trades stocks according to news stories from the Middle East, making his employer a fantastic, stupid amount of money in the process.

The question with which we wrestle over Karim is how he can be so morally relative in the classic end-of-the-innocence sense, until the one instance where he decides he cannot budge -- when his employer starts taking steps to own Kapitoil. This is what makes Karim so human and KAPITOIL so troublesome. It would be a great book for a discussion setting because it doesn't strain to ask, What would you do? (Judging by my reaction to the end of this book, I think he chose wrong, but that led to a fair amount of soul searching on my part over whether I was the one being the moral relativist.) The trouble isn't that Karim is smart or not smart in order to pull this all off, it's that he seems smart enough sometimes and not others. In any case, he's way over his head on a couple of levels, and that is both realistic and (because of its realism) difficult territory to cover as a reader because of his own unawareness of his trouble.

The layer of timeliness works in concert with his dilemma; as an Arab national working for a U.S. financial firm, Karim's life would be dramatically altered by 9/11 no matter what he chose in the moment, but we don't find out because the book ends in December, 2000. I only hesitate to call it a "pre-9/11 novel" as Vanity Fair did because technically that covers most of Western literature.

Contextual note: I picked this book up after reading its review in the Tournament of Books 2011 and am toying with working my way through the whole list. You could do worse than working through this list if you are pressed for time on your award winners past. For my own reference mostly, here it is:

• FREEDOM 
• KAPITOIL (meta-link!!!)
• ROOM
• BAD MARIE
• SAVAGES 
• THE FINKLER QUESTION (Man Booker Prize winner)
• A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD (Pulitzer winner)
• SKIPPY DIES
• NOX
• LORD OF MISRULE (National Book Award winner)
• NEXT (The Believer Book Award winner)
• SO MUCH FOR THAT
• SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY
• MODEL HOME
• THE PARTICULAR SADNESS OF LEMON CAKE
• BLOODROOT (off the blog)

Old joke

It's not even being updated any more, but nothing will get done around here while I'm busy catching up on @ChaucerSXSW. The Atlantic, I thank and curse you with one breath for this round-up of Dead Authors On Twitter. (My other favorite is @HalfPintIngalls who quipped, "For heaven's sake, it was just a little diphtheria!"

Unbookening, and Housing Works Park Slope at last

Checked out 11 from the library
Bought 5 (for shame)
Got 7 to review
23 in

Donated 7
Returned 14 to the library
Gave away 2
23 out

Over the weekend I took my donations over to the new Housing Works secondhand store, one in a chain whose proceeds help HIV-positive homeless people. The store was clean, twee, and about as double-rainbow-inducing as I expected, and best yet, I walked out with a carbon-backed donation form, a "Thanks!" and an empty bag. I didn't take the time to eyeball the selection, but go shop my castoff books y'all.

Poetry for Gumbies

Yesterday, just in time for the end of National Poetry Month, I went to the oddest poetry reading I've ever attended -- a combination poetry reading and yoga class. (Alternately, a new Das Racist breakout hit.) The Rubin Museum of Art cleared out part of its lobby on a Sunday morning and invited poets from all over the world -- Finland, Hungary, Georgia (country) among others -- to sit on the sidelines of an anusara yoga class and read at intervals.

When I described this to my roommate, he skepticked, "But won't it be distracting?" Well, depending on the level of patter, that can be a nice thing. If you've never been to a yoga class, often a teacher will keep up a sort of 'yoga chat' during the class amid instructions, ranging from the practical ("Relax," "dig deep" etc.) to more spiritual (anything describing something you would do to your heart that does not sound biologically sound) Some teachers don't talk at all, just put music on. And some give you a thousand-yard stare while speaking unconvincingly about how much they loved yoga when they finally tried it.

If you are serious about yoga as a practice, you'd probably want to give this class a miss. But no one, not even the called-out regulars, seemed disappointed at this class. At the beginning the teacher spoke for a few minutes about how much she liked poetry and the role it played in her life, and I thought it was both appropriate and pleasant. (The woman next to me even took a notepad and started writing down some of the end-of-class talk, which I thought was pushing the envelope...) Most of the poems read at this event were about breath, or compassion, or similarly spiritual topics, but I think they were easier to contemplate knowing they were a poem first and a yoga accompaniment second.

I definitely didn't catch as much of the poetry as I would have in a classical setting but I'd like to look up more work by the Georgian poet, David-Dephy Gogibedashvili. I was thinking between sessions of stretching and so on how little I go to poetry readings; it's the kind of thing I would have envisioned myself doing all the time, but in fact I don't often seek out poets to go hear as I do other authors. Maybe I should do more of that. I have been doing a little yoga since reading STRETCH and it has made zero measurable difference in anything, but one tries.

Well played, Merriam-Webster

I can't wait to start giving this book out to friends at baby showers when they decide to start replicating. I didn't even know Jonathan Lethem had kids!