Polling the audience

Does anyone really believe Philip Roth is quitting writing, as he is quoted as telling a French magazine last month? Maybe I'm just overly optimistic or suspicious of a translation error (here's the original article, for you French speakers), but I'm not prepared to accept his resignation yet.

He also says in that interview that he hasn't wanted to write in 10 years, and look how that turned out.

Book makes peace; news at 10

After writing about his feud with John LeCarre in his memoir JOSEPH ANTON, Salman Rushdie and the TINKER TAILOR author have finally made up.

Even
after
all this time
The sun never says to the earth,

"You owe
me."

--Hafiz

A book blogger was fired from the magazine Commentary after writing a post arguing the conservative case for gay marriage. (My favorite part of that post is its title, "GOP Can't Be The Party Of Old White Men," proving that at least that old white man is self-aware.) Yet his editor says the timing was just a coincidence. Hmmm...

Instead, I choose vodka and Chaka Khan

2013 will see the publication of the first Bridget Jones novel in 13 years, author Helen Fielding confirmed yesterday. There is also a 3rd movie and a musical in the works around the fictional godmother of chick lit (for better or for worse).

Who can find an insane conspiracy theory tying this to the 2012 U.S. presidential election? Wait, I can! Just as the success of the big-screen "Sex and the City" and "Bridesmaids" made marketers mysteriously wake up and discover that women watch movies, so this election was a watershed moment for political analysts who discovered that not only do women vote, but that they are a bloc not to be ignored as incumbent Barack Obama enjoyed an 11 percent advantage among women over opponent Mitt Romney. (This edge also showed up in more local elections, such as the Missouri Senate race in which women helped Claire McCaskill shut that whole Todd Akin thing down.)

The Obama-Romney gap was even more pronounced among unmarried women in which the President held down a 67-31 margin and close to it in key swing states Ohio and Wisconsin, an advantage Rolling Stone linked to the GOP "agenda to limit access to not only abortion but birth control." It's not only single women using birth control, but the Affordable Care Act's provision forcing insurers to cover contraception at no cost went into effect in August and may have been a decisive factor in these women's votes. Keep in mind, it's only been 40 years since the Supreme Court made it illegal to prohibit birth control sale to single Americans. Her preoccupation with her weight and endless fumbling may make her a bit of a caricature, but the single Bridget Jones is more relevant than ever to American women.

 ((mic drop))

On children

Last night I read from this book to my 3rd roommate, who moved in in September directly from the hospital where she was born.

Chalk it up to the combination of New York real estate craziness and ex-roommate PTSD that when my current roommates told me they were going to have a baby, I didn't immediately start making plans to move out. We don't belong to a commune or anything, and they told me they understood whatever I chose. My reasons for staying were complex, and I looked into breaking my lease; but I think the tipping point occurred with a desperate email to my dad about what-if-the-crying-never-stops-and-I-go-crazy. He wrote back: "Babies are not like that!"

It's true. The baby in question is 6 weeks old now, born with extraordinary timeliness exactly on due date. (The night before, I came home to an empty house and my first thought was, "They must have gone out to dinner." Nope.) I bought a 20-pack of earplugs and got used to the hushed astronaut feeling they give me. In general, having a baby around that you aren't the primary caregiver for is pretty great if you like kids but don't plan to have your own for a while. It has been instructive, but not that much of an interruption -- for me. (Her parents feel quite differently.)

I'll keep an eye on her sometimes so her parents can take a shower or do some dishes. After Hurricane Sandy, when my office lost power for a week, I worked from the couch with her sleeping on the Boppy pillow next to me. She can't really smile yet but she looks around with a very adult-looking furrowed brow, as if taking stock of all of us.

One night I was attempting to entertain her in her swing and thought I would read her a book, but none of her books were out, so I gave her about a page and a half of James Wood's essay about Richard Yates from his new book THE FUN STUFF -- editing around the cursing veteran from the short story he was quoting. (Not that I haven't sworn in front of her before; I have plenty, but I'm hoping she'll forget.) I thought she seemed absorbed, because you can more or less project any emotion you want on a non-crying baby. 

Last night's choice, a slow and moving novel about an Ohio teenager who disappears on her way to her summer job, was perhaps not the most appropriate. I was on edge in case the teen in question would turn up in those few pages and something grisly would come up (more to her parents' point than hers I suppose). But as I read a passage to her about the girl's friends reuniting at a high school football game over Thanksgiving, I speculated about what she would be like when she grew up, how she would learn about that time when she was born and there was a hurricane and an election in the span of two weeks. How she slept and how she woke up again. I stopped reading when her mother came back in and said, "She's looking right at you."

He's got 538 problems, but...

Nate Silver took some time off scoring the election tonight to mention that he has a new book out. I wanted to read it any way, but I feel additionally incentivized.

Via Peter W. Knox

Happy Election Day!

What's your favorite voting-related Constitutional amendment? I'm going with lucky #19 as I exercise the franchise this morning at the school around the corner from my apartment.

"I... am... a writer."

Michael Chabon's WONDER BOYS is on sale for Kindle for $1.99 today in case you like academic satire, capers, Old Hollywood or stories about really long books.

Word of the day: loins

a : the upper and lower abdominal regions and the region about the hips

b (1) : the pubic region (2) : the reproductive organs 
(source: Merriam-Webster) 

From a CNN pool report, Friday: 

David Axelrod described the message coming from President Barack Obama days before Election Day as "coming from his loins."

"I've never seen him more exhilarated than he is right now. He believes in what he's doing. He believes in what he's fighting for," Axelrod told reporters Friday after the president's event in Lima, Ohio. "You can see in the speech that he's delivering that this is coming from his loins."

"I just wanted to say loins," the president's senior adviser added with a smirk. "I wanted to see if I can get loins in the story."

Axelrod forever.

This was the book I was going to take to Staten Island to read in the hours before the New York City marathon. (I got it for free with some other galleys... don't judge.) I thought something light with the potential for name-dropping would work a good spell on my nerves surrounding this event, my first marathon, after a nerve-rattling week.

I think it's jinxed now that the marathon has been canceled so I've buried it in the back of the closet.

PW's Best Books of the Year 2012

Too soon. (Kidding, but I swear, this list comes earlier and earlier every year.) See the slideshow here, or just creep on the full list:

Chris Ware, BUILDING STORIES (graphic novel/ collection)
Hilary Mantel, BRING UP THE BODIES (fiction)
Louise Erdrich, THE ROUND HOUSE (fiction)
Lucia Perillo, HAPPINESS IS A CHEMICAL IN THE BRAIN (short fiction collection)
Victor LaValle, THE DEVIL IN SILVER (fiction, respectfully disagree)
Mark Binelli, DETROIT CITY IS THE PLACE TO BE (nonfiction)
Lisa Cohen, ALL WE KNOW: THREE LIVES (biography, now regretting not buying this when I saw it at the Strand the other day)
Richard Lloyd Parry, THE PEOPLE WHO EAT DARKNESS (nonfiction)
Bernard Bailyn, THE BARBAROUS YEARS (nonfiction)
Anne Applebaum, IRON CURTAIN: THE CRUSHING OF EASTERN EUROPE (nonfiction)

Lot of unfamiliar titles on this list -- which doesn't mean it's wrong, simply that I have to get cracking on my end-of-year reading. What do you think? Have you read any of these?

I'm a huge fan of whoever created this Eli Cash listing on Goodreads.

Hurricane Sandy damage to Powerhouse Books (Brooklyn, NY)

Powerhouse sits in a low-lying area of Brooklyn near the water, but thousands of its books were destroyed when the flooding went above the predicted line.

They're holding a book fair on Nov. 17 outside the store (37 Main St.) to raise money to rebuild. Hope you can make it.

Source: mrmullin

October Unbookening

Received 10 for review
Checked out 5 from the library
Bought 4 (2 Kindle, 2 from After-words in Chicago)

Returned 8 to library
Donated 11 

For further reading: 

I enjoyed Kristopher Jansma's Literary Artifacts: The Bibliophiles Move, but think he's slightly underestimating on how many books he has or moved. Jansma claims 900 volumes fitting into 50.5 feet of shelf space through "five overstuffed IKEA bookshelves" and some piles. I would guess I have 17.5 feet of books in my personal collection, one double bookshelf and stacks on stacks on stacks. But if I had to guess how many volumes, I would say 700. Anyone want to come over and count?

This is all giving me a wicked flashback to the time my parents made me count the number of books I had in my room with the goal of getting down to 150. I didn't make it, but children's paperbacks take up a lot less space than the trade paperbacks and hardcovers of adulthood. Also, where did my parents believe these books to be coming from? Space?