"Nabokov is my favorite writer, but in that same vein I also love Martin Amis. He aspired to be a young Nabokov. At least in the early days, he wrote with such fire, right up through The Information. Sam Lipsyte, who teaches at Columbia, is another favorite. His characters are dour and miserable. My taste in books is really different from my taste in songs. If you applied my taste in books to songs, I would like songs with someone soloing virtuously the entire way. A song that makes no sense at all. I like to read writers who are adept at their use of language, like the way Nabokov invents words all the time. I love writers who are challenging with words more than I love a good story."
- Chris Collingwood of Fountains of Wayne, Writersonprocess.com. Fountains of Wayne's new album "Sky Full Of Holes" is out Tuesday.

"Summer is for paperbacks. Toss them in a bike basket, read them in the pool (iPads don't like water) or leave them at the cottage for next year's readers."

Oprah.com is on the vacation reading bandwagon with this list of paperbacks perfect to take out this summer, including a contribution by my friend Ruth Baron. (Arguably I'd replace SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY with, hmm, maybe THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET [out in paperback this summer!!]. Otherwise, no complaints.) And as someone pointed out on Twitter, they never overheat in direct sunlight like electronics might. So where are we on that cabin-getaway-weekend, folks? I think it's hot enough.

Free Advice Friday: How not to name your daughter

When someone has a book-related problem, I have a totally unsolicited solution! It's the new occasional feature Free Advice Friday.

I'm pretty sure that this article is a prank, but from this week's Dear Prudence:

Dear Prudence,My husband and I met in college in an English class, and our first date was mostly a conversation about our favorite novels. One of my all-time favorite works is LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov. I'm pregnant with my first child, and I want to name our daughter (it's a girl!) Lolita. However, I'm worried that all the ties the name has with pornography and child molestation may outweigh the beauty of the name and significance the book has had in my life. My husband is ambivalent regarding the idea. What should we do?
—Lolita Lover

What qualifies me to be an expert on this: Very little. I thought for a few years that I was named for the Beverly Cleary book ELLEN TEBBITS, but not true. And I don't have any children, but I did have six fish and I named them all for characters from GONE WITH THE WIND. Scarlett outlived all the rest, which if you think about it is rather fitting. So what I'm saying is I am a naming expert.

Free Advice Friday responds:

You are worried for a very good reason, and that reason is Are you kidding me?????? Little Lolita may not get picked on more than any other on the playground, but just wait till she grows up! If I met an adult named Lolita as a non-stage name, I would have to excuse myself from the room because I would be too busy dying of mutual shame and/or disbelief.

Are you for real??? 

But very well, in case the pedophilia aspect of the name isn't enough let's consider the character Dolores Haze. (Mild spoilers for LOLITA follow as they must.) As described in LOLITA, part of Dolores' appeal is her ordinariness. She's not ambitious, not charming, not particularly emotional over her own mother dying... Even before Humbert Humbert gets to her, and this is not to excuse him at all, she's not a heroine. Is that the kind of character you want your daughter to emulate? No way, particularly when she gets old enough to read about her namesake and is, likely, horrified at you. (I was 18 when I read LOLITA for the first time, but your mileage may vary.)

While Dolores isn't a bad alternative, it's kind of musty for a little kid. If it's a family name, you might consider it. But surely there are other, better female characters out there. You could use Scarlett, but not if she's a red-head because that's cruel. I personally would go for Rebecca (Becky) Sharp of VANITY FAIR. Now there's a woman who knew which side her bustle was tied.

Argh, now I've gotten so exercised I can't even focus on how nice it was that your husband and you met and bonded over books. That's sweet! We should all be so lucky. Read Dear Prudence's answer here.

Earlier:

• Help! My spouse is writing novels! 
• There is life beyond Pleasant Company

NYC: Center for Fiction Reading Groups announced for fall

Thomas Mann, David Foster Wallace, Herman Melville, et al. "For information on our ongoing Proust groups, click here"? Don't mind if I do! Maybe I also could read IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME in a year!

But wait... people will pay for the same kind of question-asking I do here for free?

STOP READING THIS BLOG RIGHT NOW and pay me my $2. And I promise I will never refer to "writer's cannons," because for the love. (It's in the PALE KING blurb. I know, right?!)

Shenanigans

I can't wait to read this fall's big book UNTITLED, by Anonymous! Or can I...

The stack-of-books T-shirt

I normally wear my love of books on my sleeve. Wearing them on my chest doesn't seem like an upgrade.

(Smith St., Brooklyn, July 2011. Portrait of the photographer at right.)

Insert insurance joke here

The Daily Telegraph in Britain has been ordered to pay author Sarah Thornton 65,000 pounds ($106,736.50 as of writing) after one of its critics, Lynn Barber, criticized her book SEVEN DAYS IN THE ART WORLD by saying its claim to have interviewed her for it was false. (Thornton had proof of the interview and, apparently, a correction didn't cut it.)

Granted, as I understand it libel laws in Britain are much tougher than here -- that is tougher on the person doing the libelling, more sympathetic to the libeled, see the Polanski suit in 2005 (and that the plaintiff chose to sue in the UK) -- but that's fairly chilling. At the very least Barber's editor will probably have reservations about hiring her again.

(Tangential note, if you recognize the name Lynn Barber, it's probably because of her memoir which was made into the 2009 movie of the same name, AN EDUCATION. It really has nothing to do with her work, but jumped out at me right away.)

The judge presiding wrote in his decision that Barber's review was "spiteful" -- but who decides that? I personally don't think I ever criticize a book without clear and lucid reasoning for doing so (ahem ahem) but surely a few authors whose works I did not like would disagree. Meanness is in the eye of the beholder, for the most part. (So's favor -- been accused of that too.) If you have an axe to grind, suddenly everything looks like a wood pile.

Thornton's real victory in this case is making me want to read her book, which I hadn't even heard of, but it must be juicy -- right?

Filmbook: My AFI 100 Top 5

I'm over at The Sophomore Critic this week opining on my favorite books whose adaptations appear on the AFI Top 100 Movies of All Time list. Thanks to Orrin Konheim (who also writes at Examiner.com) for making room for me, and stay tuned for his picks of movies based on the Modern Library list for me.

Man Booker Longlist 2011: Who's your favorite?

• Julian Barnes, THE SENSE OF AN ENDING
• Sebastian Barry, ON CANAAN'S SIDE
• Carol Birch, JAMRACH'S MENAGERIE
• Patrick deWitt, THE SISTERS BROTHERS
• Esi Edugyan, HALF BLOOD BLUES
• Yvvette Edwards, A CUPBOARD FULL OF COAT
• Alan Hollinghurst, THE STRANGER'S CHILD
• Stephen Kelman, PIGEON ENGLISH
• Patrick McGuinness, THE LAST HUNDRED DAYS
• A.D. Miller, SNOWDROPS
• Alison Pick, FAR TO GO
• Jane Rogers, THE TESTAMENT OF JESSIE LAMB
• D.J. Taylor, DERBY DAY

Aaaand I've read one of these books (and have the Hollinghurst on the way, and when it gets here oh boy howdy). So I guess we will all just procrastinate till the shortlist comes out in September and then the real prize in October, right?

(Via Themanbookerprize.com)

Dinosaur Extincted

Bill Keller, who wasted his New York Times magazine column on railing against Twitter and people ever writing books, will publish his last installment in September. So where do I apply for this job?

If you've read CHRONIC CITY you will take a particular interest in (spoiler for that, and also the movie "Beneath The Planet Of The Apes") this article about the New York City subway system. I still didn't like the book very much but I think about its New York quite frequently (OBSTINATE DUST anyone?)

Earlier (in the same vein): Tigers.

On second thought...

Two recently published exceptions to the talking-animals rule:

Recommended if you like: Stories of orphans or plucky kids who are making the best of bad situations. The three children in THE SUMMER OF THE BEAR aren't really orphaned (or young; Alba, the oldest, is a teenager) but after the mysterious death of their father, who worked in British intelligence, their exile-by-mother to her childhood town in the Outer Hebrides may as well be a one-way trip to the moon -- particularly when Mom is too preoccupied with how her husband was killed to look after the kids. Meanwhile, the town is on the lookout for an escaped circus bear (based on a strange but true story).

Recommended if you liked THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME. A Ghanaian immigrant teenager investigates the murder of one of his classmates around his London tower block, tries to stay in good with the local gang without actually having to join, avoid his older sister's friend who wants to kiss him, win all the footraces at school and befriend the pigeon who sometimes strolls right into his apartment.



Full disclosure, I got both these books in e-galleys to my Kindle (from Atlantic Monthly Press and Harper Perennial).

Jeffrey Eugenides is a badass...

...for showing up to a book preview party with a blackeye after getting punched in the face on a train in New Jersey last week. The story according to the New York Post is he intervened on behalf of a female passenger after some guys refused to pipe down, but you know what, it doesn't matter, badass status assured.

They don't _all_ lead to heartbreak.

One wonders if the writer who led the Times style piece about dresses this week with a mention of "The Girls In Their Summer Dresses" read the story first. Also, why everyone at the Times is on vacation right now and they have to fill space with such a non-event. (I'm a huge fan of dresses, but come on!)

Blind Item

Which famous author was nowhere to be found last night as his wife was spotted out on the scene in Brooklyn? Perhaps he prefers his dream worlds to our hipster realm?