Tournament of Books 11: The shortlist arrives

Have at it:

Jesse Ball, SILENCE ONCE BEGUN
Will Chancellor, A BRAVE MAN SEVEN STOREYS TALL
Anthony Doerr, ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE
Elena Ferrante, THOSE WHO LEAVE AND THOSE WHO STAY **3rd book in a series
Roxane Gay, AN UNTAMED STATE (I've read and reviewed this)
Lars Iyer, WITTGENSTEIN JR
Marlon James, A BRIEF HISTORY OF SEVEN KILLINGS
Phil Klay, REDEPLOYMENT
Emily St. John Mandel, STATION ELEVEN (I've read this)
David Mitchell, THE BONE CLOCKS (I've read part of this)
Celeste Ng, EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU
Jenny Offill, DEPT OF SPECULATION
Ariel Schrag, ADAM
Sarah Waters, THE PAYING GUESTS
Jeff VanderMeer, ANNIHILATION **trilogy
Evie Wyld, ALL THE BIRDS, SINGING

I was 8/16 in my predictions, which is as expected. Also, there's no round-robin for a spot, which I did not get correctly.

Filmbook-to-Be: Ready for his close-up, Mr. Mitchell

The L.A. Times has a great profile today of David Mitchell and the high visibility he is enjoying in the light of "Cloud Atlas"' adaptation. Mitchell says he "didn't really think about it" when the book got optioned but has since seen and liked the movie -- he even appears in it. "Cloud Atlas" opens Oct. 26 and I am currently failing to convince anyone to go to a midnight screening with me and have their minds blown way open.

You know, as long as nobody got hurt.

It makes me happy to think of the polite, soft-spoken David Mitchell being mobbed by fans of CLOUD ATLAS in China. Some people should be rock stars.

Filmbook to be: Trailer for "Cloud Atlas" (2012)

Cloud Atlas - Trailer [VO|HQ]

Holy shit.

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.

Will there be time to read after the Rapture?

In case you haven't heard, a man named Harold Camping is predicting the Rapture will take place today. In our research we have not been able to conclusively establish whether this is taking place at 6PM local time or 6PM Tokyo local time, meaning that if you are reading this you already know whether you have been Raptured or not.

The publishing staff here at Wormbook have become maybe a little unhealthily obsessed with this story, for which we credit Twitter -- a great place to hang out with people whose irreverent commentary might contribute to them not being Raptured. (Exhibit A; Exhibit B; Exhibit C. I love you all; sorry.) It's likely that we know some people for whom this is a genuine concern, whether or not one is Raptured, so we will state simply that we expect the prediction to be incorrect, and leave it there. If we expected differently we might be skimming the book of Revelations right now, which we assume will act as TIME Magazine for the faithful to get their analysis and commentary for what's happening on earth while we are elsewhere (and like TIME these days, will be a little too over-explanatory and familiar for comfort). It won't be all that urgent for them anyway, for the faithful.

Though not raised in a very religious household, nor evangelical Protestant, we were very impressionable children and the tradition we were raised in (to which our parents subscribe to varying degrees) stuck with us just enough room for the pry-fingers of doubt. We assume, for example, that you do not pack for a Rapture, but what if we get stuck in some sort of Celestial Waiting Room for a bit? Would it be worth strapping our Kindles to ourselves, just in case? Would a paper book be better, in case there are no outlets? Our Sunday-school educations didn't quite clarify what was going on in Heaven all that while. (Never mind that these inquiries are probably why we are not being Raptured. It's just we never go anywhere without one.) We tab to Google -- but we hesitate in time.

Anyway, aside from what might or might not be happening today it might do us all good to reread the "Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After" chapter of David Mitchell's CLOUD ATLAS and focus on what's really scary, the threat of a postliterate society. The Guardian also has a piece on the LEFT BEHIND novels, which would seem to lend themselves to a situation like this, unless people would rather not be spoiled on what's about to happen to them. We didn't have time to read them. Will we later? In any case, we didn't bother writing any posts for after today, in case we did get Raptured. So if we don't update, just listen to this song four or five times until you see it's actually fairly cheery.

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)

Also Filmbook-to-be:
1. Actor Adam Scott ("Party Down," "Step Brothers," "Parks and Recreation") has optioned Chuck Klosterman's novel DOWNTOWN OWL... so I should probably figure out where my copy went.
2. The Wachowski siblings are adapting David Mitchell's CLOUD ATLAS with the help of Tom Tykwer ("Perfume"). Tom Hanks is reportedly attached to play Dr. Henry Goose; Halle Berry and James McAvoy are also supposedly involved at some level as Meronym and Adam Ewing respectively. So, a lot of uncertainty, but one to watch.

"There’s the 'Autocue Substitute,' where I scan my current sentence for trouble and change vocabulary and grammar to avoid it, without (ideally) my listener noticing. This doesn’t work when I’m doing a reading (though occasionally I’ll substitute a word in one of my own books on the hoof), but it was excellent training for a future novelist. By the age of 15 I was a zit-spattered thesaurus of synonyms and an expert on lexical registers. At my rural comprehensive, substituting the word 'pointless' with 'futile' would get you beaten up for being a snob because the register’s too high—it’s a teacher’s word—so I’d deploy 'useless.'"

--David Mitchell, from an essay on "The King's Speech."

D-list celebrities need not apply

David Mitchell is auctioning off the name of a character in his next novel, which he blushingly refused to speak about when I saw him at Book Court last summer, to benefit autism research in the UK. Important to note: "The author reserves the right to make the winning character name as large or small a character as necessary for his book. The character will not be based in any way on the actual winners’ characteristics." (via Moby Lives)

The author as human

Last night I went to see David Mitchell read from THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET at the new-to-me bookstore Book Court. Book Court is tucked away in an unlikely storefront on a busy commercial street in downtown Brooklyn and looks much bigger in pictures, but I wasn't surprised to find every seat taken 20 minutes before the reading, even on a Friday night. Mitchell is hip right now and in the conversations around me there was a crackle of "Let's talk about how awesome our taste in books is to see what other superlative entertainments we also have in common."

Mitchell is tall and thin and stands with his feet perilously far apart, like a boxer. The bookstore clerk embarrassed him before the reading by rattling off some of his blurbs like "genius" and his position on a previous Time 100 list. The author looked sheepish but broke out into a delighted smile as a baby blatted over his thanks and welcomes. He talks very softly, almost in a mumble, and his answers to audience questions spooled out from digression to digression until he would stop and give a little shake and ask, "Now have I answered your question yet?" I couldn't have said, I was following him.

There's always a little friction when you see an author you admire in person; you fear that he will be mean or just unapproachable; you just can't picture her sitting down at her desk every day. It's irrational to say that I gleaned some insight about Mitchell just from seeing and hearing him in person; it would belie almost his entire body of work, as someone who can get so far into his characters' heads that you forget there's an author in the middle. Wouldn't be seemly to remind. But I'm doing it anyway! I was surprised at how funny he was, how unassuming. That I've been re-reading CLOUD ATLAS and it still makes my head spin is just icing.

Thanks to my blogmigo Wade Garrett for alerting me to the signing and braving the line with me.

Reading on the Road: Don't Bring Me Down Edition

I'm going home to the Midwest for the weekend -- a short trip, but a relatively long to-do list. I have four goals: see my family, locate my copy of CLOUD ATLAS, enact vengeance and get a few good nights' sleep. (Kicking ass and chewing bubblegum will have to wait till next trip.) By the time you read this, I'll probably be working on one of those objectives; time is precious.

I'm taking Allegra Goodman's THE COOKBOOK COLLECTOR, EIGHT MEN OUT and David Foster Wallace's EVERYTHING AND MORE. That's 2/3 library books, which probably shouldn't happen but I'm not taking much with me so I still have room. The Wallace book would probably rank in the top five hardest books I've read since college, so why am I enjoying it so much?

Have a great weekend, whether it's your Independence Day or just the 4th.

One of the best books of the year, given one of the worst leads of the year. Maybe I'm just grumpy and exacting, I was surprised to find out those were Eggers' words; I'd have guessed they came from a newsletter compiler who hadn't actually read it. HARRUMPH.

That reminds me that I should be working on the best of the year so far; look for it on Sunday-abouts, and bring your own list so we can fight about it.