Days of Love...and Lack Thereof, Day 17

Gianna:


I can't believe you even considered celebrating a Valentine's Day without Pablo! What is wrong with you? Do you know nothing of romance, of love, of getting laid? Listen, it's not too late to save face. Pick up a copy of Pablo Neruda's 100 Love Sonnets (I mean, it's in English and Spanish...it's one language for free!). 

"When I die, I want your hands on my eyes:
I want the light and wheat of your beloved hands
to pass their freshness over me once more:
I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny."
--Neruda

I know...guaranteed to get things going.

Liz:

Earlier today a pal suggested that Gianna might have a better grasp of this theme than I do.  Humph.  Apparently he doesn't appreciate the awe-inspiring, loin-quivering appeal of Darth Dick Cheney.  But fine.  I'll pretend I'm Gianna.

I can't believe you even considered celebrating a Valentine's Day without Atwood!  What is wrong with you?  Do you know nothing of romance, of love, of getting laid?  Listen, it's not too late to save face.  Pick up a copy of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (I mean, it's got graffiti written in Latin...it's one language for free!).

Who doesn't want to read about the reversal of feminism and the forced sexual enslavement of the dwindling number of fertile women in the world?  Offred, (get it, "Of Fred?") is the handmaid of a wealthy couple, a servant with no control over her body and no rights.  Her job is to produce children.  It has been religiously decreed by the theocracy that has taken control of the country.  Atwood's book is shockingly prescient, and if she'd managed to include a reality TV series about Offred's tribulations on TLC I'd call her a modern Nostradamus.  

I know...guaranteed to get things going.

Days of Love...and Lack Thereof, Day 6

Gianna:

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

I think I speak for everyone when I say, “You ain’t been in love until you’ve been in love with a Republican!” Especially if you’re a Democrat, am I right ladies? There’s got to be an ex-Gingrich or three that knows what I’m talking about! [Don't look at me.]

Curtis Sittenfeld

Alice’s life changes at the age of seventeen when she is involved in a fatal car accident. She becomes a serious, bookish (a librarian actually), quiet woman. When she meets Ivy Leaguer Charlie Blackwell from a prominent wealthy Texas--geesh--Wisconsin family she isn’t impressed. He’s self-centered, juvenile, not as smart as she is, and he likes the ladies and to party. Also, she’s a Democrat and he is a Republican on the political fast track. But alas, she becomes smitten with Charlie; he is, after all, charming, and handsome, and they have some major chemistry (yeah, you’ll picture George and Laura, but try to get over it). When his career catapults him to the Presidency and some of his policies become unpopular (two wars and reproductive rights), Alice must make a choice. Does she continue to stay in the background and let people assume she too agrees with her husband’s policies, or does she speak out? And can the marriage survive if she publicly disagrees with her husband while he is vulnerable? 

I found this an incredibly interesting idea given the political differences between George and Laura Bush. Laura came out in favor of gay marriage and pro choice after Bush left office, but you know…those two kids are doing all right. 

Liz:

Get cozy and flip on the Celine Dion soundtrack, this book is going to put you in the mood for...something.  Once again I am going to discuss a book that is now, sadly, out of print.  It's just wrong.  If you read this crappy little blog at all, you know that A. I love books, and B. I love Canada, and C. I love a violent animal.  Zorro is a cat, of course.  Let's talk bears.

Stick with me here.  Bear by Marian Engel won Canada's Governor-General's Award and Margaret Atwood called it "a strange and wonderful book."  It's legitimately good literary fiction.  Here's the premise: a librarian, a lonely, timid woman, takes a job cataloging the library of the deceased Colonel Cary.  He lived on a remote island in the northern woods of Canada, and soon the librarian discovers that among his secrets is a pet bear.  The bear, she decides, will make good company.  She talks to the bear the way that she's never been able to talk to other people.  The bear becomes a pet...and then more of a companion as she becomes more isolated.  And then, well, yeah, it goes there.  Things I learned from Bear: 1. Don't have sex with bears. 2. Bears have bones in their boners. 3. You are NEVER so lonely that bestiality is a good idea. 4. A bookstore will go a full year without selling a copy, and as soon as you put up a staff selection saying that a woman sleeps with a bear, you'll sell out in a week.

Did I mention that Bear is an award-winning work of literary fiction?  I just thought I should state that again.  Also, who would have bet that I brought up the animal fornication before Gianna?  Anyone?

30 More Days Book Challenge: Day 25

Day 25: Living Author With Whom We'd Like to Have a Drink

Gianna:

I was telling my friend Stephanie about this blog question and she suggested that instead of living author you would like to have a drink with - how about a living author you would like to throw a drink at. I know, great questions.  [How are we defining "author," because Phil McGraw (allegedly) writes books and he certainly is worth the effort for criminal mischief, but it's an insult to real writers to lump him in the same group.]

Ready....Aim....

So let me answer Stephanie's excellent question first. VS Naipaul, Mr. Women-Writers-Are-Not-As-Good-As-Men. [...Yeah, this is an excellent choice.] He claims within a paragraph he can tell the author's gender. He also believes women have a narrow view of the world. I believe him to be a douche. I would throw a drink in his face, wait for it to dry and then do it again. Douche.

Now an author I would like to have a drink with, that is a longer list. Joyce Carol Oates scares me, as does Jeanette Winterson. Maybe the idea should be someone to have a drink with and learn something rather than just get shit faced with? Of course why can't it be both?

I will also take out people that aren't writers of several books; otherwise it's me, [Liz], Tina Fey, and Amy Poehler.

Fannie Flagg

One of the funniest, nicest, just all-around good time ladies that I have ever met is Fannie Flagg. I would love to spend a night with her (and you know what? Take that any way you want to .... she's got Fried Green Tomatoes money). Actually, Fannie may be my second choice.

Rick Bragg

I would love to spend a few hours sharing cocktails with Rick Bragg. I must have a thing for Southerners. [Is this why you love me?  Also, is East Texas considered "The South?"] I have met him a few times, even had a meal with him and another writer, but still....I would love to talk to him one-on-one. He is one of my favorite writers. All Over but the Shoutin' is so great, if you haven't read it (or listened to it on audio) I highly, highly recommend it. Two more memoirs, Ava's Man and The Prince of Frogtown are top rate, just excellent. There is something so sincere and down to earth about him (Am I swooning right now?), I honestly could listen to him tell stories for hours. I am most curious about his journalism. He has a collection of pieces called Somebody Told Me, which is good, but still, I would rather have it first hand ( I mean clearly I am in love with him...is this awkward for anyone?). [Me.  I'm uncomfortable.]

So that's it, a drinks threesome... me, Fannie and Rick. Look for it on video.

Liz:

Dr. Laura, you'd look fabulous with Diet Coke pooling in those face-crags.  There.  That should fulfill Stephanie's question.  That is, unless, like Dr. Phil, she's not a "writer."  In that case, and assuming that the author has to be alive (thus letting Norman Mailer off the hook), I'm winding up to launch soda at James Patterson.  Then again, Dr. Laura probably actually wrote more of her own books than J.P. ....This is what happens when you swallow down or rage.  You want to throw things at lots of people.

As for sharing drinks, let me start by stating that I am socially awkward.  Like, severely challenged in this department.  Also, I don't really drink often (other than the Diet Coke), and the idea of going out for drinks generally makes me anxious.  Basically I want to make it clear that it would take a special person to make me more excited than panicky about the prospect of drinks, and also that going to drinks with me would probably prove a chore for the selected author.  (I did once have drinks with an author named April Reynolds and she was a total bad-ass in the best ways.  I hope she's doing well.)

Two authors come to mind for cocktails.  The first is Margaret Atwood.  I'm a huge fan of her writing, and I think she's a spitfire in person, which could make it entertaining.  She's from Canada, too.  I think she'd be able to keep a conversation going without placing any obligation on me and my awkwardness.  There is a chance that I'd ask her to legally adopt me, but that wouldn't be uncomfortable for her, right?

The other writer I'd like to join for drinks is Jon Krakauer.  You know this guy has great stories.  Where else are you going to have a 50/50 chance of discussing disastrous Everest expeditions and radical polygamist cults?  He's a journalist, adventurer, and the section definition author for adventure writing.  Krakauer would be a terrific date.

Jon Krakauer--great drink date.

30 More Days Book Challenge: Day 20

You didn't think we could keep the book challenge going for 50 days, did you?  If you're interested in further insights into the bookish and bizarre world of sales repping, "like" our Facebook page.  Gianna sings.  Isn't that worth following?

On to Day 50, which is really

Day 20: Favorite books given, favorite books received

Gianna:

I think my younger brother is the only person who still has the courage to buy me a book as a gift – I say "courage," but what I really mean is that he doesn’t really care if I own the book or not. At the point that it arrives on my door, he has done his part; the gift has been given.  The thought is what counts and too bad sis if you have it already.

To his credit, he never has gotten me a double. He, in fact, gave me the best book I have ever received. [Penis Pokey?]

This past holiday he sent me the very cool Taschen (what do they publish that isn’t cool, by the way?) book, Billy Wilder’s Some Like it Hot. The book was published to coincide with Billy Wilder’s 95th birthday, and what a fantastic tribute it is. If you haven’t seen the film Some Like it Hot with Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon (oh how I miss Jack Lemmon), please treat yourself; it's one of the best made films ever. [Agreed--a truly great comedy.  And if you don't appreciate Marilyn Monroe, read Joyce Carol Oates's Blonde.]  Actually, it just occurred to me that this book comes with the DVD so you know…. two birds, one stone. 

Included in the book are over 50 pages of interviews with Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon (one of the last interviews before his death), co-screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond’s widow Barbara Diamond, producer Walter Mirisch, and of course Billy and Audrey Wilder (many of these were in Cameron Crowe’s book Conversations with Wilder but it is still a great companion piece). Also included are anecdotes about the film, original promotional material, the first draft, and the shooting script of the film. Of course this book wouldn’t be complete without the hundreds of photographs included; many of which are rare, candid shots of the cast and crew. [Gianna will be recreating these candid shots in the near future....]

I tend to give art books as gifts.  I mean, you can’t say you don’t like an art book – you look foolish! One of my favorite books to give is called Image and Memory: Photography from Latin America 1866-1994 Edited by Wendy Watriss and Lois Parkinson Zamora.

The book collects the images of fifty-two photographers from about ten countries. I love documentary photography; the images from El Salvador’s civil war are truly haunting and the best part of the book for me.

The coolest thing about this book is that some of these photographers have never been in print before – this is the first time they can be viewed by a large audience.

Liz:

I have received some great books as gifts even though most of my friends are scared to give them to me.  I am not above making lists of the books I want when the holiday season rolls around.  I get it.  It's hard to shop for someone who has access to the Random House catalog AND regularly buys books from the other publishers too.  Back when my discretionary money for books was hampered by my need to eat, though, my sister bought me a book while we were on vacation in Oregon.  It was the first time that I'd ever been to Powell's, but we only had about an hour to spend in the store.  I picked up a book as a souvenir--a signed copy of John Henry Days--but what I really wanted was the signed first edition of Margaret Atwood's Surfacing that I saw in a case.  I wanted it so much that I even asked the bookseller to open the case and let me look at the signature, hold the book that Margaret Atwood had held.  My sister, seeing my love for this book, went back and bought it for me.  It was a selfless act, and it wasn't attached to a holiday.  And Surfacing is a terrific book, by the way.  It's about a group of four people taking a trip to the north woods in Canada.  I do love my Canadian fiction.

I tend to give books that I've read before so that I know that they're good, and therefore I tend to give mostly literary fiction and narrative history.  I do believe that if you love a story, you should have a special copy to represent that love.  Last year, in August, my friend Elizabeth mentioned that she'd never even seen the hardcover first edition of People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia, one of her favorite books.  I made a note and tracked down a copy, then gave it to her for Christmas.  I think that "No fucking way!" meant she approved. 

30 More Days Book Challenge: Day 18

Day 18: Strangest Place You've Read a Book

I once read a book in the parking lot of a fundamentalist church at 11:45 pm after a Kathy Griffin performance in Austin while I waited for a guy to change my tire after I ran over what looked like shrapnel.  Book lovers read everywhere.

Gianna:

I will get right to it. The strangest place I have ever read a book is in a public library. Well...more specifically: in the bathroom of a public library. Yep, about twice a week I would go to the library, go through the six books on gay and lesbian culture, take one down and go hide in a bathroom stall to read it.  [I'm here, I'm queer, I'm proud of it?]

Oh, sure I had tried the book-behind-a-book, but it stressed me out to no end. The bathroom gave me a sense of privacy where I could read The Well of Loneliness or various Rita Mae Brown titles. I expanded my reading from here. I found Gertrude and Alice, Jane Rule’s “classic” Desert of the Heart (which was made into a “classic” film called Desert Hearts starring Mrs. Roper), Orlando by Woolf, Lillian Hellman (who I became slightly obsessed with) and I devoured everything by lesbian icon, Danielle Steel. I mean Quentin Crisp (I always get those two confused). [I'm sure that happens frequently.]

Anyway, that’s my odd place that I read, the bathroom of our public library. In other words I hadn’t yet come across anything called “gay pride.”

Kids today don’t know how good they have it. They can just sit and read Danielle Steel wherever they want.

Liz:

When I was a senior in college, my father decided that we should take a family vacation.  Fine, right?  Except that he decided that we should go the week of Thanksgiving.  Never mind that both my sister and I were knee deep in end of semester projects.  Forget about that thesis that wouldn't write itself--we needed to go to Washington DC and reconnect!  I packed twelve books for that five day trip, not to mention the notebooks, and pens, and crap like clothing.

The "high point" of the trip was the jaunt over to Colonial Williamsburg for Thanksgiving itself.  First, it was cold.  Second, 90% of the place was closed, and the few buildings that were open were the places where testicle-scratching "peasants" were insisting that women cook them their mutton and such.  I was not amused.  Eventually, tired of my outrage, my father suggested that I wait outside, and that's exactly what I did.  I sat outside, on a metal bench in 35 degree weather, reading the book shoved in my coat pocket, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.  The whole scene made for a memorable story in my Women's Studies class the following week, even if the book-imitating-life parallels were lost on my father.

30 More Days Book Challenge: Day 8

If you're one of the tens of people who like our little blog here, be sure to check out our newly created Facebook page (Liz and Gianna's Adventures in Book Land).  We're posting book-related morsels as we find them.  We've also created a Twitter account for the added challenge of reducing substantive commentary down to a pithy 140 characters.  Our Twitter handle is @AdvInBookLand.  Gianna's CB handle is Undergarment Varmint LaMorte.  I'm not sure why.  She can explain it to you.

On to the book challenge.

Day 8: Favorite Science Fiction Book

That's right boys and girls, we're diving head first into genre fiction.  One of my bookseller pals at BookPeople once convinced me to read this space opera book that included a runaway train and the hero having, uh, relations with a "woman" who was covered in blue fur.  I don't remember the title.  I do remember wondering if it's bestiality if the "woman" is covered in blue fur.

Gianna:

I haven’t read a lot of science fiction, and outside of Penthouse Letters VII, I haven’t read any fantasy. However, I have read what is widely considered the finest mass-market novel about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence published in 1995 (how is that for narrowing the field?). That’s right bibliophiles…Carl Sagan’s Contact. Try not to think about the movie. I mean, personally I’ve seen it, like, five times but it's Jodie Foster trying to sell a sexual attraction to Matthew McConaughey. I mean, if you can NOT watch that…well...I don’t know...I guess you and I really don’t have that much to talk about. [I've seen Contact so many times that I scream "Okay to go!" every time I'm locked inside a pod about to be dropped into the center of a gyroscope just on principle.  Don't you?] Anyway, I loved the novel Contact (which is only a novel, by the way, because Sagan couldn’t get the film off the ground).  It was really refreshing to read such a smart book about aliens coming to take me away. [Aliens aren't the only things poking at Gianna.] This book, by the way…real math-y, which I normally try to avoid. If I look on the back of a book and it mentions binary numbers or pi (not the good kind) or quite frankly addition…I am going to look the other way.

It's called 'chemistry' for
a reason. It looks like
she's desperate to flee.

I read this book over 15 years ago so I am tempted to give it another go. I mean you guys know that we aren’t alone right? Also if anyone wants to watch Contact….call me.

Liz:

Okay, I admit that I suggested this topic in the wider scope of suggesting favorite mysteries and chick lit and other categories of fiction, but I didn't really consider the fact that I really don't read science fiction books.  I have never read: Philip K Dick, Ursula K LeGuin, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, George Orwell, Aldus Huxley, or Arthur C. Clarke.  I've never read Neal Stephenson, China Mieville, Vernor Vinge, Frank Herbert, or Stanislaw Lem.  I could write about Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, but considering the recent political climate, it's less fictional and more "harbinger of Michele Bachmann to come."  Atwood also has a couple of books about apocalyptic environmental change, Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, but since it hasn't rained in Texas in about 1,000 years, again Atwood proves too prescient for comfort. 

So let's go with another favorite near-future possibility: organ harvesting!  Nothing warms my heart like the thought of removing my stone cold little rock and replacing it with an actual warm heart.  Thankfully, Man Booker Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro gets me.  He wrote a terrific book about special children growing up at a boarding school for exceptional children.  It's a love story--no, really!--and a philosophical exploration of humanity broken down into usable parts.  I think my twin has already claimed dibs on my cirrhosis-free liver, actually.  Oh, wait, the title?  It's Never Let Me Go.  You should read it.  And your book group should read it.  And we should all thank our lucky stars that we're not covered in blue fur.

30 Day Book Challenge: Day 13

Lucky 13: A Book Whose Main Character Is Most Like You

Gianna:

 

This question really just annoys me so I will cheat a bit and use a mixture of “characters” and people from biographies I have read (and who says that is breaking the rules anyway? People are so judgmental – mostly me though).  So okay, part Lucy Grealy (Autobiography of a Face) because I was so, so uncomfortable in my own skin when I was younger (so unlike now…yeah), and a bit of Ann in the really wonderful novel by Mona Simpson Anywhere But Here (my mantra for Glenwood, Illinois, back in the day) and a tad of Sarah Silverman (I will leave it up to you to decide if it's her bed-wetting or inappropriateness – or both – that I identify with). Also… Peppermint Patty.

Liz

Gianna would answer for me that her imagined child version of me closely resembles Flavia from The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (she imagines that I was rather precocious and too smart for my own good).  If I were much older, I might be Iris, the main character in Margaret Atwood's Blind Assassin; I would walk to the bakery for sweets and ponder the graffiti in the public restroom stall.  As for what character most resembles my life now, I'm willing to listen to suggestions.  Is there a character in literature who's in her mid-30's, lives alone, is obsessed with books and her cat, and mostly dislikes people? 

Betting on Nobel

This year's Nobel Prize for Literature will be announced on Thursday and the various book industry news venues are posting almost daily updates speculating on which esteemed writer might win this year's prize.  While I have no doubt that every source is, well, full of it, I do love the annual Nobel Prize build-up because it focuses attention on so many great authors.  And leave it to the Brits to take pleasure in betting on who'll win a literary award.  The British bookmaker Ladbrokes posts the top odds for the world's current literary giants (http://www.ladbrokes.com/lbr_sports?action=go_generic_link&level=EVENT&key=214493738&category=SPECIALS&subtypes=&default_sort=&tab=undefined). 

It's a fascinating list, but really, does the Nobel Prize for Literature mean anything?  I do think that award recipients are worthy, and considering my career I'm always in favor of any event that will generate book sales.  But how does one go about selecting the pinnacle of lifetime literary achievement each year, the one writer whose life work outshines the other six billion people on the planet?  It can't be done, and so the award tends to rotate from country to country, genre to genre, honored as much for the political climate of the year as for the author's body of work.  When Harold Pinter won the prize in 2005, speculation was that the outrage over the US invasion of Iraq and the Bush administration's treatment of detainees kept the selection committee from picking the first American since Toni Morrison in 1993.  It's a weird prize that lends itself to stereotyping, a single individual representing a whole group of people, a whole country.  There's the Chinese guy, the Holocaust survivor, the Irish poet, the South African, the Gulag survivor, the African-American woman...it's a little insulting to the talented writers representing their demographics, but the award also calls attention to important works.  Is it a good thing?  Is it wrong?  Maybe it just is.

So who are the bookies picking this year?  The popular choice is for a poet to win since the last decade or so of winners have been novelists or playwrights.  The favorite right now is Tomas Transtromer at 4/1, followed by Adam Zagajewski, Adonis, and Ko Un all at 8/1.  Generally I don't read much poetry and am only familiar with the work of Adonis.  For me the list becomes far more interesting with the 11/1 writer, Haruki Murakami, and then a cluster of my favorite writers hovering at 18/1.  The odds go all the way to the dark horse popular "poet," Bob Dylan, at 150/1.  Here are some highlights from the list of the world's greatest living writers, authors worth reading regardless of whether they ever actually go to Sweden.

• 11/1: Haruki Murakami.  Murakami is the best known Japanese writer in America, a post-modern writer who draws heavily from Western culture and music.  He's also an avid runner and recently completed his first ultra-marathon.  What to read: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which infuses music, the fantastic, and violence around the story of a seemingly boring man whose cat runs away, kicking off a chain of event.s  Also, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Murakami's nonfiction account of his life as a marathoner and triathlete.
• 18/1: A. S. Byatt.  Antonia Byatt is a British writer who won the Booker Prize for Possession.  Her most recent novel, The Children's Book, was one of my favorite books of 2009, a rich, historical novel revolving around a writer and her seven children in turn of the century rural England.  It's a book about family, secrets, love, and the loss of innocence children--and nations--experience as they mature, culminating in the outbreak of World War I. 
• 18/1: Joyce Carol Oates.  Probably the most prolific writer of literary fiction alive today, Oates not only has cranked out dozens of books, essays, and short stories, they almost all been high quality.  She isn't afraid of violence and regularly pursues the darker corners of the "American Dream."  She won the National Book Award for her novel them (and should have won for Blonde, a finalist four decades later).  Oates also wrote my favorite short story, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"  Check out We Were the Mulvaneys, a moving, dark story about the disintegration of a "perfect" family after the only daughter is attacked one night and her father can't cope with the violation of his daughter.  I also love Blonde, Oates's fictional life of Marilyn Monroe; I had no interest in Monroe at all until reading this book.  The same is true for The Falls, a novel that begins with a new husband committing suicide on his honeymoon at Niagara Falls, a tourist site which also didn't interest me until JCO immersed me in her story.
• 18/1: Margaret Atwood.  I admit that I love Canada and therefore love Margaret Atwood all the more.  Atwood writes great literary fiction, great historical fiction, great speculative fiction set in a dystopian future.  She is known for her social conscience as well as her humor and lately has become an avid Twitter user (Tweeter?  Twitterer?).  Atwood won the Booker Prize for The Blind Assassin in 2000 and The Handmaid's Tale is required reading in many high schools and universities.  More recently Atwood has written two linked near-future novels, Oryx & Crake and The Year of the Flood, that predict apocalyptic catastrophe with the destruction of the environment and rampant genetic engineering.
• 20/1: Cormac McCarthy.  He's dark, he's twisted, he's reclusive, he's Cormac McCarthy.  McCarthy won the Pulitzer Prize for his post-apocalyptic novel The Road, and literary critic Harold Bloom called his novel Blood Meridian "the greatest single book since Faulkner's As I Lay Dying."  Two great places to start for readers wanting to try McCarthy--No Country For Old Men, which inspired the Academy Award-winning movie, and All the Pretty Horses, which won the National Book Award.  Both books are superb examples of McCarthy's writing style but aren't quite as bleak as some of his other books.
• 25/1: Maya Angelou.  Poet and memoirist (and cookbook writer) Maya Angelou is best known for her first memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, her story of growing up in rural Arkansas.  The book is required reading for many grade school students and I feel like it's sometimes dismissed because of the school-aged audience.  The best memoirs, though, seem to come from poets--Mary Karr, Nick Flynn, and also the first of the confessional memoirs, Caged Bird.  Angelou also composed and read a poem at Bill Clinton's first inauguration and is pals with Oprah.
• 45/1: Chinua Achebe.  The Nigerian born Achebe is best known for his first novel, Things Fall Apart.  The book, about a tribal man whose life is complicated when Christian missionaries arrive in his village, has sold over 8 millions copies and is the most translated work of African fiction in the world.
• 50/1: Ian McEwan.  A crafter of fine characters and stories, McEwan achieved a new level of fame after the release of the movie version of his novel Atonement struck box office gold.  A war story and love story, Atonement centers around a girl misinterpreting an encounter she observes between her older sister and a servant's son, leading to the young man's arrest.  When war erupts across Europe, he leaves to fight.  McEwan also won the Booker Prize for Amsterdam, and his most recent book is a humorous, amoral romp through global climate change called Solar.
• 66/1: Michael Ondaatje.  Ondaatje, another one of my Canadian crushes, won the Booker Prize for The English Patient, which was later made into the Oscar-winning film.  The book is a sweeping love story set before and during World War II, and like most instances, the book is even better than the movie.
• 75/1: Atiq Rahimi.  I admit that I wasn't really familiar with Rahimi until last year, but one of the cool aspects of the Nobel Prize is that it does have the potential to expose audiences to great literature from around the world.  Rahimi is definitely a great writer.  Born in Afghanistan, Rahimi lives and writes in France now, where he works as both a novelist and film-maker.  In 2008, Rahimi's novel The Patience Stone won the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary award.  The book tells the story of an Afghani woman caring for her wounded husband who lies comatose in a bed as war rages in the streets outside.  She's angry at her husband for deserting her via gunshot wound and slowly begins to tell him about her life for the first time, releasing her frustrations at her life, marriage, and the constraints placed on women in the Taliban-governed country.
• 100/1: Peter Carey.  Australian novelist Peter Carey is one of the most gifted storytellers writing these days.  He's twice won the Booker Prize, for Oscar & Lucinda in 1988 and The True History of the Kelly Gang in 2001.  His latest book, a historical novel based on the real-life social critic Alexis de Tocqueville, is entitled Parrot and Olivier in America, and it too is shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Who will win?  I myself think that it's about time a Canadian wins, so I'm crossing my fingers for Atwood, Ondaatje, or short story writer Alice Munro (also at 18/1 odds).  Unlike other prizes such as the National Book Award or Man Booker Prize, we won't have an inkling of the shortlisted books in advance.  In fact, the Nobel Prize doesn't reveal  finalists until 50 years after the presentation of the award.  It really could almost anyone walking away with the 10 million Swedish kroner and medal.

The End of the World As I Know It

I confess that I have a fondness for apocalyptic and dystopian fiction. The creepier the end-world scenario, the better--and what makes them creepy? The creepiest novels are the ones that seem eerily possible. Twenty years ago, Margaret Atwood predicted that a hyper-fundamentalist theocracy would begin to brainwash the country, subjugating women. And today, driving to Mississippi, I eavesdropped on a conversation at a convenience store that involved a woman telling a man that the reason a mutual acquaintance was still single was "'Cause she's lazy and she won't cook. How's she ever going to get a man if she can't cook?" I am pretty sure that religious cults insist that women know how to cook...writes the single woman who absolutely refuses to spend her free time in the kitchen. Pot? Kettle.

Anyway, there's a lot to fear in the near future, and here are a few of my favorite alternative, probably bleak, novels.

NEVER LET ME GO--Kazuo Ishiguro's terrific novel about exceptional teens raised in a "special" school will soon debut nationwide as the new film starrng Kiera Knightley. Ishiguro is a Booker Prize-winning writer, the story rivals all the great love sagas of literature, and then there's the creepy truth about these kids' lives and their special value to society. I can't wait for the movie.


CLOUD ATLAS--If you asked me what my favorite book of the decade was, it would be this experimental novel by the brilliant David Mitchell. CLOUD ATLAS ingeniously blends together six separate stories, from a Patrick O'Brien-esque naval tale to a "China Symdrome" nuclear threat to a dystopian future akin to Kevin Costner's "Waterworld," all centering on the theme of free will and independence. This book reaffirmed my desire to stay in the book business when I was considering graduate school. Books are just more fun.

THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD--No one manages to blend literary prestige with speculative fiction like Margaret Atwood, and THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD is her most recent stroll into the near future. The events of YEAR OF THE FLOOD are the same as those in ORYX & CRAKE, both book looking at what will happen if we continue to destroy the environment and tamper with potentially dangerous genetic engineering of the food supply. Killer viruses, a hippie gardening cult, and strippers make THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD highly entertaining as well as scary.

THE UNIT--Swedish authors are hot right now, with the Stieg Larsson trilogy dominating all of the top spots on the NYT Bestseller List, but don't think that Stieg is the only Swedish author out there. THE UNIT, by Ninni Holmqvist, is set in the near future and centers around Dorrit, a woman-of-a-certain-age who, upon turning 50, moves into a retirement community of sorts with other aging, childless singles. It's like a seniors mixer/party in a dorm facility, with classes and dances...and organ harvesting. THE UNIT questions a person's worth beyond one's ability to reproduce. Maybe if Dorrit had learned to cook and moved to Mississippi she'd have found a man....

THE ROAD--Cormac McCarthy's novel of a father and son trying to survive after global catastrophe, with cannibals roaming around and horrors around every corner, received a big push when Oprah picked it for her book group a few years ago. It's a bleak book to be sure, but also a moving portrait of love in the face of adversity.

THINGS WE DIDN'T SEE COMING--How could you not be curious about a book written by a guy who used to be a psychiatric nurse and then moved to Australia? These linked stories assume that the global shutdown foretold with Y2K does transpire and the world is thrown into chaos and famine. It could have happened.

THE RAPTURE--This creepy thriller centers around the daughter of religious fundamentalists who predicts the future...a future that involves 1,000 foot tidal waves destroying the earth. The cause of the waves? An offshore oil rig disturbs the dangerously volatile frozen methane at the bottom of the ocean, creating a massive explosion. You know, sort of like the recent gulf oil spill.

All of these books open lots of room for discussion, making them ideal for book groups.

Can You Sign It As "Liz, Will You Marry Me?"

Texas Book Festival 2009! A couple of weeks ago I rose at an unholy hour to drive the three hours to Austin in order to attend the annual Texas Book Festival, held every year on the Capitol grounds. I have a love/hate relationship with the Book Fest, going back to its creator (Laura Bush; sorry, not a fan) and the days when I worked it with a bookstore in the tents and it was invariably rainy, freezing, alternately stifling hot, and my favorite, tornadic. I also would prefer that the Texas organization chose to support Texas businesses in their book sales. Nonetheless, Texas Book Fest hosted over 200 authors this year, including some of my all time favorites. I've skipped the event in years past, but this year two of the four "If I Lived Near You, You'd Issue a Restraining Your On Me" authors were in attendance. I would have hit the road any hour hour to bask in their awesomeness.

I arrived at the Capitol at 9:50 am, just in time to hear Richard Russo kick off the festival by reading from his terrific novel THAT OLD CAPE MAGIC. Russo's event was large enough that the organizers had placed him in the sanctuary of the Methodist church that's next to the Capitol. The place was packed. I was supposed to meet my boss Valerie there, but there was no way I would find her in the crowd, so I took a seat in the back (close to the door in case my presence in a holy place peeved a heavenly entity into some divine retribution lightning strikes). Russo took the pulpit after a brief introduction and kicked off his reading with an apology; his selected reading contained choice words normally not uttered in a House of the Lord. Words that I would use...and one of the reasons I'm not a minister. Or nun. Anyway, he was great--hilarious, charming, a strong reader, and he held the crowd for a full hour as he read of the travails of a son negotiating his divorced college professor parents' strained relationships. If you haven't read this book, find it and buy it and read it. It's classic Russo--humane, funny, poignant--but at a third the page count of some of his tomes. This book is my rare exception to my "I hate beach chairs on book jackets" tenet.

After the Russo event, still unavailable to locate Valerie, I instead found Gianna in the bowels of the Capitol building, where she was waiting to hear Dan Chaon, author of the amazing AWAIT YOUR REPLY (previously mentioned on this half-assed blog). Gianna and I had eaten dinner with Dan a couple of nights before, the day his book was named one of the 10 Best of the Year by Publishers Weekly (well-deserved). Dan is the antithesis of the jerkwad author; he's a delightful dinner companion and reader, and the kind of guy with whom you just want to sit around and talk books. He was part of a panel at the Book Fest, and as the room filled to capacity I relinquished my seat and set off to find my lost boss instead, leaving Gianna after a brief hello. I did find Valerie, though, and we walked through the tents of exhibitors. Unlike just about every other year, the weather was perfect and the Festival was actually festive. I ran into more friends that Saturday than I've seen since, say, the days when I was in college and saw all of my friends (and enemies) every single day. We strolled, gossiped, and then ate lunch with one of Valerie's old friends. Then Valerie said good-bye and I went off to stalk authors.

Specifically, I drove to Austin to see two people: Colson Whitehead and Margaret Atwood. Recently Gianna sent me an email asking me what my five favorite books of the 2000's were. I sent her a list and she sent me hers in return. The common thread? JOHN HENRY DAYS by Colson Whitehead. Everyone should read this book. I love it. Anyway, because lunch took awhile, I missed his reading, but like any good stalker I knew where to catch him in the signing tent and I was fourth in line, camera ready. The line attendant asked me if I'd like for the author to personalize my book. I answered, half-jokingly, "Will he write, 'Will you marry me?'" The woman laughed nervously and walked on. On the one hand, I like making people uncomfortable. On the other, I do work for his publisher and should mind my manners. When I introduced myself as his sales rep, though, he was generous and thanked me for my work on his books. He didn't propose...perhaps because I think he's already married and because he probably didn't know he was supposed to...but I still love him.

And from the wondrous Mr. Whitehead's presence, I walked down to the Paramount Theater, a few blocks from the Capitol, because if I had to maim children, I would in order to see Margaret Atwood speak. I can't think of an author I more revere. She's a tremendous writer, she's crusty and funny, and she's from Canada. I love Canada. I collect her books as a chronicle of my life--where I was and what I was doing at the times I first read them. I sometimes pretend that she's my grandma. We get along swimmingly in my imagination. And I love Canada. Anyway, I was thirty minutes early for the event and here's what I saw when I arrived: (left)
I, apparently, am not the only Atwood fan out there. The theater, once we were allowed to enter, quickly filled to capacity, and in the dark the place bubbled with anticipation. Finally, there she was. My granny, my elder Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every literary way. The format of the program was a Q & A with a moderator, Ben Moser, who happens to be the son of the manager of Brazos Bookstore in Houston. Ben, who is the books editor for Harper's, held his own versus the feisty Atwood, and both had the crowd laughing and engaged in the perils of global destruction (the cautionary tale of Atwood's latest novel, the dystopian THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD). I was enthralled. People aren't supposed to take pictures inside the Paramount, so I only took seven. Having already read and sold the book, and already a follower of Atwood's blogging and Twittering (she's a big fan of organic coffee), there wasn't a whole lot that was said that I didn't already know, except for the people who were there. I found their reactions to this author's work surprising. For example, it never even occurred to me that their aren't happy endings in Atwood's novels. She made a point of saying that none of her books is Hamlet, in which only one person is alive at the end. I guess I never read books expecting a happy ending. I consider that desire for cheery resolution a bit immature and simplistic. The real world isn't like that (or at least, my version of the world). I'm regularly surprised by readers who want happy endings. I tend to dislike books that end this way. Anyway, after the stage portion of the event, Atwood moved to the balcony area of the theater and began to sign books. I somehow managed to end up four people from the end of the line, and therefore had a ton of time to kill by talking to the other people waiting...and waiting...and waiting. We waited for almost two hours. The staff members working the event after a long day of big authors (Buzz Aldrin was at that venue before Atwood), looked like they would tackle people for a cocktail. Finally, though, I was standing next to her, talking to her, bumbling before her. And she was taking down my name for the restraining order. I'm quite convinced that Canada will confiscate my passport the next time I attempt to cross that border. I'm willing to risk Canadian jail though. Mounties are cute in those uniforms, ay?