I’m hearing from reliable sources that Bunker 13 by Aniruddha Bahal is a wild thriller with an ending that is not to be believed. It takes place at the India / Pakistan border in the disputed region of Kahmir, so it also includes a good dose of the wider world for folks who are into that sort of thing. Also, Gary Shteyngart, author of The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, stopped in today and as he was signing his book, he mentioned that he will spend the next few months writing his sophomore effort in Italy. It is tentatively titled Absurdistan. Sounds interesting…. First took notice of Shteyngart in the New Yorker (he has contributed fiction and essays), and his book was very well recieved. He also has a great author photo, which I unfortunately can’t find on the web anywhere.
A New Book, and a Book So New It Won’t be out for Months
Harry Potter Mania Flickers On
J.K. Rowling's slow, inexorable slide out of retirement continues. As we noted a couple of months ago, "For someone who's not writing any more books about Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling sure is doing a lot of dabbling."Earlier this year, we wrote about one of Rowling's post-retirement dabblings, the production of seven handmade copies of Beedle the Bard, a book of "wizarding fairy tales" referred to in the Harry Potter series. Amazon spent $4 million on a copy, and then used it to market a writing contest. Part of the prize, incidentally, was the opportunity "to spend a weekend with the rare and delightful book of fairy tales (security guards included, of course)."Now that prize doesn't look quite so exclusive, as Bloomsbury and Scholastic have made an edition the book available for the masses for just $7.59 and arriving in early December, just in time for the holidays. Amazon is going one further, offering up to 100,000 pricier facsimile "collector's editions," with "a reproduction of J.K. Rowling's handwritten introduction, metalwork and clasp, and replica gemstones," as well as various other accouterments.All net proceeds go to a charity co-founded by Rowling.
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Stephen King Books That Break the Bank
Abebooks.com has posted a list of the Top 10 most expensive Stephen King books ever sold on the site. The number one book on the list is: The Regulators, Sold in July 2004: A leather-bound copy with four Winchester bullets emerging from the front cover and the shell cases entering the rear of the book - signed by "Bachman" and dedicated to Harlan Ellison. Sold for $8,000
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Barthelme and Pynchon
Counterpoint is rereleasing a collection of Donald Barthelme tidbits (it's subtitled "Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays"), The Teachings of Don B.. The collection is perhaps most notable in that it contains an introduction by Thomas Pynchon. I'm fairly certain it's the same essay by Pynchon that's found here. It begins:Though to all appearances a gathering of odds and ends, what this volume in fact offers us is the full spectrum of vintage Barthelmismo -- fictions thoughtfully concocted and comfortably beyond the reach of time, reactions less exempt from deadlines and rent payments to news of past moments that nonetheless remain our own, not to mention literary send-ups, intriguing recipes, magisterially extended metaphors, television programming that never was, strangely illuminated dreams, elegant ranting, debonair raving, and more, much more.Now that's a blurb.
Summer Reading
I'd have thought that the whole concept of summer reading lists for high schoolers would have fallen by the wayside, as it would seem to lack usefulness in our testing- and extracurriculars-obsessed education system, but a CS Monitor article shows that it's alive and well (and just in time for that last-two-weeks-of-summer cram).The article includes some interesting insights on the makeup of such lists and how they've changed over the years.For the most part, reading lists are still heavy on classics. But consider the differences between reading lists from the 1960s and those in the 1980s. Of the nine most commonly taught books in public high schools in 1963, only one (the 1938 play Our Town) was written in the 20th century. By 1988, the 10 most commonly taught novels in public schools included four books from the 20th century: The Great Gatsby (1925), Of Mice and Men (1937), Lord of the Flies (1954), and To Kill a Mockingbird (1960).But not all novels take a generation to catapult to required summer reading lists. Some new staples in summer reading lists: Life of Pi by Yann Martel, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon, Monster by Walter Dean Myers, and The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.Ten years ago, these reading lists didn't have new books like that," says Alleen Nilsen, Arizona State University English professor and co-author of the textbook Literature for Today's Young Adult. "These are really popular new books."So what catapults Life of Pi and The Lovely Bones to the elusive reading list club? Both are bildungsromans, or stories of young people coming of age. Ms. Nilsen says this theme is crucial for reading list inclusion, as youth need to feel a connection to the literature.