I spend so much time talking about serious (grown up) books that I sometimes forget that books had a completely different hold on me when I was a little fella. These days I like to read something that will challenge me, and I seek people out who will discuss a particular book with me. We turn the book around in our heads poking it and prodding it, making this or that judgment, and then we set the book carefully aside and rush onward to the next one. It really doesn’t bear much resemblance to the way my five year old self felt about books. Back then it was the purest escape. I could open a book and be utterly immersed within its confines. Such is the boundlessness of the young imagination that I could dwell in the same book almost endlessly. I gave no thought to picking up the same book day after day for weeks on end. As we grow older, our imaginations atrophy and it becomes difficult to immerse ourselves in a story and pictures in the same way. There are, however, a special handful of books that are powerful enough to remind you of what it was like to be five again. The Olivia series by Ian Falconer is able to do this. Something about the dreamy illustrations and the antics of a stubborn pig can make you forget yourself for a few minutes. The third Olivia book comes out today. It’s called Olivia . . . and the Missing Toy, and if you are at a bookstore today and you want a bit of merriment, take a look, you won’t be disappointed.
For the Kids
New book previews: Garcia Marquez, Iweala
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a Nobel Laureate with a decent claim to the mantle of "greatest living writer," has a new book out this week called Memories of My Melancholy Whores. It's been out in the Spanish-speaking world for a year, so most folks have heard what this slim volume is about: according to the Times Online: "a respected journalist, breaking the rules of a lifetime to fall madly, anarchically, transgressively in love with a 14-year-old girl on the eve of his 90th birthday." The review goes on to say, "There is not in this slender book one stale sentence, redundant word or unfinished thought." But Tania Mejer in the Boston Herald writes, "To call Gabriel Garcia Marquez's latest effort disturbing is an understatement," and later, "every time I reflect on the story, I can't help but think how unsettling it is." In fact, the reviews across the board seem torn over this book - is it yet another transcendent example of Marquez's writing or is it creepy? Luckily the Complete Review is keeping score and gives this one a B+. See Also: The Marquez scoop and an early look. Update: Here's the glowing review in the Chicago Tribune that Pete mentioned in the comments. Amazing the disparate reactions to this book.23-year-old Uzodinma Iweala started his debut novel, Beasts of No Nation in high school after reading an article about child soldiers in Sierra Leone. The novel is told in the pidgin voice of a child soldier in an unnamed West African country. Iweala, who is American-born but has Nigerian roots, is already receiving plaudits from some big names. In an interview with MoorishGirl, Salman Rushdie named it "book he most enjoyed reading recently," and Ali Smith in a review at the Guardian described the book as "a novel so scorched by loss and anger that it's hard to hold and so gripping in its sheer hopeless lifeforce that it's hard to put down."
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New Book Previews: Thomas O’Malley, Xue Xinran
In the Province of Saints, a first novel by the Irish writer - and Iowa Writers' Workshop grad - Thomas O'Malley is being compared to Angela's Ashes. The subject here is a down-on-its-luck family in an Ireland of the late 70s and early 80s that was still ravaged by sectarian violence. PW says "his sentences have a judicious clarity even as they twist into gnarled shapes; they carry O'Malley's characters though their incomprehension with poise and assurance." Here's one excerpt and another. The book comes out in late August.Xue Xinran was a radio show host in China before she moved to England. Her first book, The Good Women of China collected the stories she heard from women who called in to her radio show. Xinran's first novel, Sky Burial, is fictionalized from a story she heard in her more recent journalistic endeavors. It's about a couple split up by the conflict in Tibet in the 1950s. Scott recently pointed to this review in the SF Chronicle, and PW says, "Woven through with fascinating details of Tibetan culture and Buddhism, Xinran's story portrays a poignant, beautiful attempt at reconciliation." The book is out this week. Here's an excerpt.
What people are reading: The Harry Potter edition
I only took the train one way today - Mrs. Millions was kind enough to pick me up this afternoon - but I still spotted at least three people reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in various stages of completion while riding the El this morning including one young man who was vigorously finishing the final pages. I wasn't surprised to see Harry Potter on the train this morning, nor will I be surprised to see it a lot in the coming weeks considering the astonishing sales numbers the book generated this weekend. According to Scholastic Books, Potter sold 6.9 million copies over the weekend - that's 250,000 copies an hour, more copies than 99.9% of books will sell in a lifetime. Barnes and Noble reported selling about 105 copies a second. You can get all the numbers here. Here's my favorite stat, though. From the Guardian: "Retailers said that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince had sold more copies in a day than The Da Vinci Code sold in one year."All of this reminded me of my days selling Harry Potter books when I worked at a bookstore. As I recall, the day Part 5 came out, we sold more copies of that book than all the other books we sold that day combined, and this was at an independent bookstore on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, not exactly the kind of place that caters to kids. People can banter back and forth about whether or not Harry Potter books are any good - or whether or not adults should read them - but I know that they were good for our bookstore. For an independent, a big seller like Harry Potter can subsidize that less profitable business of trying to supply good literature to a dwindling group of interested readers.
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A Hidden Corner for the Hardcore: The New Yorker’s Summer Flash Fiction Series
The best part about The New Yorker’s summer flash fiction series is that The New Yorker did a summer flash fiction series. The worst part about The New Yorker’s summer flash fiction series is that if you blinked you missed it.
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Appearing Elsewhere
NY-based readers are invited to "Step Inside the Book" at a reading/party I'm doing this Friday with Alex Rose (The Musical Illusionist) and Alex Itin (Orson Whales). Alex will be working his narrative/surroundsound magic, Other Alex will be screening his multimedia books, and I'll be showing art and reading fiction from A Field Guide to the North American Family. Drinks are on the house, I'm told, so if you're free, stop by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Swing Space, at 125 Maiden Lane, between 7 and 9 p.m. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming...
Bolaño Not a Heroin Addict, Sources Say
The American press' characterization of the late Roberto Bolaño as a one-time heroin addict is "stupid," according to people close the the celebrated Chilean writer. The novelist Enrique Vila-Matas, in a recent El País column, joined European bloggers in suggesting that The New York Times Book Review's allusion - "Bolaño was a heroin addict in his youth" - was "a biographical error." Now, apparently, Bolaño's widow, Carolina López, has written a letter to the Times clarifying the point.The letter, which we're told will be published soon, will likely reiterate López' comments after a recent festchrift for Bolaño's work. At that celebration, the audience was treated to a dramatic reading of the story "La Playa" ("The Beach"), in which the narrator recalls his struggles to kick heroin. Afterward, concerned that there might be some confusion, López reiterated to performer Subal Quinina that "La Playa" was fiction.As we reported last week, "La Playa," published as a newspaper column several years ago, was the source for Natasha Wimmer's characterization of Bolaño as a recovering addict in the introduction to the paperback edition of The Savage Detectives. It was also the only specified source for Daniel Zalewski's earlier mention of a heroin habit in The New Yorker. (Whence, presumably, it made its way onto the Bolaño Wikipedia page). Since then, heroin has become a ubiquitous detail in the American media blitz for 2666, and though the NYTBR may be the most recent example, references can be found in sources from The Buffalo News to Time to The Texas Observer...and The Millions.As we suggested last week, the myth of Bolaño as junkie neither honors nor dishonors the work; the two long novels, over time, will prove unassailable. However, if the heroin story is false, we owe it to the man to correct the record. And perhaps in the future we should all be more careful readers.
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Remembering a Literary Giant
Yesterday was the centennial of the birth of Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. So if you can find the time, dig up your copy of The Lorax, Horton Hears a Who!, or Yertle the Turtle. They are guaranteed to make you smile.
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