I’m a map person. There are random maps all over the walls of my house, mostly freebies that my coworkers at the book store, knowing my interest, have passed along to me. Looking around right now I can see a “Rail Map of Europe,” “World Terrorism: a Reference Map,” and this odd, black and white, line drawing map of Illinois, among several others. When I live somewhere with enough room, I intend to have several atlases. Thus, I was excited to find today a book called You Are Here by Katharine Harmon. It’s sort of a popular history of maps with heavy focus on amateur maps, folk art maps, and maps that are related to popular culture. She is especially interested in what maps can tell us about the way we see the world. I’m looking forward to getting this one.
Mapping
Hurricane help
Colleen (a regular contributor at Bookslut) sent me an email about a program she's working on to help kids displaced by Hurricane Katrina. It sounds like a great plan; here are the details:I'm working with a group in Baton Rouge who are helping children sheltered with their families at Southern University. We have put together a couple of wish lists of books and games that the folks at Parkview Baptist Church will happily deliver to the SU kids and other area shelter kids. Feel free to buy off the lists, and send the links on to everyone you know and pass on my email to anyone who has any questions. We've had some success so far and several publishers, authors, illustrators and reviewers are all kicking in copies of books they are sending direct. If any of your readers would like to do that, I can provide the mailing address.
●
●
Top books of the week
The book that sent the most people to this site this week via the search engines was Moneyball by Michael Lewis. This book and the flap surrounding it has been a huge story on sports radio so it's no surprise that there are quite a few people looking for more info. The new books that have people talking this week are not a big surprise. An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 by Robert Dallek a noted presidential biographer, revealed the news that JFK had an ongoing ralationship with an 19 year old intern codenamed "Mimi." "Mimi" then broke her 40 year silence and went to the press. Don't be surprised if her book shows up soon. The other book in the news is The Clinton Wars by Sidney Blumenthal which is, according to the reviews I've read unabashed in annointing the Clinton years as paradise on earth. The book I talked about most this week was The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Alvaro Mutis. It is by far the best book I have read in a long time, and now that several friends have read it, our new hobby seems to be speculating on the whereabouts of the mysterious Maqroll the Gaviero. Read it...Judge a book by its coverI have come to notice during my time at the bookstore that, compared to the Brits, American book cover design is pretty dull. It seems that publishers are convinced that the only way to sell books to Americans is to make the covers as bland and non-threatening as possible. Compare the American cover of Hunter S. Thompson's new book to the British one and you'll see what I mean.
●
●
Short stories from leading authors
Not sure how long this has been on line, but if you haven't seen it, take a look. The Guardian has a sizeable batch of fiction on line from Richard Ford, Donna Tartt, Haruki Murakami and many others. (via Conversational Reading)
●
●
Remembering John Leonard, 1939-2008
A year and a half ago, when BEA was in New York, Max and I decided, against our better judgment, to attend a panel discussion on the fate of book reviewing. The headliner was the intellectual performance artist Christopher Hitchens. However, we both walked away more impressed by the grit, gravity, and grace of panelist John Leonard than we were by Hitch's charming bloviations.I'd been reading Leonard's "New Books" column in Harper's for years, but I emerged from that panel with a more expansive sense of the man, and promptly dug into his essays of the 1970s and 1980s. Those were years when vernacular brio and moral seriousness were not mutually exclusive - when glibness wasn't held in such high esteem. Like Pauline Kael, Leonard made criticism feel like a vital part of the American intellectual landscape.Moreover, Leonard was a fearless explorer (and often defender) of the new and the unconventional. To name but one example, his last essay for The New York Review of Books (on Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union) was a model of sympathetic inquiry.Leonard's death last week, at age 69, is thus both a substantial loss and a reminder that the life of the mind still matters. Leonard was a great critic. He was also something nobler: a great reader. He will be missed.
●
●
●