For those interested in the new Litblog Co-op, check out the article (reg. req.) that appears in today’s LA Times featuring comments from litbloggers Mark Sarvas, Ed Champion, and MoorishGirl.
More Litblog Co-op news
The LBC Autumn 2006 Pick
The LBC members have unveiled their latest selection. It’s a great little book about a literary rat.
Book Banners
As Banned Books Week closes, we naturally have news of more attempted book bannings. In Atlanta, a woman is leading a crusade to have the Harry Potter books removed from school libraries because they are “an ‘evil’ attempt to indoctrinate children in the Wicca religion.” And in Houston, in a particularly poorly conceived move, concerned parents are trying to ban Ray Bradbury’s anti-censorship tome Fahrenheit 451, after a student was offended by “the cussing in it and the burning of the Bible.” Although these efforts are distinguished by being ill-timed, they’re really no different from the book banning attempts that so frequently make the news. It seems like nearly every week there is a new book banning story to read as I look through the newspaper book pages.It has occurred to me, in reading all of these stories that these attempts to ban books almost never succeed, and that if any of these would be book banners read the paper they would know this. It follows then that a lack of curiosity, awareness, and probably education are all factors that breed book banners. The smaller one’s world is, the more likely he is to want to ban a book. In this way, the book banner is like the fundamentalist who desires to impose an irrational act on others in the name of blind faith. It is disconcerting to me how much noise these attempts sometimes make — the battles can rage on for weeks in local newspapers and at school board meetings. Still, it is heartening that books are so rarely banned, and that so many are often willing vocally to defend them.
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Appearing Elsewhere
In my most recent “Year in Reading” post, I mentioned Joseph McElroy’s Women and Men, a 1200-page novel it took me six weeks to consume and six months to digest. A somewhat longer, though still woefully inadequate, consideration appears today at The Los Angeles Times’ Jacket Copy blog, as part of “Postmodernism Month.” If you are like me one of those odd readers for whom the conjunction of the phrases “1200-page” and “Postmodernism” whets your appetite, pop on over to Jacket Copy and check it out.
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Quick Notes: Zadie Smith and Jonathan Safran Foer
In the comments of the last post, Laura asked about a new novel by Zadie Smith called On Beauty. There’s no release date yet for the US, but I suspect it will be close to the UK date, which has been set for September. The Guardian has described it as “a transatlantic comic saga,” but I haven’t seen anything else regarding the subject matter. Smith is also writing a musical about based on the life of Kafka with her husband Nick Laird as well as a non-fiction book called Fail Better that will come out in 2006.Of all the books mentioned in my preview post, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close seems to be generating the most excitement. Among those excited is my mom, who was inspired to dig up some links to some old interviews with and articles about Foer. These may help you pass the time until his new book comes out: an interview with Robert Birnbaum at identitytheory.com, an interview with Decode Magazine and a profile in The Jewish Journal.UPDATE: Found this story when reading back through the archives at Conversational Reading. It asks when America’s fiction writers will take on the subject of 9/11. While I think it’s an odd request — I’ve never been under the assumption that fiction writers are expected to pen novels ripped from the headlines — we will soon have such a book: Foer’s new novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. From Houghton Mifflin’s description of the book: “Oskar Schell is an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center.”
New Year’s Resolution
I’m not really one for New Year’s resolutions, but I wanted to echo and add to something I wrote about last year around this time. I’ve always been an avid reader. As long as I can remember, I’ve spent a portion of my day reading, but it was keeping this blog that really helped me grow as a reader. I’ve valued the discussion, the community and having a platform to share my thoughts. I think, though, the most valuable part of this experience for me has been using the blog as a reading journal. Keeping track of what I read and writing a few sentences about most of those books has changed the way I read. Before, I never kept track of what I read, but now I feel like I’m building a library of knowledge to mull over and share. Books live on in my memory a lot longer than they used to.So, if you happen to be in the market for a resolution this New Year’s, feel free to borrow this one. It’s simple: Keep track of every book you read this year. Write down the title and author, and, if you feel like it might be a worthwhile exercise for you, jot down a few thoughts about each book. It will enrich your reading experience.
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Spotify’s Hidden Literary Gems
The sexy repartee of Darcy delivered straight to my ears? The transatlantic, resounding voice of Sylvia Plath reading her poetry? An entire playlist of Shakespeare’s sonnets is there to delight, along with biographies of classical composers and Anton Chekhov short stories.
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What People Are Reading (Parts 2 & 3)
Next, non-fiction. People seem to be very excited about a new book by the French philosopher (and best-selling author in Europe) Bernard Henri Levy. Who Killed Daniel Pearl? is both a journalistic account of the kidnapping and brutal murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter and a deeper look at the rift between extremist Islam and the rest of the world. Imagine the musings of a philosopher detective retracing the final steps of a man he has never met. In other news, I proudly voted in an election that is sure to be a footnote in the history books. I did not vote for Arnold for personal reasons: I happen to be a rabid celebrity-ist, as in I discriminate against celebrities and, by law, I don’t think they should be allowed to hold public office. Just because someone appears regularly on television and movie screens, in magazines and on billboards does not mean they are qualified to do anything other than look pretty and pretend to be another person. But, of course, this is California and it is important to have leaders who are sufficiently glamorous representing the extremely glamorous populace. Needless to say, California is a peculiar and maddening place, progenitor and betrayer of national hopes and dreams, which, in so many words, is what Joan Didion is saying in her book, Where I Was from. My hope is that the reason this book continues to sell so well is that it is people’s way of taking this election with a grain of salt. Now I’m going to do something a bit hypocritical, watch as I go from celebrity-bashing to the Rolling Stones. But what can I say? The Rolling Stones, as The Beatles did a few years ago, have put together a beautiful and comprehensive coffee table book called According to the Rolling Stones, and people are buying it like crazy.Finally, a couple of paperbacks to mention: Dan Brown, like John Grisham before him, is using his huge breakthrough hit, The Da Vinci Code to sell his previous books which had, up until now, been ignored. Since everyone in the world seems to have read the Da Vinci Code by now, folks looking to keep the good times rolling have been buying an earlier book of his, Angels & Demons in droves. Also big in paperback is the recently released collection of essays by Jonathan Franzen called How to Be Alone. I seem to be one of the few who hold this opinion, but Franzen’s non-fiction bugs the heck out of me. The Corrections, however, is a must read.
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