Mrs. Millions thanks all of you for your suggestions. We stopped by the Borders today, and she selected Michael Frayn’s Headlong. She wanted to purchase The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, as well, but the staff at Borders was unsuccessful in its half-hearted attempt to locate the book for us nor did it appear to be on the new releases/bestsellers table, all of which seemed odd to me because isn’t this supposed to be one of the big books of the summer? Well, hardcovers are no good at the beach anyway, so maybe we’ll pick it up when we get back. That’s all for now; time to go catch a plane.
Mrs. Millions buys a book
Literary Superheroes
There's an interesting story from the New York Times that describes a couple of fiction writers who are trying their hand at penning superhero comics. For Michael Chabon the move is the almost inevitable result of the success of his Pulitzer winner, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which, within the narrative, contains a lengthy accounting of a comic book created by Kavalier and Clay, the book's main characters. The comic book is about a Houdini-like superhero called the Escapist, and considering how fascinating Chabon makes this fictional comic book sound, it's only fitting that fans would want to own the real thing. Also mentioned in the article is the writer of popular thrillers (The Zero Game), Brad Meltzer taking over the writing duties at the DC Comics series "Green Arrow." Another well-known fiction writer, not mentioned in the article, who has long been crossing the line between comics and fiction, is Neil Gaiman who first became known for writing a comic book series called The Sandman before making a name for himself writing fantasy novels like American Gods. I've always preferred newspaper funnies and graphic novels to the superhero stuff, but genre jumping like this can produce interesting results.
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Breaking up isn’t hard to do
Most fiction is about people breaking up, right? So why not collect a bunch of fiction together and call it what it is.Two years ago Philadelphia based writer Meredith Broussard decided to do just this. She put together an anthology of stories about relationships gone wrong: 26 of them - arranged alphabetically - by various female authors. The result was The Dictionary of Failed Relationships, which includes stories by Heidi Julavits, Anna Maxted, Thisbe Nissen and Jennifer Weiner. Now Broussard is back with a follow up anthology from the men's point of view - again, 26 stories about love troubles arranged alphabetically - called The Encyclopedia of Exes with stories by, among others, Adam Langer, Jonathan Lethem, Jonathan Ames, Gary Shteyngart and Neal Pollack. Tou can find out more about both books at failedrelationships.com.
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War Book
One of the good things about working at my bookstore is that I can peruse any magazine I want without having to pay for it. Today's unlikely canditate was Vogue which I was skimming looking for anything by my favorite food writer Jeffrey Steingarten. No dice. Instead I came across an article about NPR's Anne Garrels who NPR listeners will recall from her gut wrenching reports from Bagdhad during the war. According to the writer of the article Farrar, Straus & Giroux will be releasing Garrel's book about the war, Naked in Baghdad, this September. Something to look forward to. In other news, I'm about to get my phone number put on the new nationwide do not call list because there are few things that I dislike more than telemarketers. Have a good weekend...
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Oprah announces latest pick; the living rejoice
When I started a book blog two and half years ago, I had no idea I would be paying such close attention to the activities of Oprah Winfrey, but here I am, again. The truth is, when I worked at a book store a few years ago (and not a very Oprah-friendly one, mind you) her influence on book sales and mainstream book culture in America was evident on a daily basis. With a few reservations, I applauded Oprah's decision to highlight "classic" novels, because it put these essential books into the hands of readers who might not otherwise be drawn to them. Now it appears as though this phase of Oprah's club has ended, and her gaze (which can bestow millions upon an unsuspecting author) has fallen once again upon the living. She says that she was "moved" by a letter signed by various living authors asking her to consider contemporary books once again, but perhaps, with the Summer of Faulkner, the "classics" experiment had simply run its course.Even if it hadn't been preceded by the Faulkner books, the current selection, James Frey's addiction memoir A Million Little Pieces would be a disappointment. While entertaining (I'm told), it's the switch to non-fiction, and more importantly, confessional memoir, that bothers me. Oprah's entire show is a confessional memoir. Her guests are invited on the show to pour out their souls so that viewers can cry along with them, and Oprah joins in. While previous picks, classic or otherwise, take us out of Oprah's world and into a narrative created by the author, books like A Million Little Pieces are indistinguishable from the content of her show, all of which makes this choice seem incredibly self-serving. Perhaps she'll get everyone to read a self-help book next.Several other bloggers have already weighed in: Scott, Annie, Authorstore
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Literary power couples
I've been getting emails extolling the virtues of Nicole Krauss's new novel, The History of Love lately. She, by the way, is also known as the wife of Jonathan Safran Foer, and there has been some suggestion that her new novel suspiciously resembles his. Seems like sour grapes to me, but it did get me thinking about contemporary literary couples, and how it seems like there's a lot of them. There's Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt. And then there's the couples where the woman is the bigger star like Zadie Smith and Nick Laird (he's a poet... does that even count?) and Alice Sebold and Glen David Gold. There must be others... writers attract writers it seems.This, of course, is not a new trend. Here's a list of some of history's literary power couples that I borrowed from a UPenn english department Web site: Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris, and Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson.
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New Books and a New Award
Some new books that are getting lots of praise, and some excerpts from those books:Natasha and Other Stories by David Bezmozgis -- review, excerptLittle Black Book of Stories by A.S. Byatt -- review, excerptYou Remind Me of Me by Dan Chaon -- review, excerptCrossing California by Adam Langer -- reviewAlso of note: the creation of the Man Booker International Prize has been announced. From the press release, "Worth £60,000 to the winner, the prize will be awarded once every two years to a living author who has published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language. The first winner will be announced in mid 2005." Now Americans will finally be able to get their hands on a Booker.
Holiday loot
Unlike in recent years, I didn't get a ton of books this year for Christmas nor did I give any - and, no, this had nothing to do with Joe Queenan's recent screed in the New York Times against giving books as gifts - though I can see where he's coming from. Nonetheless, I did get a couple of pretty cool items. The one that I'm most thrilled about is the shiny, new Complete New Yorker that my parents - who know me well - gave me. When I first heard about this back in June, I said this: "My fear is that once I got my hands on this set, I would be compelled to consume every word of it at the expense of school and work and everything else, possibly even eating and sleeping. I may have to put myself into forced hibernation starting in October in order to keep those DVDs from falling into my hands." But now that I actually own it, I'm willing to take the risk. In fact, I can't wait to get back to Chicago so I can start digging into this thing. I'll let you know how it goes.My brother gave me another cool "complete" set, the National Geographic Maps collection which contains every single map supplement published in the magazine from 1889 through 1999 on CD-ROM.From my parents, I also received a collection of interviews with writers like Thomas McGuane and William Styron called Story Story Story. Mrs. Millions, meanwhile, received a weighty tome called The World's Greatest Architecture: Past and Present from her folks.My favorite non-book gift, though, would have to be the XM Radio that Mrs. Millions gave me. I actually can't wait for our 14 hour drive back to Chicago so I can soak in all that satellite radio goodness.
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