Those oft-quoted Amazon sales rankings don’t really tell you much. They just give a snapshot of how a book is selling at a particular moment. TitleZ can track how a book’s ranking moves over time. There’s some debate about how much those rankings really tell you, but this is a fun toy nonetheless. (via)
Tracking Amazon Rankings
A Reader’s Affliction
In the Indian newspaper Business Standard, Nilanjana S. Roy declares "There is always a point in the life of the avid reader when you have to make a choice between your books and your sanity." She is not saying that reading will drive you mad but that the multiplying volumes owned by many book lovers could.I love having books around, and Mrs. Millions and I certainly have a lot. I've found that our book collection is quite fluid, expanding to fill the vessel it occupies - the result being that in our large apartment in Chicago the shelves seemed to fill as soon as we put them up, with additional stacks spreading to any available surface like some sort of creeping mold. In our slightly smaller row house in Philadelphia, at least half of our collection has been relegated to the basement. But we like the books we own, and to keep it that way we go through the occasional purge. (See the post Options for Basement Booksellers for ways to conduct your own purges.)Getting back to Roy, her suggestions for keeping the towering book piles at bay are fairly creative: conduct regular "inspections" of your library; follow the "one in, one out" rule; spend more to buy less by sticking with hardbacks; use the library more. I'm sure that if, as I mused yesterday, digitizing personal book collections were feasible, she would suggest that as well. As it stands now, she says she's "beginning to follow the 'Google Books' rule; if a book is available online in sufficiently reasonable form, it will only be bought in book form if the edition is rare enough or beautiful enough to justify this." Not a bad idea, but I'd likely only follow that rule if the book was for reference rather than reading. And anyway, we're moving to a bigger place soon, so that means plenty more shelf space to fill.
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The Grinch who Hates Harry Potter
Joel Stein of the LA Times is bravely calling the wrath of legions of Harry Potter fans down upon himself, but I can't say that I agree with what he's trying to say. First there's the headline: "Hogwarts fans, you're stupid, stupid, stupid." Not mincing any words there. Stein is apparently infuriated that so many adults are excited about the upcoming Harry Potter book. "Next Saturday, when the sixth Harry Potter book comes out, at the very least I want you to stammer excuses when I see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on your nightstand. I want you to claim you're reading it to make sure it's OK for your kids, or your future kids, or even, if you have to, for kids in general," he writes. He goes on to bash adults who enjoy C.S. Lewis, E.B. White and J.R.R. Tolkien ("Isn't it a clue that you should be ashamed of reading these books past puberty when the adults who write them are hiding their first names?") and Finding Nemo. Stein's grating tone aside, there are two points I'd like to make: First, some of the best books and movies we have were written for kids (or kids AND adults). It must be sad to go through life avoiding "kid stuff" because you don't deem it to be intellectually up to par. Secondly, what do you think all these adults who are reading Harry Potter will read instead? It will be Dan Brown and James Patterson on their nightstands, if they read at all. Is that really so much better? I say that if people are reading it's a good thing for the book industry and for our culture - even if it is just a kids' book.
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You Autocomplete Me
If Carl Jung had lived to see Google Search, he might have had a thing or two to say about how its auto suggest function is revealing the Internet's collective unconscious. For those who don’t know, auto suggest is a handy feature that helps you search when you don’t know what it is you're searching for. As you type, Google tries to read your mind, offering helpful suggestions based on the letters you have already entered. If, for example, you were to type “the mill” Google might guess you are searching for "the millions" (you were, weren’t you?) and helpfully add the term to a list that appears below the search bar. On the other hand, it might suggest “the million dollar man.” We do, after all, have the technology.
Although it’s not entirely clear how Google generates suggestions, they are at least in part based on searches entered by other users. The more popular a search, the more likely it is to appear at the top of the list of suggestions. At first, this might seem like an innocuous feature, but on closer inspection, it turns out to be a powerful tool for peering into the murky depths of the collective unconscious. How murky, you ask? For a peek into the abyss, head over to autocompleteme (may be NSFW, if you can believe it....), where a team from among the legion of unsung Internet heroes has posted some of the bizarre treasures they have dredged up from Google’s auto suggest.
A quick peek at autocompleteme can tell you a lot about the state of the English-speaking world circa 2009. We're stupid: “How come... a cupcake is not a mineral?”, paranoid “how to tell... your cat is planning to kill you?” and racist “I am... extremely afraid of Chinese people.” Its pages are full of bizarre, hilarious, and sometimes disturbing searches that are apparently so popular that Google assumes you, too, might find them useful. Of course, any number of the oddest results might just point to song lyrics, elaborate practical jokes, random hipster t-shirt slogans, and Simpsons quotes.
That's all beside the point, though. Because what makes auto suggest most compelling is not the nonsense results or the unintentional comedy. It's what it says about the human condition. Every day hundreds of millions of supplicants come to Google, the new Oracle, in search of answers. From innocence ( “how to... kiss”) to despondence (“I w... ant to die.”), they share their fantasies and desires, their deepest fears and anxieties. And every day, Google suggest lets them know they are not alone.
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Arriving 658 Years Ahead of Schedule…
As reported at The Complete Review, FSG has announced a publication date for Roberto Bolaño's massive final work, 2666. In both hardcover (912 pages!) and softcover (a three-paperback boxed set!), the book will hit shelves on November 11, just in time for the birthday of a certain Bolañophile I know. I'm picturing a more adult version of the Harry Potter release parties: customers queueing up outside their neighborhood bookstores at 11 p.m. the night before, wearing small round spectacles, smoking cigarettes and scribbling poetry on toilet paper. I suppose it's time we started figuring out how to get blogger to accept tildes. [Ed note: We've got them this time, but it takes no small amount of HTML wrangling.]But seriously, folks: 2666 offers a bright spot at the end of what some observers believe will be a wrist-slittingly bad year for hardcover fiction sales. Not incidentally, it belies a number of pieties: that there's no market for work in translation, that literary fiction is a tough sell... The New Directions and FSG publicity departments have been canny custodians of the Bolaño franchise, and the result has been an unmixed good: the introduction of an important Spanish-language writer to an American readership hungry for good books. I've had mixed reactions to some of Bolaño's shorter works, translated by Chris Andrews (I'm currently working my way through Nazi Literature in the Americas), but Natasha Wimmer's translation of The Savage Detectives was easily the best new novel I read last year.2666, which I'm surmising relates to The Savage Detectives somewhat in the way The Silmarillion relates to The Hobbit, was mentioned on our "Most Anticipated Books" list for 2008. There had recently been some speculation that it would appear again as a most anticipated book for 2009. It's impressive that, amid what appears to have been lots of pressure to produce, Ms. Wimmer managed to deliver a manuscript in time for this year's winter holidays. There's something a little unnerving about the idea of translating under the gun, but in this case, Ms. Wimmer's process may have mirrored Bolaño's own; the author had to race to finish his magnum opus before liver failure took his life when he was fifty.Bonus links:Natasha Wimmer interviewed at The Quarterly ConversationFrancisco Goldman surveys the Bolaño canon
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Brick Lane sparks a dispute
A row (as they say over there) has erupted over the filming of a movie based on Monica Ali's novel Brick Lane, spurring protests and threats of a book burning. The anger has arisen from the portrayal of Bangladeshis in the book. So far a number of notable authors have come out in support of Ali, including Salman Rushdie, Hari Kunzru and Lisa Appignanesi, as discussed in the Guardian. Now a few weeks old, the dispute is sparking secondary disputes amongst the British literati, who are taking sides. The Independent goes into detail about how "Rushdie has launched an outspoken attack on fellow literary heavyweight Germaine Greer."
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End of year book lists
With Thanksgiving come and gone, the end of year best book lists are beginning to arrive. The New York Times list is 100 strong as usual, and despite not being particularly exclusive, the accolade is sure to grace the covers of the paperback editions of many of these books. It's good marketing really. Something about that word "Notable" (along with the Times name, of course) on the cover of a book makes browsing readers want to pick it up.The Guardian has a less conventional list up. For that list, a number of well-known writers share their favorite books of the year. Hilary Mantel's Beyond Black makes an impressive showing, cited by John Banville, AS Byatt, Philip Pullman and Zadie Smith. Mantel herself names John McGahern's Memoir and The Tyrannicide Brief by Geoffrey Robertson. The New Yorker ran a substantial piece on Mantel earlier this year. I love that the Guardian runs features like this, and I wish that there were an American paper that would do the same thing with American writers.
More Reading Diaries by Emre Peker
In an effort to keep up with my Turkish reading, I reverted to one of my favorite authors Atilla Ilhan for the fifth book in a series of 6 titled Dersaadet'de Sabah Ezanlari (Morning Calls to Prayer in Istanbul). This novel too, unfortunately, is not translated into English. Frankly, I could have used a good translation myself as the language of the novel was embroidered in early 1900s "high" Istanbul Turkish, hence employing a lot of Persian and Arabic words, and therefore extremely difficult to follow. Nevertheless, Atilla Ilhan is a master whose historic novels reflect the power struggles among the politically significant personalities of Istanbul - as well as their indecisive nature and pitiful lack of influence - during the occupation of the city in the aftermath of World War I. I strongly recommend Dersaadet'de Sabah Ezanlari to any Turkish readers that follow the Millions. Surely, you must read the prequels first, which are Kurtlar Sofrasi volumes I and II, Sirtlan Payi and Bicagin Ucu.Next I turned to The Moviegoer by Walker Percy upon my good brother John D. Davis' recommendation. Indeed, the novel was everything that he described to me: struggles of an elite Southern gentleman about to turn thirty and seeking a meaning, goal, and career in life. The subject is deeply intriguing since I, save for the Southern part and minus a couple of years in age, battle with similar issues. What is most intriguing is Binx Bolling's ambivalence to his family's legacy. This particular quality enables Binx (Jack) to analyze everyone surrounding his life with utmost precision. There is his ever criticizing Aunt Emily, his successful, catholic and acquiescent Uncle Jules, his manic-depressive cousin Kate, his hot secretaries, a bunch of relatives that Binx cares little for, and his fraternity brothers from Tulane who are all full of advice and ideas as to the proper way of going about life, getting settled, and marrying the right woman. Binx, for his part, could care less for advice. The internal struggles of this Korean War veteran push him to resist his customary temptation to tease life and instead to take matters into his own hands. The events that subsequently shape Binx's life unfold on the eve of Mardi Gras in New Orleans in the mid-1950s, much to the self-reflective amusement of the reader. The Moviegoer is a very witty and entertaining read, with a great language and good hold on Southern culture. I look forward to reading other works of Walker Percy and have rather high hopes.You can see Max's thoughts on The Moviegoer here.
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