The day of reckoning has arrived. I’ve passed judgment on Shadow Country and The Lazarus Project for The Morning News Tournament of Books. Which book did I pick? Click to find out.
Appearing Elsewhere: Judgment Day
Great book list at TEV
To commemorate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Mark has posted a really good list of books about the Holocaust. I highly recommend it.
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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.
More Amazon Wackiness
As anyone who has worked as a bookseller before can attest, book stores seem to attract a disproportionate number of crazies, people with odd obsessions, questionable hygiene, and/or highly developed eccentricities. Some might decry the modern online book store because it does not allow for this unique slice of life, but, as it turns out, even Amazon has its own resident crazies. Check out the reviews by the Amazon.com JFK obsessive. For a quick taste, here’s his take on Seven Deadly Wonders, a thriller by Matthew Reilly.7 Deadly Wonders has America as the Bad Guys and England not even seriously in the race for the Capstone of the Great Pyramid of Cheops. When I read the plot outline I thought the old Gizar is plateauing. On a happier note I had a dream about 4 Year Old Caroline Kennedy describing a crayon drawing to President Jack Kennedy saying “I hope you like me Daddy” The next thing you know I’ll be tapped four the Skulls. Well I have always been a Kennedy family loyalist. Thanks to JFK and his clever and beautiful First Lady La Loi Exige. Following your Taft outline of going to Texas Florida Arizona and then back to Texas I am guessing that you are in Texas at a secure bunker Mister Shadow President. As your second in command I would like to join you with my Daughter Julia at that bunker as soon as possible Sir. Thanks to Amazon for allowing freedom of speech like the kind President George W Bush supports.(via)
More NaNoWriMo
Sloganeering rightly takes me to task for my sloppy framing of the NaNoWriMo debate – primarily the fact that I make no attempt to present the opposite point of view – and does it for me by pointing to Websnark’s pro-NaNoWriMo post from a year ago.Clearly some people find NaNoWriMo useful (or at least fun) or it wouldn’t still be around, but I question the idea that it’s good for aspiring writers. Websnark presents four reasons why NaNoWriMo is an instructive exercise. The first three touch on the idea that if you want to be a writer, you have to stop being lazy and/or afraid and you have to write every day. This is undoubtedly true, and at the very least NaNoWriMo shows people how hard this really is, though I have my doubts that very many people continue to write every day on December 1 and beyond, which is the point, right? Essentially, I’m not convinced that there’s an easy trick to learning how to write every day, or even that it can be taught at all.Websnark’s last reason for liking NaNoWriMo is that “There are worse reasons to form a community than creativity,” and that is about the best defense of NaNoWriMo that I can come up with as well. There certainly worse, less productive things one could do with one’s time, and NaNoWriMo makes a solitary, often grueling endeavor fun and social, if only for one month out of the year. But, then, if writing weren’t solitary and grueling, we’d all have novels out.
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Cottagers Week
My nominee for this season at the LBC, The Cottagers by Marshall N. Klimasewiski, is being discussed this week. I hope you’ll join the discussion over there. My first post is on suspense and the contemporary novel.
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Title Your Novel in Three Easy Steps! or, The Abstraction of Abstraction
We’ve written about how difficult it can be to find a proper title for a work-in-progress. Lately, however, we’ve started to notice a certain trend that may make things easier on the budding novelist. Consider the following novels, all published within the last couple years: The Inheritance of Loss; The History of Love; The Story of Forgetting; The God of Small Things; and The Secret of Lost Things.Certainly there’s some precedent for titling a work with the prepositional construction “The Blank of Blank.” (The Wings of the Dove, The Heart of the Matter, and The Nightmares’ forgotten R&B classic “The Horrors of the Black Museum…” come to mind, and and that’s just off the top of our heads.) Indeed, pairing a wispy abstraction with something surprisingly concrete can be a recipe for piquancy: Think of The Possibility of an Island or The House of Mirth.The innovation represented by the recent spate of prepositional titles is the pairing of two abstractions. A writer willing to settle for the tried-and-true might consider recombining some of the nouns above to create a title for her manuscript, such as The Secret of God, The Lost Things of Small Things, or The Inheritance of History. But for the truly ambitious, may we suggest the following approach: roll some virtual dice, take the corresponding abstract nouns from Column A and Column B, insert a “the” (or two) and an “of,” and you’re off to the races!Column A:1. Earnestness2. Persistence3. Irritability4. Malodorousness5. Malice6. WhimsyColumn B:1. Splendor2. Etiquette3. Particle Physics4. Numismatism5. Large Things6. Medium Things
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The Road: A Comedic Translation (Part 1)
In the knapsacks were essential things: tins of food, metal utensils, a broken Slinky, a canopener, three bullets, a picture of ham.
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