The Book Catapult

The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson

2012-01-16T16:54:00.000-08:00

Citizens, gather 'round your loudspeakers, for we bring important updates! In your kitchens, in your offices, on your factory floors - wherever your loudspeaker is located, turn up the volume!

I don't know if the timing on the release of The Orphan Master's Son (January 10) is positive or negative in light of the recent death of North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il. Are we sick of hearing about the Dear Leader at this point, after being inundated for weeks from every news source in the Western hemisphere? Has the world moved on, ready to see what madness "Brilliant Comrade" Kim Jong-un will unleash?

I say, embrace the crazy of the DPRK's pater familias, at least for a little while longer - as Adam Johnson highlights in his new novel, you have no idea how bad it really is.

Johnson has said (in an interview with Richard Powers) that he set out, originally, writing a humorous short story about Kim Jong-il and his reported shenanigans in North Korea. (Tentatively titled, "The Best North Korean Short Story of 2005.") While researching for this "'official' short story of North Korea," he began reading testimonials from gulag survivors and defectors that forced him to change his tack.

As I read defectors' oral histories, each one of them more heartbreaking than the last, a sense of duty filled me. I abandoned all the true-but-loony material about the Dear Leader, which though real, made the work too farcical; instead, I decided to tell the story of a single average citizen who came of age during the famine.

The resultant novel is by no means farcical - or humorous, or hilarious, or comedic. It exposes North Korea to be all that we Westerners worry about - a fear state run by an egomaniacal madman with no system of checks and balances in place. It is merely a playground for the Dear Leader wherein everyone needs to play by his rules, around the clock, for fear of being sent to a prison camp or sentenced to death for speaking out of turn or failing to perform the expected duties of a proud citizen.

Raised in the Long Tomorrows orphanage, Pak Jun Do believes himself to be the son of the Orphan Master, rather than a common castoff - why else would he be singled out for extra punishments all his life? (This is just the first of many ingenious, subtle falsities within that twist and re-form the storyline in the hands of its characters.) In the wake of a massive national famine, Jun Do joins the army at age 14, becoming a tunnel soldier in the ongoing battle with the South over the DMZ. After 8 years of this, he is brought out of the darkness & conscripted to perform clandestine kidnappings of Japanese citizens for the State. Then, just as mysteriously, the kidnappings come to an end, Jun Do is taught English, and he is sent out to sea on a fishing boat where he listens to intercepted American radio transmissions.

It's best not to question the workings of the North Korean state, so just go with the flow here.

From there, Jun Do is sent to Texas, of all places, as part of a mysterious diplomatic mission - which goes horribly, predictably wrong, mostly due to the duplicitous nature of the Korean delegation, such as they are. Regardless, for his part in the failed mission, Jun Do is sent to languish in a prison mine for the rest of his days. It is at this point that the narration gets tilted on its axis and becomes something else entirely.

Believe it or not, this describes merely the first third of The Orphan Master's Son - a sprawling, multi-layered exposé of life behind the walls of one of the world's most guarded nations. Wait, there's more. At some point, while in prison, Jun Do assumes the identity of one Commander Ga - a revered national hero & a fearsome rival to Kim Jong-il himself.

"He was the winner of the Golden Belt in taekwondo. They said he rid the military of homosexuals."

As Commander Ga, Jun Do's story becomes a fiction within the fiction - one of false identities, deceits, and negotiating the labyrinthine corridors of Kim Jong-il's government. Jun manages to escape prison as Ga - and even though no one truly believes that he is actually the Commander, he inserts himself into Ga's life, moving in with his famous actress wife, Sun Moon (whom Jun Do has another connection to) and living Ga's life as if it were his own. This is all about survival, in the end, whether for himself or for those he cares for - the goal, all along, is to depart from the horrors of his homeland, one way or another. In one of the more ingenious narrative twists, in between the unfurling of "Ga's" story, we are given State propaganda broadcasts which counter & romanticize what we know has actually occurred. A fiction within the fiction, as it were - lies told about the liar.

As complicated as this all sounds, Johnson eases you into every element of it - laying every evolution out as plainly as he can, almost as a natural progression. Of course Jun Do is sent to Texas - why not? Of course he can assume the identity of a man whose face is known to every citizen in the whole country - why not? Jun Do himself evolves from innocent bystander in his own life to a major player on a national scale, bringing us along with him. And while Kim Jong-il is certainly the wizard pulling levers behind the curtain and his presence is felt behind every conversation and every decision made, the story is never specifically about him. Johnson successfully avoids falling into the satirical trap, focusing on what life in a fear state run by a puppet master madman must truly be like. Eventually, Kim is exposed as the fallible, short-sighted, lunatic dictator that we know him to be, opening a brief window for Jun Do. Even so, at its heart the novel is really all about the people who suffer in the wake of Kim's crazy - the citizens who live in fear under his iron hand, never even daring to try for a better life away from North Korea.

In the end, through simple storytelling on Adam Johnson's part, we are no longer jaded, Western observers of CNN reports on political maneuverings - we have witnessed (albeit in a fictional form) what life is like for the citizens of today's North Korea. And it ain't good. But there is always hope - and that hope is what drives this remarkable story along.

The Mirage by Matt Ruff

2012-01-09T06:00:00.000-08:00

History is, of course, all about perspective. Our own personal perspective, sure, but also our collective ethnocentric perspective. Author Matt Ruff has managed to flip all that we think we know about the last decade of world history on its collective ass in his new novel, The Mirage.

First, here's a little history: the United Arab States (UAS) was formed after 13 independent states around the Arab Peninsula broke away from the Ottoman Empire in the late-19th century. While Europe went to war in the early-20th century, the UAS quietly grew into an industrial giant with the discovery of local petroleum reserves. When North African Muslims were threatened by Germany in 1941, the UAS declared war on the Axis countries, liberating 5 African states to join the union in the process. In 1944, the UAS invaded France's southern coast, leading the Allied forces to victory. (Adolf Hitler was beheaded at Nuremberg in 1946.)

Over the ensuing decades, the UAS grew into a world superpower, expanding to 22 states & experiencing wealth and prosperity. On November 9, 2001, everything changed. Two airplanes hijacked by Christian fundamentalists from America crashed into the Tigris and Euphrates World Trade Towers in downtown Baghdad, killing thousands of people. A third plane was crashed into the Arab Defense Ministry headquarters in Riyadh. After a white supremacist group from the Rocky Mountain Territories in North America laid claim to the attacks, the UAS invaded Denver, sparking a decade-long War on Terror.

As you can see, much of this world is familiar, with significant twists. America is a third world backwater, filled with loose alliances, broken states, and fundamentalist militias. Osama bin Laden is a hero from the Afghan war with Orthodox Russia and a senator from Arabia. Saddam Hussein is a thug and an organized crime boss from Baghdad. The state of Israel is in what was northern Germany & occupies the West Bank of the Rhine. Lyndon B. Johnson was president of the Christian States of America (CSA) from 1963-2003. Louisiana was liberated by UAS troops in the Mexican Gulf War. You get the idea.

The real twist to this - yes, these are not the twists, in fact - is that in the present day, Arab Homeland Security has captured an American who claims that the whole world is just a mirage and that in the real world, everything is reversed. In the man's apartment, agents find a copy of the long-defunct New York Times dated September 12, 2001 that appears to refute his claims. As it turns out, AHS has other objects of interest in their possession: an American flag with a field of white stars instead of the familiar golden cross, a map of the Middle East with Israel instead of Palestine & Iran instead of Persia, and a French newspaper with similar headlines to the Times one. But what does this all mean?

"This mirage you speak of, it's God's doing?"
Costello nodded. "'The last shall be first, and the first last...' God's turned the world upside down."
"And why would He do that?"
"To punish us."
"The Americans?"
"Yes."
"For what sin?"
"Pride," Costello said.

Despite the phenomenally clever and original premise, The Mirage does have its faults. The cast of Arab Homeland Security agents and detective-types fall a little flat in the personality department and, while necessary for that all-important perspective, the familiar name dropping gets a little tedious. Dick Cheney, George Bush, Saddam, Osama, Kissinger, LBJ, even David Koresh. Law & Order: Halal, CSI: Damascus. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But stylistically it reads like a mass market thriller, which I think is the author's intention - with the notable exception that the entire plot premise gives the reader pause. Even with all the hokey faux-cultural references, The Mirage makes you think - it challenges our preconceptions about the inner workings of our world in a way that fiction rarely does. Rather than just being an out-of-the-box Tom Clancy novel, we are challenged to reflect on our world - and America's place in it - a little differently.

We live under the assumption that things are the way they are because that's just how it is - but Ruff proves that with just a slight tweaking, our world could be a very different place. In the case of his created universe, the perspective is only shifted to a different hemisphere - the world is very much the same, just from a different vantage point, but with huge ramifications. And like I said, history is all about perspective.

(The Mirage goes on sale at your local indie in February 2012.)

New Year, New Look

2011-12-31T13:51:00.000-08:00

Same old Catapult.
I'm currently fiddling with the Book Catapult's look, so bear with me. It seems that black is no longer "the new black," so I thought I'd switch it up.

If you're looking at this through the crap-caked glasses of Internet Explorer, things may not look so hot. Sorry.

Happy New Year!

2011 Catapult Notable List - #1

2011-12-29T06:06:00.000-08:00

Cover of the year, to boot.

#1: We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen

I read several outstanding books in 2011 - any one of the top three could have made it to the top spot at one point or another. This was an unusual year in that there was never a 100%, clear-cut Best with a capital B book for the year. Every year that I've ranked my reads like this, I've known way in advance what the #1 book was going to be. This time, for awhile I knew who was in the top 5, but not the order they would ultimately fall in. But there was just something extra in Carsten Jensen's sprawling, seafaring Danish epic that solidified its position in the top slot this year.

The fuller, longer Catapult review from March is right here for the readin'.

Spanning the years and generations from 1848 to 1945, We, the Drowned follows the sailors of Marstal – a tiny town on the island of Ærø in the Danish archipelago – as they travel the oceans of the world as adventurers, soldiers, sailors, fathers, & sons. As each narrative voice moves on, another from their life picks up the tale & makes it their own. When on dry land, the people of Marstal tell the story in a collective “we” – a narrative device that Jensen wields with majestic clarity & grace. Funny & poignant, heartwarming & powerful, yet dark & foreboding in a way that only the events of our own world can actually be.

I know that I'm partial to novels of the sea, or involving whales, or wooden ships, but there's so much more to We than that. The flow of the narrative from the collective to each of the individual narrators is seamless, lyrical, and beautifully wrought throughout. The characters are unusual and original, yet wholly familiar - I reached a comfort level in their presence like I would with an old friend. We always carry our own lives & experiences around with us when we read, so maybe certain themes were more resonant for me than for others, but that's the brilliant thing about this - so much of the story is also about those left behind in the wake of the departing ships that you could read the same book and come away with a different feel for what it truly was about. As much as it is about the adventures of Laurids, Albert, and Knud Erik, it is about Klara, Herman, and the all the rest of the people of Marstal. After living amongst them for weeks, I felt as if these people of Marstal had become a part of my own life, my own history.
And in the end, even after nearly 700 pages, I was still blown away by the final, heart-rending page as the living and the dead of Marstal all returned to the shores of Ærø. "Tonight we danced with the drowned. And they were us." A fantastic, gorgeous novel - both inside & out - and one of the best books I have ever read.
----------------------------------
2011 Catapult Notable #2
2011 Catapult Notable #3
2011 Catapult Notable #4
2011 Catapult Notable #5
2011 Catapult Notable #6
2011 Catapult Notable #7
2011 Catapult Notable #8
2011 Catapult Notable #9
2011 Catapult Notable #10
2011 Catapult Notable Notables

2011 Catapult Notable List - #2

2011-12-28T06:36:00.000-08:00

#2: West of Here by Jonathan Evison

Now we're really getting down to it. Real top tier stuff.

I read and wrote a long review of West of Here almost a year ago - right here - but even still, the characters and the town of Port Bonita have stuck solidly with me over all that time. Truly the mark of brilliance. Here's a little blurby-blurb I wrote awhile back, a slightly different version of which also ran in the San Diego Union-Trib at some point:

The sprawling narrative of Evison's brilliant novel never leaves the tiny river town of Port Bonita on Washington State’s Pacific coast, but the collection of voices he utilizes offers a resounding portrayal of how closely all of our lives connect & intersect, even across generations & hundreds of years. In 1890, Port Bonita is just getting started, as Washington is perched on the cusp of statehood & the untapped wilderness calls to the region's transplanted residents. However, the PB of 2006 is standing on her last legs, a victim of the very model of industry that created the town in the first place. Evison skillfully & beautifully weaves together these vignettes (often riotously funny) of the lives of PB’s residents, bringing a wide variety of voices together in a chorus of humanity, ultimately showing us how thin the veils between generations really are. I loved every word. Onward!

WoH is sort of a staggeringly vast piece of fiction, filled with dozens of fully-formed characters with story arcs that twist and weave in and amongst each other over the course of generations and decades. The residents of 1890 PB are (for the most part) filled with vim & vigor - hopeful and ready for the future on the horizon for their frontier town. Their descendants in 2006 are... well, dealing with the rash decisions made back in the day. As it turns out, the technological masterpiece of a dam that put them on the map in the previous century has proven to be more problematic for the long-term life of the town than the founders originally thought. (As is, your all-important salmon canning industry kinda hinges on the fish being able to swim up the river.) This dichotomy between generational perspectives - seeing how much things didn't actually pan out - is really the crux of the appeal of WoH. It's all about the thread of connection we share with our predecessors - all the tiny, seemingly insignificant filaments of life history that bind us together across the years.

Plus it's really funny. (Maybe it's because I'm writing this around Christmas, which is nog-season, but the Franklin Bell character, who drinks eggnog all-year round, kills me. He's also based much of his life philosophy around the songs of Don Henley. I mean, c'mon.)

It's a big, fat book, too - in the neighborhood of 500 pages - but I implore you to not be scared off by the girth. Like I said, much of it is funny as all hell and Evison manages balance things nicely with a subtly wide scope that envelops a large swath of humanity within its pages. All of these vignettes of PB's residents - a cacophonous chorus of voices - are brilliantly woven together into a stunning tale of humanity at both its absolute worst and its heart-rendering best. The veil that separates generations proves to be rather thin, even porous, when you step back with a little historical perspective. And hell, isn't that what we all hope for?

2011 Catapult Notable List - #3

2011-12-27T06:00:00.000-08:00

#3: The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht

I moved this one up and down this list, for some reason, before finally settling on the fact that I was blown out of my shorts by it when I read it. This is another case (like Rules of Civility) where I need to forget about the whiny complaints of others and just go with my gut - and my gut tells me that Téa Obreht is one hell of a writer. Listen to the fawning praise I heaped upon her in March:

Foreign, yet familiar, impossible, yet true, unsentimental, yet emotional - the elements that she has managed to cull together here are melded absolutely perfectly. A stunning, stunning debut, and one that will stick in your head for long after you've turned that final page...

I stand by that lofty assessment.

The summary, such as it is: Natalia is on a diplomatic mission across the border of her war torn Balkan homeland to deliver vaccines to an orphanage, when she learns of the death of her beloved grandfather in a remote village far from his home. Knowing that he was gravely ill & never would never have traveled without a real reason, she becomes convinced that he was in search of "the deathless man" - a longstanding, mysterious figure from the stories he told her as a child. As Natalia sets out to uncover the mystery of her grandfather's final days, she learns more about herself, her family's past, and her country than she ever thought possible and finds that all the answers she seeks lie within the stories of her grandfather.

Obreht's mixing of timelines, folklore storytelling, and mythology within the landscape of a war-ravaged, modern setting really does the trick. I was, and continue to be bowled over by the fact that she wrote this when she was just 24 years old. (She's another of the New Yorker '20 Under 40' that I can't shut up about.) The stories that live within her - released into this novel - seem to be ageless or timeless. The "deathless man" could be a story told 500 years ago, or a thousand years ago, yet, someone could have told it to me yesterday & I would have believed every word. Just take it slow, enjoy it for what it is, and give it to a friend when you're done. Destined to be a modern classic.

2011 Catapult Notable List - #4

2011-12-26T06:00:00.000-08:00

#4: Crimes in Southern Indiana by Frank Bill

This debut collection of short stories hit me like ten tons of bricks when I read it. Ten thousand tons. I found it impossible to shake Frank's raw, gritty stylings of rural Indiana, no matter how badly I wanted to tear myself away and step back into the light. Seriously, after each of the first, maybe, 5 stories, I tried to put the book down - hell, just to stretch my legs & feel some sun on my face - but I was grabbed and yanked and coerced and forced back into the pages of the book. Each story is like a squared-up punch right in the face - like the guy sets his feet, his friend holds your arms down and your head steady, and he unloads his big hamfist with all 230 pounds of himself behind it right into your teeth. So I kept reading.

I've been going back over a lot of these stories for this post & I've just been struck - again - by the insane power of the opening lines from every single one of these. Check some of this action out:

Pitchfork and Darnel burst through the scuffed motel door like two barrels of buckshot. Using the daisy-patterned bed to divide the dealers from the buyers, Pitchfork buried a .45 caliber Colt in Karl's peat moss unibrow with his right hand. (from "Hill Clan Cross")

J.W. Duke was choking down his fifth cup of kettle coffee, nursing a hangover, when his wife, Margaret, came through the kitchen door, screaming as if her skin had been pressed through a cheese grater. (from "A Coon Hunter's Noir")

It was too damn early for this shit, Officer Moon Flisport Conservation told himself as he steered his Expedition down the country road, sweating bourbon through his pores. His heart was pounding in his skull, ready to explode across the front windshield because of the Knob Creek he'd torn into last night after his wife, Ina, had called him a racist. (from "Officer Down (Tweakers)")

These are openers, friend, designed to lure you in with their dulcet tones and sense of intrigue. What they are really telling you is to stay the hell away from these people. Ah, but you can't, can you? For deep down, they are you and me...

Frank's writing really reminds me a lot of James Crumley's in The Last Good Kiss and Denis Johnson's stories in Jesus' Son - all are populated with the scabby, tweaked-out dwellers of America's nasty underbelly who use every ounce of their strength to do horrible shit to one another for a variety of inexplicable causes. I can't think of another writer out there today that I'm more excited to see more from than Frank Bill. This guy's the real deal, a stone-cold badass writer with more skill & chops than you know what to do with. Rock on.

2011 Catapult Notable List - #5

2011-12-25T06:00:00.000-08:00

#5: Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch

I definitely first noticed Jamrach's Menagerie because of its cover art (top), but thought the UK versions were equally solid, so I'm including their likenesses here as well. The nice part about this book is that the insides are actually better than the jacket art!

I was born twice. First in a wooden room that jutted out over the black water of the Thames, and then again eight years later in the Highway, when the tiger took me in his mouth and everything truly began.

Set in Victorian England, this is the bizarre tale of Jaffy Brown, born in the darkest, dirtiest slum of Bermondsey, London. After being nearly eaten by a tiger on the street one day - a perfectly natural situation - he is taken in as hired help by the tiger's owner, Mr. Charles Jamrach. Jamrach is a "Naturalist and Importer of Animals, Birds, and Shells" who brings exotic beasts from all corners of the world, houses them in a vast menagerie at his house in London, and sells them to wealthy Brits. After proving his value to Jamrach, Jaffy finds himself off on an ocean voyage with his best friend Tim Linver and Jamrach's "finder," Dan Rymer, in search of a reported dragon in the Java Sea. What they find sends them all on a much different kind of journey - one laced with insanity, unreliable narration, thirst, starvation, and the dark turns in the inner workings of the souls of men. It's this latter part, of course, that I really loved. When your narrator is going insane from hunger and thirst, floating in a life raft hundreds of miles from everywhere... that's when I tune in. What's the fun in having a narrator who you can completely trust? You gotta embrace the crazy.

At turns this is a playful, whimsical story - light and filled with the magical awe experienced through the innocence of childhood - but Birch tosses in just enough Heart of Darkness for that third act, transforming it into a truly brilliant, wholly original book that I loved every word of. (Also shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize, so it's not just me.)

2011 Catapult Notable List - #6

2011-12-24T06:00:00.000-08:00

This cover is a rare case where Canada is better.

#6: Galore by Michael Crummey

And so the fish book section of the list begins... The full Catapult review can be seen here. For whatever reason, Michael Crummey's weird little book about a community of Newfies and an albino dude cut out of the belly of a whale has somehow stayed completely off the radar of everyone else in the U.S. this year. Your loss, America!

I tried to come up with a good, new review for Galore's inclusion on this list, but I have to admit, I can't put it better than I did earlier. So...

Galore is filled with weird little vignettes imbued with a magical spark and a folkloric vibrancy that sucks the reader into its undertow and deposits them for the duration amongst the bizarre folk who populate Paradise Deep, Newfoundland. Mummers storm your house every Christmas, the ghost of an awful husband is condemned to watch his wife with another man, a woman has all her teeth pulled out so that they never rot, unrequited loves abound across the generations. The family Devine and the family Sellers are the integral cogs in the machinations here, driving the story forward with their slights, feuds, disagreements, illicit love affairs, snubs, fistfights, and secret children. Inextricably linked together, they are Paradise Deep, in the end, whether they like it or not. The story arcs over the course of 100 years or so in this tiny town, tracing familial lineages as they intersect and merge to create a beautifully complicated family tree. Always hovering amongst the branches of that tree is the mysterious Judah, pale, mute, and possibly ageless, yet infinitely more complicated, magical, and brilliant than anyone gives him credit for. He's the star of the show, the white whale always alluded to but never caught, as his significance manages to slip through our fingers until the last glimpse of him vanishes behind a wave in the final act.

Galore is one of those novels that manages to tell a broad-sweeping story through the eyes of a multitude of odd people - right in the Seth Marko wheelhouse. It's weird, it's funny, it's filled with dozens of characters, it's loaded with obscure history and strange Canadians. It has proven to be one of those books that has stuck in my craw for months - I can't seem to shake it. Did I mention the albino guy found - alive - in the belly of a beached whale? Yeah.

It's a really wonderful novel, I have to say, and it's a tragedy that more people have not noticed it. Yet. Thus, it is a solid #6 on the 2011 Catapult Notable list.

2011 Catapult Notable List - #7

2011-12-23T06:00:00.000-08:00

#7: The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan

Somehow, I almost overlooked Glen Duncan's werewolf novel for inclusion on this year's Catapult list, but after a little heartfelt soul searching... I remembered how phenomenally awesome it was from the first sentence to the last. Compiling this list can be tricky sometimes - it's hard to go back to the books you read in January, February, March and remember what it was about them that you loved so much back then. Sure, it helps to write things down in, say, a blog, but still. Do the books that you raved about in January stand up in the following December? In the case of The Last Werewolf, hell yeah.

By the way, Duncan is another author that I have met in person & I was struck by how werewolf-like he appeared. (see left) This doesn't have any bearing on this post, but I thought it was an interesting factoid. Please continue.

I've always thought that the genre of "werewolf fiction" was deserving of more attention. Okay, maybe I've never thought about it at all. Duncan's edgy, erudite prose provides a surprising literary spark to this pigeon-holed genre that we never consider. Jake Marlowe has walked the earth for the last 200 years, turning into a wolf with an amped-up libido upon every full moon. When we first meet him, he has just learned that the agents from the World Organization for the Control of Occult Phenomena (WOCOP) have - quite literally - detached the head of the only other of his kind left on the planet.

"It's official," Harley said. "They killed the Berliner two nights ago. You're the last." Then after a pause: "I'm sorry."

Jake is tired, generally. Tired of being alone, tired of fighting with vampires, tired of running from the goons who have hunted down all the other werewolves on earth. He's done everything we think we would do if given that much time. He's traveled everywhere, he's read all the books he wants, slept with thousands of prostitutes - One of the things I've been hanging on for is the death of my libido. I've lost interest in everything else, so why not? But it just keeps, as it were, coming. He's lived a life more full than any of us could reasonably imagine. Except, two centuries is a long time to keep on keepin' on just because that's what you do. Especially, to be honest, without any meaningful, lasting relationships.

I still have feelings but I'm sick of having them. Which is another feeling I'm sick of having. I just...I just don't want any more life.

So, he's come up with a solid plan to go out in a hail of silver bullets, taking his arch-nemesis from WOCOP with him, when events occur that turn his life philosophy, such as it is, on its lupine ear. I cannot stress enough how pleasantly surprised I was by Duncan's prose stylings. I know that sounds kind of shitty, but what sort of expectations could I have had, going into this? It really is an extraordinarily well-written novel - Jake's narration is so skillfully relayed that you never stop to question the validity of his crazy-sounding tale. Of course he's 200 years old! Of course he's a werewolf who kills and eats people! The infinite twists and turns within keep you guessing throughout - and thoroughly rooting for the wolf - and I can pretty much guarantee that you will not see the ending coming. All-in-all, rather than being just a trashy, sex-crazed horror novel, Werewolf is a brilliant tale of love, survival, prejudice, and the finer points of living a life well lived. Bravo.

2011 Catapult Notable List - #8

2011-12-22T06:00:00.000-08:00

#8: Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

Thanks to his publisher, Viking, I was lucky enough to have dinner with Amor Towles in Los Angeles (along with 8 or 9 other bookseller-types) back in March of this year. A rather charming fellow, this was his first real interaction with "the public" as a published author. He had never autographed his book for anyone on the planet before that dinner and although I wasn't the first (see photo), I was dangerously close - foiled by my...occasional friend, Julie. (Occasions when Julie is not my friend: when she gets to be the first-ever recipient of an author's signature. I'm just sayin' is all.) Needless to say, even without the dinner, Amor's book alone was easily good enough to vault him onto the Catapult list for this year.

Here's the full Catapult review that I posted back in August. And here's a stolen bit from that:

Rules is a novel about a year in the life - 1938 to be precise - of young Katey Kontent, 25-year-old New York City secretary, struggling with identity and her place in the world. At a New Year's Eve party, Katey and her friend Eve meet Tinker Grey, a handsome, high-society-type gadabout straight out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald piece. Tinker's friendship opens new doors for Katey and she floats through the upper echelons of NY society with ease, although always as more of a voyeur than an active participant. Without a trace of contrivance, Towles completely brings 1930's NYC to life - the clothes, the restaurants, the bars, the dialogue, the smoking, drinking, dancing - everything, top to bottom. (It's a little bit Mad Men for the 30's.) To me, that's what Rules is all about - it's a view into a lost world of American life. Sure, 1938 proves to be a life changing year for little Katey Kontent, but Towles' creation of the era is what has stuck with me as something special.

The "problem" with being around books and booksellers and other readers all day long is that opinions get spread around like swine flu, often leaching into your own head if you listen to them enough. I loved this book while I was reading it and loved it after I finished. But after talking with other readers, reading other books in the months after, my opinion shifted around towards general apathy, I suppose. Well, maybe not complete apathy - I still liked the book, but I thought I could see its flaws more clearly, or something like that. Now, after reflecting a bit for this list, I realize that the flaws - such as they are - don't really matter. Nor are they so prevalent as to be problematic. A common complaint I've heard and read is that "nothing happens" to Katey over the course of the novel. To that I say, "Who cares?" This is a novel about a year in her life - plenty happens to her, but there's just no over-arching trauma or personal revelation. I read it as a chance to escape into the 1930's for awhile - Towles' evocation of the era is astounding - and that's how I would suggest you approach it yourself. Don't look for the answers to all of life's big questions, just enjoy it for what it is - #8 on our countdown.

The Open Road with Ken Bruen

2011-12-21T10:52:00.000-08:00

I found this via Publisher's Weekly this morning - Open Road is a "digital publisher and multimedia content company" that markets ebooks through original video content and social media. While I'm not a ebook-er, as you know, the documentary film content they offer is pretty fab. This one's a 2-minute piece on Catapult favorite, Ken Bruen:

2011 Catapult Notable List - #9

2011-12-21T06:00:00.000-08:00

#9: Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

For a guy who claims to not read science fiction anymore, I always seem to have at least one title on my year end Notable list. The Brief History of the Dead (2006), The Yiddish Policemen's Union (2007), The Gone-Away World (2008), Super Sad True Love Story (2010). And now this - the Robopocalypse is upon us.

Daniel Wilson's novel is definitely sci-fi, make no mistake, but please don't let that deter you like some book-snobby jerk. Reading this thing is like stepping in front of a subway train & getting pushed down the tunnel for an hour before you're tossed aside in the grass on the other side. You're bloody and covered with soot and garbage, but you're alive, man. I wrote a full review back in May, but here's a rundown:

In a near future of ours where humanity has mastered the art of robotic machinery - from the smart chips in our cars to simple, scurrying Death Star droids and domestic bipedal robots, there are engineered helpers all around us. In the presumed safety of a secure lab, one scientist finally creates the ultimate thinking machine, Archos, whose intelligence reaches unchartable levels in just 15 minutes of existence. Much to the fatal dismay of its physicist/father, Archos quickly figures a way out of its secure environment and starts in motion its plan to logically erase humanity from the planet. By Archos' calculations, humans were put on earth to create our evolutionary successors and once we have done that, we may be dismissed. Archos, of course, considers itself that successor, which means that some bad shit is coming down the pike toward us.

Archos, now plugged in and in a secure location, quickly begins to spread its message of world domination to all the electronic devices around the world capable of being manipulated. At first, isolated incidents are reported: a nonviolent, "humanoid safety and pacification robot" stationed in Afghanistan starts killing people; a domestic bipedal robot rips the face off a Frogurt employee; a "Baby-Comes-Alive" doll does just that, spouting robot propaganda at a Senator's daughter; the onboard computers of two domestic airliners chart a collision course before being overridden at the last second. Then all hell breaks loose. It's mostly the cars - any automobile with an "intra-vehicle communication chip" either runs humans down on the street or drives the ones on board to their deaths. Imagine the chaos in the cities... Bipedal robots go door-to-door, "removing" human occupants - definitely not safe to stay inside. So what do you do?! After much death and madness, humanity regroups a bit, in the first incidence of true global solidarity, and tries to salvage what's left of our societies in an attempt to stop whatever the hell is happening to our world.

That battle - to rescue humanity from the clutches of the mad, near-omniscient robot we created - is what Robopocalypse is all about. Easily hitting the #9 spot on our countdown. (PS: Spielberg is hard at work on the film, on your screens in July 2013.)

2011 Catapult Notable List - #10

2011-12-20T06:00:00.000-08:00

#10: Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

Starting off the 2011 Catapult Notable list is a late add, a squeaker that came in through the back door when everyone's backs were turned: Karen Russell's first novel, Swamplandia! Russell isn't really a newbie - she received substantial acclaim for her 2006 story collection, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves and was named one of the vaunted New Yorker "20 Under 40" last year - which is, of course, how she really ended up on my personal radar. This book proves her mettle, friend.

Swamplandia! is one of those quirky, funny, sad, bizarrely poignant books that lingers and lingers and lingers... long after you've put it back on the shelf. A good half to 3/4 of it is narrated by a 13-year old girl - often a red flag, but the voice is delivered here with such a stunning clarity and honesty that I hardly noticed her age. Emma Donoghue put it well in her NYT review: "Her first-person narration is not a transcription of a 13-year-old voice, but an evocation, in adult language, of a barely adolescent mind-set."

Ava Bigtree and her family own and operate an alligator-wrestling theme park on their island in the swamps of the Florida Everglades. At one time, Swamplandia! was billed as "The Number One Gator-Themed Park and Swamp Cafe in the area," I'll have you know. Russell had me with the first line, "Our mother performed in starlight," but solidified it further a couple pages later:

We leased an expensive billboard on the interstate, just south of Cape Coral: COME SEE "SETH," FANGSOME SEA SERPENT AND ANCIENT LIZARD OF DEATH!!! We called all our alligators Seth. ("Tradition is as important, kids," Chief Bigtree liked to say, "as promotional materials are expensive.")

How could I stop reading a book featuring 98 alligators named Seth? Ava's mother, Hilola, the park's headlining, high-diving, gator-pit-swimming star attraction, has just died, leaving Ava, her 2 siblings, and their father alone on Swamplandia! The island is only accessible via ferry and once the headliner is gone, the tourists stop coming to spend their vacation money. (Rather, they hit the new apocalypse-themed "World of Darkness" park on the mainland.) Within a few months, operations have been suspended on the island and Ava's brother, Kiwi has left to try to make some money on the mainland. Her father, who has dubbed himself "Chief" Bigtree, on account of a falsified familial, Native American heritage, heads to the mainland on "a jaunt" to take care of some urgent business (involving something he calls "Carnival Darwinism"), leaving Ava and her sister Osceola, alone with the Seths. Ossie has taken up communing with the spirit world via her Ouija board and claims to have fallen in love with the ghost of a turn of the century "dredgeman" named Louis Thanksgiving. Okay, no problem. Until Ossie steals off to elope with Louis, somewhere out in the swamps, leaving Ava completely alone. Convinced that Ossie is making her way to the entrance to the underworld, where, naturally, she and Louis can be together, Ava enlists the help of the odd, crow-wrangling swamp-gypsy, the Bird Man, to help track Ossie down.

So, you know, it's just your typical, run-of-the-mill American family tale.

Like I mentioned earlier, Ava's spot-on narration is what drives the story. All throughout, I took the world she was relating to me at face value - somehow, Russell was able to convince me to put aside any adult thoughts about the situation Ava was in and just accept what was happening as being truthfully transcribed by this 13-year-old girl. (Who has never left her alligator island for more than 24 hours.) So when reality sets in and the magic wears off, Ava reverts to being a scared teenager who is out in the middle of nowhere with a dude in a bird cape. But in the end, as odd as they all are, it is the strength of the Bigtree family that prevails - despite inevitable tragedies, life goes on as long as your family is there to shoulder the burden along with you.

The Catapult Notable List 2011

2011-12-19T06:00:00.000-08:00

Well, here we are again - it's list-makin' time. Self-indulgent list-makin' time. As you know from previous years - this being the 6th annual Catapult Notable List - my "best books" list isn't like a lot of the other standard lists you see out there. Sure, I share a few favorites with the New York Times' 10 Best, a couple with Publishers Weekly's Fiction list (and none! with their overall "best" list), and even a few on Amazon's list. And hey, check out the Guardian's crazed list - this is what happens when you let the authors pick their favorites. Wha? Huh?

But my Top 10 are drawn from the 43 books I chose to read in their entirety during this past year (there were 7 others that I read significant, 100+ page chunks of but never finished) so there's quite a bit of subjectivity to it. AND, I will have you know - six of the books I read this year were written by women. Go ahead, ride me for not reading enough, but if you recall, the tally for 2010 was a big fat zero. This is progress, everybody, so lay off!

The only other real qualification is that all potential Notables were published in 2011 - which unfortunately leaves Bruce Machart (The Wake of Forgiveness) and Scott Huler (On the Grid) off in the wings. (Sorry fellas, loved 'em both, but rules is rules.)

I was down from 47 reads in 2010, and over 50 in 2009. Not sure what that means, other than I'm stupider, busier, or lazier, perhaps. Despite the lower number there, I agonized over this list this year. I shuffled the Top 10 more times than I can count, some books got cut, others moved into the top tier, but after the dust settled, I'm pretty sure that the final list is absolutely correct. Before you get too excited, know that there are no books by Jeffrey Eugenides or Haruki Murakami on the list. Ken Bruen (Headstone), Philip Kerr (Field Gray), David Bezmozgis (The Free World), and George R. R. Martin (Dance with Dragons) were good, but just not quite good enough to make the list. But before the Top 10 commences tomorrow - and unfolds in incredibly dramatic suspense over the following 10 days - here are the best of the rest. The also-rans. Those that just missed the cut. The Notable Notables for 2011, in no particular order:

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

This is one that just - and I mean just - missed making the Top 10. I debated this right up until the last, self-imposed second, but the book that beat Chad out was just slightly better. I suppose that in the literary canon of baseball novels, this will ultimately rank up there with Malmud's The Natural and Kinsella's Shoeless Joe. However, as for the rest of the book, there wasn't anything particularly stunning about Harbach's prose that made me really sit up and take notice. It sort of putters along, laying out the unfolding drama of this young man's life, populating the world with some half-formed characters (Pella, Schwartz) and some other wonderfully fully-formed ones (Guert), and ultimately leaving us with a very good story, but not a life-changer. To me, at least. Every other critic in America seems bowled over by it, but on the whole, I think it left me a little flat.

The Leopard by Jo Nesbø

Scandinavia's best crime novelist, in my not-so-humble opinion. Jo has firmly wrestled the mantle away from Henning Mankell with this fantastic addition to the Detective Harry Hole series. Yes, Hole is an unfortunate surname, I know, get over it. After the soul-ripping events in last year's The Snowman, Harry has abandoned his life in Oslo for a drunken, opium-hazed existence in Hong Kong - just the kind of behavior that endeared us to him in the first place, if you ask me. (If you've only read The Snowman, with Harry off the booze and settling into a cozy relationship, you're severely cheating yourself.) Since Harry is the only police officer in Norway with any experience with serial killers, his boss sends someone to bring him back when two women turn up dead in Oslo under bizarre circumstances. (The only wounds on their bodies originate inside their mouths.) Harry waltzes back into a morass of politics and backstabbing upon his return, leaving him constantly wondering who he can trust and who amongst his friends is sabotaging him at every turn. And there are a lot of those turns to keep you guessing throughout.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

Winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize. My first foray into Barnesian lit, after some elbowing by friends who told me I'd like him. Right they were - I do like him, this Mr. Barnes! This slim, quiet little volume is, as the NY Times so rightly put it, "a mystery of memory and missed opportunity." Within its pages, Tony Webster, in his 60's, divorced, finds himself pondering back on his youth when his college girlfriend's mother bequeaths him a small sum upon her death. His long-ago relationship with her daughter, Veronica, was fleeting and innocuous - or so Tony thought. Down the rabbit hole of memory we go, back 40 years, to meet friends long gone and a life long left behind all in order to sort through the reasons why he is involved with Veronica at this late stage in his life. A solid little number.

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

Johnson's one of my favorite writers, (Tree of Smoke, Jesus' Son, Already Dead) so I easily devoured this little novella in the better part of an afternoon. It's a simple story, really, on the surface, about the hard life of a early 20th-century working man named Robert Grainier. Johnson essentially puts on a writing clinic with this book, fully evoking a lost time of railroads and hard work, hermit-living and love lost. It seemed to have a sepia-tone to it - an aged look about it. I got completely lost in its too-few pages. In his review, Anthony Doerr put it well in that upon finishing this book, "You look up from the thing dazed, slightly changed." Hell, I think I'll read it again.

The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje

I'm including Mr. Ondaatje (The English Patient, Divisadero) here on the Notable Notables simply because he is Michael Ondaatje. There is a lot to like about this book - a semi-autobiographical tale about a young man's journey by steamship from his home in Sri Lanka to a new life in England - but Ondaatje could write the copy on the back of a soup can and make it sound beautiful.

Feast Day of Fools by James Lee Burke

JLB's my man, what can I say? Sometimes he drops a little too much churchin' on me in his books, but sometimes, the biblical evil shines through and all is forgiven. In this case, Feast is the second novel to feature septuagenarian South Texas sheriff & widower, Hackberry Holland and his attempts to maintain sanity in his tiny border town. His primary nemesis is a man called the Preacher, who has a tendency to mow people down with his tommy gun and bury them in the desert. But is he the worst thing to haunt the hardpan in Hack's neighborhood?

The Cut by George Pelecanos

Read the full Catapult review. I've been over George already, but I can't stress enough how fucking great he is at writing an atmospheric, darkly realistic crime novel.

The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollack
Pollock’s debut novel – following his acclaimed short story collection, Knockemstiff – is a dark, gritty, violent power-punch in the jaw, populated by the fringe elements from America’s seedy underbelly. Somehow, in the midst of this grotesquerie, we are able to sympathize with most of his characters, despite their inherently repulsive flaws. The NY Times described Pollock’s Ohio/West Virginia landscape as “one long, coal-smeared and hell-harrowed gash in the earth,” so imagine what sort of folks would populate such a place.

Okay, tune in tomorrow for #10 on the 2011 Catapult Notable List.

Occupy

2011-12-08T07:27:00.001-08:00

I almost don't know what to say about this, I'm so stupefied by it.

This Saturday, December 10th, Amazon.com is offering up to $5 off a purchase through their site if you use their barcode scanner app to scan an item in a physical store somewhere, then turn around and purchase the item on Amazon. Basically, they're paying people $5 to run their local shops out of business.

I know that I often rant and rave on here about how much I hate Jeff Bezos and Amazon and how they're making things impossible for booksellers, but this goes much further than just independent bookstores. This sort of thing is a blatant attack on any local business in your community that sells anything that Amazon also offers. Think about that for a second. I know that many readers/visitors to the Catapult are Amazon shoppers. I get it - this is just the way of the world, the way of our current economy. I shop online too, although just not at Amazon. They make it easy - but keeping dollars in your community isn't about just making things easy. At a time when unemployment is still hovering around 10% nationally, is it a good idea to take more jobs away from people? Is losing the local businesses in your neighborhood and taking much needed tax revenue out of your community worth a lousy 5 bucks?

I happen to be lucky enough to live in a community that has a thriving small business sector and I can't imagine it losing all of that. (Last week, a cash mob descended on one of my favorite stores around the corner. That's what I'm talkin' 'bout, people!) Nor can I fathom having the gall to walk into someone's shop - a place of business that they've more than likely poured their heart & soul into - and picking out the items I will later purchase from a giant, faceless conglomerate website. Are you looking at yourself right now? The fact that there is even a physical location for you to walk into is argument enough for you to stop what you're doing!

So this Saturday (every day, really), rather than using an app on your phone to take sales away from a local business, put your phone in your pocket and take out your wallet instead. Support your local business and help your community thrive.

If you're on Facebook, please join the burgeoning Occupy Amazon movement started by Kim Gavin from Powell's Books in Portland. This battle is all about awareness, everybody, so tell your friends. Thanks.

Leopard Spot

2011-12-03T17:06:00.001-08:00

In just surfin' about, thinking about the upcoming Catapult Notable list (hint, hint), I stumbled on this video trailer for Jo Nesbø's The Leopard, on sale in the US later this month. This is NOT a trailer for a film, mind you - this is a trailer for a book. It's great for Jo, don't get me wrong, but seriously, how much cash does Random House have to burn?

Boxer, Beetle, Madness

2011-11-20T14:44:00.001-08:00

Ned Beauman's debut novel Boxer Beetle is one of the strangest books I've read in awhile - almost impossible to classify, explain, or handsell to anyone. Regardless, here's my short little pitch:

Kevin is a dealer in Nazi memorabilia - he's not a collector, personally, but he has found a niche in the online market that he's happy to exploit. He doesn't leave his London apartment much, however, due to his acute trimethylaminuria, which leaves him constantly reeking of rotten fish. However, following instructions from his biggest client, Kevin forces himself out into the world against his better judgements and stumbles onto a murder scene & a mysterious 1936 letter from Adolf Hitler to a Dr. Philip Erskine that sets the whole bizarre mystery in motion.

It turns out that Philip Erskine was a fascist British entomologist with a disturbing human eugenics agenda who managed to breed a nearly indestructible beetle in honor of the Führer. Erskine's story - told in alternating chapters with Kevin's - is distinctly intertwined with that of the 5-foot tall, nine-toed, Jewish, homosexual boxer, Seth "Sinner" Roach. Still with me?

Despite his diminutive stature, Sinner is a phenomenal pugilist and a bizarre physical specimen. When Erskine stumbles upon him in 1934, he is well on his way to a shot at a championship bout - only to be derailed by a horribly bad attitude towards everyone around him and a love for only a bottle of gin. The relationship between these two vastly different men is hardly that - a "relationship" - but more an infatuation on the part of Erskine and a raging hatred by Sinner that causes their lives to intersect in bizarre ways over the course of several months in 1934. Which ultimately, eventually, strangely reveals the tale of how Hitler wrote a letter to Philip Erskine.

Kevin's side of the story - while his gag-inducing affliction is fantastic - felt a bit as if it were forced in between the pages of the rest of the book. (His is a detective story, of a sort, and it read a bit false & amateurish to my eyes.) The 1930's vein is filled with enough bizarreness to carry the load - beetles with natural swastika markings on their wings, drunk, gay, midget boxers, fascist entomologists, invented languages, dissonant music composers, and some truly wonderful turns of phrase. Plus, Beauman can be funny as hell - take his opening sentences:

In idle moments I sometimes like to close my eyes and imagine Joseph Goebbels' forty-third birthday party. I like to think that even in the busy autumn of 1940, Hitler might have found time to organize a surprise party for his close friend...

To me, Boxer Beetle is but a glimpse - an early shot across the bow - of what Ned Beauman is capable of. While it may not be for everyone - what with all the Nazis and homoeroticism - there is an undeniable skill at work here and he has created a weird little world that exists just beyond the fringes of what we think we know about history and the people who populate our world. Keep your eyes on this dude.

Quitting's Alright By Me

2011-11-10T18:23:00.001-08:00

I've started thinking that it's okay to quit on a book that I don't particularly enjoy. I used to think that I needed to power through, thinking & hoping that there was something of inherent value within that I was so far missing. This isn't a new topic here on the Catapult - I wrote this in 2007:

In 2003, I stopped reading Lawrence Norfolk's 574 page The Pope's Rhinoceros on page 549. I really actually tell myself that I'll finish it some day. One day my life will come full circle, back to "aught three", and I will be inextricably drawn back to the soothing tones of Lawrence Norfolk and his rhino. No one else believes me though...

"Don't you love me anymore, Seth?"

Hell, I don't even believe me. I haven't touched that book since I wrote that 4 years ago - and I hadn't made an honest attempt to read any of it for at least 3 years before that. So why the guilt? Who cares? Norfolk got paid & has moved on to other things (whatever they are), so why do I think of every book-quit as a failure on my part?

I do often feel almost guilty for quitting on a book. It's ridiculous. How could I possibly be letting the author down in any way? I really so badly wanted to love The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk, but I only lasted halfway. I'm sorry, Orhan! With John Sayles' Moment in the Sun I fell just short of halfway (albeit 400+ pages.) Mr. Sayles, your bonecrushing handshake tells me that you would smash me to bits if you found out! I even felt a little bad for only reading 126 pages of the ARC of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo while on a plane in 2008 - that is until that whole thing blew up and every soccer mom in America started telling me that I HAD to read it. Now I'm glad I quit. Besides, Stieg's dead anyway. Off the hook, there.

There are certainly books in recent years that I should have quit on, but didn't. Franzen's Freedom, Point Omega by Don Delillo, Summertime by Coetzee, to name a few. All penned by respected, "literary" authors that I, as a bookseller & a self-respecting reader, felt I needed to read to have a broader scope of the world of contemporary literature. Bullshit. I hated all three of them, let's be honest.

I bring this up because I have experienced a rash of books fitting into the "unfinishable" category of late. Or, maybe they're just books that I've stumbled along in, never gaining traction & needed to put aside. Just in the last month or so, I've read 200 pages of Neil Stephenson's Reamde, a good chunk of Amitav Ghosh's River of Smoke, and 144 pages of the mystery novel, Utu by Caryl Férey. And now, 127 pages of 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami - one of my personally most-anticipated books of the year. I'm just bored to tears by it - despite all the critical praise being heaped upon it. (I actually doubt very much that the folks at Amazon who voted 1Q84 the #2 book of 2011 actually plodded their way through the whole thing.)

Yet bookmarks still reside in each of those books, as if I will return to their unwelcoming prose on some rare rainy, Southern Cali day. Maybe I'd be better off saving them for a snow day. Either way, after writing this all out, I feel like I've come through some sort of tunnel of light or enchanted forest, where on the other side I get to read whatever the hell I want.

Cover of the Year?

2011-10-27T19:58:00.000-07:00

Sadly, this was due to be published to coincide with the start of the Republican primaries in January, but has been postponed. (Or canceled, I can't tell.) The title comes from a mocking comment Perry made about a reporter at the end of a lousy interview in 2005.

Is this what they mean by "Papa Hemingway?"

2011-10-21T19:02:00.000-07:00

Another hot Friday night at my house.... I was in the middle of searching for accoutrements for my Ernest Hemingway Halloween costume (my wife nixed my Gertrude Stein costume idea) when this place turned up in a Google search:

What the fuck?

Warwick's

2011-10-16T20:53:00.000-07:00

How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but - mainly - to ourselves. 

-from Julian Barnes' The Sense of An Ending

Me, Joe Porteous, author Eric Puchner, & Scott Ehrig-Burgess

I find it strangely poignant that Julian Barnes' latest novel, The Sense of an Ending has been the book I've been reading this past week. (Booker Prize shortlister.) It doesn't completely resonate with my own personal life, of course, but it is about a man taking stock on his own life - which I have been doing quite a bit lately (to the detriment of my writing & this blog, I have to say.) Shit, just look at the title - all good things must come to an end, as they say.

No, no, not the Book Catapult - after 8 years, I am leaving my position as bookseller, book buyer, website coordinator, social media wrangler, merchandiser, book shelver, coffee talker, and heavy lifter at Warwick's bookstore in La Jolla - San Diego's greatest independent bookstore.

Over the years - especially here online - I have come to identify myself, primarily, as an independent bookseller & this is due, in large part, to my experiences at Warwick's. (Not to mention, my 2+ years spent a decade ago at the best bookstore east of the Mississippi, Octavia Books in New Orleans.) So, of course, I could never just turn my back on that independent spirit completely - in my new life, I will be the Trade Book Buyer at the University of California, San Diego bookstore. With a little time, effort, & elbow grease, hopefully I'll help turn the University's store into a spectacular independent in its own right.

I would never have been offered my new position had I not been afforded the opportunities I received at Warwick's, so I would like to publicly thank all the people there (past & present) who taught me along the way - whether how to be a buyer, a bookseller, a website guy, or a generally good person:

Nancy Warwick, Scott & Kristi Ehrig-Burgess, Janet Lutz, Barbara Melkerson, Adriana Hill Diamond, Joe Porteous, Tracy Rutherford, Kat Kinzer, Jason Perkins, Steven Lesinski, Molly McDonald, Margie Trailer, Pam Fox, Jim Stewart, Phoebe Markley, Julie Slavinsky, Ted Burke, John Hughes, Jan Iverson, and Adrian Newell. Not to mention the thousands of customers I've conversed with over the years - especially Will Wainess, Ted Chandler, Norm Eisenberg, Noel Phelan, Ed Cozza, Bob Draper, & Sean down at Adelaide's. You guys all gave me a reason to come in & talk about books every day - maybe the world's greatest job - so thank you.

And of course, Jenny.

Thanks, everybody. I'll see y'all down the line.

Barry Eisler, Amazon Deep-Cover Operative

2011-10-07T09:04:00.000-07:00

"I made this announcement that I'm gonna self-publish the book, I'm not going to take the big - seemingly big - legacy advance, I can do better on my own... Amazon...approached me with what is essentially a hybrid deal, the best of both worlds."

This morning, Barry Eisler, mid-list thriller writer of such books as Rain Fall, Killing Rain, Rain Storm, and Hard Rain, had an interview on NPR's Morning Edition: www.npr.org. Go listen to the story, then come back here. Go on, it's only 4 minutes.

In case you didn't go off & listen to the story, even though I just told you to, here's the deal: back in March, fed up with the general inefficiency of his publishing company, St. Martin's Press, Eisler walked away from a lucrative 2-book deal, claiming that he would be better off self-publishing his books and offering them directly to his readers. Although booksellers could feel the knot in the pits of our collective stomachs growing, I could understand his move & thought it was a harbinger of a new wave of author/publisher relationships. Even if Eisler was mainly talking about providing eBooks, rather than paperbacks, directly to the consumer - much like J.K. Rowling's Pottermore site - I understood the frustration with the traditional model of publishing. Publishers have generally been extremely slow to evolve along with the current electronic trends in the industry, helping force the downfall of brick & mortar stores, from Borders to local indies. We're all in this together - it was only a matter of time until authors began to try to write directly for their readers, cutting out all us middlemen.

Aha, but NOW, things are different in the Eisler "self-publishing" company. Soon after his announcement, Eisler was approached by Amazon.com & the two brokered a deal, wherein Eisler would retain creative control & Amazon would handle the distribution of his eBooks.

(I have) the entire Amazon marketing juggernaut behind the book, which is something you, as a self-published author, can't do on your own - it's good to have a powerful, competent distribution partner...

Sort of...like...ummm....having a publisher like...Macmillan distributing your books...? Wait a minute....

Not only is Amazon distributing the eBook, they are also publishing a paperback version through their new Thomas & Mercer imprint. So... he backed out of his deal with one publisher - who would have presumably distributed his book in all formats - in favor of another. It sounds to me like Eisler had a shitty deal with St. Martin's, wherein he didn't have the kind of creative control he wanted, he made threats to self-publish, which could have potentially caused an avalanche of authors following suit, upsetting the publishing apple cart, only to broker a better deal with a new player in the game in Amazon. Sorry, Barry, but no matter how you slice it, this would be the very definition of hypocrisy.

To boot, writing a book & signing a lucrative, multi-format distribution deal through the world's largest distributor is not "self-publishing," sir. I understand that normally, a self-published author would not have the marketing machine of Amazon in their camp, but this would move what you're doing firmly outside the parameters of doing anything your "self." Maybe I misheard him, I don't know. He seems to talk extensively about self-publishing in his NPR interview, but drops this little series of gems at the end:

Look, I told you what my objectives are...to make more money from the title, to get the digital out first, and to retain more control over business decisions. Those are my objectives and self-publishing seemed like a good way of achieving those objectives, but if a better way comes along - and the Amazon model is a better way for me - of course I'm going to take it. Publishing, for me, is a business, not an ideology.

All this in response to those of us who claimed he was being hypocritical in signing his deal with Amazon. Uh, not good enough, Barry - it still seems pretty goddamn hypocritical to me. You can't claim that you're just trying to provide a better service to your readership by self-publishing and turn around and sign a better deal with a different company who is pretending that they're not a publisher in the traditional sense. I call bullshit.

Oh, and my favorite part of all of this - and perhaps the most perplexing - is the listing for The Detachment on Amazon. Remember, Amazon is the sole distributor for this book, yet the price structure listed is "$9.99 digital list price" - which is dramatically crossed out & offered by the generous folks at Amazon for a mere $5.99. (Ditto for the paperback version. WTF?)

Tomas the Tranströmer

2011-10-06T08:02:00.000-07:00

Swedish poet, Tomas Tranströmer has been awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature, "because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality." Check out the 20 second video announcement at www.nobelprize.org. If that's not the picture of standoffish, snooty, elitist award-announcing, I don't know what is.

I would never want to take anything away from a 80-year-old, half-paralyzed stroke victim who has made a living writing poetry, but... a Swedish poet? Hometown referee, I say. How 'bout leaving Europe for a change, you Nobel dickwads? 7 of the last 10 winners have been Euros. The last American was Toni Morrison in 1993 - you're telling me that there has been not one single American writer, poet, or playwright in the last 18 years worthy of the Nobel? What about Africa? (Not South Africa, Africa Africa.) Or Japan?

Before Morrison, we Americans had Joseph Brodsky in 1987, Isaac Bashevic Singer in 1978, Saul Bellow '77, Steinbeck '62, Hemingway '54, Faulkner in '49, and Pearl S. Buck in 1938. Really? That's all the broad-reaching, globally-embracing work we've produced since 1901?

Again, I don't really want to take anything away from Tomas - I'm sure he's a very fine poet - but I'd hate for authors like Haruki Murakami, Cormac, Nurrudin Farah, or even old white dudes, DeLillo and Roth, to get Mark Twain-ed out of a Nobel Prize. Most of what I read, if the authors are American, is coming from writers of my generation - ie: under 50 years old. Will we be having this conversation in 40 years about Ron Currie, Téa Obreht, David Mitchell, Wells Tower, Aravind Adiga, or Jeffrey Eugenides? Who the hell knows? I guess for now I'll just shelve the ranting until next year and give Tomas his day. Congratulations, Tranströmer - I can't wait for your books to not be available to sell in English for the next 6 months. By then, maybe no one will care anymore.

Nobel '11

2011-10-03T23:55:00.000-07:00

O Cărtărescu!

For some reason, I love to discuss the fact that people - British people, really, if we're honest - like to bet money on literary prizes. It's Book Award Betting Season again, everybody!

Thursday morning, kids all over the planet will wake up to a world with a new reigning Nobel Prize winner in Literature. They'll rush downstairs, turn on their local NPR station, & hope to hear their favorite name announced. Little Jimmy's been praying all season for Syrian poet, Adonis, but he wouldn't be broken up if Tomas Transtromer took home the gold. Gary thinks it's gonna be Philip Roth, but he's wrong - at least according to Suzie, who has inside knowledge that Nuruddin Farah is a sure thing.

Ah, what do they know - here are the odds as of Monday, according to Ladbroke's famed betting house, London:

Adonis - 4/1
Tomas Transtromer - 6/1
Haruki Murakami - 8/1
Peter Nadas - 10/1
Assia Djebar - 12/1
Ko Un - 14/1
Les Murray - 16/1
Thomas Pynchon - 18/1
Philip Roth - 20/1
Nuruddin Farah - 20/1

Just like every year, most of the names on the list are a mystery to me, even after Googling & Wikipedia-ing. This is just the top 10, filled with many familiars, although Tomas & Assia are still enigmas - there are 77 total names listed with odds on Ladbroke's. (Les Murray is an Australian poet, by the way.) Last year, 25/1 darkhorse Mario Vargas Llosa took the Prize even though Cormac McCarthy was the heavy 5/2 favorite heading into the final week. This year, my money's on Romanian poet Mircea Cărtărescu - I mean, why not? Who the hell knows anyway?

Not to be outdone, the Booker Prize is in the one-month Shortlist waiting period - the winner is announced October 13th. Here're the current odds on that action:

Julian Barnes - The Sense of an Ending: 13/8
Carol Birch - Jamrach's Menagerie: 7/2
A.D. Miller - Snowdrops: 7/2
Stephen Kelman - Pigeon English: 9/2
Esi Edugyan - Half Blood Blues: 13/2
Patrick deWitt - The Sisters Brothers: 8/1

I have no idea how to interpret odds like "13/8" but it would seem that Julian is a pretty heavy favorite. I'm still pulling for Carol Birch.

Any thoughts? Maybe a little side bet?

JPatt Redemption?

2011-09-23T07:20:00.000-07:00

And on the 118th day, JPatt gave away $70,000 worth of Indiebound gift certificates to college-bound high school seniors.

From ABA's Bookselling this Week (September 22, 2011):

Bestselling author James Patterson has announced the launch of the second annual College Book Bucks program supporting college-bound high school seniors. The 230 winners of the College Book Bucks contest will receive gift certificates ranging from $250 to $1,000 apiece for use at any IndieBound-affiliated independent bookstore.

High school seniors headed for college can enter the competition by visiting JamesPatterson.com and submitting an essay that answers the question “How has your favorite book inspired you toward what you’d like to do in life?”

How can I hate so hard on this guy now? My world is crumbling around me! Everything I believed in is a lie!!!

Nicely played, Patterson, nicely played - you smashed this one right into my face. Although, you DID make $84 million last year, so giving away 70 grand isn't THAT great...

Jack Taylor is my BFF

2011-09-20T19:24:00.000-07:00

Is there anything better than settling in for the evening, pouring yourself a stiff drink, and finishing a new Ken Bruen novel?

In Headstone, Ken's latest Jack Taylor novel - and the first of his to be published with Otto Penzler's revitalized Mysterious Press (see the awful jacket ARC version at left) - Jack has worked out an equilibrium with the pints and the Jameson (the Jay) and the cigs and his battered, half-deaf, limping self. He's gotten himself a ladyfriend - they even spent a week together in Paris, in a decidedly un-Jack turn of events. Life is good... But lest we forget, this is Jack Taylor. Brace yerself, for right on Jack's turf there's a group of Galway kids methodically beating, murdering, and

"...ridding the city of:
the misfits,
the handicapped,
the vulnerable,
the weak,
the pitiful."

It's only a matter of time before Jack gets involved, being a misfit and all. Not to mention, de facto defender of the pitiful. Of course, as usual, he gets in over his head, at least at the start of things, and ends up - forgive me - getting his ass handed to him. But there's no keeping auld Jack down for long...

The thing I love about Bruen's novels is that they sort of help me reset my reading compass. As I read book after book of "serious" fiction - Eugenides, Ondaatje, Denis Johnson, Ron Hanson, etc, etc, blah, blah - it helps me to regroup & recenter a little bit with a healthy dose of Jack Taylor from time to time. The books only take me a matter of hours to get through - not because of anything but the machine-gun fast pacing and ripping-quick, brilliant dialogue. Jack holds a lot of disdain - mild hatred, even - for pretty much everyone he meets, with the exception of a select few friends. He's without a doubt, THE best guy to have in your corner. But whether he stays in that corner from day-to-day, is another matter.

I'll leave you with this little bit from Headstone, which I particularly enjoyed - I think it gives you the perfect sense of what kind of a fellow Jack is. (He's not particularly a fan of Catholic priests, I'll have you know.)

"I'm Father Gabriel."

Like I should know?

I asked,

"Like the Archangel?"

Too easy, but what the hell, how often do you get a Dan Brown moment, especially when he said,

"You know your angels?"

I countered,

"And my demons."

The smile vanished. Just folded its tent and fucked off. He asked,

"Is there somewhere...less public we might talk?"

I bit down, asked,

"The confessional?"

He was seriously tiring of me, so I said,

"The River Inn, across the road, does a rather good lunch."

I added the rather just to keep him off balance.

Some of the smile slithered back. He said,

"Capital."

I mean, outside of Booker nominees, who talks like that?

He added,

"My treat."

My cup fucking overfloweth.

See? Quit wastin' time & get reading.

The Art of Fielding

2011-09-12T08:47:00.000-07:00

Before the weekend, I grabbed a copy of The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach as I was leaving work. I've been hearing kind of an insane amount of buzz about this debut novel (actually, since BEA in May, and I wasn't even there) & I thought I'd give it a look-see on my day off. Before I could start it, however, I read an article in the October issue of Vanity Fair entitled, "The Book on Publishing" written by Keith Gessen - yes, I occasionally read VF for the articles. After that, I dropped the other books I was reading & started Harbach's novel.

This is as much an endorsement for Gessen's article as it is for Harbach's novel - of which I am only 50 pages deep, so who knows how its really going to go. Gessen, an old friend of Harbach's and fellow co-founder of the lit journal n+1, chronicles the entire process of getting The Art of Fielding published - which is completely fascinating, to say the least. From the decade Harbach spent crafting his novel and the endless rejections & pitches to agents, to the eventual, breathless acceptance and the headline-grabbing $665,000 bidding war between publishers. Then to the exhaustive editing process (at the hands of the great Michael Pietsch, multi-talented editor of David Foster Wallace and James Patterson), to the cover design, galley printings, and a full-on analysis of the economic state of the industry - this is the first time I have seen the whole deal so eloquently laid out before.

As if that weren't enough, there's this other bit: Gessen has no reason, really, to pad the egos of independent booksellers in his article. We often feel like the red-headed stepchildren of the book industry, living in the shadow of giants like B&N and Amazon, complaining endlessly about how no one's got our backs, customers are heading for the hills, pubs are ignoring us, Amazon is trampling us, yadda yadda. The following bit from this article, however, renewed my faith in the indie's place in all this:

I was surprised to hear from Heather Fain, the head of marketing at Little, Brown, about just how much energy goes into wooing the independent booksellers. They are visited by salesmen and sent galleys; at BookExpo there is a dinner for them. All this, because they, more than anyone else, can put a book into someone's hands and urge them to read it. Would Fain, if she could, trade the affection of these booksellers for any single item of publicity? A positive review in the Times would not be enough, but how about the cover of the Times Book Review? It would depend on the review, said Fain. "If it is a rave review, if Jonathan Franzen wrote it and said, 'This is the new me,' or Don DeLillo wrote it and said, 'I will never write a book again because this man has written anything I could ever do'" - well, in that case, maybe, but only because the booksellers would really enjoy a review like that.

I can't seem to find the full article on Vanity Fair's website (here's an excerpt of the novel, though) but if you are at all interested in the process of publication, pony up for the whole magazine. Or... somewhat ironically (and depressingly) Gessen's full article is available as a VF eBook for $1.99 at the Nook & Kindle stores. Sigh. (There's another roundup of the article on PW's blog as well.)

Oh, one last thing - this review quote appears on the back of the book:

"Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding is one of those rare books - like Michael Chabon's The Mysteries of Pittsburgh or John Irving's The World According to Garp - that seem to appear out of nowhere, and then dazzle and bewitch and inspire until you nearly lose your breath from the enjoyment and satisfaction as well as the unexpected news blast that the novel is very much alive and well." -James Patterson

Sold!

Why Brian Selznick is Awesome

2011-08-31T19:35:00.000-07:00

On why his upcoming book, Wonderstruck, won't be released as an eBook (from a piece in USA Today of all places):

"I want it to exist as an object. The turning of physical pages is important to me. I want to feel the weight of a book. The paper in your hands is an intrinsic part of understanding the story."

In one of the coolest experiences I've had as a bookseller, Brian invited the book department staff of Warwick's to his home in La Jolla last March so we could see what he was working on. He had the hand drawn artwork panels of Wonderstruck, his followup to the Caldecott Award-winning The Invention of Hugo Cabret, laid out all over the walls of his workroom & let us get all up on them. For those who've never seen Brian's work, these are illustrated novels that he draws with a pencil in such tiny detail that he works on a drafting table with a gigantic magnifying glass. Yeah, yeah, they're kids books, whatever. Hugo Cabret is pretty freakin' spectacular and I guarantee, from what I was lucky enough to see last year, the new book is going to blow your face off.

Anyway, the point here is, I LOVE that Brian - a hugely successful, award-winning author who had his other book made into an upcoming goddamn Martin Scorsese movie - recognizes how important the physical, paper-filled rectangle known as a book is to some of us. There's just something about The Book that I can't replace - that I don't want to replace, no matter how amazing the new technology for the delivery of stories gets.

PS: if you live in San Diego, or thereabouts, Warwick's will be hosting a pretty kick-ass event with Brian at the SD Museum of Natural History over in Balboa Park on October 28th. Check out warwicks.com for more info. (You just might meet the operator of the Book Catapult while you're there.)

I Want My Cut

2011-08-30T07:21:00.000-07:00

George Pelecanos is pretty boss - I'm just sayin'. Whenever I read one of his books, I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about how insane it is that no one else seems to be reading them. What's wrong with everyone?

Pelecanos is perhaps the most underrated writer in crime fiction these days, existing in that same "mean streets" limbo as the equally brilliant Richard Price. His main claim to fame these days - since he tends to have more fans who are critics & dorks like me, rather than cash-carrying book buyers - is his work as a writer and producer on HBO's acclaimed series, The Wire and currently, writer on the same network's Treme. (Interestingly enough, Price also wrote for The Wire.) My line here, basically, is if you've watched The Wire or read crime novels, you really need to be reading George Pelecanos. Really.

There is an efficiency of prose in GP's writing that I especially appreciate. There is no mincing of words, no flowery stylings. No bullshit. Every word, sentence, paragraph, is measured out carefully and methodically so as to have maximum impact & not waste my time. In The Cut - the first in a new series - Pelecanos introduces Spero Lucas, an ex-Marine, pretty fresh from Fallujah, who works as an investigator for a DC defense attorney, specializing in the recovery of lost property. This specialization brings him in contact with some of he seedier elements in town - in this case Mr. Anwan Hawkins, currently incarcerated by the District of Columbia - who hires Spero to find out who's been stealing his packages of drugs from their drop points. (Anwan has a system where packages are FedEx-ed to unsuspecting homes while people are away at work, then his minions collect from the porch after delivery. Someone's been removing packages without Anwan's approval.) Spero's a good man, really, so the moral line he's treading with this work is, well, delicate. But he's a stone cold bad ass.

Now Lucas was just a couple of yards away from the man. They stood in the center of the lot. It was like a basketball court where they had to jump for possession. Or the center circle of a wrestling mat.
"You know your Bible?" said the man.
Lucas did not answer. He stayed focused on the man's lidless eyes.
"John, Eleven-Ten. 'But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him'"
"Not this man," said Lucas.

The hyper-efficiency of Pelecanos' prose works well for a character like Spero, who turns out to be too methodical and driven to stumble into mistakes. He never gets hurt, punched, shot, stabbed, surprised. (Even while stomping the Bible-verse-spouting loser in the above scene.) Yet, he does end up embroiled in a much bigger, messier morass of violence and criminality that he ever anticipated. Fueled by Pelecanos' sharp, punchy dialogue, The Cut roars out of the gate and smashes through the plate glass window at the finish line. Good stuff. Great stuff.

Besides, you've got to love a book with character names like Spero Lucas, Anwan Hawkins, Beano Mobley, Ricardo "Rooster" Holly, & Tavon Lynch. I mean, c'mon - get on the Pelecanos bus already.

I'm Jame$ Patter$on, beeotch!

2011-08-18T11:10:00.000-07:00

Forbes has announced their list of the World's Highest Paid Authors for the year - guess who's on the top of the mountain again?

James Patterson - $84 million

Danielle Steel - $35 million

Stephen King - $28 million

Janet Evanovich - $22 million

Stephenie Meyer - $21 million

Rick Riordan - $21 million

Dean Koontz - $19 million (but Best Hair)

John Grisham - $18 million

Jeff Kinney - $17 million

Nicholas Sparks - $16 million

Ken Follett - $14 million

Suzanne Collins - $10 million

J.K. Rowling - $5 million

JPatt managed to garner a $14 million increase in his wages from last year by selling over 10 million copies of his books, along with somewhere around 750,000 eBooks. I had hopes that my 117 Days would have chipped away at his sales a bit, but he still made more money than Tiger Woods ($75 million for sucking at golf) and Leonardo DiCaprio ($77 mil) - the highest paid athlete & actor, respectively. (To illustrate how unfair the gender split is in sports & Hollywood, tennis player Maria Sharapova made "only" $25 million and Angelina Jolie $30 million. 4 out of the 10 authors are women, so not too bad of a split.)

Other fun facts: apparently, Ken Follett will be paid $50 million total for his current trilogy of historical fiction, while Janet Evanovich (who just might be worthy of her own 117 day blasting) commands a $10 million advance for every book. (Last year, she wanted a $50 million advance from her then-publisher Macmillan, who refused, hence her new deal with Ballantine.) Danielle Steel has something like 600 million copies of her books in print, with 2.3 million sales in 2010. Rowling will be somewhere in the top half of the list next year when she opens Pottermore & starts selling eBooks.

How Stephen King managed to rake in that much cash without writing a new book is beyond me.

Bonus fun fact: I've met Nicholas Sparks & Jeff Kinney and they were both assholes. Nothing says "romance" and "children's books" like egomaniacal douchebags.

One other thing: why are we paying these people so much? Does JPatt work 2333 times harder than me? 'Cause his pay would indicate that he does. I'm just sayin'.

Oh Yeah, Amazon Sux

2011-08-11T22:03:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry if you read my previous post where I ever so slightly defended the Amazon Kindle as a dedicated reading device. As a way of bringing me back to earth, I have been alerted to the latest Kindle television commercial:

"I thought you were going to the bookstore."

"Ssssshhhhhh!"

Seriously, how can independent bookstores compete with blatant, cocksure advertising as that? "Look how stupid you would be if you went to a bookstore."

By the way, if you live in California, please, please, please don't listen to the people parked outside your Trader Joe's pushing people to sign Amazon's ballot initiative petition. Despite what they may tell you, the issue is not about raising taxes or any such nonsense. (The petition is being put forward by a campaign committee called "More Jobs Not Taxes" which has exactly one donor, to the tune of $3 million. Right, Amazon.) All the new law requests is that out of state online retailers (like Amazon) charge sales tax to customers from California - just like every single California based online retailer has always had to do.

A few recent articles on the subject:
Bloomberg
KPBS San Diego
New York Times
Hell, just Google "California Amazon tax"

And the world has been reset.

What Kind of Reader Are You, Anyway?

2011-08-11T12:23:00.000-07:00

NYT, Brian Snyder/Reuters

I think I've stumbled onto actual written proof of the fundamental difference that I've always believed existed between the readers of traditional paperbound books and the eBook reader: highlighted in technology writer Nick Bilton's article for the New York Times, Deciding on a Book, and How to Read It. Bilton took up the noble cause of reading a book - the same book, Caleb Carr's The Alienist - on a variety of electronic devices (as well as a paperback version) to decide which one gave him the best reading experience.

Pretty much right away, I could tell that this guy was a different reader than myself. Not that there's anything wrong with that - I'm just sayin'. His biggest complaint about the Kindle was the lack of internet browser: "you can’t hop off to the Web to look up facts, which I often wanted to do when reading a historical novel." When I read, I use that time as a chance to disengage from the digital world I spend so much of my waking day in. (I mean, look at me right now, typing this over breakfast before I go to work as the web coordinator at the store.)

As for reading on his phone (an experience that makes my skin crawl):

Despite the small screen on a mobile phone, I find reading on one to be simple and satisfactory. Maybe this is because I have become accustomed to mobile screens, using them for hours at a time to check the news, sift through e-mail and navigate social networks.

To me, again, the reading experience warrants unplugging, especially from devices that have access to other bits of information. If I were to be reading a book on my phone, what's stopping me from checking my Twitter feed after 10 seconds? I can better understand the Kindle, actually, as a dedicated reading device, free from the distractions of the interweb. Nick's Apple iPad experience illustrated that difference as well:

...iPads offer an immersive reading experience. I found myself jumping back and forth between my book and the Web, looking up old facts and pictures of New York City. I also found myself being sucked into the wormhole of the Internet and a few games of Angry Birds rather than reading my book.

This is the big difference, to me - the "immersive experience," as he calls it. The pages of a book are much more immersive for me than anything the internet can offer. Even when just browsing websites, I'm continuously distracted from whatever is right in front of me & I often drift off down some other rabbit hole of nonsense. This tends to not happen when I'm reading a regular book. (Maybe this would be the case with a dedicated eReader as well.) In the end, his experience with the paperback was the most telling:

For the last chapters of the book, I read the paperback. It took barely a paragraph for me to feel frustrated. I kept looking up things on my iPhone, and forgetting to earmark my page.

There's clearly a place for both types of reader out there - those that, like Nick, prefer an experience where the reader is willing to be distracted (maybe a poor choice of wording, that) and those, like myself, who feel that the experience of reading an unplugged, printed book is fully immersive in itself.

By the way, this article also ran in the paper version of the New York Times on Thursday, August 11. That's got to mean something, I just don't know what.

The Civility of Voyeurism

2011-08-08T08:56:00.000-07:00

Photo courtesy of Manhattan Rare Book Co.

Back in March, I read Amor Towles' debut novel, Rules of Civility - partially because the publisher was taking me to a dinner with the author, (full disclosure here) but once I read the first page - yes, it passed the ol' first page test with flying colors - I was in.

Rules is a novel about a year in the life - 1938 to be precise - of young Katey Kontent, 25-year-old New York City secretary, struggling with identity and her place in the world. (I know, I know, yadda-yadda. Bear with me.) At a New Year's Eve party, Katey and her friend Eve meet Tinker Grey, a handsome, gadabout, high-society-type straight out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald piece. Tinker's friendship opens new doors for Katey and she floats through the upper echelons of NY society with ease, although always as more of a voyeur than an active participant. I know, it doesn't fit in with my usual genres of whale books and crime novels, but Towles is a truly stellar talent. Without a trace of contrivance, he completely brings 1930's NYC to life - the clothes, the restaurants, the bars, the dialogue, the smoking, drinking, dancing - everything, top to bottom. (It's a little bit Mad Men for the 30's.) To me, that's what Rules is all about - it's a view into a lost world of American life. Sure, 1938 proves to be a life changing year for little Katey Kontent, but Towles' creation of the era is what has stuck with me as something special.

I always love seeing a complete era of Americana brought to life in the pages of a novel - even more impressive to see in a debut. (Towles is an investment banker by day, on top of it.) 1938 itself was in the middle a pretty fascinating time period of American history - the Depression was almost behind us, but World War II still loomed, unseen, over the horizon. What would that have felt like? Katey has a certain giddiness with having the oyster of the world before her at 25, but what would your "everyman" have been like, riding the subway to work every day, glad to have a job?

Which brings me back to the opening scenes of Rules - set forward in 1966, Katey and her husband are attending the Museum of Modern Art exposition of Walker Evans' voyeuristic NYC subway photographs, Many Are Called. Within the faces captured surreptitiously by Evans, Katey sees her old friend Tinker Grey and the flood gates of reminiscence open. As much as I loved the ensuing book, I was drawn to the use of Evans' work, as he has been a favorite photographer of mine since my photography student days in icy upstate New York. (In fact, I own an original print of Evans', as well as a well-worn copy of the book version of Many Are Called.)

In 1938, Evans began taking photographs of people on the subway with a camera hidden in his overcoat. (He shot through a buttonhole!) To me, the photos are as much about the vulnerability of the subjects as they're an unprecedented glimpse into a bygone era. They are completely unposed and raw - the subjects are exactly as they were in life, they're not gussied up for the camera, they're not even aware of its existence. They are are lost in their own thoughts, daydreaming, chatting with friends, looking out the window, people-watching. There's something amazing about looking at someone from 70 years ago as they people-watch...

Anyway, the images are a perfect complement to Amor's novel, as they bring a visual element to his words and the era in which he set them. (This post is as much a plug for Walker Evans as it is for Amor Towles, I suppose.) Here are a few, courtesy of Yale University Press, who re-published Many Are Called in 2004.

And don't forget to read Rules of Civility. Cheers.

Ah, the innocent era before the connotations of the "Hitler moustache."

(Above) She's always been one of my favorites. Shock? Awe? Disgust? Happiness?

Man Booker 2011

2011-07-26T19:49:00.000-07:00

Once again, I am trying to find meaning in another meaningless literary award. (I might be a complete idiot.) The 2011 Man Booker Prize longlist was announced today - aka: The Man Booker Dozen (as the Booker people like to style it.) The nominees are:

Julian Barnes - The Sense of an Ending

Sebastian Barry - On Canaan's Side

Carol Birch - Jamrach's Menagerie

Patrick deWitt - The Sisters Brothers

Esi Edugyan - Half Blood Blues

Yvvette Edwards - A Cupboard Full of Coats

Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger's Child

Stephen Kelman - Pigeon English

Patrick McGuinness - The Last Hundred Days

A.D. Miller - Snowdrops

Alison Pick - Far to Go

Jane Rogers - The Testament of Jessie Lamb

D.J. Taylor - Derby Day

The board of judges this year is chaired by Stella Rimington, a B-list mystery novelist (at best) & former director general of MI5. Matthew d'Ancona, Susan Hill, Chris Mullin (the author/politician, not the retired shooting guard from the Golden State Warriors), & book critic Gaby Wood round it out. I suppose even with Rimington directing things, this is a somewhat better panel than last year (which featured a poet, a dancer, & a writer from the Financial Times.) But I have to say, the field itself looks a bit weak, compared to other years. Julian Barnes seems to me to be the early favorite, as a 3-time shortlister & a generally good chap. Then again, Alan Hollinghurst is the one who stole David Mitchell's Prize in 2004, so maybe he's the darkhorse favorite. That's right, I said "stole." Cloud Atlas vs The Line of Beauty. "The line of who?" you ask. "Exactly," I say.

I've heard great things about Sebastian Barry's book, which sits waiting on my desk as we speak. Of course, I'm pulling for Carol Birch, author of Jamrach's Menagerie (see my little blurb from the other day.) Yes, I read yet another book written by a lady! Shocking! That's FIVE for the year - and it's only July!

Anybody read any of these? Care to chime in? Does anyone even care about the Booker these days?

George R. R. Martin, in da' house

2011-07-25T12:49:00.000-07:00

GRRM & the Catapult operator.

George R. R. Martin, the genius - yes, genius, I said - behind A Song of Ice and Fire, aka: A Game of Thrones, etc, was kind enough to stop by Warwick's this morning on his way up to Los Angeles after this weekend's Comic Con. Nice fella, soft hands, fast book signer. Warwick's has a bunch of signed first editions of the new book, in case you're interested: warwicks.com.

What I've Been Reading, In Case You're Interested...

2011-07-24T21:08:00.000-07:00

How we select what to read fascinates me. Why do we gravitate towards the books we pick up? I know, we read authors that we've read before or books that friends have recommended to us, but I'm talking about the actual cosmic order that we read them in. Is there a subconscious plan that we're unaware of? Is there a certain style of cover art that reels us in every single time? (I think yes, by the way. There are plenty of great books that I haven't wanted to read, based solely on the cover art.) Is there a special sequence of words in the jacket copy that triggers a subconscious buying reaction? Why do we progress from author to author, sometimes realizing that they are connected in some way only after we've begun reading?

This philosophical question is really just an impetus for me to write about some of the books I've read lately, without feeling guilty for not writing more frequently. So, here's what I've read since the last book I wrote about (Michael Crummey's Galore) presented in sort of a journal format. Is there a pattern within the chaos?

After I read Robopocalypse by Daniel Wilson, I couldn't really face reading something "serious" like Moby Dick, Michael Ondaatje, or, I don't know, any of the other countless books on my shelf that I haven't gotten around to yet. (Hello, Lorrie Moore.) So, naturally I picked up Glen Duncan's The Last Werewolf. A natural progression, to be sure. This is no Twilight, teen-angsty, light-horror beach read. Duncan's edgy prose is surprisingly literary and the well-wrought story has an infinite number of twists & turns that keep you guessing and rooting for the wolf. Jake Marlowe is just a 200-year old man who happens to turn into a wolf with an amped-up libido once a month. He's tired of running from the goons who've hunted down all the other werewolves on earth, but just as he's prepared to go out in a hail of silver bullets, his life is turned on its lupine ear and he desperately wants to stay breathing. In the end, a tale of love, survival, prejudice, and the finer points of living a life well lived.

Then I went to Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy for a little gravity, I suppose. (Follow the link for that mini-review.) Then to Galore. Then I read about half of James Sallis' The Killer Is Dying, but I couldn't tell you what it was about at this point. A serial killer? Just never grabbed me. Then, for whatever reason, I decided to tackle John Sayles' A Moment in the Sun - a 1000-page McSweeney's novel about the Gold Rush and the US's war with Spain in the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century. Sayles is a film director by day - Lone Star, Eight Men Out - so Moment certainly has a cinematic air about it. To be honest, it's a sprawling epic of monstrous proportions that I've had a hard time wrapping my head around. My advance reading copy was printed in two, 500-page sections & I've just about managed to get through Part One. I think I'll go back to it...

As a break from the nearly-impenetrability of that, I moved to George Pelecanos' forthcoming The Cut, which I will be reviewing (hopefully) in the coming weeks as we get closer to the release date in August. Pelecanos was a producer & writer for The Wire, as well as currently wearing the same hats for Treme, in addition to being one hell of a crime novelist. The Cut is flat-out awesomeness.

After that I was on vacation & had my family in town, so, naturally, I read Crimes in Southern Indiana by Frank Bill - a series of linked short stories that showcase the horrible shit that people in rural Indiana do to each other. (I'm just funnin', Mom.) As a way of introducing you to his stunning debut, Frank Bill grabs your hand & leads you into the pitch-dark, flooded basement of America where he proceeds to force your head down into the dark, pungent depths. The resultant interlaced stories are gritty, mean, awful, & flat-out brilliant. The characters of Bill’s Indiana are deplorable, miserable wretches – brawlers, drunks, meth-heads, & scumbags - yet this is what lends them such a vitality that makes them all the more real. I couldn't tear my eyes away from them - I kept thinking "Just one more story & I'll stop this madness," but I never did. Ah, let’s admit it: I never wanted to. (On sale August 30. Also, visit Frank Bill's House of Grit, where he has given me an unprecedented couple of shout-outs. A thousand thanks, Frank!)

In an attempt to "lighten the mood" after that, I read A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion by Ron Hansen, which is a novelized version of the events surrounding the 1927 murder trial of Ruth Snyder. (Hansen is also the author of The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, which was made into a Brad Pitt film.) The Snyder case had the country riveted for several weeks that year and was one of the first instances of an "O.J. Trial" sort of sensationalized court case. Basically, Ruth, unhappy in her marriage, plotted with her lover to murder her husband. And they pulled it off, at least until the police showed up the next morning and saw how obvious it was that Ruth & her squeeze, Judd Gray were responsible for the murder. It's a fascinating story of an obsessive relationship and a tremendously sloppy murder - which leads, ultimately to The Chair for Ruth & Judd (I'm not ruining anything that you can't learn on Wikipedia) - but after reading Hansen's novelized version, I'm not sure why he wrote it this way. He certainly did an extraordinary amount of research for the book, but a lot of it reads like a transcript of events at times, with some journalistic tendencies, combined with some hot & heavy sequences with Ruth & Judd that he made up. Other reviews have gone on about how brilliant Hansen is for being able to create such a lush backstory for Ruth & Judd, but it all read as rather pedestrian to me.

Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch was a book that I admittedly first picked up for its cover art. That's where that element of my early musings over why we choose what we choose comes true. I'm a sucker for the ocean-scene woodcut cover art, apparently. (See We, the Drowned.) Much to my surprise, the inside of the book was far, far better than the packaging. Set in Victorian England, this is the bizarre tale of Jaffy Brown, born in the darkest, dirtiest slum of Bermondsey, London. After being nearly eaten by a tiger on the street one day...he is taken in as hired help by the tiger's owner, Charles Jamrach, "Naturalist and Importer of Animals, Birds, and Shells." Jamrach imports and sells exotic beasts from all corners of the world, housing them in a vast menagerie at his house in London. With his best friend Tim Linver, Jaffy eventually finds himself on an ocean voyage with Jamrach's "finder," Dan Rymer, in search of a dragon in the Java Sea. What they find sends them all on a much different kind of journey - one laced with insanity, unreliable narration, thirst, starvation, and the dark turns in the inner workings of the souls of men. At turns a playful, whimsical story combined with a little Heart of Darkness, Carol Birch turns in a brilliant, wholly original book that I just loved every word of.

Which brings me to today, where my secret nerd comes out: in anticipation of the release of George R. R. Martin's A Dance with Dragons, I went back (yes, back) and read book #4 in his Song of Ice & Fire series, A Feast For Crows. Then, a week later, began Dance, another 900+ pager, which I am currently still tearing through. I first encountered these books when #3 came out - so long ago that I had yet to work in a bookstore at that point. (There was a painful 5 year wait between #3 and #4, followed by another six year wait for the current book.) Nowadays, GRRM is the hottest author around - the HBO adaptation of the first book in this series, A Game of Thrones (written & produced by David Benioff) has been nominated for an Emmy and Dance sold 298,000 copies on its first day. So, where've you been? The best endorsement I can offer for Martin's books is this: I have read all of the first four books twice, clocking in at somewhere in the neighborhood of 4000 pages. And I'll read them all again.

So there you have it.

Author, Critic, Stripper, Fowler

2011-06-22T08:19:00.000-07:00

I must admit, I'm getting kind of sick of seeing author bylines that make mention of their graduation from MFA creative writing programs. There's an overabundance of books being published that use this bit of information as a marketing tool, as if I should be significantly impressed enough by the author's schooling history to pick up their debut short story collection. "Yeah, I get it, you went to the Iowa Writers' Workshop & therefore I need to read your flowery new experimental novel." An MFA in creative writing seems to be a person's ticket to publication more often than not these days, which can do nothing but dilute the quality of the writing that gets produced. That said, there are some very competent, incredibly talented new writers out there who happen to be products of those programs & we - both critics and readers - shouldn't dismiss them due to the degrees mentioned in their jacket copy. It's a tough decision to make as a reader - do you scoff at the degree or should you pick it up anyway & give it a try? (So in the span of a paragraph, I've managed to argue both sides of this discussion. Good night everybody!)

The impetus for this post is Ruth Fowler's recent piece of criticism in the Huffington Post, The Orange Prize Has Let Us Down (June 10, 2011). Recently, Téa Obreht, author of The Tiger's Wife, won the 2011 Orange Prize - an annual award that "celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women's writing." Fowler took umbrage with this, to say the least. Some choice verbiage from her post:

A plump, blonde, smiling MFA-product, Obreht's debut novel, The Tiger's Wife, has resulted in some astonishingly pretentious bullshit from the critics, to rival the content of her own book.

...it's unreadable: turgid, overwritten, self-indulgent...

...my god is it boring.

Worthy, insufferably dull, and an ordeal, it's the kind of book that one reads only because a sibling or loved one wrote it...

It's like gagging down spinach when you hate it.

...competent, assured, boring-as-fuck prose.

...we should make 10 years in the real world compulsory for all writers who have graduated from an MFA course before the age of 25.

I'm going to admit now that I haven't read all of The Tiger's Wife.

Ruth Fowler

Now, again, I don't completely disagree with Fowler on the MFA issue in general, but to assume that everyone under a certain age is incapable of writing a story that reaches beyond their own life experiences is ridiculous. (In fact, it was actually this ability of Obreht's to write beyond her years that so impressed me with The Tiger's Wife.) It's easy, I would assume, for Fowler to complain about a writer not having enough life experience to be able to write a well-crafted story, as she made her bones (so to speak) writing a blog - Mimi in NY - and a book - Girl, Undressed - about being a stripper in New York City. Not everyone needs to have the same resumé or narcissistic, sociopathic tendencies as that in order to be able to write a novel.

I think that what bothers me most about this, is that Fowler actually got paid to write a snarky, bullshit piece like that - a piece where she admits to not finishing the book she was paid to review! Alright, so you were bored by the book, you thought it was overwritten, I get it - but all credibility you might have as a critic is lost when you admit to not finishing the book. It's one thing to pan something so heavily that the reader assumes that you threw the book across the room at some point or walked out of the theater in disgust, but you shouldn't ever admit it. Hell, it's not like I follow any sort of rules when I write reviews here - it's not that I adhere to some list of stodgy guidelines that I learned in some writing course. So it's fine that Fowler writes with such honesty in her post - what do I care? What I do have a problem with, is that she wrote this - for pay, one would assume - in a widely-read format like the Huffington Post. If anything, I think by having a critic with a tone like Fowler write for Huffington, they've done nothing but compromise their own journalistic integrity. Such as it is. Did I mention that Fowler became a "famous" author by writing about stripping?

I'm not saying that you should only read reviews from the New York Times (far from it, actually, especially since they've started charging to read their online reviews) but I think there should be a sort of unspoken professionalism in criticism to avoid having pieces published with tones like Fowler's. For the most part, there is that level of professionalism in criticism. While the tone may be different from the Times to The Millions, the New York Review to Publisher's Weekly, to the New Yorker to The Morning News, there is always a degree of professionalism in the writing. Write however you want on your own website, who am I to judge? But as soon as you get paid to write a review elsewhere, you need to get your shit together, tighten up your prose, and ditch the personal attack jobs.

One last thing: Fowler tears into Zadie Smith in the middle of her piece - "Shut up Zadie. You're about as entertaining as an enema." - but fails to mention that Smith is quite proud of the fact that she never attended an MFA program. However, Lionel Shriver, who is championed by Fowler in the piece, has an MFA from Columbia. I'm just sayin'.

Galore by Michael Crummey

2011-06-13T06:00:00.000-07:00

Michael Crummey's novel Galore opens with a living man being cut out of the belly of a whale on a beach in Newfoundland. Given my unexplainable propensity for books about fish and other marine animals (Tuna, Cod, The Whale, Kraken, etc.) all I had to do was read the jacket flap and I was in.

In an early-19th century spring, "during a time of scarcity when the ocean was barren and gardens went to rot in the relentless rain," the people of Paradise Deep in Newfoundland, gather on the beach to butcher a whale that has run itself aground. When the Toucher triplets poke a hole in the stomach lining of the beast, a human head, with "hair bleached white" reveals itself. Hacked loose by the woman known only as Devine's Widow, the albino corpse proves to be living still, and the town is never the same. The mute man is dubbed Judah ("a compromise between the competing stories of who it was in the Bible had been swallowed by a whale") and as the fish stocks hit an all-time low after his appearance, the town starts to think he's "bad for the fish." (Not to mention that he carries the eye-watering stink of fish on his person until the end of his days.) But when Judah is taken out to the fishing grounds by Callum Devine (at the mysterious behest of his mother, Devine's Widow) he proves...well, magically adept at fishing and the town's fortunes swing back towards abundance and prosperity. Fish galore, as they say.

Galore is filled with weird little vignettes like this one, imbued with a magical spark and a folkloric vibrancy that sucks the reader into its undertow and deposits them for the duration amongst the bizarre folk who populate Paradise Deep. Mummers storm your house every Christmas, the ghost of an awful husband is condemned to watch his wife with another man, a woman has all her teeth pulled out so that they never rot, unrequited loves abound across the generations. The family Devine and the family Sellers are the integral cogs in the machinations here, driving the story forward with their slights, feuds, disagreements, illicit love affairs, snubs, fistfights, and secret children. Inextricably linked together, they are Paradise Deep, in the end, whether they like it or not. The story arcs over the course of 100 years or so in this tiny town, tracing familial lineages as they intersect and merge to create a beautifully complicated family tree. Always hovering amongst the branches of that tree is the mysterious Judah, pale, mute, and possibly ageless, yet infinitely more complicated, magical, and brilliant than anyone gives him credit for. He's the star of the show, the white whale always alluded to but never caught, as his significance manages to slip through our fingers until the last glimpse of him vanishes behind a wave in the final act.

While some readers of The Catapult will think that the family-of-mariners-folklore thing to this is oddly reminiscent of We, the Drowned - another one of the best books I've read this year - this similarity is simply due to the fact that I have read and recommended them both. Which begs the larger question (to me, at least) of why am I drawn to novels with themes like this? Hell, I don't know, but they're both pretty great, so just pick one and get readin'.

Not convinced? Take 2 minutes and watch this video of the author (a Newfie his own self) talking about the folklore of Galore and Newfoundland/Labrador.

Available in paperback from your local independent bookshop.

thebookcatapult.com

2011-06-09T22:46:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody, The Book Catapult is growing up! After 5 years of meager existence, faking my way across the internets with my own name, you can now find this site by going to... thebookcatapult.com! Try it!

You can also "like" the Book Catapult on Facebook and "follow" me on twitter.com/sethmarko

Sebastian

2011-06-09T21:25:00.000-07:00

In the ten years that I've been a bookseller by trade, by far the biggest perk of the job has been meeting authors face-to-face. I've attended countless book signings & lectures, shook thousands of famous (or relatively famous) hands, all while on the clock. (This perk might be better than the free books, actually.) Granted, sometimes meeting "The Author" is a bit of a disappointment - maybe you love their work a little too much, have built them up to deification in your own head, and their in-person personality turns out to be a little lackluster. Sometimes they're just assholes. (People are assholes sometimes, it's okay to say so.) No, I'm not going to name names. Wait, I'm getting off point here. Most of the time - at least 99% - it's reaffirming, in a way, to put a face & a voice to the creator of the written word you've enjoyed so much. Sometimes, the experience of meeting that person surpasses all expectations & transcends into something else entirely. This was the case with Mr. Sebastian Junger this past Monday evening in San Diego.

Junger (you know, The Perfect Storm?) was appearing at Warwick's to discuss and sign his latest book, War, (also a 2010 Catapult Notable Notable book) which is a chronicle of the 15 months he spent in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan with the Army's 173rd Airborne. (His time spent there also resulted in the film Restrepo.) The Korengal is a horrible place, due to all the shooting, bombing, & killing and is perhaps the most violent place on earth right now (he witnessed 4 firefights with Taliban soldiers on the day he arrived in camp). His book is, as he says, "about men's reaction to combat - which is a complex thing. It's not simple, it's probably not what civilians expect, but it needs to be understood...."

So, like I said, I've witnessed a lot of author talks, but the one delivered by Mr. Junger was far and away the best one I have ever had the privilege of seeing. He was erudite, courteous, polite, candid, & wholeheartedly honest in his assessment of what is happening in Afghanistan right now - at least as far as he saw in the Korengal.

So, I know that the video is crazy long, but you owe it to yourself to watch at least some of it. (Please forgive the jumpy video at the start - not my fault, I promise.)

Outer Dark

2011-06-04T08:48:00.000-07:00

They crested out on the bluff in the late afternoon sun with their shadows long on the sawgrass and burnt sedge, moving single file and slowly high above the river and with something of its own implacability, pausing and grouping for a moment and going on again strung out in silhouette against the sun and then dropping under the crest of the hill into a fold of blue shadows with light touching them about the head in spurious sanctity until they had gone on for such a time as saw the sun down altogether and they moved in shadow altogether which suited them very well.

The opening sentence of Cormac McCarthy's second novel, Outer Dark - a hidden gem in the Cormac canon, published in 1968 when he was just 35 years old. It's dark, twisted, and a bit disjointed, but there's no denying that it shows flashes of his distinct, sparse prose style, dialogue, and thematic arcs that we've become accustomed to in later, more celebrated works.

Young Rinthy Holme gives birth to a child by her brother, Culla - right there we're thrown off balance by the incest - who decides it best if Rinthy thinks the child has died, so he leaves the baby under a tree in the woods. This is early 20th-century Appalachia, so naturally a tinker happens along the babe and takes him in - long enough to give him to someone else in trade. When Rinthy discovers that the child has not died, Culla takes off running and she sets out across the land to find her son. The resultant tale is of their divergent paths across this dusty, rural landscape, searching, wandering, struggling. Not a happy tale, even by Cormac's standards and the added element of a trio of murderous chaps also wandering the countryside lends an extra sinister air to the whole thing. But still, if you're at all a fan of any of his other books, you might not have stumbled across Outer Dark in your travels to date & I'd recommend you check it out.

San Diego's Literacy Health

2011-06-01T07:34:00.000-07:00

Last week, Amazon announced the list of the 20 "Most Well-Read Cities in America" according to their own sales data and however else they decided to gauge things. The list was compiled from "all book, magazine and newspaper sales in both print and Kindle format since Jan. 1, 2011, on a per capita basis in cities with more than 100,000 residents." (The Christian Science Monitor pointed out that this list is nearly identical to a list compiled by Amazon last year entitled "The 20 Most Romantic Cities in America." Hilarious.) Regardless, the town that I live in wasn't on either list, which got me thinking...

The store formerly known as Borders in downtown San Diego

1. Cambridge, MA

2. Alexandria, VA

3. Berkeley, CA

4. Ann Arbor, MI

5. Boulder, CO

6. Miami

7. Salt Lake City

8. Gainesville, FL

9. Seattle

10. Arlington, Va.

11. Knoxville, TN

12. Orlando

13. Pittsburgh

14. Washington, DC

15. Bellevue, WA

16. Columbia, SC

17. St. Louis

18. Cincinnati

19. Portland, OR

20. Atlanta

According to the Most Literate Cities survey conducted (with a bit less bias, perhaps) by Central Connecticut State University in 2010, San Diego ranked #38 overall (in a tie with Greensboro, NC) and #40 in number of per capita bookstores. (This list focused on the largest cities in America, all with over 250,000 residents.) Granted, we're not top of the heap here, but San Diego still seems to be a relatively literate and book-friendly town by most standards. For comparisons, CCSU's overall Top Five cities:

1. Seattle, WA
2. St. Louis, MO
3. Minneapolis, MN
4(tie). Cincinnati, OH
4(tie). Portland, OR

So, since I'm trying to look for a positive spin here, does the omission of San Diego from the Amazon list strangely translate into hope for local independent bookstores? I'm presuming that the data compiled by Amazon was strictly from their own sales, which would cause the list to be an "Amazon top customer" list, rather than one highlighting overall literacy. By that rationale, paired with the findings of the CCSU survey, San Diego seems to be a city open to brick & mortar bookstores. Maybe? The success of the 2 larger independent stores in SD would seem so...

There are not that many indies in San Diego these days - by my count, there are 4 "legit" stores, focusing primarily on books, one of which is planning on closing up this summer - but does the closing of most of the branches of Borders in SD County, coupled with our failure to make the Amazon-friendly list create a literacy vacuum that can be filled by indies? Are San Diegans poised to shop local or am I just being overly hopeful and naive?

The questions about this topic that I've been asking myself lately (in an attempt to shake things up, personally, perhaps) are nearly endless: Does SD need more bookstores? Can our city sustain a literary society like a Seattle or Portland or even a Cincinnati? Do we still want to read actual books, or do we prefer to get our content online or in a digital format? I know that the majority of readers of The Book Catapult don't live in San Diego (oddly, only 14% of pageviews even come from California) and I know that many of you are ebook readers, but I am curious about where people think the book world is heading. On the heels of Book Expo and the Book Bloggers Convention in NYC last week, I don't get the sense that that giant elephant of a question was fully addressed. Are paper books dead? Do we still want places to go and physically browse stacks of books? Do we want to meet authors in person anymore? Or do we just prefer the ease & anonymity of buying books online? What does the 21st century bookstore look like to you, if it exists at all?

Any thoughts?

Robopocalypse!

2011-05-19T13:16:00.000-07:00

"You humans are biological machines designed to create ever more intelligent tools. You have reached the pinnacle of your species. All your ancestors' lives, the rise and fall of your nations, every pink and squirming baby - they have all led you here, to this moment where you have fulfilled the destiny of humankind and created your successor. You have expired. You have accomplished what you were designed to do."

The words of Archos, the most powerful artificial intelligence ever created, set the terrifying tone for the first true summer blockbuster of 2011 - Robopocalypse, a novel by Daniel H. Wilson, on sale June 7th. You're gonna have to trust me on this one.

This debut novel by Wilson, robotics engineer and author of the satire/nonfiction How to Survive a Robot Uprising, is written with a blistering pace that forces the reader to give up all preconceived notions, airs, and snooty proto-literary ideas, and just hang the hell on for the ride. Optioned for film by Steven Spielberg before the book was ever published - Dreamworks is thanked in the acknowledgments of the advance copy I read - Robopocalypse reads like a finely tuned film script and hits like a punch in the face from a robot arm right from the get go.

Set in a near future of ours where humanity has mastered the art of robotic machinery - from the smart chips in our cars to simple, scurrying Death Star droids and domestic bipedal robots, there are engineered helpers all around us. In the presumed safety of a secure lab, one scientist finally creates the ultimate thinking machine, Archos, whose intelligence reaches unfathomable levels in 15 minutes of existence. Much to the fatal dismay of its physicist/father, Archos quickly figures a way out of its secure environment and starts in motion its plan to remove humanity from the equation.

"What will I do? I will cultivate life. I will protect the knowledge locked inside living things. I will save the world from you."

Oh shit.

Daniel Wilson, robot leader

After Archos manipulates some humans into providing it with a secure location, it begins to spread its message of world domination to all the electronic devices around the world capable of being manipulated. (Your TV won't kill you, but your "Big Happy" domestic robot just might.) At first, isolated incidents are reported: a nonviolent, "humanoid safety and pacification robot" stationed in Afghanistan starts killing people; a domestic bipedal robot rips the face off a Frogurt employee; a "Baby-Comes-Alive" doll does just that, spouting robot propaganda at a Senator's daughter; the onboard computers of two domestic airliners chart a collision course before being overridden at the last second. Then all hell breaks loose. It's mostly the cars - any automobile with an "intra-vehicle communication chip" either runs humans down on the street or drives the ones on board to their deaths. Imagine the chaos in the cities... Bipedal robots go door-to-door, "removing" human occupants - definitely not safe to stay inside. So what do you do?! After much death and madness, humanity regroups a bit, in the first incidence of true global solidarity, and tries to salvage what's left of our societies in an attempt to stop whatever the F is happening on the planet.

The story is told through reviewed dispatches and personal accounts compiled by Cormac "Bright Boy" Wallace, a soldier and apparent survivor of the war against the machines. This narrative device is my one true complaint with Robopocalypse - Cormac's italicized recaps at the end of every chapter/dispatch don't leave much room for doubt as to how the war will end. (In fact, the opening sentence of the novel begins with "Twenty minutes after the war ends, I...") Yet despite the perceived inevitability of how things will go for human/robot relations, the journey is so spectacular you end up not caring one whit about the quirks of delivery.

Wilson proves stunningly expert at pacing the story out - leaving just enough fear and doubt in the narrative to keep you quickly turning pages. Thankfully, the dialogue is kept to a relative minimum and remains sharp and believable throughout - speaking parts in books like this can quickly go awry when the robots sound more human than the humans. Not so here. The actions of both machines and humans drive the narrative completely, leaving us constantly wondering what the next ensuing horror will be before humanity can react. Part of this is due to the shocking near-reality of it all - the recognizable element of the horror. Who among us can't see this "robopocalypse" being part of our own future? We already rely too much on our technological comforts as it is, so who's to say we won't be inventing bipedal home aides in the next 50 years? (We could, of course be headed toward Gary Shteyngart's version of the future too.) We just might be so shortsighted to allow ourselves to get taken in by the ease of tech and end up overrun by our robot slaves. (Kindles are mind-control devices, by the way.)

Anyway, I was skeptical of this, to say the least, when I first saw it. Being a complete book snob, as you know, I thought it odd that my Random House sales rep was pushing this robot book so hard. Then I talked to his wife - a very sensible woman and a great, unbiased reader - who loved it. WTF? And after reading 5 pages I realized how wrong I was in my rash judgment - fine, there I said it. Read this book as soon as you can - it's well-written, different, escapist, a lot of fun and you'll forget all about the boring, mundane, tedious shit in your life. And besides, even the jaded reader won't see exactly how things will shake out in the end - trust me.

**For future reference, you can "like" Archos the evil AI on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ArchosR.14, which offers some pretty hilarious robot posts. (Wilson and the book itself are also on FB.) Also, http://www.danielhwilson.com/ of course.

And, once again, I implore you - if you read this blog, do me a solid if you are looking to purchase books (including eBooks, mind you) and please check to see if there is at least an independent bookstore near you where you could buy your books, such as Robopocalypse:

Most indies have websites that are just as easy to use as Amazon.com, so try to keep your dollars in your own communities!

Cloud Atlas Burst

2011-05-13T21:18:00.000-07:00

This isn't exactly breaking news anymore, what with Tom Hanks crashing the party last month, but things seem to be moving forward - for reals - on the film version of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. This week, it was announced that Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, and Jim Broadbent would be joining Hanks and Hugo Weaving (and perhaps Natalie Portman?) in the film, crushing any fading hopes that it would remain as well-wrought and ground-breaking as the novel. That's right, I don't like it.

I can kinda get on board with Tom Hanks - he's a classy guy - and Susan Sarandon is great (except for the whole maybe-cheating-on-Tim Robbins-thing) but Halle Berry? The rumor has gone further in that she may play "Meronym" from the "Sloosha's Crossin'" section - a post-apocalyptic future where people speak a garbled, pidgin English that I imagine her delivering like Ben Stiller's "Simple Jack," if you know what I m-m-m-mean. But I digress. Some stupid part of me had always hoped that the necessary ensemble cast for the film - even with the Wachowskis attached to it - would be comprised of unknown actors, or at least not Big-Timers like Hanks & Portman. Now there're way too many A-listers (or B, I guess) attached to it for my taste.

I have further problems, really, with the production team of the Wachowskis. (Formerly known as the "Wachowski brothers" until Larry became "Lana" a few years back. Seriously.) They have created one original, notable work - the original Matrix film - and have utterly failed to deliver on everything else they've gotten their hands on since then. The other two Matrix movies, Speed Racer, V For Vendetta... uh... did I mention Larry's now a girl? 'Cause that's all they got. It scares me that these uninspired, bloated-budget, high-gloss clowns are making what is perhaps my favorite book of the 21st century into a film. More rumors have the film's budget ballooning up over $140 million already - which could be good or bad, depending on whether that cash is going to production value or cast salaries. (Speed Racer cost $120 mil & the 2 shitty Matrix sequels, $237. FYI.) The one saving grace here may actually be director Tom Tykwer, who wrote Run Lola Run & the film adaptation of Patrick Süskind's Perfume, which wasn't half bad. Can he overpower the brother/sister combo of crap, though?

One last thing: Natalie Portman told Entertainment Weekly a few months ago that she read Cloud Atlas while she "was doing V For Vendetta and (then) gave it to the Wachowskis and to Tom Tykwer." So, obviously, she's dead to me.

Ah shit, I'm sorry, I should keep an open mind on this. It's not like I won't be there on opening night. I mean, c'mon.

Hey, don't be a jerk - if you want to buy a book, do it right:

Happy JPattaversary!

2011-05-02T06:30:00.000-07:00

Friday, April 29th marked the one year anniversary of the completely one-sided friendship between myself and James Patterson. To celebrate, JPatt is publishing the sequel to The 9th Judgment on Monday, (sort of) appropriately entitled Tenth Anniversary. I like to think that he threw that title in just for me.

I love you too, Jim, but I'm not doin' that shit again.

Go ahead, revisit the 117 Days, it's okay.

Not Your Father's eBook

2011-05-01T21:35:00.000-07:00

Barnes & Noble and Sandra Boynton Join Together to Present the World's First E-Book App Signing
New York, New York – On Monday, May 2, renowned writer and illustrator Sandra Boynton will become the world’s first author to sign an eBook app for the general public. This historic signing will take place at 7:00 PM at Barnes & Noble’s Upper East Side store, located at 150 E 86th Street at Lexington Avenue, in New York City.

It's gonna be so awesome to look back over my purchased apps in 20 years and see my signed ebook version of Moo Baa La La La.

Is this the future we want? I get that authors and publishers are proud of the interactivity of children's books in the electronic format, but what kind of future generation are we creating as a result? We are already so plugged in - look at yourself right now - are we not going to read to our children in 10 years? Will we let our iPads & Nooks do the reading and interacting with the kids, while we check our Facebook pages?

Below is Loud Crow's version of The Tale of Peter Rabbit. (They're also responsible for Boynton's app.) It's very cool looking, I must admit - until I remember that this will be used by tiny children in lieu of a parent reading them the story on their own.

Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way - perhaps this isn't to be viewed as an "improvement" on the book, but more of a supplement....

Ah, screw that, we all know where this is heading. There's no way that a parent who invests in something like Boynton's app is going to be reading aloud to little Billy when he goes to bed. "Here, son, watch this video reenactment of storytime and I'll see you in the morning." Dramatic, sure, but is it untrue?

Again, this leads to the debate over books & eBooks - a subject we've all been discussing to death, I know. Yes, the argument can be made that paperbound books are just another technology, waiting to be replaced by the next one - in this case a musical, speaking electronic version. (My old pal, Jeff Bezos from Amazon has said as much on numerous occasions.) And there's a certain degree of truth to that argument, I suppose. I know that many readers of this blog, even, are eBook readers. I get it. I know it's not going anywhere. But where is it taking us? To me there's an intangible, personal element to holding an actual book in your hands and turning the pages that is lacking in the soulless, plastic and glass electronic tablet. An autographed eBook? Are you kidding me? What the f**k am I going to do with that? What does that even mean?

Look, I get that there's a certain degree of irony to all this, as I only have a voice as loud as I do because of technology, but I think this is leading us down a slippery slope. Hearing the sound of both of my parents' voices reading to me (not simultaneously) was an integral part of who I became as a person - can the same be said for a generation who has a computer doing the reading? Amazing technological advancements aside, it all just strikes me as a little sad.

Air Time

2011-04-12T22:59:00.000-07:00

I have definitely been neglecting the Catapult as of late, so I'm sorry if you're one of the few loyal readers who keeps checking back to see if anything's new, only to find that, sadly, there's not. This inadvertent hiatus seems to happen every year, what with The Tournament and all (see left, thank you Kemba.) I've also just finished a month-long project (involving reading & reviewing) which has sucked up all my free time - including time normally spent reading books - so I do plan on returning to regular Catapult posts in the near future.

If you're interested in hearing the melodious sound of my voice to tide you over, you can do so at www.kpbs.org, where I gave an interview/book talk on the Tuesday morning edition of These Days. I talked about The Tiger's Wife, The Pale King, We, the Drowned, and West of Here. Enjoy!

The Troubled Man by Henning Mankell (review)

2011-03-29T13:14:00.000-07:00

I think I first discovered Swedish mystery novelist Henning Mankell in 2004 - Warwick's was carrying one or two of his Kurt Wallander books, but no one on staff had ever read any and customers weren't really buying. Being a young, fresh-faced 29-year-old, I was suckered in by the sweet-looking Vintage Crime packaging of The White Lioness (the cover art is an X-ray of a handgun) and discovered that a pretty fantastic series of crime novels lived inside. Now, I don't want to take all the credit, but there have been six Wallander films made for PBS and Warwick's has sold (to date) a combined 1,318 copies of the books in the series (not counting Mankell's array of stand-alone novels.) Not to mention the blossoming of Scandinavian crime fiction in the US market - Stieg Larsson, Jo Nesbo, Hakan Nesser, Karin Fossum, I'm talkin' to you. Now, seven years down the road, I think I've outgrown Wallander a little bit - and after reading the final Wallander novel, The Troubled Man, I think Mankell has too.

For the uninitiated, Kurt Wallander is a morose genius of a detective from Ystad in southern Sweden. He is brilliant in his policework, but constantly overwhelmed by his own personal shortcomings - whether in his relationship with his daughter, his ex-wife, his father, or his girlfriend, nothing ever seems right to him and he is prone to angry, self-righteous outbursts that ostracize those around him. In all the previous eight books (and one short story collection) Wallander's crimesolving abilities have outweighed his faults, allowing the reader to accept that his morose personality is a package deal with the brilliant detective. Most of the time, his ennui is almost humorous to witness and has become one of the character's most endearing qualities. Not so here. His self-loathing and general, everyday misery - now coupled with encroaching memory loss and looming hereditary dementia - creates an atmosphere of such painful, pitiful wallowing that I wanted to toss the book across the room when I finished.

He checked his watch. A quarter to two. He had been asleep for nearly four hours. His sweaty shirt was making his shiver. He went back inside and lay down in bed. But he couldn't get to sleep. "Kurt Wallander is lying in his bed, thinking of death," he said aloud to himself. It was true. He really was thinking of death.

Jesus. Really?

Unfortunately, the case that Wallander works in The Troubled Man, isn't compelling enough to carry the book and I ended up mired down in the self-pitying inner thoughts of Kurt, rather than remaining interested in the criminal elements. (That narrative, by the way, consists of the parents-in-law of Wallander's daughter going missing on two separate occasions. Kurt figures it out, eventually, but I didn't find any of it all that interesting.) Sadly, to me it read as if Mankell was trying to re-capitalize on the Swedish mystery-thing by forcing one final Wallander book out of his book hole. (Of course, this may not be true, but Henning can feel free to write about it on his own blog.) I think we would all have been better served had he just decided to collect the royalties he's already getting and let the series lie.

*One other thing that bothered me (and this commentary would be for readers of the rest of the series) - at the end of the previous book - Firewall, published by Vintage in '03 - some of Wallander's personal relationships were left in a sort of limbo status, especially his volatile partnership with fellow detective, Martinsson. At the very end of the book - which, remember, was the final Wallander novel up until now - Martinsson calls out Kurt for being out of touch and not listening to others on the police force, kind of leaving their friendship hanging. There is no trace of this conflict in The Troubled Man - which pisses me off.

But hey, that's just me.

Janet Maslin's take in the New York Times. (Non-committal take, that is.)
Anna Paterson, from The Independent
Andrew Brown, The Guardian (a fascinating, insane rant)
A starred editor's review at Kirkus ("...Wallander will grip the reader hard." Hee-hee!)

The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht

2011-03-12T08:26:00.000-08:00

Not Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother or Tiger, Tiger by Margaux Fragoso, or John Vaillant's The Tiger - the tiger book that you really need to read is The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht, easily one of the best books of 2011 and destined for your bookshelf, whether you know it or not.

Obreht, at just 25 years old and one of the New Yorker's 20 Under 40, writes with a grace and style WAY beyond her years that just blew me away. She mixes magical realism, fables, and tall tales with the stark realities of war, loss, and love as if she has been walking the earth for a hundred years.

Everything necessary to understand my grandfather lies between two stories: the story of the tiger's wife and the story of the deathless man. These stories run like secret rivers through all the other stories of his life - of my grandfather's days in the army; his great love for my grandmother; the years he spent as a surgeon and a tyrant of the University. One, which I learned after his death, is the story of how my grandfather became a man; the other, which he told to me, is of how he became a child again.

In a nutshell: Natalia is on a diplomatic mission across the border of her war torn Balkan homeland to deliver vaccines to an orphanage, when she learns of the death of her beloved grandfather in a remote village far from his home. Knowing that he was gravely ill & never would never have travelled without a reason, she becomes convinced that he was in search of "the deathless man" - a longstanding, mysterious figure from the stories he told her as a child. As Natalia sets out to uncover the mystery of her grandfather's final days, she learns more about herself, her family's past, and her country than she ever though possible and finds that all the answers she seeks lie within the stories of her grandfather.

Obreht mixes together Natalia's contemporary story of life in her ravaged homeland (she was born in the former Yugoslavia, herself) with her grandfather's incredible stories of "the deathless man" and "the tiger's wife," to create a fantastical world grounded in the harsh reality of a region recovering from decades of war. And man, those stories of her grandfather... absolutely incredible. Perfectly wrought, beautifully paced out, and completely enthralling - at times you feel, "I know this tale, somehow..." only to have the rug yanked out from under you, just when you think you've figured things out. And every time the deathless man shows up, it sends chills down your spine.

Foreign, yet familiar, impossible, yet true, unsentimental, yet emotional - the elements that she has managed to cull together here are melded absolutely perfectly. A stunning, stunning debut, and one that will stick in your head for long after you've turned that final page, I guarantee it.

Listen to Obreht's interview on NPR's Weekend Edition.

We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen

2011-03-05T07:26:00.000-08:00

I have been, admittedly, very lax in my postings on the Catapult as of late and the best excuse I can offer is that I was so wrapped up in the book I was reading that I had no leftover time to write about anything else. Sound good?

We, the Drowned is a gorgeous 675-page novel about several generations of seafaring Danes from the tiny town of Marstal on the archipelago island of Ærø. Since its original Danish publication in 2006, it has won the Danske Banks Litteraturpris - the highest literary award in Denmark - and was voted the best Danish novel of the last 25 years by the readers of the country's largest newspaper, Jyllands-Posten.

And check out that cover art - if this isn't the kind of aesthetics that will keep paperbound books in our lives, I don't know what is. (Illustrated by Joe McLaren, jacket design by Susanne Dean, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.)

Spanning the years & generations from 1848 to 1945, We follows the sailors of Marstal - the center of Danish seafaring pride - as they travel the oceans of the world - from Samoa to Newfoundland, Australia to London, Casablanca to Dakar, Murmansk to Greenland, and back home to Marstal. Always back to Marstal, where the women wait, worry, and grieve.

In the 19th-century, Marstallers expertly manned the sailing ships of the world, moving commerce across the seas on the winds, only distracted by periodic warring with the Germans. Larger and louder than life, Laurids Madsen was once "best known for having single-handedly started (one of those) war(s)," that is, until he was literally blown sky high when his ship was destroyed in a sea battle. According to him, thanks to his rather large, heavy sea boots, he landed back on his feet, but not before seeing Saint Peter "flash his bare ass" at him in Heaven first. But Laurids came back down a changed man and he mysteriously abandoned his wife and family to sail the seas far from Marstal, never to return home. No news ever came that he had died or been lost, he just disappeared - a fate worse than actual news for those left behind.

The "we" of the title is, in fact, the residents of Marstal and Jensen often turns his narration to the collective voice when viewing events from the safety of land. "We" are proud, curious, & judgmental, yet sympathetic and completely invested in the lifeblood of Marstal. In the early chapters, the collective "we" is our primary narrator, telling stories of the sea from the warm bars and dry docks of town, until "we" implore Laurids' son Albert to tell his tale of life on the seas, searching for his missing papa tru.

In 1862, wearing his father's famed boots, Albert follows a rumor of Laurids from Singapore to Hobart Town in Van Diemen's Land, Australia - "everyone's dead end" - where he follows a debt of his father's towards Hawaii. Albert's narrative - his harrowing adventures across the Pacific with the insane, malignant Jack Lewis, his crew of tattooed Kanak islanders, and the shrunken head of Captain James Cook - is really where the novel hits its stride. So driven is Albert to find his missing father, he ignores Jack's encroaching insanity and dismisses his own, preferring to discuss his plans with the shrunken head, rather than step back and reevaluate his voyage. Of course, what he does eventually find living on Samoa in the body of his once majestic father leaves him empty, ravaged, and baffled. But the voyage itself is the journey he needed to become his own man in the end, despite what sort of creature Laurids may have become in his self-imposed exile. But Albert kept the boots.

When Albert eventually came ashore by the 1890's, Marstal experienced its most productive, profitable time period and Albert became quite wealthy as a ship owner & broker, while filling the pockets of the townspeople and spreading his message of the strength of fellowship. However, starting in 1913, on the cusp of the first World War, he nightly began to dream vivid dreams of the deaths of the men of Marstal at sea. He knew, beyond doubt, that he was "foreseeing a war" and the "end of an entire world." The innocent world inhabited by Marstallers was soon coming to a close with a mighty crash.

In response to his dreams (which he kept secret, except for in his diary), Albert became a comforting voice to the grieving families of the lost sailors - visiting them to break the terrible news from the front. This new position eventually lead him to Klara Friis and her young, newly fatherless son, Knud Erik. Albert and the boy began spending their days together, Albert acting as the father Knud Erik had lost, and the boy as the son Albert never had. Klara forbid Knud Erik from ever becoming a sailor, fearing above all else, losing another man in her life to the treacherous sea. But all Knud Erik ever wanted to do was become a sailor like his father, and now, like Albert.

I think I've given away enough of the plot now, and I don't want to ruin anymore for anyone. The third act of the book is about Knud Erik, who picks up the narration upon Albert's death and carries us across the northern seas and into yet another war with the Germans. If Albert's story was where this novel hit its stride, it is Knud Erik's where it becomes something else entirely.

The flow of the narrative from the collective to Laurids to Albert to Knud Erik, is seamless, lyrical, and beautifully wrought. The characters are unusual and original, yet wholly familiar - I reached a comfort level in their presence like I would with an old friend. Forget all the "book review" stylings: We, the Drowned was one of the best books I have ever read in my life.

We always carry our own lives & experiences around with us when we read, of course, so maybe the fathers-and-sons theme just struck a more resonant chord with me than it will for everyone. That's the brilliant thing about this - so much of the story is also about those left behind in the wake of the departing ships that you could read the same book and come away with a different feel for what it truly was about. As much as it is about the adventures of Laurids, Albert, and Knud Erik, it is about Klara, Herman, and the all the rest of the people of Marstal. It is funny and poignant, heartwarming and powerful, yet dark and foreboding in a way that only the events of our own world can be.

Even after nearly 700 pages of reading and as crazy as it sounds, I really didn't want it to end. It was all so well told and so vividly rendered, I felt as if these people of Marstal had become a part of my own life, my own history. (Not literally, of course - I'm not insane.) After all that I had read, the final, powerful page brought tears to my eyes as the living and the dead all returned to the shores of Ærø. "Tonight we danced with the drowned. And they were us."

Check out The Interview Online with author Carsten Jensen.

Doerr Prize

2011-03-04T10:38:00.000-08:00

Just so you never doubt me again, here's a bit of awesome news: Anthony Doerr has won the 2011 Story Prize for his latest short story collection, Memory Wall. (If you remember, Memory Wall was Number Five on the 2010 Catapult Notable list.) Here's the rather eloquent statement about Tony's book from the Prize judges:

“It is the shimmering space between the two planes of reality and memory that Doerr captures with immense sensitivity. He is adept at evoking a variety of places and different times in history, conjuring sharp settings in which the fragility of his characters is played out. The diversity of backgrounds underscores his poetic skill at illustrating his themes of emotional distancing and the resilience of hope. While he displays a rare imagination in the handling of his subjects, he maintains a beautiful and quiet grace in his precise, spare style, providing a harmonious resonance to all of the stories.”

Congratulations Tony - so well deserved!

Border Crossing

2011-02-18T17:53:00.000-08:00

As I'm sure you're aware, there has been a bit of an upheaval in the book industry this week with the announcement of Borders filing for Chapter 11 and closing 200 stores around the country. Two San Diego county stores are closing - the downtown store and one out in El Cajon - and 33 others in California alone. None of this really comes as much of a surprise, as Borders has been in some serious financial trouble for several years, but what will this mean for the industry as a whole?

In 1997, Borders stock hit an all-time high of $44.88 and by 2003 they were operating 1,249 stores (including Waldenbooks stores) worldwide. However, the last time Borders turned a profit was in 2006 - not that most indies have much to brag about either, but we're talking billions of dollars here. Citing financial woes, they sold all of their UK stores 2007 for a mere £20 million, scaled back the number of their Waldenbooks stores by half, and turned around & opened 14 digital concept stores in the US in 2008. Then, later in '08, they announced that they were attempting to sell the whole chain - rumors that they approached Barnes & Noble for a buyout began to spread. 2008 losses: $187 million. By November 2009, the number of their smaller, non-"superstores" had dwindled from 1100 to 170. In 2010, their CEO bailed and they posted a $46 million second quarter loss despite opening an online eBook store selling eReaders. The 3rd quarter was even worse, at a $76 million loss & the stock plummeted to less than a dollar a share.

This January, they appeared to receive a bailout from GE of all places, but that seemed to fall apart when it became apparent how much money they actually owed their creditors. Chapter 11 opened on February 16th and they announced the closure of the 200 stores.

So, what does this mean for the rest of us? For years, Borders and Barnes & Noble were the ultimate enemy - their shadowy presence across the country forced the closures of 100's of small independent bookstores. Up until the last couple of years - as Amazon cornered more and more of the online market - the gruesome twosome were the bane of our collective existence, hated more than anything else for forcing the demise of so many of our fellow booksellers. Yet, people were buying books from them in droves, keeping America literate, despite it all.

Okay, so indie booksellers might have reason to rejoice over the fall of the giant, but...

Borders has $1.293 billion in debt. Soak that figure in. Even with restructuring & loans or whatever, how will they be able to pay off all their creditors? Who cares, you ask? Those creditors are the publishing companies - who are already behind the the eight ball with the eBook thing. Penguin is owed $41.1 million, Hachette $36 million, and Random House, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster all north of $25 million. Hell, they owe Source Interlink $6 million for magazines. None of this factors in the small publishing houses who are so far down the payback pipeline that they'll fold up altogether before seeing any restructuring funds.

So despite the fact that I've strongly disliked Borders' brand of bookselling for much of my time as a bookseller (see previous rants, Borders Invents Handselling, May 7, 2009 and In Your Face Bookselling, March 22, 2008), I think their failure speaks volumes for the fate of the book industry. Whenever there are fewer physical places for people to buy books, we all suffer.

And I don't mean "suffer" financially, I mean suffer as a literate, intelligent society.

So where do we go from here? I would hope that we would regroup as a society & realize the benefit of having small, locally owned bookstores in our communities. Alas, I fear that more people will gravitate to Amazon, ebooks, and more reality TV. After losing so many indies over the years, what will it mean to have the behemoth who killed them fall themselves? Will we just march on past or will we return to our bookish roots?

San Diego booksellers have long been fortunate in regards to the chains - the city is so spread out (SD county is a roughly Connecticut-sized piece of real estate) that the big stores never really encroached on what indies there were already in place. Yeah, the malls have chain bookstores (or they did) but having big box bookstores amidst the big box sections of town never really affected stores like Warwick's. So the demise of the downtown Borders won't have any effect on most of us, despite our long standing wish that they fail. Or rather, our longstanding wish that their customers were ours. Which I'm afraid they won't be now, even with the present set of circumstances. Complicated, no?

So, I've added a little 2-part poll to the Catapult this week in the wake of all this - see the side bar. I'm curious to know where people buy their books and how they read them. As readers, are you affected at all by the Borders closures?

West of Here by Jonathan Evison (review)

2011-01-29T07:59:00.000-08:00

I was planning on posting this review of Jonathan Evison's brilliant new novel, West of Here just a few weeks before the February release date, but this week his publisher surprised me and released the book early. (Thinking I was getting a jump on things, I returned home from ABA Winter Institute to see WOH already on the front table in the store.) Jonathan also received a huge spread in the industry daily, Shelf Awareness this week, not to mention that the book is the Number One Indiebound pick for February. So rather than being ahead of the curve for once, I am a day late and a dollar short. Sigh.

It was the early review blurbs on the ARC back jacket that actually forced my hand - yes, I fell victim to the marketing campaign. David Liss, author of The Coffee Trader (which I finally read last year), Dan Chaon, of Await Your Reply (which I read & mildly enjoyed last year), and Jim Lynch, who I have not read but have considered reading (which is good enough). Algonquin then threw these two softballs at me: James P. Othmer, a casual reader of the Book Catapult and author of the 2010 Notable Notable Holy Water who called it "A daring, gorgeously structured, and deeply satisfying expedition of a novel" and Ron Currie, author of my favorite book from 2009, Everything Matters! 'Nuff said, as they say. (I am sorry that all of the blurbs were provided by male authors, but it wasn't my fault.)

West of Here is set in the fictional town of Port Bonita on the Olympic peninsula of Washington and alternates between two time periods: 1890, when the town is just beginning and Washington is on the cusp of statehood and 2006, when the town is fading from prominence and the decisions made in 1890 are coming full circle on the residents. The cast of characters is vast, but not unmanageable and you soon learn of the wide variety of connections between the residents of the two time periods.

"...what I really wanted to write was a novel about history, about the countless tiny connections that bind people together, and tie people to a place, and a time, and how the sum total of all these connections amounted to a living breathing history." - Jonathan Evison, in an interview in Shelf Awareness, January 24, 2011

1890: James Mather is leading a relatively foolish expedition south of Port Bonita, along the Elwha River and hopefully over the mountains to the greener pastures and fertile valleys beyond. The Klallam Indians in the area have warned him of the Thunderbird who protects the southern valley, but Mather presses on. Eva Lambert has come to Port Bonita to write for the local newspaper and make a name for herself, independent of her father or any other man. She is also 9 months pregnant when the curtain rises - an obstacle she refuses to yield to. Ethan Thornburgh has followed Eva to this tiny town, in the hopes of forcing her to accept him and allow him to prove that he is a man of some salt. Determined to capitalize on the approaching land grab, Ethan has grand plans for Port Bonita and the surrounding environs. And then there's young Thomas, mute and mysterious, he has a foot in both the White world and the Klallam, the physical and the ethereal. Is he really The Storm King of legend or just a weird little kid?

2006: The descendants of PB's original residents are living in the shadow of all that their forefathers wrought. After Ethan Thornburgh built the Thornburgh hydroelectric dam in 1894, the region changed - for a time, for the better. The salmon cannery industry blossomed for much of the 20th century and the population boomed, but now the salmon stock has been depleted, mostly due to the fact that the fish can no longer swim upriver due to the dam. Port Bonita is a dying town. Jared Thornburgh, son of a senator and great-grandson to Ethan, struggles with reconciling the town's past with the future and the legacy of his family name. Dave Krigstadt is convinced he saw Bigfoot in the mountains, but is learning that he needs to set boundaries when he talks to other people. Mostly about Bigfoot. Franklin Bell, the local parole officer and the only black man in town, lives alone, hums Don Henley songs, and drinks eggnog all-year-round. Curtis is a young, troubled Klallam who rails against the establishment, but seems to have a deep connection to his predecessor, Thomas - although, what this connection really is remains to be seen.

It would be really easy for this review to get away from me and end up being a synopsis of every character that inhabits the pages of West of Here. I think the author put it best in his interview: this is a novel about the connecting threads between us all, whether across generations and decades or between those we see every day. We all are responsible, on some level, for the creation of the space we live in and ultimately how livable that space becomes.

On the surface, you might wonder, "Well, what's this all about?" That's just the point, actually - the arc of this story traces seemingly insignificant glimpses into the lives of the characters that ultimately become monumental, life-changing events when viewed from afar. Evison uses his considerable powers to weave together all these vignettes of PB's residents - a staggering chorus of voices - into a stunning tale of humanity at both its absolute worst and its heart-rendering best. The veil that separates generations proves to be rather thin, even porous, when you step back with a little historical perspective.

Oh, and in case all of that sounds too serious, it tends to be really, really funny. Onward!

...Bell lowered himself back onto his squeaky chair then stood, walked to the corner, picked up the eggnog carton, and dunked it. He sat back down in his squeaky chair. "That there's a high percentage shot. And that's how you do it, Tillman. You gotta slam dunk your life. Think about the future you want for yourself. When you figure that out, the rest is easy. Find a hole, get yourself a head full of steam, grip that rock, and drive to the hoop. And like the man says, 'Don't look back, you can never look back!'"

Wayne Gretzky Day

2011-01-26T07:43:00.000-08:00

While the world reacts to the President's State of the Union address this morning and goes about their daily business, I am thinking about hockey, for today is the 50th anniversary of the birth of The Great One. While you sip your coffee and discuss the economy of Europe, I am thinking about his 894 goals, 1,963 assists, and 2,857 points. (Regular season, of course.) Egypt may be falling apart right now, but I can remember cutting out every newspaper article on him from 1987-93, at least. You might be thinking about Congresswoman Gifford's improved condition, but I am remembering the shocked feeling I had on that late summer day in 1988 when they announced that he had been traded to Los Angeles. I have been able to find Brantford, Ontario on a map since I was 12. I read his 1990 autobiography at least 25 times. I still wear the black LA Kings t-shirt that I got for Christmas in 1989, much to my wife's dismay. I know that he scored 378 goals in a single season when he was ten. And that he scored 51 goals & tied for the NHL scoring title in his rookie season. And that he scored over 200 points in an NHL season 4 times - something that no one else has done even once. AND that his 92 goals in a season is a record that will never be broken - as will his mark of 50 career hat tricks. But I digress.

Happy 50th birthday, Wayne Gretzky.

2010 Catapult Notable List - #1

2011-01-06T06:00:00.000-08:00

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
Was there ever any doubt, really?

What can I say about this book that I haven't already said? I first wrote about it after I finished it just over a year ago and again the week it was published. (Yes, I'm including it on this list because its publication date was June 2010, even though I read it in late 2009. Get over it.) I also wrote about it on the Warwick's blog for "Are You Seth, vol.10" and again on the Catapult when Mitchell was snubbed by the Booker Prize committee in September. And there was "Booker Be Damned, Read David Mitchell!" that I wrote for KPBS's Culture Lust blog in October. So the #1 status should come as no surprise if you've been paying attention.

I was fortunate enough to meet the man himself at a booksigning in July at Skylight Books in L.A. where he confessed that he had read what I wrote about the book back in December 2009 on this site. (I nearly died.) When I went up to the signing table clutching my (rare) bound manuscript of Thousand Autumns, I mentioned that I worked for an indie bookstore in San Diego and he said, "Um, didn't you write a review back in December, perhaps, where you said something like, 'Holy shit, what a book?'" Yep, that was me! He actually went on to thank me for writing such a positive early review (if it can be called that - it was awfully brief), as it made him feel like he had created something of worth - up until that point, all the readers were either relatives or publishing people. So I've got that going for me.

I won't get into too much of the plot of Thousand Autumns here, as you can read one of my other ten thousand pieces for that. In a nutshell, it's set in the year 1799 on the manmade island of Dejima, in the middle of Nagasaki harbor in Japan. The Dutch are the only Westerners allowed to trade with the isolationist Shogunate, but they are banned from actually setting foot on Japanese soil, hence the manufactured island. Jacob de Zoet is a low-level clerk for the Dutch East Indies Company who has traveled to Dejima to make his fortune and return to marry his ladyfriend within the next five years. (A 19th-century 5-year plan, if you will.) As fate will have it, Jacob falls in (unrequited) love with a local midwife almost immediately and remains quite conflicted, both in matters of the heart and of his faith for the duration. Soon after, this Miss Aibagawa disappears under mysterious circumstances and Jacob must do all he can to break through the significant linguistic and cultural barriers uncover the truth and save the woman he loves.

What Jacob feels for Orito Aibagawa is ultimately the driving force to the whole novel. Here, he is tending to his garden when Orito approaches him after her schooling session with Dr. Marinus, the Dutch doctor:

She askes, "Why does Mr. Dazuto work today as Dejima gardener?"

"Because," the pastor's nephew lies through his teeth, "I enjoy a garden's company. As a boy," he leavens his lie with some truth, "I worked in a relative's orchard. We cultivated the first plum trees ever to grow in our village."

"In the village of Domburg," she says, "in province of Zeeland."

"You are most kind to remember." Jacob breaks off a half dozen young sprigs. "Here you are." For a priceless coin of time, their hands are linked by a few inches of fragrant herb, witnessed by a dozen bloodorange sunflowers.

I don't want a purchased courtesan, he thinks. I wish to earn you.

**Warning: this is about where this post turns into a bit of a David Mitchell Nerd-fan Showcase. Sorry.** Mitchell's previous novels - especially the Booker-shortlisted Cloud Atlas and his debut, Ghostwritten - have amazingly intricate labyrinthine plots, multiple timelines, and a myriad of characters whose stories all intermesh and flow around each other in a narrative dance unlike anything I have read before or since. In comparison, Thousand Autumns seems rather straightforward and linear, although populated by a staggering number of characters. For the bookseller in me, it has proven easier to sell this book, actually, by referring to its "historical fiction" structure. (When you have a 70-year old lady say, "Oh, I love historical fiction set in Japan!" when you're talking to her about a David Mitchell novel... there's something different there.) But, after meeting him and hearing him discuss his work this past summer, I have a renewed appreciation for the bottomless depths of his books, the connections - both seen and unseen - between them and can see the role that Thousand Autumns has an integral cog in the machine that is his collected work.

At his signing in Los Angeles, he referred to all of his books as "sort of chapters in an übernovel or a hypernovel" and mentioned the presence of "hyperlinks" between books in the guise of recurring characters. This sort of talk makes people like me crap their pants. The very idea that he is crafting one giant, career-long novel... Schwing! I would strongly recommend listening to the entire podcast of Mitchell's event at Skylight books - it was really one of the best author events I have ever witnessed, and not just because I'm a nerd fan. To hear the author himself reading the opening to Chapter 39 should convince you enough - although, if you've gotten to this point in this review without wanting to read Thousand Autumns, there's something wrong with you.

There is no author on the planet that I have yet read that can craft a better, more beautiful, eloquent, & powerful sentence than David Mitchell. He is an innovative, clever, witty, and wholly original storyteller, which is why I believe that The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell was the best book of 2010.

2010 Catapult Notable List - #2

2011-01-05T06:00:00.000-08:00

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin
Now we're really getting down to it - the top two.

This is a book that I never get tired of talking about - a good thing when talking about books is your livelihood. Here's my never-fails plot synopsis:

Silas "32" Jones was born the son of a poor, single black mother in Chicago. When he was 13 and his mother's boyfriend went off to prison, they moved to rural Mississippi to get a fresh start. Silas soon became friends with white, lower-middle-class Larry Ott. There seemed to be some sort of underlying familiarity between Larry's parents and Silas' mother, but it was never elaborated on by the adults. When they were 16, unpopular Larry went on an unprecedented date with a girl, but the girl never returned home. While there was never any proof that Larry had done anything untoward and he was never tried for any crimes, he never talked about what happened, choosing to live with the stigma of what he might have done. His friendship with Silas was shattered as a result and Silas left town to go to college. Now, nearly 25 years later, Silas has returned to tiny Chabot, Mississippi as a police constable and another girl has gone missing. The whispers about "Scary" Larry Ott have never gone away and the town assumes that he is behind the new disappearance. But Larry is lying in a coma after being attacked in his home and Silas is the only one who can clear his former friend's name...

So what's so special about this book that seems like a pretty straight forward crime novel? For one, I would never label it as genre fiction or a crime novel or a mystery or anything so simplistic or uninspired. As cliché as it may sound, the story is never about the perceived crime committed - although it does prove integral to uncovering the true characters of Larry and Silas. It's more about how the people of tiny Chabot are affected by the crime's longstanding aftermath, especially in the way they treat Larry, even if it has never been proven that he ever did anything wrong. A novel of preconceived notions, perhaps.

Above and beyond all that is Tom Franklin's ability to somehow subtly create an amazing sentence that can impress with a quiet power and unspoken emotions. Here Larry meets Silas for the first time:

The pair of them was standing at the bend in the road by the store, a tall, thin black woman and her son, about Larry's age, a rabbit of a boy he'd seen at school, a new kid. He wondered what they were doing here, this far out, before the store opened. Despite the cold the boy wore threadbare jeans and a white shirt and his mother a blue dress the wind curved over her figure. She wore a cloth around her hair, breath torn from her lips like tissues snatched from a box.

His father passed without stopping, Larry turning his head to watch the boy and his mother peer at them from outside.

Larry turned. "Daddy?"

"Ah dern," said his father, jabbing the brakes. He had to back up to meet them, then he leaned past Larry on the truck's bench seat (an army blanket placed over it by his mother) and rattled the knob and they were in in a burst of freezing air that seemed to swirl even after the woman had shut the door.

While this excerpt isn't necessarily indicative of this, I was struck by Franklin's command over the dialogue. It would be easy to fall into a down-home, Southern Mississippi patois when writing a novel like this, but he manages to keep any hokiness out of the way his characters speak to one another. There's no verbal showboating here, leaving you focused more on what is left unsaid than what is.

It truly is the unspoken storylines that drive this book forward. What happened on that fateful date so long ago? What is the connection, if any, between the parents of these men? If innocent, why has Larry never tried to clear his name? This is a novel about perceptions - both by the characters within and the reader - and how those perceptions can transform as more facts are filled in. As the plot gently unfolds, you learn more and more about the connection between Larry and Silas, quietly altering your perception of who each of them are. As the story is revealed, the images you have of each of these men on the first page is inexorably different by the final sentence. Franklin almost toys with the reader, offering up early assumptions about his characters, leading us down one path, only to have the path double back ten-times over before the end. Which makes for some truly brilliant fiction and the #2 book that I read in 2010.

2010 Catapult Notable List - #3

2011-01-04T06:00:00.000-08:00

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
I know it's dangerous territory to call any one book "the best" of a genre, but perhaps with the exception of the novels of Tim O'Brien, Matterhorn has got to be the best novel of Vietnam that has been written to date. (A mouthful, I know.) It took decorated veteran Karl Marlantes 35 years to get the story inside him down onto paper - how many more firsthand novels of that era can there be on the horizon? This is something I keep going back to, almost as a defense of the novel as the best of its genre: who can top this? Who was in that war and is still working on a more realistic novel than this one?

It is such a powerful story that I feel I am almost doing him a disservice by putting his book as low as #3 on this list - as if something so trifling would phase someone who has experienced what he has. Sometimes I am such an idiot.

Matterhorn is a novel that highlights the utter futility, stupidity, and frustration that permeates modern warfare. It's the story of a company of Marines, entrenched in the jungle of Vietnam, forced to protect, defend, abandon, attack, and hold a supposedly strategically significant mountain that rises above the treeline just south of the DMZ. While there are a few bright spots, it is a ensemble cast of characters - every man in Bravo Company has a name and a story worth listening to. Each is as integral to the telling of this tale as the next - much as it would be in reality. These men fight, kill, and often die, at the whim of an alcoholic, glory-seeking Battalion Commander who watches and criticizes from afar. It is raw, yet elegant - powerful, yet humble; a remarkable book that forces a fresh perspective on a sad chapter in American history.

I've struggled a bit with what I wanted to say about Matterhorn in this post - unlike other books on this Notable list, there wasn't one particular passage that resonated with me and Marlantes' writing isn't as elegant & polished as some others. (He's infinitely better at exposition than James Patterson, I can guarantee you that.) I was born in 1975 - a month and a half after Saigon fell - so for me, there's always been a bit of a mystique surrounding Vietnam. It is a war that has left its indelible stamp on my generation - even though we were just barely getting started as it came to a close. I didn't want to paint a picture of Matterhorn as a total downer of a novel, all blood and suffering and pain and war, even though I haven't read anything that has brought the stark reality of that war to the forefront quite like this one. The bottom line is that it is a very realistic novel about what it is like to be a soldier on the front lines of a war - and everything that that entails. You sort of have to take it or leave it, you know? At Number 3 on our countdown, I say take it.

2010 Catapult Notable List - #4

2011-01-03T06:00:00.000-08:00

The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea by Philip Hoare
A shocker in the Top Five, I know! When first published in England, The Whale (originally, Leviathan, or the Whale) was awarded the UK's most prestigious nonfiction award, the Samuel Johnson Prize - sort of like the Booker Prize of nonfiction - yet it has received almost no attention in the States that I've seen. Ah, but I noticed - and what wonders I found within!

Did you know that whales in recent years have been found – well over 150 years old - with 19-century harpoon heads still lodged in their blubber? Or that some scientists think that whales may have developed complex "emotions, abstract concepts and, perhaps, religion?" Hoare, although born with an innate fear of deep water, has had a lifelong obsession with the family Cetacean & has compiled a riveting account of what is, essentially, the human history of the whale. The Whale is filled with (disgusting) tales of ambergris, hefty literary allusions to Melville & his white whale, accounts of humanity’s ongoing, (mostly) unhealthy whale mania, and a breath-taking first-hand account of Hoare's own experience of swimming in open ocean with the world’s largest, loudest animal.

Personally, I was kept sated by passages about amazing whale facts:

A sperm whale can create a two-hundred decibel boom able to travel one hundred miles along the "sofar" channel, a layer of deep water that readily conducts noise. It seems strange that such a physically enormous creature should rely on something so intangible; but bull sperm whales, by virtue of their larger heads, generate sounds so powerful that they may stun or even kill their prey. These directional acoustic bursts, focused through their foreheads and likened to gunshots, are the equivalent, as one writer notes, of the whale killing its quarry by shouting very loudly at it.

I grew up in Connecticut - a San Diego County-sized piece of real estate - where the sperm whale is the state animal, the defunct NHL team is the Whalers, and where thousands of whaling families made their homes in the whale oil crazy 1800's. Twenty pages into The Whale, the author is on a whale watch off Provincetown, MA, off the north end of Cape Cod - something I did almost every summer as a vacationing kid. With the exception of four years of college, I have never lived far from the sea, so, like the author, I have a healthy fascination with the creatures who populate its depths. I offer this information as sort of a disclaimer: I like to read books about fish and other sorted ocean dwellers. Cod, Tuna, A Fish Caught in Time, The Whale - these are comfort reads for me, but I realize that the subject of slimy underwater creatures may not be for everyone.

That said, The Whale is very much a volume of history and Hoare never pretends to be a scientist, or a cetologist (a whale scientist), or an ichthyologist, but rather a curious historian interested in the long-standing & complex relationship between humans and these giant creatures who roam the depths of our world's seas. He uses Herman Melville as a centerpiece of sorts, as the author of Moby Dick researched his masterwork by venturing out as a hand on a whaleship and spent several years on the docks of New Bedford, Massachusetts learning the trade. (He also was BFF with Nathaniel Hawthorne, who helped him form his writing style, which is interesting in and of itself, I thought.) Using this literary angle, Hoare is able to bring the history around to practical purposes - to put things into perspective in relation to the history of humans and the whale. Melville was like the Jon Krakauer of the 1840's, climbing Mount Everest for the story of a lifetime. Somehow, learning that Herman spent so much time around the culture of the whale before putting his story down on paper lent something more to the romance of his novel.

Either way you look at it, whatever your reasons for reading it are, this is a fascinating, highly readable history, an amazing exploration of a majestic animal, and quite a funny volume of personal discovery that comes in swimming strong at Number Four on the countdown.

2010 Catapult Notable List - #5

2011-01-02T11:59:00.000-08:00

Memory Wall by Anthony Doerr
Doerr is the author of three previous books: one of my favorite novels, About Grace, a memoir of his time spent in Rome, and an earlier collection of short stories called The Shell Collector. Memory Wall is a volume of two novellas and four shorter pieces, all revolving around the central theme of memory.

One night in November, at three in the morning, Alma wakes to hear the rape gate across her front door rattle open and someone enter her house. Her arms jerk; she spills a glass of water across the nightstand. A floorboard in the living room shrieks. She hears what might be breathing. Water drips onto the floor.

Alma manages a whisper. "Hello?"

A shadow flows across the hall. She hears the scrape of a shoe on the staircase, then nothing. Night air blows into the room - it smells of frangipani and charcoal. Alma presses a fist over her heart.

Beyond the balcony windows, moonlit pieces of clouds drift over the city. Spilled water creeps toward her bedroom door.

Thus opens the title story of Memory Wall - with apologies for swiping such a large chunk of the story there. Even in a piece such as this - set in a future Cape Town, South Africa where we have the ability to digitally preserve memories for revisiting once the originals are gone or corrupted - Doerr opens a window and allows at least the reminder of the beauty of the natural world to flow in. I love the smells on the night air and the subtle drip of the water from the spilled glass. Water is certainly a recurring theme - not just in these six stories, but in all of Doerr's work - one of submergence, of washing clean, of the fleeting flow of memories.

Memory is such a tenuous, fragile, human phenomenon whose presence we usually take for granted - this ignorance is essentially the underlying theme in all of these stories. Even in the dystopia of the title story it is proven that you cannot hang onto memories after their time is up, while in Afterworld, for some there is a diaphanous, porous barrier between our waking world & an afterlife subsisting on memories. (This one reminded me of Kevin Brockmeier's fantastic novel, The Brief History of the Dead.) Rivers and lakes, giant fish and dinosaur bones, collected seeds and wounded cranes - all mix and blend with tales of husbands and wives, fathers and sons, grandfathers and granddaughters, friends lost, abandoned towns, and the memory of all things.

I know that I harp on this subject quite a bit - both on this site and in real life - but I really wish more people would read short stories. Some of the finest fiction I have ever read has been from short form pieces - many of which have been written by Anthony Doerr. Alma Konachek (from "Memory Wall"), the hunter in "The Hunter's Wife," and "The Shell Collector" are all characters that have stuck with me long after I first read their tales. A story doesn't have to be 300 pages in order for you to connect with a character or become emotionally involved. Hell, look at Jonathan Franzen's Freedom - over 500 pages of blathering about people I could never empathize with or care about in the slightest.

The title story in Doerr's book was originally commissioned by McSweeney's and their editor & founder, Dave Eggers wrote that the piece Doerr turned in has "the nuance and depth and complexity of a novel five times as long." So you see, I'm not alone! MW was also a NYT Notable Book, an Amazon Top Ten Literature & Fiction title for 2010, and a Boston Globe Top 12, just in case being #5 on the Catapult doesn't do it for you.

2010 Catapult Notable List - #6

2011-01-01T01:11:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's New Year's Day, I know, but I figured I should just keep this Catapult list rolling along, despite the holiday. If you're visiting on January 1, thanks, & Happy New Year!

Truth by Peter Temple
Of Peter Temple's previous eight books, five have won the Ned Kelly Award for best Australian crime novel, essentially solidifying him as the master of Aussie crime fiction. (Broken Shore, a Book Catapult "Notable Notable" in 2007, won the CWA Gold Dagger, the Colin Roderick Award, and the Australian Book Industry Award. Not bad shakes.) Truth was the winner of the 2009 Miles Franklin Award - essentially the National Book Award for Australia.

The truth is, Truth is complicated. This is a good thing, a great thing - Temple is his country's most-decorated crime novelist for good reason & he'll definitely keep you on your toes. Truth blazes with a raw, searing intensity that drives his detective Stephen Villani forward as if there were a raging firestorm at his back. In fact, there is – the outback is ablaze, forcing a blistering, miserably dry heat into the city of Melbourne.

In his office, Gavan Kiely gone to Auckland, Villani switched on the big monitor, muted, waited for the 6:30 p.m. news, unmuted.

A burning world - scarlet hills, grey-white funeral plumes, trees exploding, blackened vehicle carapaces, paddocks of charcoal, flames sluicing down a gentle slope of brown grass, the helicopters' water trunks hanging in the air.

With this furnace as a backdrop, Villani’s multiple cases merge and blend into each other, braiding political corruption with scenes of horrific violence on the uneasy city streets. As his marriage crumbles and his teenaged daughter takes up with a tattoo-faced drug dealer, Villani must negotiate the inept bureaucracy that is Australian law enforcement and the political iron curtain that seems to block his path at every turn to tie his cases together in time. My advice would be to read this slowly – soak in the great regional vernaculars, the sharp, tense dialogue, and keep an eye on as many characters as you can – they all play a part by the end. This is the best, most intricate crime novel I’ve read since…I honestly don’t know when – it’s that good.

2010 Catapult Notable List - #7

2010-12-31T06:00:00.000-08:00

Great House by Nicole Krauss
For 25 years, a well-known, reclusive American novelist has been writing at a wooden desk that she inherited from a young poet who disappeared under Pinochet's regime in Chile. One day, she is contacted by a young woman claiming to be the daughter of the Chilean poet who asks after the desk. "I'd like to have it," she says.

An aging man sees his wife's memories begin to slip away like paper in the breeze and when he finds a secret hidden in her desk of many drawers, he begins to question whether he in fact has ever known her at all.

A German antiques dealer works tirelessly across his lifetime to reassemble a mysterious collection of items - with one more elusive than any other.

The subtle arrangement of characters and their stories within Great House is its great strength, overlapping in such subtle ways as to continuously surprise you with the depth of your own emotional involvement. The wooden desk, with its nineteen drawers (one permanently locked) and its mysterious history, is the quiet central character that it is the knot that ties all the others together. "So, Great House is really a novel about a desk?" you ask. "C'mon," I say, "Pay attention."

The desk of many drawers is ultimately what brings all the storylines fatefully crashing together, but the real stars are of course the human characters. It is a novel about a writer, so attached to her past that she cannot see the future. A man who unconditionally loves his wife, even as her memory fades and her secrets emerge. A family torn apart by anger and misunderstanding, yet hanging together by the thinest of familial bonds. An antiques dealer who sacrifices those who love him most in a lifelong attempt to reassemble a collection that has far-reaching meaning for him. The four storylines at first seem unconnected, of course, but eventually they emerge through the fog to become the multiple elements of one larger story.

What can I say, this book was right in my wheelhouse. (The easiest way to get your novel onto a Catapult Notable list is to feature multiple, intertwining narratives. FYI.) In that regard Krauss is more Colum McCann than David Mitchell - never leading the reader through a darkened labyrinth, she always leaves the lights on and you know that she has a firm grip on your hand. She is an immensely skilled writer - I found I could escape into the words of her creation with ease. The subtle worlds she creates are not unlike our own, in that they are normal, banal even, but always with a stark reality to them that is comforting and appealing. Yet even within that reality, there is always an element of the mysterious - that idea that the answers we seek are just around the next corner.

I'll leave things with a bit from my personal favorite storyline, that of Arthur Bender and his wife Lotte Berg:

The doorbell rang. We looked up at each other. It was rare for anyone to visit us unannounced. Lotte put her book down in her lap. I went to the door. A young man was standing there holding a briefcase. It's possible that the moment before I opened the door he had extinguished his cigarette, because I thought I saw a trail of smoke slip out of the corner of his mouth. Then again, it could have been just his breath in the cold. For a minute I thought it was one of my students - they all shared a certain knowing look, as if they were trying to smuggle something in or out of an unnamed country. There was a car waiting by the curb, the motor still running, and he glanced back at it. Someone - man or woman, I couldn't say - was hunched over the steering wheel. Is Lotte Berg home? he asked.

2010 Catapult Notable List - #8

2010-12-30T09:00:00.000-08:00

Life by Keith Richards
In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that the Rolling Stones' 1972 album Exile on Main Street is my favorite by any artist, ever. I listen to at least some of the album every week, without fail, like it's some sort of twisted security blanket. I've even considered writing a piece-by-piece breakdown of the "lost tracks" from Exile that were released this past summer, but I figured that was something only a Stones nerd like myself would be interested in & might cost me readers, so I restrained myself. So, Keith's memoirs were, of course, something that I was going to devour with abandon, regardless of the content.

In light of this information you still might ask, how does a rock star's memoir make it into my top ten list? Is Life only here because of my personal affinity for the band and the man or is it genuinely one of the ten best books I read in 2010? What kind of "literary" blog is this? James Patterson, Keith Richards, c'mon.

To that I say, bollocks.

Keith was the forerunner, the trailblazer, the first man into space for a whole generation - a series of generations. He was the antidote to Beatlemania. The giant middle finger in the face of the musical establishment. (Any establishment, really.) His band has been cranking out hit records and blistering riffs longer than anyone else - and he has done so with a decade-long heroin habit in his rearview mirror. Better yet, he remembers a whole hell of a lot of what he's done and has proven remarkably adept at bringing those tales of jamming, smoking, drinking, snorting, rocking, and grooving to the printed page. It turns out that Life is also well-written, insightful, coherent, witty, and eloquent. Considering the source, I mean, who knew?

Before the publication, there was a good deal of press coverage (mostly in the UK) about what Keith had to say in Life about Mick. The nature of their relationship is no secret - they are not exactly BFFs, but not sworn enemies either. If you're looking for pages and pages of tell-all, forget it - he is rather candid (and perhaps a little hurt) when he does discuss their partnership but it never comes off as catty or petty. It somehow feels genuine enough that you never feel like you've wandered into a lovers' quarrel, as some critics would have you believe. He equates their relationship to that of brothers, rather than friends - "I mean, shit, if you work with a guy for forty-odd years, it's not all going to be plain sailing, is it? You've got to go through the bullshit; it's like a marriage."

One of my favorite bits - which gives you a good idea of what the rest of the book is like - is from Keith's recollections from the infamous 1972 tour in support of Exile - Truman Capote was a friend of Mick's and was accompanying the band on a leg of the tour:

...Truman was just Truby. He was on assignment from some high-paying magazine, so he was ostensibly working. Truby said something bitchy and whiny backstage - he was being an old fart, actually complaining about the noise. It was just some snide, queenie remark and sometimes I don't give a damn, other times it just gets up my nose. This happened after a show and I was already on cloud nine. Motherfucker needed a lesson. I mean, this snooty New York attitude. You're in Dallas. It got a little raucous. I remember, back at the hotel, kicking Truman's door. I'd splattered it with ketchup I'd picked up off a trolley. Come out, you old queen. What are you doing round here? You want cold blood? You're on the road now, Truby! Come and say it out here in the corridor. Taken out of context, it sounds like I'm some sort of Johnny Rotten, but I must have been provoked.

There's a certain degree of stream-of-consciousness to Keith's writing, as you can see - as if he's talking into a dictation machine, laughing, smoking his cigarette, sipping his drink. A swaggering storyteller with a captive audience. Running between all the tales of court appearances, hotel trashings, and drug-fueled brushes with death, however, is the true lifeblood that flows in his veins and that which has kept him going all this time. (It's even apparent in the Capote excerpt if you look hard enough.) Despite his faults, his bad behavior, his inability to deal with pain & loss, his rampant drug use, making music has been the glue that has kept the man together for the last five decades. It turns out, Life is all about the music, man.

2010 Catapult Notable List - #9

2010-12-29T09:00:00.000-08:00

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
Gary, Gary, Gary. What to say about this marvel of a man? He was recently named one of the 20 Under 40 by the New Yorker. He likes weiner dogs. He lives in New York but was born in Russia. He visited Warwick's this year and took the debut Warwick's Questionnaire. This novel, his third, has been named a 2010 New York Times Notable book AND comes in at Number 9 on our Catapult Countdown.

SSTLS (as I will hereby refer to this book) is a dystopic vision of our possible future - one where no one reads anything anymore (paper books, which smell awful, are referred to as "printed, bound media artifacts") preferring endless streaming videos instead. When not checking their GlobalTeens page, they're shopping online at places like Assluxury.com and scanning crowded rooms for higher "fuckability" indexes on their neighbors. All have an unhealthy attachment to their "äppäräts" - handheld mobile devices that take care of everything. Wait, this sounds vaguely familiar...

Overweight, slovenly Lenny Abramov works diligently for the Post-Human Services division of the Staatling-Wapachung Company, who promises their customers immortality if they follow the rigorous program of dieting and supplements. He's just returned home to New York after a year "working" in Rome, where he accidentally fell in love with Eunice, a "super-healthy Asian" with a "very high life expectancy." He failed miserably to sell "The Product" in Europe, where some people "actually want to die" and now his job seems to be in jeopardy - a prospect he cannot fathom, especially in light of his relationship with his boss/father figure, Joshie. If only he can lure Eunice to New York!

Meanwhile, the global economy seems to be collapsing - aided in part by the U.S.'s occupation of Venezuela and the falling dollar and the horrible credit of most our citizenry. (Your credit scores are announced publicly when you walk past a "credit pole.") In fact, it seems likely that the Chinese investors who are keeping the US economy afloat may be ready to pull the plug. It perhaps doesn't help that the government is highly militarized and secretive, with national "security" falling under the purview of the Big Brother-like American Restoration Authority. This information, in front of a government tank, greets Lenny at JFK when he arrives home:

It is forbidden to acknowledge the existence of this vehicle ("the object") until you are .5 miles from the security perimeter of John F. Kennedy International Airport. By reading this sign you have denied existence of the object and implied consent.

-American Restoration Authority,

Security Directive IX-2.11

"Together We'll Surprise the World!"

Gary and the Warwick's booksellers in August 2010

As absurd as all of that sounds, Gary does a spectacular job of satirizing and skewering so many layers of our actual society - it's frighteningly easy to see elements of who we are as a planet and where we might be headed if we cannot alter our behaviors. Are we really so far off from all of this? Sadly, I don't think so, which lends an air of gravity to the title and delivers SSTLS into the 9-spot on the 2010 Catapult Notable list.

#8 on the 2010 Catapult Notable list.

2010 Catapult Notable List - #10

2010-12-28T09:00:00.000-08:00

Citrus County by John Brandon
The full Catapult review. In that earlier review I called this "a powerful, funny, bizarre little novel of adolescent longing, loss, and general, everyday misery that creaks along down the dark halls of narration with a resounding reality and clarity of prose." Despite its tough surface subject matter (a teenaged boy kidnaps his friend's little sister and keeps her locked in an underground bunker in the woods. What?) there's an intangible magnetism to the characters and the story that unfolds at their feet. Besides, a lot of it is hilariously funny!

Citrus County, Florida has "no beaches and no amusement parks and no hotels and no money." But it does have "rednecks and manatees and sinkholes (and plenty of) insects, not gentle crickets but creatures with stingers and pincers and scorn in their hearts."

Our narrators wander on the extremities of what is socially acceptable - teenaged kidnapper Toby in his blunted rage; the disaffected geography teacher, Mr. Hibma with his thinly veiled homicidal tendencies; Sherry, who seems to weirdly, quickly accept the fact that her sister has been kidnapped; and that her own life has a new path. Yet even with that social blurriness, Brandon manages to create a cast of sympathetic characters who wallow in their malformed lives, leaving us feeling better about our own, yet comfortable with theirs. This town of misfits clings to your clothing as you pass through, leaving you with the feeling that you had wandered into their lives at the worst possible moments - their most vulnerable, their weakest, the craziest points in their lives. And even in light of their weirdness, there is always a place for redemption and renewal - even if it comes from the most unlikely of sources. Not to mention that the whole thing has a crazed, edgy hilarity that I found particularly appealing - hence it comes in at Number Ten for 2010.

*One other note: this was published by McSweeney's, so the hardcover is totally awesome looking. No dust jacket, different colors for different editions - these guys are the ones that will keep books looking interesting for the purists among us. (See also last year's faux fur-covered The Wild Things by Dave Eggers.)
#9 on the 2010 Catapult Notable List.