Doing the green thing

Sick of the word green yet? It does seem to be the catchword of the hour, with sustainable, organic and carbon footprint running not far behind. I'm starting to think we're on the verge of overload and that soon people will start throwing up their hands and saying, "Forget it! Shut up and give me a styrofoam cup of nonorganic, unfair trade coffee and never mention the words reduce consumption to me again!"

For those who have not yet OD'd on the whole green concept, a world of great new books awaits you. The subject is moving beyond simple "what you can do" guides and into deeper, more interesting reads that tell stories of how people have done it and are doing it right now. Greg Melville's Greasy Rider, which I'm reading right now, will be out in October. Melville and his buddy Iggy decide to drive from Vermont to California in Melville's old Mercedes, which has been has been converted to run on used cooking oil; although they can operate the engine on diesel or biodiesel, they decide to make the journey using nothing but oil begged from restaurants along the way.... and naturally, they run into a few snags. My husband's car has been converted to run on recycled oil (we call it The Greasemobile) so perhaps I'm reading Melville's book with a little more interest than most, but I think Greasy Rider is entertaining enough to reach far beyond the diesel engine conversion crowd.

The next title on my to-read list is You Are Here by Thomas M. Kostigen. Reminiscent of The World without Us and Garbage Land, You Are Here (available in September) takes a concrete approach to addressing how our everyday actions affect our world. Kostigen travels to Jerusalem to witness firsthand how acid rain is eroding earth's most treasured religious site; he visits a village in Alaska that, by 2015, will be under water due to the rise of ocean levels; he sails to the Eastern Garbage Patch off the coast of Hawaii to see with his own eyes a drifting vortex of trash twice the size of Texas. Kostigen will be speaking and signing here at Vroman's on September 27, and I think I will have a few questions for him.

A book that's available right now and getting a lot of local press is The Urban Homestead by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen. In their book, and on their blog Homegrown Evolution, Coyne and Knutzen talk about practicing small-scale urban agriculture in Los Angeles. You don't need acres of country land or tons of money to make big, life- and global impact-altering changes, they argue; ordinary people in the heart of a major metropolitan area can grow some of their own food, live off the grid, and reduce their (warning: overused phrase!) carbon footprint. Here's an interesting recent L.A. Times article about guerrilla gardening that features Knutzen and Coyne.

And the race is on

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction has announced its 2008 longlist. Although a few titles (Girl in a Blue Dress, From A to X, Sea of Poppies and The Northern Clemency) aren't yet available in the U.S., only one (The Clothes on Their Backs) seems currently to be in limbo with no U.S. publication date on the horizon. It looks like we have all the others in stock, so if you're the ambitious sort who likes to tackle lists, you have until Tuesday, October 14, to read them all. Rumor has it that Salman Rushdie's entry, The Enchantress of Florence, is heavily favored to win, so you might want to start with that.

Just a Few More Days...

...until Breaking Dawn! OMG! That sound you heard is a million teenage girls hyperventilating at the same time, as the release date for Stephenie Meyer's book is just three short days away. Remain calm ladies, remain calm. To help, I give you musical entertainment (If you don't recognize what song the band is playing, you might want to ask your folks what it is):

I Felt the Earth Move

We just had an earthquake. 5.8, baby! And you know what, we're still here. A few books fell off the shelves, but I was the only person who hid under his desk like a five year old girl. So...good times.

Vroman's Podcast 2: Julie Klam

Regular readers of this blog know that I love Julie Klam's memoir Please Excuse My Daughter. It so perfectly captures what it's like to be smart and cool and young, and yet somehow unable to find your way. It's a book that's consistently funny throughout but never at the expense of real emotion. Everybody should buy it (from Vroman's) and then buy it again for their friends.

And now Julie Klam is the subject of our second podcast (or, as I'm tentatively calling it, "The Inquisition with Patrick Brown"). In our interview, we discuss balancing writing and parenting, David Letterman, Titlepage, the Kindle, Goodreads, and much, much more. The running time is roughly 45 minutes.

Again, there's no music (still working on that), and if you notice a few edits, it's because I had to edit out a section where we talked about AP tests and the movie Diner for about twenty minutes ("Oh, Modell, my blood is boiling!"). Anyway, thanks to Julie for putting up with my slightly amateurish interviewing style, and thanks to all of you for listening.

Click here to download the podcast to your computer.

Friday Book Trailer! Tana French!

Tana French writes literary thrillers in the vein of Mystic River. This is the trailer for her latest book, The Likeness.

First of all, this is really nicely photographed. It makes me want to go to Ireland. But there's a moment when the camera focuses on French, and the film cuts to a couple of different shots of her peering through the trees. The effect is...unsettling. What do you think?

Incidentally, Tana French will be appearing at Vroman's on Wednesday, August 6 for our Literaries Who Lunch series.

[And the trailer doesn't seem to want to embed. That's awesome. You can watch it here if it doesn't appear.]

What He Said

I wanted to make sure that everyone read the letter that Sarah linked to (via the blog Bookshelves of Doom). It is a response from a librarian named Jamie Larue to the challenge of a book called Uncle Bobby's Wedding, a book that features a wedding between two male guinea pigs, and it is well worth a read.

And thanks again to Sarah for posting it here.

Gay Penguins Still Don't Fly with Americans

From the Morning News (God bless the Morning News, by the way. What an incredibly great website. Everything about it makes me happy -- the design, the content, the fact that it changes on a regular schedule. It's what the internet ought to be) comes this story in the Economist about the most challenged books in American libraries and schools. And Tango Makes Three, the infamous gay penguin book, was once again number one on the list, followed by other books that have sex in them.

The best part about this list are the impassioned and idiotic comments that follow it. Someday I'm going to find out what it's like to be offended by something I've read, and then maybe I'll leave comments like that on a website. But not yet.

Literary Tattoos

Some people have a favorite quote from a book or a poem, something they might say to themselves every now and then, something that speaks to their experience. I know people who carry quotes around in their wallets or write the same quote on the first page of every notebook they buy, an exhortation to get moving, keep striving, etc.

These people took it one step further and got those quotes tattooed onto their bodies. Personally, I could never commit to having a tattoo of any kind -- I just can't commit. Like I'd get a tattoo that said something like "It's true there are moments--foolish moments, ecstasy on a tree stump--when I'm all but gone, scattered I like to think like seed, for I'm the sort now in the fool's position of having love left over which I'd like to lose; what good is it now to me, candy ungiven after Halloween?" then wake up ten year's later and say, "Aw, William H. Gass? He sucks!"

But what about you? If you had to have a literary quote tattooed on your body, what would it be? (Bonus points for telling us where you'd get it. Super bonus points and my unending awe if you actually have a quote on your body.)

Goodbye LA Times Book Review

This Sunday will be the last standalone LA Times Book Review. From now on, book coverage will be carried in the Calendar section, and since I doubt they're going to be compromising any film coverage to accommodate it, that means there will be less of it. Sorry, I should say even less of it, since they've been trimming the Book Review for at least a year now.

It's not that the coverage the Times was presenting was so important. There are other places to get book coverage, and I think they will endure. But it does send a pretty bad message about literature's place in contemporary Los Angeles. And, I would argue, an inaccurate one. This is the town where hundreds of thousands of people pack the LA Times Festival of Books every year, where there are many successful reading series, and where, believe it or not, there are independent bookstores that are not only surviving but thriving and expanding (despite the weekly eulogies of Dutton's). And yet we can't sustain a once-a-week standalone book review.

So what will the future of book coverage in Los Angeles look like? Will the LA Weekly step into the void and expand its coverage? Is Mark's digital idea a possibility? Or will we continue to flock to blogs, some of which are beginning to expand their scope into more formal reviews anyway? It should be interesting, if a little depressing, to watch.

Monday Morning Blogging Fun

It's Monday, people. What'd ya do over the weekend? I saw The Dark Knight (good, not great, but Heath Ledger was tons of fun), I ran six miles (not all at once), and I made pizza. Yum. Here's what they're talking about out there on the internet:

• Edan has a terrific interview with Joan Silber at The Millions, where she touches on, among other things, how it felt to be nominated for the National Book Award: "TM: Ideas of Heaven was nominated for the National Book Award in 2004, and you were one of five women finalists. I was dismayed by the outcry following the nomination announcement; how did you deal with such reactions? JS: I think critics felt left out of the loop, since they'd never heard of us. (I'd heard of most of us, actually.) Their strongest objection was that we weren't famous, which we already knew. I didn't immediately think the criticism was anti-female, but after a while I came to think that some of it was."
  

• From the New York Times, the fine line between young adult and adult fiction (via Maud Newton). On that subject, I just snagged a galley of Kelly Link's new story collection, Pretty Monsters, only to discover that it is YA. Do I keep said galley? I think I will.

• Forget the Kindle, it may end up being the iPhone that finally makes the ebook mainstream.
  

Friday Afternoon Time Suck

If you're looking for something to do this afternoon, try typing the name of your favorite author into this Literature Map and watch the cloud of authors form around them. I like to watch the names jockey for position. Not sure how they determine the map, though. Some sort of algorithm, I guess. Whatever it is, they ought to tweak it. Barry Hannah shows up on every map. Anyway, it's still better than minesweeper.

Happy weekend, folks!

Talking About Books: The First Episode of Open Book

Books and authors, which never really caught on with television (although I remain hopeful for "Inside the Writer's Studio," or some similar TV show), seem to have a shot on the internet. First came Titlepage, which features four authors in a round table discussion about their books and literary culture in general, and now Slate has launched Open Book, an interview show that focuses on a single author.

The first episode of Open Book (discussed earlier on The Millions and the Avery Anthology blog) features reigning Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz discussing The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, as well as his childhood in the Dominican Republic, and why it took him so damn long to publish Oscar Wao. I agree with Emma over at Avery when she says that Diaz seems more relaxed than the guests on Titlepage, but I found something about the set to be distracting. It might be the projection screen walls they've got going on. I don't know. I spent half the show trying to make out what was happening through the screen (I think there's a picture of one of those rooftop water tanks they have in New York, right?). Also, I don't believe I've ever seen a show where there were two interviewers and only one guest. It makes it seem like an inquisition more than an interview (That would be a great name for an interview show, huh? "The Inquisition with Patrick Brown"...maybe that's what we'll call the Vroman's Podcast from now on).

As for Diaz, he's a fun interview, and it's kind of amazing that he read and reread all those sci-fi novels so that he could drop the casual jokes that he did in Oscar Wao. And, I dig his shirt, although I'm not entirely sure I could carry it off.

Anyway, check out the interview for yourself and tell me what you think. (And if you haven't read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, do it! It's a great book and it's fun, damn it!)

Happy All Star Break, Everybody!

"I went to the restaurant where I always went to the restaurant and I sat down on the stool before the long counter and ordered coffee. It tasted pretty much like coffee, but it wasn't worth the nickel. Sitting there I smoked a couple of cigarets, read the box scores of the American League games, scrupulously avoided the box scores of the National League games, and noted with satisfaction that Joe DiMaggio was still a credit to the Italian people, because he was leading the league in batting."

That's the third paragraph of John Fante's Ask the Dust, and it nicely crystallizes my feelings about tonight's All Star game. I will be rooting for the American League to once again thump the inferior National League...Well, I'll be rooting for every American League player except Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, who I hope will be revealed to be the true perpetrators of the Obama New Yorker cover. (On the subject of Derek Jeter, did you here that his defense sucks? Remember that when you see hit after hit slipping just past him to his left.)

Spoiler Control in the 21st Century

Unless you've been living in a colony on the moon for the past few months (like a character in a John Kessel story), you're probably aware that the new book in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga, Breaking Dawn, is about to come out.

In order to guard against spoilers, Meyer has requested that the message boards for all of the Twilight fan sites be taken down until the book's release date, August 2. In a letter posted to her official site, Ms. Meyer stated the reason for the request:

"Another thing you may notice close to the release of Breaking Dawn is that the message boards on several fansites will be taken down. They are doing this as a favor to me because I want to protect you all from stumbling upon something that could ruin the book for you. There will be plenty of time to discuss all the details of the book after August 2nd."

A quick search of Twilight fansites confirms that some of them are complying with her request, while others are not (naughty naughty). There's been much hand wringing over whether or not to close the message boards. As one of the board moderators at Twilight Nexus stated, "This is one of the most important times for fans to be able to communicate. The excitement is only going to grow in the next month and we feel it would be unfair to cut off online communication with TwiNexians that have proved themselves in the past."

I see this side of the argument. I can't imagine what the reaction would be if Theo Epstein asked Sons of Sam Horn to shut down for two weeks leading up to the trade deadline (If you get this reference, great. If not, it just means you're not spending nearly enough time in your parent's basement).

On a related note, Vroman's is hosting a Breaking Dawn Prom Party, complete with live music, a drawing to win tickets to see Stephenie Meyer in concert on August 7, and much, much more. The party will be August 1, from 10 pm to Midnight, at which point you'll get your copy of Breaking Dawn, fresh out the box. Pre-order with us for a chance to win! Check out our official website for complete event details.

Rushdie is Best of the Bookers

It's been reported elsewhere, but Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children has been named the greatest book of all friggin time, er Best of the Bookers. When Rushdie read at Vroman's, someone asked him to comment on winning the Booker for Midnight's Children. He quoted Kingsley Amis, who, upon winning the award late in his career for his (in my opinion) superb The Old Devils, commented "I've always hated this award, but I've just changed my mind."

Jeanne Kelley in Bon Appetit

Local chef and food writer Jeanne Kelley has a small urban farm where she raises a goat and some chickens and has a vegetable garden. She is in this month's issue of Bon Appetit (I know, because I'm a subscriber). She has several recipes that I'm going to attempt in the next few weeks (including a goat cheese and green olive crustini. Yum). Jeanne will be at Vroman's on Wednesday, July 23 to present her new cookbook Blue Eggs & Yellow Tomatoes. I would link to the article, but it appears that Bon Appetit doesn't put all of their content on line. So buy the magazine already! And come to Vroman's for the event.

So About That Blood Oath...

I haven't been doing very well on my summer reading list. If you'll recall, I posted an ambitious list of titles I was going to tackle this summer. So far, I've read one of them. Julie Klam's Please Excuse My Daughter (which was terrific, and you should listen to her on Blogtalk Radio. It's an extensive interview...more on this book later).

I think I'm not very good at predicting what I'll want to read in the future. Look at my Goodreads page. I put things on "To Read," and then they just sit there, like the bunch of Japanese Broccoli I got at the Farmer's Market, convinced I'd make it into something delicious and wonderful, only to toss in the trash, wilted and gray, a week later. It just never went with anything I was making. It's depressing.

I will still get to a few of the books on this list (it is only July), but I've been reading other stuff. What other stuff? Thanks for asking. I'm reading David Browne's engrossing biography of Sonic Youth, Goodbye 20th Century. I'm also reading a bizarre and stimulating collection of short stories called The Baum Plan for Financial Independence, by John Kessel.

So why can't I stick to my summer road map? Does anybody else have this problem? Maybe I distract easily, or maybe working in a bookstore just provides too many choices, too many options. I'd be curious to know how people decide what they're reading next, and how far off they plan in advance. Do you have a list? Do you have a full-fledged "Reading Queue" like Max? Or do you just grab whatever catches your eye at that moment?

Bookish Links

I've got some longer post ideas percolating, but for now, I'll just direct your attention to a couple of things of note on the net at the moment:

• Mark has suggested moving the LA Times Book Review entirely online. In the comments, there are various arguments for or against the move. It doesn't seem terribly radical to me (of course, my first thought upon reading this post was "Wait, they still publish a print version of the LA Times?), and I like the idea of an expanded book review, with features, interviews, longer reviews, more content, and better writers. So what's the hold up?

• Nam Le has been everywhere the past few weeks, including my couch (which, I fear, shall never be the same). He's the belle of the blog ball at the moment. He revealed to me that the set of Titlepage is inhumanly cold. Those brave panelists hide it well.

• HBO has purchased Sloane Crosley's collection I Was Told There'd Be Cake, guaranteeing that it will forever be compared to Sex and The City (I'm like a week late on this. My internet was out over the 4th of July weekend. Thanks a lot, AT&T.).

No Shortlist Required

Jhumpa Lahiri has won the world's richest short story prize, the Frank O'Connor award for about $55,000, for her collection of stories Unaccustomed Earth. Apparently, she so lapped the competition that the judges dispensed entirely with the formality of a shortlist. Which really sucks for the books that would've gotten the recognition of being shortlisted.

Long Day

I'm tired, and I can't bring myself to go digging all over the internet, but I will point out a couple of quick things for your reading enjoyment:

• Avery Anthology has published an interview with Dan Chaon, in which he discusses his writing method, music, teaching, and reading. Highly recommended: "After that, I have two more novels that are in partial states of development, one called I Wake Up, about a kid who has been in various foster homes for many years when he’s contacted by a woman claiming to be his mother; and the other called Ill Will, about a man whose brother murdered their parents in the 1970s.
  
  And after that, I want to finish a short story collection.
  
  Which should take me close to the end of my life, I imagine."

• Salon has started a week dedicated to pork. Yum. Perhaps they'll discuss Pork & Sons, the coolest cookbook of the past few years.

See. Told you I didn't have much today. But those two links are sweet. They should be enough to get you through the day. More tomorrow, I promise.

Speaking of Books & Music

I came across this paragraph in David Browne's biography of Sonic Youth, Goodbye 2oth Century:

"With their twitchy sound and bass lines, the Heads weren't anyone's idea of a punk band, and the prim preppiness of singer and guitarist David Byrne didn't look ravaged either; [Sonic Youth guitarist Lee] Renaldo in particular was struck by the fact Byrne wore a wristwatch. "Rock and rollers didn't wear watches," he recalls. "You were there to play all night. You didn't want to know what time it was." But maybe the normal rules no longer applied."

New Hispter Book Club! Now with more lists!

The new issue of Hipster Book Club is up. As I mentioned yesterday, it's the music issue (there's a bit of non-musical content, too, like a review of David Benioff's City of Thieves). Among the manifold joys are an interview with John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats, a review of his new book 33 1/3: Black Sabbath's Master of Reality, and bands compiling their "Top 5 Desert Island books." Many of the bands had a shockingly literal interpretation of the question. In Kyle Olson's "Literary Muxtape," he compiles a list of twelve songs for bibliophiles that include "The Book of Love" by Magnetic Fields, "Graham Greene" by John Cale, and "Marx and Engels" by Belle & Sebastian.

I used to do this in my spare time: think of a bunch of songs centered around a theme. Like I did one that was all about movies. I think it had "Stanley Kubrick" by Mogwai, "Cassavetes" by Fugazi...help me out here..."The Right Profile" by The Clash, I think. Anyway, you get the idea. A common one was books and authors. Belle & Sebastian are probably the most bookish rock band (are they really a rock band?), and they have about a dozen songs that reference reading, bookshops, etc., but they're a bit obvious. Another bookish band, The Decemberists, have a song about contemporary writer Myla Goldberg. I always thought that was cool, since the song came out about five minutes after Goldberg's debut novel Bee Season. It would be like me writing a pop song about Keith Gessen. "Everyday I Write the Book," by Elvis Costello is a classic literary rock song, and, to my knowledge, the only song that directly addresses process, unless you count the one line in "Dancing in the Dark," when Bruce informs us that, like every other novelist on earth, he's "sick of sittin' round here tryin' to write this book." (I'm pretty sure most novelists could also use a "love reaction," but I digress).

What would be on your literary mixtape?

(Oh, and I should shill once more for the July 12 event at Vroman's featuring Hipster Book Club's Yennie Cheung and Kyle Olson and the band Red Pony Clock.)

What Are You Doing This Saturday?

Me? I'm going to be at the The Edge Summer Author & Music Series. Every Saturday in July we celebrate the summer with a unique pairing of a band and an author! The events are totally free, and they take place out on the Vroman's stage (right next to our main store) ever Saturday at 4 pm.

This Saturday is Paula Yoo, author of Good Enough, and local band The Listing Ship. Here's the latest video from The Listing Ship, who, as you can see, are quite fun:


Listing Ship, "Voice of the Future" from James Fletcher on Vimeo.

Next Saturday, Yennie Cheung and Kyle Olson from Hipster Book Club (don't be intimidated by their name, they're really quite welcoming!) will discuss their new music issue, featuring reviews and essays about books like Black Sabbath's Master of Reality: 331/3 by John Darnielle, Beige by Cecil Castellucci, and many, many more. After the discussion, San Diego's finest, Red Pony Clock will perform. What's Red Pony Clock like? Well, judging from this video, I'd say that if you put They Might Be Giants, Beirut, a reggae band, and the cast of Saturday Night Live (one of the good casts) in a blender together, Red Pony Clock is what you would pour out:



Now doesn't that sound like more fun than that hot air balloon festival you were going to go to?

Exciting Book Related On-Line Happenings

At The Millions, Max has up his Most Anticipated Books post for the second half of 2008. That's always a great post, and this time is no different (Would that make it a "Most Anticipated Post" about the Most Anticipated Books?). If you check out the comments, you can see a book that I'm anticipating.

At The Elegant Variation, Mark interviews John Banville about a new book of his play "Conversation in the Mountains" about a meeting between Martin Heidegger and Paul Celan. An interesting interview. Highly recommended.

On Jacket Copy, Carolyn compiles a succinct rundown of review coverage of Ethan Canin's America America. Canin will be at Vroman's on July 25.

At Critical Mass, Kevin Prufer writes eloquently about one of my favorite poets, D.A. Powell.

"The Art Isn't Completed Until a Reader Reads It"

I'm famously ambivalent about book trailers. Here's the trailer for Robert Crais' new book, Chasing Darkness:

I wish they'd just let him talk more. Crais is an interesting guy, and I was enjoying hearing him talk about his creative process. My favorite Robert Crais story is one he told at the LA Times Festival of Books. Early on in his career, his publicist sent him to an Ingram book distribution facility in between tour stops. He walked into a room that housed 40,000 copies of his book, and they told him, "Sit down, and start signing." I can tell you what 1,000 copies of a book looks like, but 40,000? I can't even imagine it.

Robert Crais will be at Vroman's tomorrow night, where he will sign slightly fewer than 40,000 copies of his new book, Chasing Darkness. If you go, you will have a good time. Robert Crais gives good event.