Monday, March 31, 2008

Monday Morning Links

The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao routed The Remainder to win the 2008 Tournament of Books. As a bookseller, I'm curious to see whether this impacts sales at all. Most awards don't seem to have an immediate or overwhelming impact, at least not at the places I've worked.

Looking for a bookshelf? Don't limit yourself to those boring old slats of wood. Try something inventive, like a circular shelf.

It's opening day of the baseball season (sort of), so if I seem distracted, you'll know why.

Jacket Copy is exploring my neighborhood today, with a post about the Shakespeare Bridge, which is so named because...nobody knows.

Check back in tomorrow, as I have a special treat in store for the month of April. What is it, you ask? You'll have to come back to find out.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Late Afternoon Postings

So I've been busy today, and haven't had much time to write anything (What's that you say? Yes, yes this is my job...I just didn't have a whole lot of time between my lunch break, my coffee break, and the forty or so minutes I spent looking for my pen, to write much of anything...I don't have to answer to you). I wanted to pass along two quick things that are floating about out there today:


Joshua Ferris stopped by the store to sign some copies of his novel Then We Came to the End. Coincidentally, his book has made it to the finals of the Tournament of Books, where it will face The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao...or maybe it won't. Mr. Ferris was a very nice guy, and I have this feeling that his book will win. And now we have signed copies of it, so stop by and pick one up, won't you?


I read this article on Slate about the history of the hangover, mainly because I'm a Kingsley Amis fan, and I just assumed he would be mentioned (He was). On the second page of the article is this interesting bit of information:
The Scots, the Irish, the Welsh, and the English seem to have special relationships with the hangover. Why do societies drink? The answer is obvious, in a way, but not entirely. Several years ago, Nature, the science journal, published a report suggesting that drink was, from a biological point of view, engrained among the British. There are historical reasons for that. Fermented drinks contained none of the bugs that could be found in water. In Dublin in the 1940s, it wasn't unusual for people to give the young children Guinness when the water wasn't potable.
See. It's not that I have a "problem" as you say, but rather that there are bugs in the water. Bugs, I tell you!


Reasons NOT to Move to Indiana:

1. Corn allergy
2. Keith Smart
3. Bookstores must register as places that sell "sexually explicit materials."
4. John Mellencamp
5. Hatred of noble farm life as portrayed in pick-up truck commercials
6. Proximity to Illinois

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Titlepage: Episode 2(?)

The second episode of Titlepage is up (although, according to this writeup on Jacket Copy, it was filmed before the first episode). It features four debut authors, including Keith Gessen, who will be presenting and signing his book at Vroman's on April 28. The other panelists are Sloane Crosley, Julie Klam, and Ceridwen Dovey. There are a few very nice moments in the conversation, including some real vulnerability from Gessen, whose friend told him his book All the Sad Young Literary Men would ruin his life. That's criticism everybody wants to get! Other good parts include Julie Klam's very funny story about her mother blaming the alphabet for her daughter's inability to distinguish "M" from "N" ("Why do they put them so close together?!") and Ceridwen Dovey referring to her ancestors as "drunkards and bums." Klam, who wrote for Pop Up Video on VH1, tells a few interesting stories form her days on that show, as well.

All four books sound like the sort of thing I'd like, and Gessen's is actually on my "to read" list as I write this. Dovey's book, Blood Kin, sound fascinating. The story of a coup in a fictional country, Blood Kin, is told by several nameless characters, including the deposed ruler's chef. Menaker, I think, asks her some excellent questions about the many descriptions of body parts, aging, and other corporeal elements. Despite Menaker's talent as a host, the show is at its best when the authors start talking with one another. I'm excited to see how the next panel, which features Mark Sarvas, who will be at Vroman's on May 5, plays out. The show definitely has potential.

Other things I noticed while watching this episode: all the panelists sit on what appears to be cheap lawn furniture. I can sympathize. A few years ago, I moved to Iowa with my then girlfriend. When we moved into our apartment, we had no furniture. We bought this terrific vintage Leave it to Beaver style kitchen table, the kind with a Formica top and stainless steel legs. Then we got some patio furniture for our porch. We didn't have enough money leftover to buy chairs to match the table, so we used the patio furniture. You know, just until we got the cash together to pick up some cool vintage chairs to match our great table. Flash forward two years and there we are in the kitchen, eating seared tenderloin while seated on lawn furniture. Classy. Apparently the Titlepage folks had the same problem. I guess those books on ropes are more expensive than they look.

Another thing I learned from comparing this episode to the first (or second) one: it must be the second book that turns you into one of the mole people, because all of these authors are pretty attractive.

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Monday, March 24, 2008

The Dawning Age of the Superbooks

Via The Morning News, comes this story from the Independent about the new market for "superbooks." These gargantuan tomes, typically priced over $2,000 (₤1,000), "target wealthy sports enthusiasts – the kind who can afford a corporate box at a cup final." German publisher Taschen has long led the field in this category, producing the fabulously expensive Muhammad Ali GOAT book, Helmut Newton's Sumo, and other books costing multiple thousands of dollars and requiring their own structural supports.

Two stories from my bookselling past come to mind whenever I think of these superbooks. A few years ago, I was working in a bookstore in Hollywood when a starlet bought our last remaining copy of Sumo, a book that weighed about 100 pounds, table included. We kept it in the basement, so once the transaction was finished, I crawled down there to get it. After dragging it up the stairs, through the store, and out onto the street, the starlet pulled up to load the book into her...Porsche Roadster. A car so small she was lucky to fit into it (and she wasn't a large woman). She apologized for making me carry the book up the stairs for nothing, and asked me if I would please hold it for her, back down in the basement, until her assistant could come the following day with a truck to pick it up. Soaked in sweat and gasping for air, I shrugged nonchallantly and said, "Yeah, you know, it's cool, whatever, tomorrow's cool." She squeezed my shoulder and thanked me.

A year or two later, I was managing a store in Orange County, and we carried the limited edition GOAT, priced at about $12,500, I believe. One day a gentleman wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and flip-flops came into the store and asked to see the GOAT display copy we had (Taschen was good enough to send along a sample, complete with a stand to hold it). After a few minutes of flipping through the display copy, he bought it. In fact, he bought three of them, for well over $30,000. And he paid in cash. And I spent half an hour making sure none of the hundreds he gave me were counterfeit.

Kudos for Us

Two very nice write-ups about Vroman's on the interweb this past weekend. First the Pasadena Star News gave us a little front page treatment with a very nice interview with our owner Joel Sheldon. Then LAist, the LAest of the LA blogs, gave us a fine tip of the cap, complete with color photograph of our main store on Colorado Blvd. For a second, I tried to find my office window in the picture, then I remembered that I toil my days away in a six-by-eight foot windowless cell, my skin turning a pale green beneath the fluorescent lights . Good times!

Friday, March 21, 2008

Odds & Ends

A couple of bits of literary and non-literary news that have grabbed my attention today:


The 2008 Book Sense Book of the Year Awards have been announced. These titles represent, according to Shelf Awareness, "the books ABA members most enjoyed handselling this year." The winners are as follows:

In other awards news, the LA Times book blog Jacket Copy has been running a series on some of the nominees for the LA Times Book Prizes. Up right now is a post about Simon Sebag Montefoire's biography Young Stalin, complete with You Tube footage. The LA Times Book Prizes will be announced at the LA Times Festival of Books, where Vroman's will have a booth!


Faced-out or not, Border's is circling the drain.


Western Kentucky just upset Drake in the NCAA Tournament. The folks at Slate won't be pleased.


No Weekly Shelf Talker this week. In lieu of that, I thought I'd recommend folks check out the newly revamped Vroman's website, where they can find dozens of recommendations, for adults, teens, and kids, in every imaginable genre.


I didn't want to write an entire recommendation for this book, but the 2008 Baseball Prospectus is out. If you're a baseball fan and you don't read this book, you need to be slapped (metaphorically speaking). The book features breakdowns of all the teams, with a blurb about each player, plus articles on cutting edge statistical analysis and rankings of the game's top prospects. Yeah, it's geeky, but I typically spend two or three days each spring doing nothing but reading this book. It's surprisingly funny, provided the reader has an obsessive working knowledge of baseball. Take for instance, this sentence that appeared in a previous Prospectus instead of a blurb for former Yankee prospect Ruben Rivera: "I had a comment about Ruben Rivera, but I left if in Derek Jeter's locker, and now it's gone." If you get it, great. If not, you probably have a life. Congratulations.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

A Sense of the NCAA Tournament

The NCAA Tournament kicks off today, and as my bracket comes apart at the seams (pull it together, Xavier!), I find myself thinking of the best book I've ever read about the tournament or college basketball in general. John McPhee's first book, A Sense of Where You Are, is a portrait of Bill Bradley before he became a Rhodes Scholar, played for the Knicks, served in the US Senate, or ran for president. It's a study of the man in early adulthood, balancing athletics and academics at Princeton University.

Much is made now about the fiction of student athletes. Too often, this time of year brings forth a flood of editorials decrying poor graduation rates and the loss of the true amateur in college sports. I won't add fuel to that fire, since, frankly, it's tedious and tinged with racism and elitism. McPhee's book addresses some of these issues, showing how hard it is to be both a first class athlete and a student at a top flight academic institution. The scheduling alone proves insurmountable for some. Bradley's success, according to McPhee, stems as much from his intense self-discipline as from his equally prodigious talent.

The book is full of incredible anecdotes of Bradley's time at Princeton, both on the court and off. While it borders on hagiography -- McPhee stops just short of prescribing super powers to Bradly -- it is a thrilling read for fans of the game. Bradley led Princeton to the Final Four in 1965, where he was named Most Outstanding Player for scoring 41 points in a semifinal game against Cazzie Russell's Michigan Wolverines, then following it with an NCAA Tournament record 58 points in the consolation game against Wichita State. Princeton in the Final Four. 58 points in a college game (before the three point shot, remember). Maybe he really did have super powers.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Anthony Minghella Passes Away

Anthony Minghella, director of a great many literary adaptations, died yesterday in London of "complications from surgery to treat tonsil cancer," according to the New York Times. Minghella was working on an adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith's The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series of novels for HBO.

A Beautiful Review for a So-So Book

Maud Newton has written an excellent review of Richard Price's new book Lush Life for the Boston Globe. It ends with this lovely paragraph:

At a friend's wedding last fall, I was talking with the jazz singer Mary Foster Conklin about the transformation we've seen over the past decade. "Do you think the city has lost its soul?" I asked her. She didn't. "The image I've always had," she told me, "is that New York is like a compulsive gambler. When times are good, it's flashy suits and drinks all round. When times are bad, the clothes are threadbare, and friends disappear." Whether and where crime might increase or what form it may take if the city slides into recession in the next few years is anyone's guess. But one thing is certain: If we're lucky, Richard Price will be there to get it all down.

I enjoyed reading Maud's review much more than I enjoyed reading Lush Life, which I found interminably dull.

Monday, March 17, 2008

If You're Looking for Something to Read...

You might want to head over the Vroman's website, where someone has arranged all the staff picks into useful and sometimes shockingly irreverent categories for easy browsing. Browse away!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

What, you were expecting some quote from Joyce here? Or maybe Yeats? You should know me better than that, laddie.

Friday, March 14, 2008

The Weekly Shelf Talker: Star Wars Legacy of the Force

The Weekly Shelf Talker is our Friday column, in which a Vroman's employee recommends a great book, new or old, fiction or not, for you to enjoy. This week's Shelf Talker is from J. Clark Mason who recommends Star Wars Legacy of the Force, by Aaron Allston, Karen Traviss & Troy Denning:

I’ve been a Star Wars fan since seeing Star Wars in 1977 when it was first on the big screen. There have been a lot of Star Wars books released over the years that have expanded the universe of Star Wars, but I have only dabbled at reading a handful of them, never sure which of the many books to read or when they were set it the Star Wars timeline.

Then in December 2007 I stumbled upon the Legacy of the Force series. The series' first book was released in the summer of 2006. The series is planned for 9 books (8 of the books have been published as of March 2008, the 9th book is due out in May 2008) and has re-energized my love of George Lucus’ world. The series starts about 40 “standard” years after Star Wars: A New Hope. The main focus of the series is the current lives of Luke, Han, Leia and their families. Many of the characters from the original movies are in the series including R2-D2, C-3PO, Lando, Boba Fett and Wedge Antilles. I am listening to the abridged audio books and I’m on book six, I love every moment and can’t wait to drive into work listening to the high points and low points of the Galactic Alliance and the current heroes and villains.

The series is not as light as the first three movies were, the series is darker and similar to the prequel movies (Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith), but it is a wonderful series and can’t be missed by any Star Wars enthusiast. You don’t need to have read any other Star Wars book, but you definitely need to have read the book version or watched the six movies to have a good base for this series, but who hasn’t seen the six Star Wars movies? Anyway, I strongly recommend these books on either audio or in print; they are listed below in order:

#1 Betrayal
#2 Bloodlines
#3 Tempest
#4 Exile
#5 Sacrifice
#6 Inferno
#7 Fury
#8 Revelation
#9 Invincible (due out May 2008)

J. Clark Mason is Vroman's Chief Financial Officer.

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Wednesday, March 12, 2008

A Breakfast of Links

A couple of quick links to pass along on this fine Wednesday morning:
  • Kate Christensen, whose fabulous book The Epicure's Lament I recommend to everyone, has won the 2008 Pen Faulkner Award for her novel The Great Man. In the words of novelist James Hynes, "Buy it, read it, love it. Nuff said."
  • Border's is going to "face-out" a lot more books, reducing its overall selection by 5-10%. We'll see how this strategy works. When you work at a bookstore, one of the first things you learn about merchandising is that books turned face out sell faster than books that are shelved spine out. Of course, whenever anybody talks about what they want in a bookstore, "great selection" is usually the second thing they mention, after a friendly cat.
  • David Kelly opened a controversial topic on the NY Times Paper Cuts blog on Monday, asking who is the most overrated author. In the comments section, people are taking their semi-anonymous internet shots at everybody, and I mean everybody. Nabokov, Kerouac, Melville, Carver, Oprah books (oh, of course), nouveau literary whipping girl Marisha Pessl (seriously, can we get over this?), Dave Eggers (again, get over this, people), Bellow, Faulkner, Dickens, Proust, Eliot, Atwood, all of fiction, and of course, that hack F. Scott Fitzgerald. "What about Mozart? You don't want to forget Mozart when you're trashing people."

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Vroman's Wins "Bookseller of the Year"!

Publishers Weekly has named Vroman's "PW's Bookseller of the Year!" The article cites, among other things, our commitment to community, our profitability, and our many programs that benefit our employees (such as scholarships to BEA and the ABA's Winter Institute). The article also quotes book rep Marshall Presnick:
“I could wax poetic for pages on what a great service they provide to their community, their responsiveness to customers, their ability to handsell staff favorites, the quality of their selection, the way they listen to their sales reps, how well they promote their events, etc. etc. etc,” said Macmillian rep Marshall Presnick.
We will be honored at a special ceremony at this year's BEA, held right here in LA. Congratulations have already begun flowing in from publishers, authors, other booksellers, and of course, our customers.

Monday, March 10, 2008

"The Wire" and New Media

"The Wire" is over, and like many white urban liberals, I'll now have to find something else to do with my Sunday nights. (Thank god baseball season is around the corner.) The final season of "The Wire" created more acrimony amongst fans of the show than any other season, except possibly Season 2. Most criticisms of the show focused on the plot involving show creator David Simon's former place of employment, The Baltimore Sun. In Simon's Sun, real homicides, particularly those that happen in poor African American neighborhoods, end up buried deep within the Metro section of the paper, while the fake murders of white homeless men get prominent, page one, above-the-fold coverage:
"This is why I'm the king of meta," Simon said with a mischievous grin. "Everything that you know about 'The Wire' up to this point never appeared in the newspaper." He then recounted the many plot points taken from Simon's real-life Baltimore experiences -- the corrupt mayor asking for cooked crime stats, the elementary school test scores spawned from students being taught the tests, the deaths of Prop Joe and Omar -- all indicators of the city's real problems that never appeared in the Sun's pages, in reality or on HBO. "Watching a TV drama to get the truth, that's the real joke," Simon added.
Simon's critique of the newspaper business is whithering indeed, portraying the bosses of the paper as either heartless bureaucrats or prize-hungry opportunists. The "real" journalists and editors, those who want to cover the city as it is, are buried by the paper and its corporate parents in Chicago.

The newspaper plot failed for a number of reasons, including a lack of characterization. Some of this was due to timing. By introducing all the reporters in the show's final season, Simon and company short them of valuable time given to developing the police, the drug dealers, the school kids, and the city hall politicos. In previous seasons, Simon never would've left editor Gus to stand as Patron Saint of the City Desk, flawless and noble to the end, or to leave Scott Templeton to be nothing more than a fraud and a sham. The characters lacked nuance and at times, humanity, and it showed up on the screen.

But the newspaper plot suffered for another reason, as well. Newspapers are losing traction in the public consciousness, giving way to cable news channels, ESPN, and, most importantly, the internet. Electronic media has accelerated the news cycle and changed the appetites of the average news consumer, so much so that even the nightly news, once the most important source of information to the average American, now seems hopelessly out of touch, viewed by the elderly exclusively (or at least, that's what I've been led to believe by the people who buy ad time on these shows). "The Wire" ignored electronic media, particularly the impact of the internet on how newspapers cover crime, and it did so to its own detriment. Here in LA, where homicides have been in the news lately, the LA Times (owned by the same parent corporation as Simon's Sun) has done something rather remarkable. The Homicide Report, written by Jill Leovy and Ruben Vives, aims to cover every homicide in Los Angeles, regardless of where, why, or how it was committed. The goal is to give coverage to the tragedy that is every killing, to remove homicides from the world of statistics, to keep the problem fresh in the public's imagination.

The genius of the Homicide Report, about which I've written before, is that, through RSS feeds and the like, it can be delivered to you in the same way the good old fashioned newspaper used to be before you canceled your subscription. I'd like to have seen Simon examine something like this phenomenon, and maybe, given another ten episodes, he might have. It isn't hard to imagine Alma Gutierrez, the reporter the Sun exiles to the Carroll County Bureau (everyone familiar with "The Wire" knows what it means to be sent to "the county"), starting a blog similar to The Homicide Report, covering the stories she feels deserve it. As it stands now, the Baltimore Sun has blogs about the military, education, entertainment (where their critics panned the finale of "The Wire"), and beer. But no homicide blog yet.

Blogs have often lowered the level of discourse in journalism. The anonymity allows for a certain recklessness, it seems to me, and the consumer has come to expect something different from a blog than it does a magazine or newspaper. But blogs and other forms of internet reporting have also uncovered previously underreported issues, forced greater transparency upon public institutions (It stretches credulity that the cover-up at city hall, the police department, and the Sun would go uncovered in the contemporary news environment), and made newspapers more nimble. Examining this would've made the final season of "The Wire," great though it was, even greater.

Friday, March 07, 2008

The Weekly Shelf Talker: Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance

The Weekly Shelf Talker is our Friday column, in which a Vroman's employee recommends a great book, new or old, fiction or not, for you to enjoy. This week's Shelf Talker is from Jan Littler, who recommends Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance, by Gyles Brandreth:

I am a huge fan of Oscar Wilde. Perhaps it’s because we’re both Libras (which also, perhaps, explains our shared interest in things respective of law, order & justice). Or perhaps it’s because – whatever his birth sign – he remains a fascinating character – both the public and private man – more than 100 years after his death.

I am also a fan of this kind of mystery – nothing too grisly or explicit – mainly the solving of a puzzle. And yes, I did solve it, although not so early as to detract from the story. Besides, that’s not really why I read the book. To me, and I believe I can say the same for the author, when it comes to Oscar Wilde, everything else is simply an adjunct.

What was more interesting to me than the plot was who peopled it. It should come as no surprise that Wilde’s acquaintance, which was extensive, should include the prominent & noteworthy of his time. But it is always surprising which people one bonds with (to?) Arthur Conan Doyle – yes, that Arthur Conan Doyle – is an integral part of the book, as well as having been a close friend of Wilde’s. (I didn’t even know they knew each other. Surprise!)

There is always a danger in historical fiction when one is writing in the voice of a well-known personality. Especially one whose prose is so familiar to so many. Gyles Brandreth handles it brilliantly. How many of the bon mots are his & how many Wilde’s I’m not sure. Because the narrator, Robert Sherard (Wilde’s first & staunchest biographer), is telling the story in flashback, he is able to allude to other times & issues without detracting from the flow of the story. I do have one problem with the outcome, which I won’t reveal as it would give away too much, but having said that, it didn’t really bother me until after I had finished the book. (Ok, like 2 days later. “Wait a minute!” I said to myself….)

This is the first in a projected 9 stories spanning Wilde’s life from his Oxford days to his death in Paris in 1900. If book 2 is as engaging as this, I expect to be as anxious to read the rest of them as Wilde’s public was waiting for his next play.

Jan Littler works in the Customer Service Department and enjoys a broad range of subjects.

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NBCC Award Winners Announced

The National Book Critics Circle Awards have been announced, and they include, in my opinion, some minor upsets. The fiction winner, as I guessed it would be, is The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz. The winner in criticism - and another pick of mine - is Alex Ross' The Rest is Noise. Other winners include Elegy, by Mary Jo Bang for Poetry, Tim Jeal's Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer, for Biography (a minor upset), Medical Apartheid by Harriet Washington for General Non-fiction (another upset), and Edwidge Danticat for Brother, I'm Dying, in Autobiography.

So I nailed fiction and criticism, while completely missing the other categories. I'll take that. It's a great selection of books, and I applaud the NBCC for again choosing more interesting titles than many other awards. And of course, you can get your copy of the NBCC Award winners at Vroman's or online at www.vromansbookstore.com.

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Tonight's the Night

The National Book Critics Circle Awards will be announced tonight in NYC at the New School. For those interested, Lizzie Skurnick will be live-blogging the ceremony and posting reaction and speeches from the winners. Just to refresh your memory, I made some predictions back in January. We'll see if I do better at these than I did at the Oscars.

Vroman's Ed Teacher Makes Good

One of the best, most innovative things we do here at Vroman's is our Vroman's Ed series of craft classes and writing workshops. Several times a year, we put together a schedule of classes on diverse subjects like memoir writing, playwriting, bookbinding, writing for kids, and the basics of crochet. The classes are taught by skilled, experienced professionals, including writers like Mona Simpson, Mary Otis, Kerry Madden, and Amy Goldman Koss. Our workshops have brought people together to learn craft, and even produced a few published authors, including Liza Palmer. Today brings the happy news that one of our past teachers, Edan Lepucki, has taken second place in the prestigious Story Quarterly 2007 Fiction Contest. Her story "Animals" is available to read online. Congratulations, Edan!

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

"The Kudzus of Uncertainty"

I thought this was a wonderful sentence from a piece by Nicholson Baker at The Morning News, discussing what he's reading at the moment: "Often in fact the last twenty-eight pages of a book will tarnish an experience which otherwise would glow greenly forever with kudzus of uncertainty." I'd like to be the sort of person who dropped stuff like that into conversations everyday.

So, I guess it's Consequences then?

By now, you're all well aware that Margaret B. Jones' memoir Love and Consequences is, consequently, fake. "None of it is true," according to the NY Times. Ms. Jones is actually Ms. Seltzer. Peggy Seltzer. She attended the same private school as the Olsen twins. I assume that somebody at Riverhead will have to fall for this, as they also brought us the James Frey fiasco. The internet reaction has been swift and witty. My favorite piece of criticism on the subject comes from Slate's coverage of The Wire, where Jeffrey Goldberg writes, "I assume you have seen the coverage of Love and Consequences, the "memoir" of a half-white, half-Native American girl not named Margaret Jones who grew up in South-Central, except that she didn't? A writer like that belongs in the Baltimore Sun newsroom."

Oh, and I should probably mention that she won't be appearing at Vroman's this Thursday. Vroman's don't truck with no liars.

Monday, March 03, 2008

Titlepage: The First Episode

As far as panel discussions go, the first episode of Titlepage, the new web show hosted by former Random House head Daniel Menaker, is nothing special. Richard Price, Susan Choi, Colin Harrison, and Charles Bock sit around on a spare set (the influence of the Bravo network and Charlie Rose is evident) talking about their respective books and the craft of writing in general. Anyone who's ever been to a book festival has probably seen something similar and possibly something a bit more raucous (all these panelists are pretty reserved). The set is dimly lit, with isolation spotlights casting a sometimes unflattering pallor over a few of the authors. Books hang on ropes in the background, similarly to how they might hang next to a toilet. Menaker guides the discussion through each title, summarizing the story and asking specific questions of each author. His questions are smart, and he creates a thoughtful atmosphere for discussion.

The episode definitely has its moments: Richard Price's terrific quote "There's no book that's more fun than the first book, because when you write that first book, you're a writer. After that, you're a goddamn author;" Charles Bock's bewilderment, as if he's stunned to be on the same show as these other authors; the description of Harrison's method of writing violence. I'm curious to see where the show goes, how it branches out from here. Obviously, its success will depend entirely on how compelling the guests manage to be.

This first episode features some terrific authors (although, in the interest of full disclosure, I didn't like Price's Lush Life very much at all), but it's nothing that will set your hair on fire, but I didn't find myself longing to click over to ESPN.com either. Frankly, it's exciting to see a show like this about authors. We live in a world where, with a few exceptions, chefs have become more recognizable than fiction writers. Here's to a show that pulls the writers out, wriggling and mole-like, into the light a little.

Saturday, March 01, 2008

Odds & Ends

Just a few quick things I've been thinking about, since I'm in the office on a Saturday and all:
  • Lost in all the posts about the passing of Alain Robbe-Grillet was the fact that his work served as a chief inspiration for the last 350 pages or so of Miles Raymond's epic, unpublished novel The Day After Yesterday.
  • It occurred to me that, since I mentioned it in our interview, I ought to publish Dan Kennedy's groundbreaking book trailer for his memoir Rock On. Here it is:



  • Speakers for the BEA breakfasts and lunches have been announced. Alec Baldwin, Neil Gaiman, John Hodgeman, Dennis Lehane, Sherman Alexie, Judy Blume, Ted Turner, and Michael Moore are among the many authors and personalities that are set to appear. On the subject of Alec Baldwin, while I was wasting time preparing for my interview with Dan Kennedy on the McSweeney's site, I found this terrific monologue. "A-B-C. A—always, B—be, C—careful. Remember those perverts, kids. Let's get some sort of buddy system going, huh?"