Mix & Mingle

The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library will hold its fourth annual Opus & Olives fundraiser on Sunday, October 28.

Mingle with guests including the poet Nikki Giovanni and Dave Zirin, author of Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics and Promise of Sports. Then hear them speak about their work, their lives, and anything else they want to talk about over dinner.

Buy your tickets online or by calling 651/222-3242.

Imagine All the People... Gone--Part 2

A few weeks ago I posted about a radio interview with Alan Weisman, author of the forthcoming SF novel The World Without Us. Now, thanks to the good folks at Very Short List, I can tell you there's a website for the book as well.

Besides the usual praise and reviews, worldwithoutus.com has a very interesting slideshow depicting Manhattan in the 15,000 years after humans disappear and stop maintaining its infrastructure and a movie about what happens to houses which aren't kept up.--David E

The Other Murakami

I know I go on a lot about Haruki Murakami, but this is not one of those posts. Instead, I'm writing about Ryu Murakami, whose books include the surreal and down at heels Coin Locker Babies and the seedy, creepy In the Miso Soup. Now comes his latest, the incredibly distressing Piercing.

Piercing is the story of two damaged people, victims of past child abuse, who find each other and work through their issues using an icepick, a Swiss army knife, and various other less-than therapeutic implements. It's also a love story, in a very, very dark way. (You can also read a review of Piercing in the Japan Times.)

Ryu Murakami's books are on a downward trajectory, each one darker and scarier than the last. It's a sickening rollercoaster past Tokyo's neon lights, and I love it.--David E

Punctuated... And How

Punctuation sure does get people angry. Witness the UK's Apostrophe Protection Society or this blog deriding unnecessary quotation marks.

And if any more proof was needed, you can find more than enough in the comments following David Crystal's article attacking Lynn Truss' "zero tolerance" policy towards punctuational incorrectness. Crystal really brought out the partisans. ("Contrary to what some posters above believe, the subjunctive has not disappeared in the English language, not at all." and "What I wrote was 'fully conjugated'. Your examples show the subjunctive is not fully conjugated. Indeed, it is not conjugated at all.") There are over 100 comments; it's fun reading.--David E

Be a Mensch: Visit Your Local Library

It's not too late to participate in the Friends of the St Paul Public Library's series of book discussions entitled ""Your Heart's Desire: Sex and Love in Jewish Literature." Held at 7pm every Tuesday in July at the Highland Park branch, the events are free and open to the public. This month's remaining books are

• July 17: A Simple Story, by Shmuel Yosef Agnon
• July 24: The Lover, by Abraham B. Yehoshua
• July 31: The Mind-Body Problem, by Rebecca Goldstein

Visit the Friends of the St Paul Public Library website for details and information on registering.

Newfound Tribe of Librarians Not Happy

So I'm not the only one who was irked by the New York Times' article on the newer, hipper librarian recently unearthed in deepest Brooklyn. (See my post "It's Hip to Be Pretty" here if you missed it.) Nicole Scherer at The Huffington Post has a nice roundup of snarky opinions from the blogosphere, particularly about the Times' depiction of the "guybrarian."

007 @ 100

Word today that the estate of Ian Fleming has annointed Sebastian Faulks, probably best know as the author of Charlotte Gray, to write the next official James Bond novel. Faulks' book, to be called Devil May Care, will be published in May to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of Fleming's birth.

The Guardian also reports the news, along with a satirical excerpt from the new novel, a segment in which Bond stares down his arch-rival Jaws, a thinly veiled contemporary British writer obsessed with his teeth.--David E

Put Your Pants On and Read

On the heels of last week's news of a clothing-optional book signing in Vermont, comes this great theory from the sages at BoingBoing.net: underwear created literacy. According to Dr Marco Mostert, a historian at Utrecht University, an increase in discarded underpants (itself primarily the result of folks moving to the big city where underwear was the custom) made cloth-based paper cheaper than the earlier parchment, and thus reading material was more widely available than ever before to the huddled, jockeyed masses.

Follow this link to see more on the story and a picture of what medieval underwear looked like.--David E

It's Hip to Be Pretty

Ever on the cutting edge, the New York Times "Styles" section has discovered that there are librarians under the age of fifty. And, this being the "Styles" section, these newly-found booksters are fresh and trendy, in their "thrift-store inspired clothes and abundant tattoos."

Of course, anyone who's ventured into the blogosphere has already encountered plenty of lively librarians; my favorite is Your Neighborhood Librarian.

And while we're objectifying the bookish, I'll point you towards the winner of Gawker.com's "Hot" Straight Men Of Book Publishing" contest. Enjoy.--David E

Sheer Genius

Judge the Book has hit a home run with this one. Count the hands.

Did you get five?

Faking It

Today the blog at Encyclopaedia Britannica begins a handy series of postings sure to help literary fakers everywhere. "20th-Century Literary Genres in a Nutshell: Part 1" lists movements and key authors. So if you're not clear on Acmeism ("Russian poets who reacted against the mystical, vague, and allusive qualities of symbolism: Anna Akhmatova, Chetki (1914); Osip Mandel’shtam, Kamen’ (1913)") or just want a quick refresher on the Black Mountain Poets ("1950s–1960s. Teachers and students of Black Mountain College (1933–1953) in North Carolina whose poetry was aligned with the rhythms and spontaneity of consciousness: Charles Olson, The Maximus Poems (1960); Robert Creeley, For Love: Poems, 1950–1960 (1962)."), this is the place for you.

This first post goes through D; further posts will come each week.--David E

Fly on the Shelves

Design Observer has posted an article about Jack Stauffacher's storied Greenwood Press. My favorite bit, though is the slideshow of Stauffacher's shelves. I'm always reading the titles on bookshelves in the backgrounds of photographs, so I'm glad for a chance to be able to stare openly for a change.--David E

The 80s Weren't So Good the First Time Around

I've just been dying for an excuse to blog about the logo for the 2012 London Olympics, and at last I have it: designer and critic Michael Beirut was on WNYC talking about the logo, product packaging, and fonts, and his book Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design. So I can with a clear conscience tell you that an animated version of this ugly, ugly logo has been shown to cause seizures in photosensitive epileptics and to cause aesthetic nausea in anyone who is old enough to have seen Miami Vice on broadcast television.

There, I feel better for venting. Thanks.--David E

Embarassment of Riches

I can't resist a headline like the one I saw today:
"Blind author to hold 'clothing optional' book signing."

It seems a bookstore in Vermont is holding an after-hours reading by the author of Nudity & Christianity by Jim Cunningham, lifelong promoter of both causes through his "Theology of the Body Retreats." He calls his latest book (no pictures, by the way) his "magnum opus... the best of his twenty-three years of naturist publishing." Customers can get naked if they choose during the event.

Bring a towel, if you're attending, please.--David E

Hiding in Plain Sight

There's an excerpt from one of the three novellas in Paul Theroux's forthcoming book The Elephanta Suite posted at the Times of London's website.

It tells the story of a backpacker's encounter with a kind Indian man who is perhaps more than he seems to be. (The picture at the top of the page gives a clue to his identity.)--David E

Judging a Book

I'd hoped there was some great story behind the drab jacket design for the hardcover version of Cormac McCarthy's latest novel The Road. Now, thanks to an interview with renowned cover designer Chip Kidd at Esquire, I know that in fact there isn't any good excuse.

Says Kidd, "[McCarthy] didn't even want his name on the front. We had to gently persuade him that that was not a good idea. So the cover just became this black hole." All well and good, but a little resistance from an author is no reason for such a poor cover, and no rationalizing about the colors reflecting the drabness of the book's grim subject matter really makes up for that.--David E

My Hero

Edna Foulds, of the town of Redcar in the north of England, is my new hero. Over the last 40 years, she's borrowed an estimated 20,800 books and only once been late returning them! I wish I could do as well.

Read the full article here.--David E

The Highs... The Lows

Slate.com has posted a funny excerpt from Andrew Ferguson's book Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe's America. It tells the state of Illinois' first steps in the making of its Lincoln library and museum. Would you believe Lincoln's manias and melancholies dramatized by a roller coaster? It was on the table for a while.

Book with a Beer Chaser--July

Join us at Bryant Lake Bowl (map) for conversation and a beverage with some very interesting folks. Doors open at 6:00pm for socializing; discussion begins in earnest at 7:00pm.

This month's book is Pretty Little Mistakes by Heather Mcelhatton. Like the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books of your youth, this book contains hundreds of possible endings. Pick your favorite, debate with your friends, and even meet the author at this month's book club.

Books & Bars is not your typical book club. We provide an atmosphere for lively discussion of interesting authors, good food and drinks. You're welcome to come even if you haven't read the book.

A Whole World On a Napkin

Esquire magazine sent paper napkins to authors across the country, asking them to write whatever they'd like and return the result to the magazine for publication. The result is the Napkin Fiction Project.

The newest additions include work by Joshua Ferris and the very Esquire-appropriately-named Angela Pneuman. The backlist includes the mandatory story of sexual inconsequence by Jonathan Ames and Christopher Sorrentino's monologue from a paper company sales rep.--David E

Poor Richard, Poor

Mike Jones, whom coloradoconfidential.com succintly calls the "Haggard Outer," will appear in Colorado Springs, even though none of the local book stores (including otherwise feisty independent Poor Richard's) was willing to sponsor an event. They claimed there would likely be no audience--in the town that was home to Haggard's very own church, no less. But DJ's Bar & Grill has bravely stepped forward. On July 8, they'll kick off Colorado Springs' gay pride weekend with an appearance by the not-so-haggard-actually-quite-well-rested-looking Jones.

(See the full article here.)

What Light Details and FAQs

Information on our judges:

Maria Damon
Maria Damon teaches poetry and poetics at the University of Minnesota, where she is Professor of English. She is the author of many essays on poetry and poetics as well as The Dark End of the Street: Margins in American Vanguard Poetry (Minnesota UP) and the forthcoming Bagel Shop Jazz: Selected Essays for a Post-literary “America” (Iowa UP), co-author (with mIEKAL aND) of Literature Nation, Eros/ion, and pleasureTEXTpossession, and co-editor (with Ira Livingston) of the forthcoming Poetry and Cultural Studies: A Reader (Illinois UP). She is a fellow-traveler in the Flarf Collective.

Poetics Statement: I am enamored of the raw and the “wrong,” the micropoetries of everyday life, and so forth. Favorite poets right now: bpNichol, John Wieners, Adeena Karasick, Kamau Brathwaite, Alan Sondheim, Talan Memmott. What I’m reading right now: a pretty mediocre collection of critical essays on Hans Christian Andersen, and a pretty wonderful collection of Walter Benjamin’s unpublished notes, including a section of “Opinions et Pensées” of his toddler son.


Patricia Kirkpatrick

Patricia Kirkpatrick has published a poetry book, Century’s Road (Holy Cow! Press), two letterpress chapbooks, Orioles and Learning to Read, and books for young readers. Her awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Bush Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, Jerome Foundation, and, in 2006, the McKnight Fellowship Loft Award in Poetry. Poetry is forthcoming in The Poets Guide to the Birds, edited by Judith Kitchen and Ted Kooser, Prairie Schooner, and on Saint Paul sidewalks through the Saint Paul Everyday Poetry Project. She teaches in the MFA program at Hamline University where she is Poetry Editor for Water-Stone Review.

Poetics Statement: I’m a lyric poet: we want to sing! I’m intrigued when a ‘highly charged lyrical phrase,' colloquial even plain language, and/or experimental velocities express the inner life, dream and feeling. But the inner life takes place in a world where one civilization overtakes another, where ‘progress’ fractures landscapes, ways of life, and poetry too. Certain subjects interest me: birth, death, landscape, the historical moment in which we live, our power--or lack of power--as Americans. Yet no subject works separately from how a poem is made, and the creation of music and metaphor in poetry mean everything to me.


Carol Muske-Dukes
Carol Muske-Dukes is author of seven books of poetry, most recently Sparrow, a National Book Award finalist published by Random House, 2003. Her fourth novel, Channeling Mark Twain, from Random House, is in stores now. Carol’s collection of essays entitled Married to the Icepick Killer, A Poet in Hollywood was published in August of 2002. Her collection of reviews and critical essays, Women and Poetry: Truth, Autobiography and the Shape of the Self was published in the “Poets on Poetry” series of the University of Michigan Press, 1997. She is a regular critic for the New York Times Book Review and the LA Times Book Review. Her work appears everywhere from the New Yorker to L.A. Magazine and she is anthologized widely, including in Best American Poems, 100 Great Poems by Women and many others. She is professor of English and Creative Writing and founding Director of the new PhD Program in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California. She has received many awards and honors, including a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, an Ingram-Merrill, the Witter Bynner award from the Library of Congress, the Castagnola award from the Poetry Society of America, and several Pushcart Prizes.

---

“What Light” FAQ

Q: What is your preferred format for receiving poems?
A: Word docs (with .doc following the title) or pasted into the email. Those are best. I can’t deal with PDFs or .docx at all. If you have put all your poems together in one doc (which you don’t need to do), use real page breaks, not just a bunch of returns, to separate the poems.

Q: Should my name be on the poem?
A: No—judging is anonymous. However, I firmly believe that publishers should avoid being nit-picky, so if you have all your poems formatted so that your name is already on the thing, that’s fine, I’ll just remove it. Otherwise, no need to add your name.

Q: Do I need a cover letter?
A: No. I feel reassured when I see “Please consider” etc, though. No need for a bio; I don’t read them. Do put your name on your submission.

Q: Should I resubmit poems that have been previously rejected?
A: That depends. Judges come and go, but the screener, who weeds out about 50% of the poems, remains the same. If your poem got by the screener but was rejected by a judge, it makes sense to send the poem again. If your poem was rejected by the screener, it makes no sense to send the poem again. How can you know the difference? Politely ask the screener (via the poems@mnartists.org address). Do not get upset if the answer is slow in coming.

Q: How do you feel about poems with specific spacing (tabs, spaces, etc)?
A: Personally, I like them. I write them. But online journals in general deal poorly with formatted poems, and “What Light” is no exception. Why? Too many “translations” of the poem—the font, and thus the spacing, will almost certainly be changed before the poem gets to the website. So (sigh) try not to send your fanciest-spaced stuff here. A few tabs we can deal with.--Lightsey Darst

Every Man a Medici

Author Michael Thomas Ford has launched a website to raise money for writers and to draw attention to the lack of funding for working writers generally. At www.dollaraword.com he's writing a novel one word at a time, as he gets sponsonship from individuals like you. Give him a dollar and he'll write another word. Give him a thousand and get a chapter or so. When the money runs out, so does the novel--even in the middle of a sentence. You can read the beginning of the book here.

So dust off your checkbook and become a patron of the arts. If he gets enough money to finish the book and is able to sell it to a publisher, Ford will end up donating $100,000 to various organizations which support authors. At the very least, tell your friends about the project and discuss Ford's big question: What is art worth?--David E

Imagine All the People... Gone

I'm not a science fiction fan, as a rule, but I'm not immune to a little alternative-future thinking on occasion. So I'll confess I was intrigued by a recent CBC interview with Alan Weisman, author of the forthcoming SF novel The World Without Us (to be published July 10).

Weisman discusses how the world would change if humans were to suddenly disappear. For example, he predicts that feral housecats wouldn't miss us at all. (But you knew that.) The author says he spoke to a number of experts to ground his sci-fi in sci-fact, and the result sounds like it will be better than your usual space opera.

Listen to the interview here.--David E

After IV

Last month, I drew your attention to a great title: Working IX to V : Orgy Planners, Funeral Clowns and Other Prized Professions of the Ancient World. (See that earlier item here.) I also mentioned that the author would be appearing on NPR. Now that interview has been posted, along with an excerpt from the book detailing various types of Roman slaves and their extremely specialized responsibilities.

My favorite is the triumph slave: "The slave stood behind the triumphant general in his chariot [during the victory parade], holding a heavy, jewel-laden gold crown over the man's head. His other task was much trickier. As the procession moved along amid cheers, the slave whispered wet blanket remarks into the general's ear: 'You're not that great. Look around you and remember you're only a man.'" That doesn't sound hard at all.--David E

Why & Wherefore

Have you ever wondered why soda comes in round containers while milk comes in square ones? No, I hadn't either until the question was posed in an article at Design Observer.

The answer--that milk's squared containers mean more efficient use of refrigerated space during transport and display, while a soda can's round shape is easier to hold in your hand and better holds the pressure of a carbonated liquid--is revealed in The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas.

Author Robert Frank is an economist and professor who wants to turn the study of the dismal science away from mathematics and statistics in a more social, psychological, and--he would say--naturalist direction, and he's focused his attentions and his economics analyses on the world around us, specifically product design and consumer behavior.

Pick it up if you want to learn Frank's answers to questions such as

• Why, even though the discs are exactly the same size, do DVDs come in such larger packages than CDs?
• Why do drive-up ATM machines have Braille dots on the keypads?
• Why do fast food chains promise a free meal if the cashier doesn't offer a receipt, even though most customers don't want one?

--David E

Thumbs up for Annie

Daniel B Smith reviews Annie Dillard's latest novel The Maytrees at slate.com, and it's a rave: "At times, The Maytrees acts like vintage Dillard: It contains gorgeous, meticulous descriptions of the outdoors that springboard into the Platonic ether, into meditations on devotion, loss, and time. ... The result is one of the most lucid and effective books Dillard has ever produced."

Run, Don't Walk

HarperCollins is offering advance reader copies of Ann Patchett's next book Run, which will be published September 25. Patchett is the author of book club favorite Bel Canto.

To get on the list for a copy, email HarperCollins.

Just Like Being There

Fora.tv has posted an almost hour-long reading and Q&A with Armistead Maupin. The event was held at San Francisco's Books Inc. bookstore. Maupin is discussing his latest book Michael Tolliver Lives, the latest book in his longrunning Tales of the City series.

No Thorns, Please

NPR recently talked to Aurelia C Scott about her new book Otherwise Normal People: Inside the Thorny World of Competitive Rose Gardening. Learn the tips and tricks of the flower world's most devoted growers. (Some, for example, actually place a shovel beside an underperforming bush, as a threat.) There's also an excerpt from Scott's book, to whet your appetite.

And you can find out even more here in our store on July 1, when Scott herself will be here for a reading. The stories are great, and the Q&A will be worth the trip, I'm sure. So bring your favorite flower stories and enjoy.--David E

Well Begun is Half Done

World-famous librarian (how often do you read those words?) Nancy Pearl has posted some great reading suggestions for the younger set. To whet you appetite, she's chosen books with particularly engaging openings. Among my favorites:

• "There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
• "I come from a family with a lot of dead people."
• "I have been accused of being anal retentive, an over-achiever, and a compulsive perfectionist, like those are bad things."
• "We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck."

What are these from? Your choices are below, but they're not in order. Give it a guess.

• Each Little Bird That Sings
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
• Millicent Min, Girl Genius
• Feed

The answers are here, along with exceprts, so you can keep on reading past the first sentences.--David E

Just Can't Wait

A purported hacker who broke into Bloomsbury's computers has posted what he claims is the super-secret ending to the seventh and final Harry Potter novel.

Why did he do it? The hacker says, "We did it by following the precious words of the great Pope Benedict XVI when he still was Cardinal Josepth Ratzinger.He explained why Harry Potter bring the youngs of our earth to Neo Paganism faith. So we make this spoiler to make reading of the upcoming book useless and boring."

In fact, it's the revelation that's kinda dull. (You can read the putative secrets here). I haven't read the Potter books, so that combined with the fractured English makes the post pretty well meaningless to me. Take that, hacker.--David E

The Sound of One Tooth Gnashing

Residents of the little French town of Lussaud (pop. 25) are up in arms over their depiction in Pierre Jourde's novel Pays Perdu. Five of them are currently on trial for actually attacking the author's house with stones in 2003.

What provoked such biblical outrage? Passages such as this: "That curious tradition of having only one tooth could have been taken for a fashion, a form of dandyism, like wearing a monocle. It seemed an aesthetic expression rather than a necessity. Because one lone tooth--is it any better than having none?"

Pays Perdu isn't available in English just yet, but you can read the Guardian's coverage here. A Year in Provence this ain't.--David E

Reading Nigeria

Nigeria is on the literary map. Two of the country's writers have won major literary prizes recently. Chinua Achebe (author of the classic Things Fall Apart) won this year's Man Booker International Prize for his career, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie won the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction for her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun.

And it turns out that Adichie actually grew up in a house once occupied by Achebe. How's that for a promising literary pedigree?

Nigeria's Daily Sun newspaper is hosting a forum in which readers compare the two authors both to each other and to Olaudah Equiano, who is argubably Nigeria's first author for his book The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. The comments make for a very interesting glimpse of a writing scene little known in the US.--David E

Behind the Curtain

Last week, I wrote about McSweeney's sale to cover debts incurrred during the bankruptcy of their distributor. This week salon.com has posted a full article, going into all the details. If you're interested in the behind-the-scenes financial aspect of publishing, it's a must-read. My only comment: the article is perhaps a little too upbeat in its belief that the internet will be the salvation of struggling small publishing houses.--David E

The Last Grape on the Vine

I'm always the last to know. It turns out that A.M. Homes, author of the recent memoir The Mistress's Daughter is bisexual, telling the Washington Post, “I've dated men and I've dated women and there's no more or less to it than that.” She's also written for HBO's guilty pleasure The L Word.

For more on all this, you can read an interesting interview with the author at AfterEllen.com.--David E

Wee Reads

Don't tell me you don't have room for another book. New York's Grolier Club is hosting an exhibition of miniature books through July 28. In the show are a two-inch-tall set of the complete works of Shakespeare, a four thousand-year-old Babylonian tablet, and a book that's been to the moon and back.

You can also see video footage from the show here.

Poetry from Guantanamo, Part 2

The University of Iowa's book Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak got a very compelling write-up in the Wall Street Journal today. Among the details: prisoners scratched poems on stryofoam cups with pebbles and passed them between the bars. The military censored some of the poems, citing the possibility of hidden messages in the verses, but verses like "To be with my children, each a part of me/to be with my wife and the ones I love/to be with my parents, my world's tenderest hearts,/I dream to be home, to be free from this cage" don't seem to be hiding their content at all.

See my earlier post about this topic here.

Off the Shelves, Into the Galleries--Part 2

Last week it was books as building materials. Today it's books as fantastic distorted, even tortured shapes and forms, courtesy of photographer Cara Barer, who has two series of her photographs posted on her website (here and here).

Says the artist, "I realized I owned many books that were no longer of use to me, or for that matter, anyone else. Would I ever need "Windows 95?" After soaking it in the bathtub for a few hours, it had a new shape and purpose."

Get Published, Poets

Knockout, a new literary magazine, is soliciting poetry for its second issue. The deadline is August 15. See www.queerwriters.com for full details.

Boxers or Briefs?

Kids' book illustrator Noah Z Jones has a promotional website that's worth a look: almostnakedanimals.com. Don't be scared if you're at work; it's not going to get you in trouble. Rather, it's filled with cartoons of various animals standing around in their underpants. Each also comes with a quick list of likes and dislikes. It's worth a quick look.

On the Mike, Part 2

Mike Jones talked to the Minneapolis StarTribune's Claude Peck and Rick Nelson. (Fair warning: I haven't had a chance to listen to this interview yet.--DHE)

Download the MP3 here.

And hear him for yourself when he's in the store on Thursday, June 21, at 7:30pm.

Straight Up With a Twist

In the middle of May, NPR had a nice interview with Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein, authors of Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes. Their book uses jokes (goods ones, even) to illustrate philosophical concepts.

Now, Boston's public radio station WBUR has posted an hour-long program with the pair, so you can really get your fill.

Local Folks Make Good (Again)

It's an odd name for a literary prize--IMPAC; and odder still when you know that it stands for Improved Management Productivity and Control. But the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award is a big deal. At 100,000 euros (about $135,000), it's the richest award out there for an author.

This year, 169 libraries around the world nominated 138 novels for the prize. Nominees included Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy, and Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie. But the winner was a little-known Norwegian author Per Petterson, for his novel Out Stealing Horses.

And to bring it all back home, Petterson is published in the US by the Twin Cities' own Graywolf Press. While they won't see any of the money, the award again reminds the literary world just how good Graywolf's judgment is.--David E

Free Expression

The Scotsman has posted a brief article about two upcoming BBC television programs (or programmes, rather) to be hosted by Edinburgh author Ian Rankin. Which is really neither here nor there for us here in the States. But what is worth a quick look is the comments which readers have posted about Mr Rankin. They feel he's overexposed; I guess that's the nice way to say it. But although the comments are mean, they're also really funny.

Read them quickly, before they're removed for violating Terms of Service.

Gray Lady

The New York Times has launched its own blog, entitled (prepare to grin fixedly) Paper Cuts. So far so good: They've posted about Chinua Achebe winning the Man Booker International Prize, an essay by Martin Amis shadowing Tony Blair to Iraq (highly recommended), and a slideshow of book ads from the Times from the early 70s.

Posts are long, but for now infrequent.

Off the Shelves, Into the Galleries

vvork.com is featuring art made from books. If your collection is threatening to overwhelm you, you might find some ideas for putting those unruly tomes to good use.

On the Mike

Mike Jones was on the Leonard Lopate show from New York's public radio station WNYC. You can listen to the show here:



Hear him for yourself when he's in the store on Thursday, June 21.

Gimme Gimme

To cover a deficit caused by the bankruptcy of their distributor, McSweeney's is holding a fire sale on some very cool stuff, including signed copies of their books and magazines, and doodles by authors such as Spike Jonze, David Byrne, Tony Millionaire, and Dave Eggers. Some of the items for sale are listed on their website; the complete list is at eBay. New items are posted daily.

My personal favorite is the issue of McSweeney's number 13 signed by Chris Ware. Are you reading this, Santa?--David E

No Dogs Allowed

Gawker.com snarks all over John Grogan, author of the freakishly popular Marley: A Dog Like No Other, Marley and Me, and several other Marley-related tomes. It seems Grogan's old employer, the Philadelphia Inquirer, is republishing his old columns, which they own, without paying him. To add insult to unremunerated injury, the cover features a dog, the better to lure in Marley's fans.

In a letter to his publisher's sales reps, Grogan's agent says, "Already there is a title and jacket that egregiously exploits John's success with Marley & Me, and we are outraged at this misleading representation of a collection that has nearly no content that relates to Marley or even to dogs."

Marley's people have not commented on the brouhaha, but it's a good bet that he didn't get paid for any of it.--David E

M-O-N-E-Y

The New York Times has a review today of Robert Frank's Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom And the Lives of the New Rich. It's fun for stoking your sense of outrage, both economic and aesthetic. Alligator-skin toilet seats for your private jet, anyone?

But don't be jealous; all is not well in Have-land. They want more. Says the review, "On a more reassuring note, it’s nice to learn that the rich suffer status anxiety, too. When Richistanis are asked how much money would make them feel secure, they inevitably choose a figure that is double their own net worth."

--David E

Book with a Beer Chaser--June

Join us Tuesday the 12th at Bryant Lake Bowl (map) for conversation and a beverage with some very interesting folks. Doors open at 6:00pm for socializing; discussion begins in earnest at 7:00pm.

This month's book is Special Topics in Calamity Physicsby Marissa Pessl. The New York Times loved it, saying, "The joys of this shrewdly playful narrative lie not only in the high-low darts and dives of Pessl’s tricky plotting, but in her prose, which floats and runs as if by instinct, unpremeditated and unerring."

Books & Bars is not your typical book club. We provide an atmosphere for lively discussion of interesting authors, good food and drinks. You're welcome to come even if you haven't read the book.

Baaaad Sushi, Man

Slate.com has published two excerpts from the new book Death of a Dissident: Alexander Litvinenko and the Demise of Russian Democracy. The book describes the poisoning last November of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko. It's written by Alex Goldfarb and Litvinenko's widow Marina.

• Part One
• Part Two

It's Better Over Here

Armistead Maupin's latest installment of his great Tales of the City series comes out this month. Michael Tolliver Lives brings loyal fans up to date on the goings-on of Michael, Mrs Madrigal, Brian, and even the long-missing Mary Ann Singleton.

Regular readers of this blog know I like to contrast the American and UK versions of books' covers. (Two nations separated by a common language, etc, etc...). And I'm doing it again. But it's not out of kneejerk Anglophilia. Rather, it's to point out that Americans are getting the better deal this time. The UK cover isn't nearly fabulous enough:

Aldo Leopold

The blog at the Encyclopaedia Britannica website has a very interesting posting about the naturalist Aldo Leopold. It's a very nice summary of Leopold's life and career, including his founding of the Wilderness Society and the Civilian Conservation Corps.

If it stirs your interest, you can't do better than to start with Leopold's classic work Sand County Almanac. We also have a good selection of his other books in our Nature Writing section.

In the (Random) House

New York magazine has posted an interesting little summation of Random House and the economics of a large publishing house. It's not all a bed of roses. For example: "Out of every eight books, one is very profitable, one is very unprofitable, and six either break even or lose money."

Folks Are Talking

The buzz around the multiple books about Hilary Clinton continues unabated.

The Times of London has posted an extract from Carl Bernstein's new book A Woman in Charge. And my favorite Canadian radio news program As It Happens features a 15-minute interview with Bernstein in its daily podcast.--David E

No Cold Omaha

Atlanta, New York, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver.

In all these cities, bookstores are hosting readings by Mike Jones, the Denver masseur who announced last November that his client of three years was Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals. You can also add Minneapolis, since Jones will be at our store on June 21.

Who's not on that list? Colorado Springs, home of Haggard's former congregation, New Life Church, and arguably the place where folks most want to hear from Jones. The local Borders and Barnes & Noble stores aren't hosting the author, though if you want to give them money in exchange for Jones' book I Had to Say Somthing, they'll accept it.

Independent bookstores support independent voices. Take advantage of being in the big city (or at least within driving distance) and come hear Mike Jones. Otherwise, you might as well live in Colorado Springs.

And the Winner Is....

Cormac McCarthy will be on Oprah today discussing The Road, his postapocalyptic father-and-son-reunion story. If the message boards at Oprah.com are any indication, Lady O's fans have embraced her surprising choice of reading material.

And the next OBC title has been announced. This time it's a less unusual selection: Jeffrey Eugenides' perrennial book club favorite Middlesex. It's the story of Calliope and her discovery that she's in fact a hermaphrodite. (I'm not giving anything away; the book's first line is "I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.").--David E

20 Questions

The New York Times Magazine thinks Mike Jones is worth talking to. He's the subject of this week's "Questions for..." page. You can see it here.

It's a very interesting glimpse of the "escort who brought down Ted Haggard," as they put it. But it's only a page. If you want to know more, you can ask your own questions on June 21 when Mike is in our store. See our events page for all the details.

Meanwhile check out Mike's book I Had to Say Something. Then meet the man himself on June 21.

What's in a Name?

I'll confess that I've never read Crime and Punishment, but apparently it's full of confusingly similar names, as a result of all the diminutives, patronymics, diminutive patronymics, and so on. Into this breach leap the brave programmers of bonkworld.com with The Amazing Dostoevsky Machine which allows you to pick distinct (and distinctly unusual) names for the characters. The formerly tongue-twisting Andrey Semyonovitch Lebeziatnikov becomes the euphonious Dicky Dalloway; Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladov is now Trixie Gallagher.

You can either print out a cast list or view the entire text online, with your new easy-to-remember folks in place.--David E

Read All About It

The entire script for the brilliant, funny film Withnail and I is available online. If you haven't seen the movie, rent it. The 1987 story of two down and out students is a cult classic, not least for its dialogue. If you've seen the movie, you can now read your favorite bits. Here are two of mine:

I [mentally]: Thirteen million Londoners have to cope with this, and bake beans and allbran and rape, and I'm sitting in this bloody shack and I can't cope with Withnail. I must be out of my mind. I must go home at once and discuss his problems in depth.

and...

Withnail: Look at that, look at that. Accident black spot. These aren't accidents. They're throwing themselves into the road gladly. Throwing themselves into the road to escape all this hideousness.[To a pedestrian] Throw yourselves into the road darling, you haven't got a chance.

Where's the On Switch?

Too Real

UK television viewers will soon be able to watch a reality show featuring aspiring authors. Not the actual writing, you understand; thought is not telegenic. The show will be authors pitching book ideas to a panel headed by Simon Cowell's older brother Tony. Tony is himself a published author--his works include a compilation of his younger sibling's most caustic putdowns--so he knows good writing.

Details are here, if you really want to know.