The Young Chicago Authors program will soon travel to Washington, D.C. to receive the 2009 Coming Up Taller Award, to be bestowed on them by Michelle Obama. The Coming Up Taller Award is a project of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities that recognizes and supports after-school and extra-curricular arts and humanities programs for children, honoring "programs that offer exceptional learning experiences in the arts and the humanities and that have a tangible effect on the lives of young people as evidenced through improved academic scores, enhanced life skills, and positive relationships with peers and adults." As written in their mission statement, YCA "encourages self-expression and literacy through creative writing, performance and publication," with programs geared toward ages 13-19 that feature, among other things, poetry slams, a female-oriented webzine called "GirlSpeak" and the opportunity to be published in their own print magazine "Say What." Says Dr. Robert Boone, founder of YCA, in a press release, "Young Chicago Authors is deeply honored to accept this award on behalf of all of the young people and teachers who have made creative writing a living part of Chicago." Congratulations to everyone who has put their time and hard work into the program--the award is undoubtedly well-deserved.
Almost literally. Open Books's grand opening for the used bookstore and literacy center is just a few weeks away, but you can still get in on any of their numerous ways to become a part of their store. Dedicate a fireplace tile to a book or a person you love, buy a bookshelf in honor of a fabulous reader in your life, or make a donation by becoming an official Open Books member and get a load of goodies, including a nifty T-shirt and discounts on store merchandise. Then come to the store on November 21-22 for a rousing weekend of literary events to help celebrate the store's opening. Stay tuned for details on who and what will be going on that weekend.
Cory Doctorow reports that a new CD of Shel Silverstein poetry and music is being released. His take on the new material? "[T]his is some seriously awesome kids' music, full of Silverstein's flawless, legendary rhyme, his wicked humor, and some damned fine music and playing beneath it. It's fast, witty, and full of jokes that work on levels that can be appreciated by pre-verbal toddlers...by kids, and by adults, who will appreciate the snatches of extremely grown-up jokes woven into the whimsy."
Kanye West is a proud non-reader of books and yet he is about to publish his third. Yeah, I'm scratching my head at that one, too. The new book, Through the Wire, is described as a graphic memoir illustrating twelve of West's songs: "From his decision to drop out of college to pursue his dreams in music, through his days spent folding chinos at The Gap while struggling at night to make a name as a producer, through the pivotal car accident that eventually set him on the course to stardom and the epiphany of realizing exactly who he had become." Hmm...somehow I don't think I'll be lining up at the bookstore to purchase that when it comes out.
The Chicago Writers Association has been working on a project to shine the spotlight on our city's literary greats: the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. This week they launched a new website to introduce their inaugural nominees, many of which faithful Book Club readers will be familiar with. The list boasts such names as Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, Lorraine Hansberry, Norman McLean, Studs Terkel and many others whose contributions have significantly affected Chicago. Nominators include a flurry of current literary notables, such as Booklist's Donna Seaman, Lake Claremont Press's Sharon Woodhouse and our own Alice Maggio (whoo!) and on the judges panel sit more Book Club selection authors, such as Achy Obejas and Stuart Dybek. The judges will select six of the nominees to be inducted into the 2010 Hall of Fame, though the selection date doesn't seem to be posted on the website yet. Nevertheless, take a moment to browse through the nominees and reacquaint yourself with writers you've read in the past and get acquainted with writers that have escaped your literary eye. The full list of nominees is, as expected, impressive and the project will do well to uphold their mission of "promot[ing] and celebrat[ing] Chicago's rich literary tradition."
OK, not literally. But in terms of sales figures, it seems that local authors have a greater influence on the Chicago book buying public than market darling Dan Brown. Granta recently wrote in a press release that reports from Unabridged Bookstore favored the magazine's Chicago issue over Brown's The Lost Symbol two-to-one. Says Ed Devereux of Unabridged: "Copies of GRANTA 108 are flying off the shelves. We've restocked three times already. It's even outselling Dan Brown!" Such loyalty to our city's authors is heartening, indeed.
Did you know that October is National Reading Group Month? Only two years old, the celebration was started by two members of the Women's National Book Association and works to promote the value of books and reading, particularly "enjoyment of shared reading and appreciation of literature and reading as conduits for transmitting culture and advancing civic engagement." To which I say, right on. Unfortunately, there isn't a Chicago chapter so there won't be any National Reading Group events here, but that doesn't mean you can't take their mission to heart and get involved in shared reading on your own. If reading Chicago-related books isn't your thing, or if your schedule doesn't work with ours, there are a ton of other reading groups in the city with a variety of foci. Our Book Club home, the Book Cellar, hosts their own book club meetings each month and plays host to a number of other book clubs as well--if you're interested in South Asian writers, the Desi Lit Book Club might be for you; if you enjoy young adult reads, check out the Never Too Old Book Club. Women and Children First has a long running book club that focuses on feminist reads and the Chicago Public Library, in addition to hosting the One Book, One Chicago program, offers a number of different book clubs for both teens and adults throughout their various branches. Or, get together your friends, family, co-workers or other interested parties and start your own club. The NRGM website features a list of Great Group Reads to help you get the ball rolling.
On Amy Guth's Chicago Subtext blog, Danielle Chapman, the Director of Literary Arts and Events at the Cultural Center, wrote a post detailing the Center's plans to expand the Chicago Publishers Gallery, a well-honed collection of books from local authors and publishers in celebration of the city's contribution to literature. Chapman offered her email address for anyone who would like to be included in the Gallery, so if you're a local author or you publish books in Chicago and want to be considered for inclusion in this display, now's your chance to voice your enthusiasm.
Northwestern sent out a press release last week announcing, among other things, that Northwestern University Press's literary journal TriQuarterly will forgo their print editions for an online-only format starting next year. Says Sarah Pritchard, Charles Deering McCormick University Library, "This move will align publishing efforts more closely with the University's academic enterprise while at the same time expanding electronic dissemination and public access to the wonderful literature and essays that are published in TriQuarterly." The conversion to digital seems to also have come at the hands of the hard economic times: "After a year of significant economic setbacks, the Press has undergone a careful review. The University has reaffirmed its commitment to the dissemination of scholarship as part of its academic mission. The Press will be a more efficient operation and we will deepen our alliances with the University's academic programs while moving forward with the delivery of content in a digital format. There undoubtedly will be challenges, but it also should be a time of exciting opportunities."
Audrey Niffenegger isn't the only local author with a highly anticipated novel coming out. This week also brings us Generosity: An Enhancement by Richard Powers. The press is mixed: the Tribune gives a positive sounding plot synopsis, the Complete Review calls the story "conventional and simple" but successful in "story-telling," and Slate comes out swinging with a subtitle that reads "What Richard Powers' new novel gets wrong." Yikes. Well, it won't be but a few days before you can judge for yourself how the novel stacks up. In the meantime you can get a taste of the story in this excerpt at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
One final item, something that those of you who attended our September discussion of The Echo Maker and had less than glowing opinions of the book may appreciate: Scott at Conversational Reading has no intention of reading the new novel at all. Says Scott, "The more Powers I've read the more I've realized that he goes to pains to make everything extremely clear, to the point that his work is very over-written. This often combines with a tendency to phrase things in a quasi-oblique/quasi-scientific manner that just ends up sounding adolescent. With his ability to link concepts and come up with original ideas, Powers could probably be a strong essayist, but he's not a novelist."
Harsh words, indeed, but I can see how they would apply (and I was part of the minority that did enjoy The Echo Maker). I'll be interested to see if Generosity merits such criticisms when I get the chance to crack it open.
Feminist independent bookstore Women & Children First celebrates thirty years of business this week. The Sun-Times talks to owners Ann Christophersen and Linda Burbon and explicates what makes this bookstore so great. (Come help them celebrate this milestone at their 30th Anniversary Gala on Saturday.)
Tomorrow is the release date for Audrey NIffenegger's highly anticipated (and worth the hype, I might add) Her Fearful Symmetry. Here's what a few of the reviews are saying:
New York Times: "Lovers of Niffenegger's past work should rejoice. This outing may not be as blindly romantic as "The Time Traveler's Wife," but it is mature, complex and convincing -- a dreamy yet visceral tale of loves both familial and erotic, a search for Self in the midst of obsession with an Other. 'Her Fearful Symmetry' is as atmospheric and beguiling as a walk through Highgate itself."
Chicago Tribune: "Her Fearful Symmetry is at its best in its early pages, when Niffenegger gives herself room to present her cast of characters; there are some charming descriptions, particularly of these odd, wan mirror twins. The author's love for and deep research into Highgate is also apparent, as when she writes of the cemetery 'spread out in the moonlight like a soft grey hallucination, a stony wilderness of Victorian melancholy.' Not a deep meditation, the novel requires its readers to thoroughly suspend their disbelief and to go along for the haunted ride."
Sun-Times: "In this effective and very haunted ghost story, Niffenegger raises compelling questions about identity, the long-lasting power of love and the consequences of imposing one's will on others. And while the ending may not be totally satisfying, Her Fearful Symmetry manages to remain a beautiful testament to Niffenegger's fertile imagination and love of storytelling."
The reviews of the Chicago issue of Granta are coming in and the Guardian wonders if the city no longer produces or needs writers like Saul Bellow.
Granta's answers is, apparently, yes, as they direct us to a piece - "Memoirs of a Bootlegger's Son" - by Bellow published in issue 41 of the magazine.
The Millions reports that Mariel Hemingway will produce a film adaptation grandfather Ernest Hemingway's memoir, A Moveable Feast.
The Guardian got their hands on an advanced copy of Twitterature, the "twitfic" book by two U of C undergrads. Of course, the two have also started their own Twitter page.
McSweeney's is jumping into the e-reader game with their own iPhone app, called the "Small Chair." The app will bring readers weekly selections from McSweeney's publications, including the quarterly magazine, the Believer and Wholpin. Spike Jonze, Wells Tower, Chris Ware and Jonathan Ames are all slated to be early contributors. It's $5.99 for the app and a six month subscription. Need more incentive to download the app? This content won't be available online.
Granta reports that Aleksandar Hemon has been awarded the 2009 inaugural St. Francis College Literary Prize for Love and Obstacles. The award grants the winner $50,000 and is judged by such notables as Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem and Ayelet Waldman.
GalleyCat reports that Patrick Somerville's novel The Cradle has been named a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. The prize awards $10,000 to the winner and nominees are submitted by librarians, staff and members of The Center.
A press release announced yesterday that Dave Eggers will be awarded the National Book Foundation's Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community for his work as an author, a co-founder of independent publisher McSweeney's and a co-founder of 826 Valencia. The Award is presented to a person who demonstrates "outstanding service to the American literary community, whose life and work exemplify the goals of the National Book Foundation to expand the audience for literature and to enhance the cultural value of literature in America. " The Award will be presented on November 18 where Gore Vidal will be awarded the 2009 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
While the media is still up in arms about local boy Kanye West's asshattery at the VMAs, The Millions takes this opportunity to point us to their Open Letter to Kanye West, written in June of this year. The subject of the letter is Kanye's comment that he is "not a fan of books" and "a proud non-reader of books" and the irony of the publication of his own, sparsely worded book, Thank You and You're Welcome. A sampling:
Just a heads-up here: Not only does the inherent irony at play in these words make you appear unintelligent, which you obviously aren't, but you have also undermined the privilege of living in a country in which we can read anything and everything we choose or, as in your unfortunate case, nothing at all. Though you may be a self-proclaimed "proud non-reader," surely you cannot be proud of rallying others to follow you in this non-ambition...how could you, the son of an English professor no less, say something so destructive, so moronically conceived, and so contrary to the vaguely youth-centric message of your own music? I ask this question in seriousness and with all the respect I can summon, which admittedly isn't much at the moment.
Jeff Hobbs, the author of this letter, goes on to quite eloquently and unfalteringly rip Kanye a literary new one. To which I can only say: Right on. (And don't forget to read the original Reuters article Hobbs quotes, in which Kanye makes himself out to be ridiculous and absurd. Not that that's anything new.)
Here's an unfortunate aspect of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 come to life: a boarding school library in Massachusetts is getting rid of all of their books to stock the library, which will be called a "learning center," with flat screen TVs, cubicles for laptop use and e-readers. Says the school's Headmaster, James Tracy, in an interview with the Boston Globe, "When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books...This isn't 'Fahrenheit 451.' We're not discouraging students from reading. We see this as a natural way to shape emerging trends and optimize technology."
I'm not sure which saddens me more, the fact that the headmaster of a school is calling books "outdated technology" or that he claims the removal of books is not discouraging students from reading. But, Alexander Coyle, the school's history department chairman, who does use the Kindle but also refers to libraries as "secular cathedrals," had this to say about the change: "I wouldn't want to ever get rid of any of my books at home. I like the feel of them too much. A lot us are wondering how this changes the dignity of the library, and why we can't move to increase digital resources while keeping the books.'' Good question.
Chicago Ex-Patriate tries to lessen the disproportionate amount of "middle-aged white men" in his reading repertoire by brushing up on the works of Nella Larsen.
I have a vague memory of us talking about an upcoming movie when we read J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace back in November of 2007, but I had completely forgotten about it until I saw this. John Malkovich makes a perfect David Lurie, don't you think?
More good news from Granta: In honor of the "Chicago" issue, they're offering a discount on new subscriptions to the magazine. Instead of the usual $45 yearly subscription, all of us here in the 312 can currently get a full year for $31.20. (You can still get it if you're in the 773 or the 847 or the 630, etc., but those numbers wouldn't have made for much of a discount.) Jump on it while it's hot!
Gearing up for their all-Chicago issue, Granta directs us to a 2005 essay by Neil Steinberg, published in issue 89, titled "Fancy Lamps":
From the street, the factory housing the Frederick Cooper Lamp Company is not as ugly as most. The building was originally a ladies undergarment plant, built around 1900; it has a courtyard and windows, luxuries that would later be dispensed with in most factories. The four-storey brick building, with a square tower double that height, is a reminder that a factory was once the centrepiece of a neighbourhood, second only to the local church. The tower, like a steeple, catches the eye; it advertises the product with a sign informing the 260,000 cars that pass every day along the Kennedy Expressway leading out of Chicago that Cooper produces LAMPS OF ELEGANCE.
Steinberg is a contributer to Granta's upcoming issue 108. And, if you're interested in reading some more of his work, you can also check out his review of Dave Eggers's Zeitoun in Wednesday's Sun-Times.
People are buzzing about the upcoming all-Chicago Granta issue (here and here and here). What seems to be the common feeling on it? In your face, New York!
"I was suddenly no longer the governor." The Reader provides some excerpts from Rod Blagojevich's new book.
More Blago news: The Ex-Gov may not be able to get all those book royalties if convicted of corruption. [via]
Hot on the heels of Featherproof's Triple Quick Fiction announcement, comes CellStories, a website that will deliver a new short story every weekday to web-enabled cell phones. According to Reuters, the website was created by Dan Sinker, a journalism teacher at Columbia College, whose motivation was to experiment with digital reading. The stories are not device specific, so they get around the Kindle-posed problem of only being able to read your downloaded literature in one way. Stories will consist of fiction, personal essays, creative non-fiction and narrative journalism and are meant to be a 10-15 minute read. Fellow Columbia faculty member Joe Meno has already promised to contribute his talents to the project. What will this mean for the future of both digital and printed literature? No one's really sure yet, but it does promise to introduce writers to new readers, which may encourage them to purchase published works. That can only be a good thing.
Granta's forthcoming issue is dedicated entirely to the city of Chicago, something they've done only once before with issue 65's dedication to London authors. It's a bit thrilling that this British literary magazine would take notice of all the wonderful writing that comes out of our city, out of all the cities in the US, but it is, of course, a notice that we feel is entirely warranted. Contributing authors include a slew of Book Club selection authors: Aleksandar Hemon, Sandra Cisneros, Stuart Dybek, Nelson Algren and many more. Here, Granta acting editor John Freeman gives a sneak peek of what will be in the issue, available September 22. And be sure to check our events sidebar as next week Granta will bring us a number of literary events in celebration of this issue.
The big news this morning is that Rod Blagojevich's book, The Governor, is out for early sale at some bookstores. I watched an amusing story about it on WGN in which people interviewed said that they would mainly read the book for entertainment value, but not much more. Apparently, the former Gov likens his plight to a Shakespearean trajedy, comparing himself to the characters of Othello, King Lear and Julius Caesar. (It's interesting that he leaves out Macbeth, isn't it?) The Sun-Times has the scoop on what's in the tell-all and a couple of quotes on notable Chicago figures as well. No word on which bookstores have the book in early, but if you're chomping at the bit to get your hands on a copy, fret not as it will be officially released next Tuesday, September 8.
Remember when HarperCollins said they weren't going to cash in on Michael Crichton's death? I guess Steven Spielberg didn't get that memo because he's already planning on making a film of the as-yet-unpublished, unfinished novel, Pirate Latitudes. Yeah, there's no money to be had in that at all.
In a musing over the recent practice of forgoing book jackets for printing cover images directly on books, as McSweeney's has been doing for some time, Chicago native Stephen Elliott's new book, The Adderall Diaries gets a mention. (Would that all publishers made books as beautifully as McSweeney's does.)
National Book Critics Circle reviews Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition, saying "[Grandson and editor] Sean Hemingway agrees with scholars that decisions made in compiling the original book were questionable. Now he is likely to face a barrage of criticism for creating this alternate version of what has become, despite its possible flaws, a comfortable favorite."
Jacket Copy wishes Ray Bradbury a happy birthday, apologizing to Illinois for claiming him for LA. Though we'll always feel the opposite - that he belongs to us - we're certainly happy to share him and his wonderful work.
Apparently Oprah tweeted last night on what her next book club selection would be, saying she had never made a selection like "this." What's "this"? GalleyCat does some research and comes up with a few guesses. Anyone have any guesses of their own? The selection will be revealed on September 18.
A new biography of L. Frank Baum is hitting the shelves, this time with a particular spin on looking at his classic children's tale The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Author Rebecca Loncraine is imparting a Freudian take on Oz to explain how Baum dreamed up his wonderland in the first place. According to this New York Times review, Loncraine is not the first biographer to attempt to do so, saying, "It does not take Freud's insight to find origins of Oz's Emerald City in the famous White City built for the 1893 World's Fair." But the reviewer does describe the book as one revealing the numerous influences on Oz's creation and the subsequent failure of the author to live "happily ever after," making it more interesting than other biographies who have cut Baum's life story short.
Those of you reading Richard Powers's The Echo Maker with us will be interested in reading this very recent New York Times article that Alice brought to my attention. While The Echo Maker's Mark Schluter's misidentification disorder is trauma induced, the mysterious Capgras syndrome is usually found absent of trauma. However, this article follows a 19-year-old named Adam, convinced that his mother is a fake and doesn't "live in the real world," whose own Capgras was the result of a motorcycle accident much like Mark's near-fatal car accident. The article gives some good outside information that will help shed a little bit of light on what, for most of us, is a completely unheard of syndrome and lend some credibility to Powers's story.
Happy Birthday to Ray Bradbury! The prolific and beloved author turns 89 tomorrow. If you're a fan of Chicago lit living in California, don't forget that you can attend his birthday party at the Mystery and Imagination bookstore in Glendale.
Also of note, Bradbury has a new story, titled "The Juggernaut," published in the Saturday Evening Post.
This makes me feel old, in a you-kids-and-your-new-fangled-communication-devices kind of way. Featherproof Books has announced the release of the Triple Quick Fiction iPhone app, an application that allows you to download new stories to your iPhone or iPod. The "Triple Quick" name does, in part, refer to the quick attainment of the stories, but also to the length of the stories, only 333 words long, or 3 iPhone screens. This seems like the logical next step from Featherproof's downloadable mini-books, which are also a quick, free way to get the latest stories from the current hot authors, but the app takes things one step further. Not only can you read the stories Featherproof makes available, but you can also compose your own stories and submit them to Featherproof's editors. The app will be available in September, just in time for all the back-to-school hoopla to get you thinking about readin' and writin' again. Meanwhile, I'm going to go listen to three songs I've managed to upload to my store brand mp3 player.
Speaking of Ray Bradbury (and really, when am I not?), publisher Macmillan has a video on their website of the author discussing the graphic novel adaptation of Fahrenheit 451. He calls himself "The Illustrated Man," which is so wonderfully fitting here, and reveals that two more of his most famous novels - Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Martian Chronicles - are slated to receive the graphic novel treatment in the near future.
In other news, this reviewer at Slate doesn't seem to think too highly of the new Fahrenheit 451, saying that the graphic novel "reads like a joke" and that it is ironic that a novel about book burning has now become a shortened version of itself. Now, I'd be the first person to jump up and defend a watering down of any book, especially when it comes to my beloved Bradbury, so I do think the reviewer missed the point here. To say that this is a contribution to the end of print is to say, essentially, that graphic novels are a detriment to literature and I just don't believe that to be true. Nor does Mr. Bradbury, if you recall this post here. It's simply a different medium, one not comparable to the picture stories of the original novel that were created so that no one would have to read the news, a comparison that this reviewer makes. "It's hard to know what on earth Bradbury was thinking. Did he just give in to the enemy?" the reviewer asks. "Is Bradbury saying that it's back to pictographs to save the literary world?" What's hard to know is just where the disdain for the comic form comes from for this reviewer, but I'd venture to say that for Bradbury, as it is for all of his fans, this is really just another way to experience the novel, not a replacement for it, nor a "giving in" to an illiterate enemy nor a plot to "save the literary world." But that's just my opinion, that of a lover of literature who loves her graphic novels, too.
Following in the footsteps of Tim Hamilton's adaptation of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, comes a graphic novel adaptaion of Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. The novel, which will be published in a series of volumes, will mix comics with the full original text of Dick's novel and, according to Publisher's Weekly, is not just a retelling of Blade Runner, the movie based on this book that incorporated significant changes. The first issue of the comic is out now, with 24 issues expected for the series run and six hardcover collections to be published later, each containing four issues.
The Library of America has just published a new volume of Philip K. Dick's stories, titled VALIS and Later Novels. The San Francisco Chronicle discusses Dick's life and the stories in the new volume, saying, "What this volume ultimately tells us is that Dick was not a science fiction writer, but instead he was our writer."
Publisher's Weekly reports that Crocodile Pie, a children's bookstore in Libertyville, will close on August 14. Also of note (as previously reported), Borders on Michigan Ave. is slated for closure in January.
The National Book Foundation recently remembered Saul Bellow's winning book Herzog. Blogger Ron Fields remembers it too, describing it as "a towering literary achievement that is at once a mundane account of an intellectual dealing with his wife's incomprehensible betrayal, and the tragic loss of his marriage and family life, and also a life-affirming manifesto about finding the strength and devotion to try to move on and rebuild one's life after a divorce."
Catch a podcast of local lit blogger Pete Anderson reading his short story "One Son Resists" at this year's Emerging Writer's Festival.
Also on Publisher's Weekly (you have to scroll down a bit), here are a couple of small reviews of Chicago-related reads, one by Dominic A. Pacyga titled Chicago: A Biography and the other featuring Adam Langer's upcoming book My Father's Bonus March, both non-fiction reads.
A comparison of William Faulkner and Aleksandar Hemon.
Half Deserted Streets give another glowing review of Audrey Niffenegger's Her Fearful Symmetry: "If you're a fan of her previous novel, you won't be disappointed with this next one." I'm very much looking forward to getting this, myself.
We start with Bradbury and we end with Bradbury: a podcast of one sci-fi fan's thoughts on Fahrenheit 451.
The Reader catches up with Audrey Niffenegger to discuss her upcoming book, Her Fearful Symmetry, the beauty of working in Chicago vs. the city's lack of recognition abroad, and her visual art. But not the upcoming Time Traveler's Wife film. It seems that she's taking the Alan Moore stance, saying only that she wasn't a part of the adaptation.
Anthony Horowitz of the Telegraph writes that he hated the movie version of The Wizard of Oz as a child. He notes that there are vast differences between the book and the movie, and those of us who read the book in August 2008 will certainly agree. Here Horowitz expounds on L. Frank Baum's life, revealing him to be a failure at several careers and something of a white supremacist (wasn't aware of that one myself), and explores what makes Oz such a fascinating world. Says Horowitz on one of the major differences between the movie and the book:
...the storytelling is surprisingly violent. The film gave us the winged monkeys but spared us the wild crows, sent out by the Wicked Witch with the command: 'Peck out their eyes and tear them to pieces!' Forty of them are strangled by the Scarecrow who is probably not singing while he does it, while in the same chapter 40 wolves are decapitated by the Tin Man.
Forty wolves and 40 crows. I'm not sure those numbers are accidental for it seems to me that the books could have been almost purposefully in the style of the Bible. We are given as much detail about Oz as we are about the Garden of Eden. God-like archetypes - the wizard in particular - loom over the action. Things happen because they must.
USA Today interviews Ray Bradbury about the upcoming publication of the graphic novel version of Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury says he can imagine "someone giving it to a 10-year-old kid who then wants to read the original novel. That's what good graphic novels can do. They can make you read more." He's not worried that kids will only look at the pictures because, from his own experience with illustrated novels, they only increase kids' desires for learning to read. Bradbury also commented on the idea of a new film version of the book, saying that the 1966 François Truffaut film downplayed one of the main characters (that being just one of the problems, in my opinion) and he'd love to see a new version with Sean Connery as Beatty and Nicolas Cage as Montag (ooh...don't know about that Nicolas Cage part, but this movie is definitely itching to be remade).
The Newberry Library thanks your for your Book Fair patronage, but not for ripping off the cover of the first volume of that Samuel Johnson biography or for donating your stereos, VCRS and adding machines.
The Guardian pans a musical on Ernest Hemingway that's closing four weeks early, saying it "doesn't even fall into the so-bad-it's-good category."
According to the Sun-Times, Amazon is offering a discount on pre-orders for Rod Blagojevich's book, The Governor. Or, you can always line up at the bookstores at midnight, à la Harry Potter.
More shameless author self-promotion, this time by Marcus Sakey, author of the upcoming The Amateurs who is offering prizes (signed hardcover books!) for people commenting, tweeting and...facebooking?...answers to his daily "Ready, Go" question. Full list of rules and prizes here.
The Man Booker Prize longlist was announced today and it includes JM Coetzee for Summertime. Coetzee previously won the prize in 1983 for Life & Times of Michael K and in 1999 for Disgrace, our November 2007 selection. Coetzee is one of only two novelists to have ever won the Booker Prize twice. See the full list of nominationed authors and their works here.
The latest issue of Chicago Magazine gives some love to local writers. Not only do they do a nice little write-up of Marcus Sakey, author of the recently published The Amateurs, they also name Nami Mun, author of Miles from Nowhere, as Best New Novelist and Sara Paretsky, author of our March 2008 selection Fire Sale, as Best Mystery Writer.
Not to be outdone, the U of C Press toots their own horn (not that there's anything wrong with that...horns are good) and points to some of their authors and publications that have recently been mentioned in the news.
Blair Kamin reports in the Tribune that Prairie Avenue Bookshop, purveyors of architecture related literature, will close on September 1st unless a buyer for the shop can be found. According to Kamin's article, the owners are blaming the 10.25% sales tax for contributing to their declining sales. Says owner Wilbert Hasbrouck: "People would come to the bookshop with their notepad, make notes of what they wanted and then go buy it somewhere else." But Kamin raises another question, crucial to the potential success of this and other independent shops like it: Can they survive in the digital age? Says Matt Stromberg of William Stout Architectural Books in San Francisco: "Fifty years ago, you couldn't find normal architectural books anywhere. Now you can find them everywhere--for a discount. ... Why would you buy that $200 book from us when you could get it almost 40 percent off, free shipping and no tax?"
Prarie Avenue Bookshop is located at 418 S. Wabash St. Visit them while you still can.
Last week, the University of Chicago Press announced that they are now offering over 700 titles in e-book format. The U of C is one of several universities pondering the e-book route. The cost for downloading the books varies depending on how long the purchaser intends to keep the book, which is kind of nice for students who know they won't need to hold onto their first year chemistry textbook for the rest of their lives. Although, I imagine there'd be far less satisfaction in finally trashing that copy of the Marx-Engels Reader that you were forced to carry around for multiple classes. Not that I, um, did that.
Also of note, love the portability of the e-book but miss that real book smell? Fret no longer.
Today in here's-why-we-still-need-Banned-Books-Week news: A school board member at a high school in New Hampshire wants short stories by Ernest Hemingway and David Sedaris, as well as two other stories by Stephen King and Laura Lippman, removed from the reading list of an upper-level English class. The school's principal removed the stories from the class reading list after a group of parents complained about the "mature themes," saying they were not appropriate "for developing minds that are very impressionable," only to have that decision protested by another group of parents and students and have the English Department head resign. The Hemingway story is, as you might guess as it's frequently targeted for its supposed impropriety, "Hills Like White Elephants." The story is thought to be about abortion, although the word appears nowhere in the very short text and, honestly, I never thought it was about abortion until it was suggested to me and I had to concede that, of the many things it could possibly be about, abortion might be one. The Sedaris story in question is "I Like Guys," which, as Book Club members might recall from our discussion of Naked, is not just about homosexuality, but about how, in dealing with our differences from the majority, we just might become the sort of oppressors from whom we are trying to escape. Both stories provide excellent teaching opportunities, so it's unfortunate, though not terribly surprising, that they would be challenged. After all, how horrible it would be for students who are at the age where they are struggling with things like sexuality to realize that others have gone through the same struggles as they. We can't have that happening.
Says a graduate from the school, in perhaps the best statement about any act of censorship in schools: "I'm ashamed this happened in my town. Sheltering people doesn't help anyone learn. It just dumbs down the school. It just sickens me that this can happen in my town." [via]
Aleksandar Hemon talks to the New York Times about music and how it's inextricably linked to his writing. He provides a 10-piece soundtrack to his work, revealing that although he did listen to a lot of Beatles music while writing Nowhere Man, he actually didn't listen to the eponymous song. Says Hemon:
I cannot live or write without music. It stimulates the normally dormant parts of my brain that come in handy when constructing fiction. A particular piece of music attaches itself to the piece I'm writing and there is nothing else I can listen to. Every day I return to the same space to write, the music providing both the walls and the pictures on the walls. Once I'm done and the piece is published, I often have a hard time remembering what piece of music is inscribed (or, indeed, transcribed) in it, as there are no visible, let alone obvious, connections, apart from an occasional embedded line. I think that is because the music and writing become indistinguishable to the aforementioned dormant parts, which constitute the majority of my brain mass. So the playlist that would provide a soundtrack for my work would have to be insanely long.
Today the National Book Awards remembers their 1965 winner, Herzog by Saul Bellow.
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, a 2008 National Book Awards fiction judge, writes of Bellow and his book: "Bellow is often cited as a hero of narrative realism, as having single-handedly, through the heft of his technique, held back the postmodern, meta-fictional, experiments-in-naval-gazing onslaught. But Saul Bellow's relationship with reality was as complicated and adversarial as any writer's before and after. He was not going to be the one to submit. Let reality submit. What a fighter the man was, a conquistador with dreamy Jewish eyes.
"It's extraordinary how many times Bellow calls out to his mighty antagonist by name: Reality. He uses the word more times than Kant and Hegel put together. That's what he was up against, the thing he was out to master and possess. His boot, cleated with metaphors, is planted smack on its exposed bulging neck. His famous style--the zealousness of his figurative language, the mixing of milky thought and bloody-raw meat--is never an end in itself but a means of taking possession."
Audrey Niffenegger was interviewed at Book Expo about her upcoming novel Her Fearful Symmetry. Borders has a video of that interview, which you can see here.
The National Book Award blog continues their reminiscences of past winners with the 1960 winner Goodbye, Columbus, by University of Chicago grad student Philip Roth.
Writes Liz Rosenberg, a National Book Awards judge and author of Home Repair: "I am always struck by the perfection of Goodbye, Columbus, however many times I read and teach it. It is the perfect Jewish American novel--perfect in its pacing; plotting; its metaphors (the librarian's 'behind barging against his suit jacket like a hoop'); its fruitful Edens: 'There were greengage plums, black plums, red plums, apricots, nectarines, peaches, long horns of grapes, black, yellow, red, and cherries, cherries flowing out of boxes and staining everything scarlet...and on the top shelf, half of a huge watermelon, a thin sheet of wax paper clinging to its bare red face like a wet lip. Oh Patimkin! Fruit grew in their refrigerators and sporting goods dropped from their trees!' One could die happy after writing a passage like that."
Salon talks to Dave Eggers about his newly published book Zeitoun, how the Bush administration has affected America's acceptance of literature and the future of print journalism. On the latter topic, Eggers had this to say:
I think there's a future where the Web and print coexist and they each do things uniquely and complement each other, and we have what could be the ultimate and best-yet array of journalistic venues. I think right now everyone's assuming it's a zero-sum situation, and I just don't see it that way...I think newspapers shouldn't try to compete directly with the Web, and should do what they can do better, which may be long-form journalism and using photos and art, and making connections with large-form graphics and really enhancing the tactile experience of paper...I think there will always be -- if not the same audience and not as wide an audience -- a dedicated audience that can keep print journalism alive.
The Tribune reviews local author Billy Lombardo's How to Hold a Woman, calling it "beautifully written, replete with small, perfect details of family life in the wake of tragedy."
The Independent takes a look at Steven J. Zipperstein's Rosenfeld's Lives, a study on the Chicago native, New York intellectual and close friend of Saul Bellow, Isaac Rosenfeld, who died at 38 and only published one novel.
Is Aleksandar Hemon the new Vladimir Nabokov? Open Letters Monthly thinks not, but finds plenty enough to love about Hemon's prose as it is. Over at Pop Matters, Hemon answers 20 Questions.
The Second Pass points us to a 1955 interview with Nelson Algren in the Paris Review.
File this one under "things that make Veronica incredibly jealous": novelist and screenwriter Steven Paul Leiva has been spending a lot of time with Ray Bradbury for a video he's working on for the Buffalo International Film Festival. Here he composes an essay about the "world's greatest science fiction writer," exploring where the writer came from and how he came to embody that title. Great essay, but, man, I want to spend time with Ray Bradbury! [via]
Listed as one of the top anticipated books to be published, Joshua Ferris's The Unnamed gets critiqued over at Gawker's Status Galley Book Club. After judging industry hype, movie potential, the book's status symbol and first sentence, they give the book a final grade of B- saying "The book is great! But it gets downgraded for its mainstream appeal (makes it less cool to the publishing crowd), availability (having it doesn't denote much exclusivity), and the lack of a proven track record beyond his debut novel [Then We Came to the End] to please the New York Publishing Elite."
This new publication of A Moveable Feast sure has raised the occurrence of Hemingway news, e.g., this Tribune article by biographer Gioia Diliberto about receiving a set of taped conversations with Hadley Richardson, Ernest Hemingway's first wife. Says Diliberto on her impression of Richardson upon listening to the tapes:
I expected Hadley, who died in 1979, to be bitter toward Hemingway; instead, on the tapes she is full of gratitude to him for giving her "the key to the world." When she met him in 1920, she had been a timid spinster, who lived for years under the control of her dominating mother in a state of nervous collapse. Meeting Hemingway at a party in Chicago, she told Sokoloff, was a great "explosion into life." He was the first person to see deeply into her true nature, and in a rueful irony, he helped her find the strong sense of self that sustained her through their break-up.
Also, check out this essay at Powell's written by Hemingway's grandson Sean, offering his thoughts on his work editing the new A Moveable Feast:
I think that my grandfather would be happier with the text presented in A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition. Lovers of literature the world over will find much of interest from a new text for Feast to a wealth of supplementary material, including a personal foreword by Patrick Hemingway and a selection of facsimile manuscript pages that enhance our understanding of this critical period in the author's life and how he wrote.
If you're at all partial to getting good books for ridiculously cheap, I would highly recommend getting yourself to the Burnham Park Powell's as soon as you can. I went this weekend and there was still a great selection of books priced around $5-$6, which means, with their 50% off sale, I came away with a full bag of books for less than two regular priced paperbacks. While there I learned that this isn't the only Powell's that's closing - the Lincoln Ave. location is slated for closure in the future as well. Word on the street (or, at least, from the guy who rang up my purchases) is that there's no set date yet, but it'll happen in the next two to three years and the only store that will remain will be the one on 57th St. So, enjoy your multiple Powell's stores while you can...and, in the meantime, start familiarizing yourself with the #6 bus route.
This USA Today article takes a look at the academic study of romance novels. Yep, romance novels. It seems that romance novels are gaining ground in academia, as Princeton University held a conference titled "Love as the Practice of Freedom? Romance Fiction and American Culture" this past April. Here they talk to, among other authors, DePaul University English professor Eric Selinger, the organizer of the conference. Says Selinger on the ease of being a man in the romance world, "Nobody thinks I'm a spinster or trapped in a bad marriage, or I'm betraying feminism...People don't judge me as much." I'm not a fan of romance novels myself and I would, in all likelihood, scoff heartily at the idea of a conference on the genre, but, as a student at DePaul, I've heard nothing but positively glowing reviews of Selinger's romance novels course from classmates who would consider themselves as disinclined to the literature as I am. So maybe there's something to it.
Exciting news from Open Books: The non-profit literacy organization has announced the location of their used bookstore and literacy community center as 213 W. Institute Pl., the 100-year-old building that currently houses their office. Opening in the Fall, the store and center will hold over 40,000 used books for sale, three full classrooms and a mobile computer lab, offices and community event space, and space specifically for online book sales, rare and fine books, book processing and other bibliophilic needs. Check their blog to keep up to date on store happenings and find out how you can contribute to its success. Don't forget that you can also check their events and volunteer opportunities lists to see where they'll be next and how you can get involved in promoting literacy throughout the city.
We wish Open Books all the best as they see their dreams of the past three years come to fruition!
Women and Children First's annual used book sale and inventory are coming up next month and they're asking for help from volunteers to get both done successfully. The used book sale will be on Saturday and Sunday, August 1st and 2nd, and the inventory will occur on the following day, Monday, August 3rd. The store will offer a gift certificate to those who help and, I'd imagine, you'd get first crack at the books on either of the sale days. Shifts for the book sale are 8am-1pm and 1pm-6pm; shifts for the inventory are 8:30am-12:30pm and 1pm-6pm. If you're interested, email the store at wcfbooks[at]gmail[dot]com or call them at 773-769-9299.
In other news, here's your chance to contribute to Chicago history. The Chicago Area Women's History Council is recording the store's history and an archive has already been started at Loyola. If you have any memorabilia from the store and their many events - photos, program schedules, newspaper articles, video footage, etc. - and would like to donate it to the archive, bring it in or email it to the above address.
The National Book Foundation is looking back at their past 77 National Book Award winners over the last 60 years and blogging about one book per day. They started yesterday with the 1950 winner, Nelson Algren's The Man with the Golden Arm, and will run through September at which point readers will have the opportunity to select "The Best of the National Book Awards Fiction" and win two tickets to the 2009 National Book Awards. The site points out that this is the first time the Awards will be open to public voting, so that's a nice little twist on the usual process.
Of particular interest to Book Club members will be that first winner, which we read in July of 2006, three titles by Saul Bellow (The Adventures of Augie March, our January 2006 read, Herzog and Mr. Sammler's Planet), a smattering of University of Chicago folk (Ralph Ellison with Invisible Man, Thornton Wilder with The Eighth Day, Philip Roth with Sabbath's Theater and Susan Sontag with In America), and our upcoming September read, The Echo Maker by Richard Powers. Keep checking the site as they add commentary on the winners each day. [via]
The Illinois Arts Council recently announced the recipients of its 2009 Literary Awards. Only new writing by Illinois writers in Illinois published in Illinois not-profit literary magazines qualify for the award. This year the winners include:
• Stuart Dybek for his story "Bait", which appeared in Tri-Quarterly
• Carolyn Alessio for her creative nonfiction story "Meet Marisol" in Ninth Letter, and
• Robert McDonald for his poem "Postcard Written at 'The Perfect Cup'" published in the Columbia Poetry Review
The LA Times reports that Ray Bradbury will hold his 89th birthday celebration at the Memorial Branch Library in LA where he won't charge admission to the party, but will put the sales of his books toward helping the library. Bradbury will also sign those books that are purchased at the party. If I weren't convinced that planes could just randomly fall out of the sky (and recent events haven't helped to persuade me otherwise), I might seriously consider making a little trip out to the west coast for this shindig.
I also recently learned that Fahrenheit 451, the classic book about book-burning, has been adapted into a graphic novel. Tim Hamilton is the artist who did the adaptation with Bradbury's full approval and cooperation. Publisher's Weekly talks about the new graphic novel here.
It has long been speculated that another author, frequently thought to be Francis Bacon, wrote a number of Shakespeare's plays and now Barack Obama undergoes the same suspicions. Conservative author Jack Cashill posits that it was not Obama but Bill Ayers (wtf?) that penned his memoir Dreams from My Father. For his stunning proof, Cashill compared Ayers's writing with Obama's to produce a list of similarities that, taken completely out of context, could be quite convincing. Taken in context, however, these similarities mean almost nothing and English PhD and blogger Scott Eric Kaufman hilariously refutes the claim. (Personally, I would love to hear what my style and rhetoric professor would have to say about this.) It seems that this argument has been ongoing since September of last year. Fortunately, it doesn't sound like too many people are convinced of Cashill's claim. Or even really care. [via]
The Chicago Public Library has chosen The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City as their Fall 2009 One Book, One Chicago selection. Publisher U of C Press talks briefly about the book and provides a link to their Plan of Chicago Facebook page where you can follow the upcoming events and discussions. The events will also be posted on Slowdown, so be sure to check our calendar once the discussions get started next month.
Dan Gross of the New York Times takes former University of Chicago professor Thorstein Veblen to task for his study of the American elite in the classic The Theory of the Leisure Class. Though the book was published in 1899, Gross applies Veblen's theories to our current economy and finds "while Veblen frequently reads as still 100 percent right on the foibles of the rich, when it comes to an actual theory of the contemporary leisure class, he now comes off as about 90 percent wrong." Gross finds that Veblen's assessment of the leisure class as needing to spend on others, in the form of expensive presents, entertainment, private education, etc., after they've spent all they can on themselves and their mimicry of European nobility to still ring true, however, whereas Veblen defined leisure as the "nonproductive consumption of time" and, therefore, wasteful, Gross points out that today, many members of this upper class continue work though they need not, that "to be at leisure, to be idle, is to be irrelevant." The fact that Veblen's theories still apply at all is interesting to learn and Gross does a fair job of explicating where Veblen succeeds and fails in modern times.
The New Yorker's books blog recently pointed readers to a 2002 article in which author Malcolm Gladwell remembered the heat wave that tore through Chicago in 1995. Gladwell, appropriately, turns to sociologist Eric Klinenberg's study, Heat Wave, to discuss that deadly week. The Book Club read Heat Wave in August (when else?) of 2005.
I'm dismayed to learn that Powell's is closing their Burnham Park location at 828 S. Wabash. In truth, I've only visited that location once, but mainly that's because for the first five years of my time in Chicago I had easy access to the Hyde Park location and since then I've been close to the Lincoln Ave. location. I visited Burnham Park simply because I was curious to see what the third Powell's was like and, though the Hyde Park location remains my favorite (I'm told that the first Powell's you visit is the one you fall in love with), it was nice knowing that this great purveyor of used books could be found in multiple places throughout the city. Though the closing of this location is sad, the one bright spot is that they're offering 50% off everything in the store. I don't know about you, but I'm fairly certain I'll find myself making one final trip down to S. Wabash in the very near future.
It's funny. I had an interviewer ask me, "Are you writing chick books?" I said, "Chick books? What's a chick book?" "You keep writing about women," he said. I said, "What's wrong with writing about women?" I don't know. I guess it's because of Hummingbird, in part. But part of the process of Hummingbird was being accepted by the women's healing community in the indigenous world. I didn't really understand the world of medicine, or curanderas. I had some access to that through men, because I have all these brothers who are Oglalas (adoptive brothers, in the loose term of brother), and I have relatives who are Apache, and so forth.
When I was accepted by a couple of communities of women, I was taken in to learn the women's stuff. One of those women said this very simple thing. It was so simple it was brilliant. She said, "You goddamned men. When you want to know something about women, why don't you just ask?" I had this idiotic Western writer's response; I was writing down notes: "Hmm, ask women!" [Laughter] Her follow-up was, "And when we tell you, why don't you listen?" It became really important to me if I was going to write Hummingbird's Daughter to try to do honor to women.
The New Yorker's Book Bench blog isn't really the place I expected the image of such shirts to jump out at me, as if leaping through the past to haunt me in my present (I wholeheartedly concur with Walker's summation of time spent at the University of Chicago as "bleak"). Nevertheless, two reported items are of note: the left-leaning locally published magazine The Baffler is coming back, and two undergrads are penning a book called Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books, Now Presented in Twenty Tweets or Less and have sold it to Penguin. Is the last item sad or ironic? The thing about the U of C is that you never really can tell the difference.
There's even more Hemingway news to bring you. Last week Alice alerted us to a new book that will take a fictionalized look at Hemingway's first marriage; now the New York Times tells the story of the author's grandson's efforts to restore the posthumously published A Moveable Feast, the memoir that includes the dissolution of that first marriage. It seems that the editing of the book is a story in itself: originally edited by Hemingway's fourth wife, the first edition included a final chapter on that first marriage built from parts that Hemingway indicated he did not want published. The upcoming new edition of the book, what is being called the "restored edition," is edited by grandson Seán Hemingway who, among other changes, added passages from the manuscript that he believes puts his grandmother (the author's second wife, Pauline) in "a more sympathetic light." The Times reports on Seán's motivations:
Seán said he revised edits that had been made in the first edition, and restored paragraphs that he believed presented his grandmother's relationship with Hemingway in a more nuanced and truthful way. Seán said that in doing so, he felt he was returning the text closer to the way his grandfather wanted it.
The new version of Pauline's arrival in Hemingway's life, titled 'The Pilot Fish and the Rich,' and included in the additional Paris sketches, shows Hemingway taking more responsibility for his breakup with [first wife] Hadley. While the 1964 edition casts him as Pauline's victim, he shares the blame in the new version.
Uh oh. More Hemingway news. A fictionalized look at Hemingway's marriage to his first wife, Hadley Richardson, and told from her point of view, will be coming to a bookstore near you.
The Guardian asked novelist Ewan Morrison, author of Menage, to pick the Top Ten Literary Threesomes. His list includes not one, but two Chicago authors. In at #1, the Top Literary Threesome Ever, is Oak Park native Ernest Hemingway with The Garden of Eden, a novel that "tells the story of an author, his adventurous wife, and the psycho-sexual games they play while sharing a young woman. It is largely held to be autobiographical." University of Chicago alum Susan Sontag comes in at #7 with The Volcano Lover, a historical fiction revolving around Sir William Hamilton, his wife Emma and Vice Admiral Horation Nelson. Apparently, Chicago authors know how to write the sexy. (Of course, we already knew that.)
Banned Books Weeks is coming up in about three months and it's a shame to be reminded why we so desperately need to continue with this celebration. Recently, parents at a school in the suburb of Antioch petitioned to pull Sherman Alexie's The Absolutley True Diary of a Part-Time Indian from the freshman required summer reading list. Parents objected to the book's "descriptions of masturbation, racist language, graphic depictions of sex, and references to bestiality," but faculty maintained that the language needs to be read in context and that the book contains an overall "strong anti-drug, anti-alcohol message." The faculty won (yay!). I haven't read the book myself, but knowing that it was challenged certainly sparks my interest when I had none before. I imagine the same will be true for a lot of those freshmen. [via]
The Tribune also reviews the novel, and according to the reviewer, Meno is an "ambitious, adventurous writer" who "throws in every thing but the kitchen sink -- historical digressions, magic realism, fervent prayers, sordid sex, academic politicking, three wars and the 2004 election -- as he follows two confused teenagers, their bewildered parents and a disoriented grandfather through one eventful month."
And, in the following video, Meno talks about why he works with an indie publisher to publish his books:
Ray Bradbury is lending his considerable literary clout to save the Ventura County public libraries, which are threatened by loss of revenue from falling property taxes. The 88-year-old author tells the New York Times, "Libraries raised me. I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years."
Some local publishing honchos, including Doug Seibold, president of Agate Publishing in Evanston, Garrett Kiely, the director of the University of Chicago Press, and Jonathan Messinger of Time Out Chicago and featherproof books, discuss whether Chicago can be a hub for independent publishing.
The annual Newberry Library Book Fair is just one month away, but you can read the book fair blog now and find out all kinds of cool facts about the fair written with a surprising amount of snark.
Do you think you know your Chicago literature? Here's your chance to put your knowledge to the test. Bill Ott at Booklist has put together a wicked Literary Chicago quiz. Not only do you have to match the book with its author, but you also need to correctly identify the neighborhood or location where the story takes place. Several of his choices are past GB Book Club selections. Here's the .pdf version. Good luck!
Recently the Guardian interviewed Egyptian author Alaa al Aswany, known to us through his 2008 novel, Chicago, based on his experiences as a student at UIC. On his time here:
"As a dentistry student in Chicago three decades ago, he hugely admired America's efficiency. But it was not, in the long run, for him. 'Everything is systemised, practical. Egypt is the opposite, but there is beauty in that. To me, it's the most wonderful place on earth.'"
Julia Keller profiles Dalkey Archive Press, located at the University of Illinois, and happily reports: "While most updates from the publishing business these days can automatically be filed under the 'bad news' category, the dispatches from Dalkey are decidedly upbeat."
Last month author Aleksandar Hemon appeared at a Barnes & Noble event with Ukranian-born musician Alina Simone. He discussed fiction and identity, and you can watch the video online:
The siege of Sarajevo is the dark cloud that seems ever to drift through the atmosphere of Hemon's fiction, sometimes in the historical periphery, sometimes in the story's present on American television, sometimes in the adjustments of emigre life, casting its shadow on tales that might otherwise read as family comedy out to trace human foibles and -- what shall we call it? -- the existential oddity of being. He writes books of laughter and non-forgetting.
I have always believed that the books of youth stay with us in a unique way. The fairy tales, nursery rhymes and novels we read when we're young become part of our DNA.
Author Alice Hoffman talks about how Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451restored her faith after the events of 9/11.
Did you miss the GB Book Club Book Swap last week at Black Rock? Check out some photos from the swap on Flickr, snapped by our wonderful partners for the event, Open Books.
The New York Times contemplates local (and Book Club selection) author Amy Krouse Rosenthal's high production of children's books and wonders if there's something about children's books in particular that attracts the prolific writer:
"Maybe kids' book writers simply have more fun. That certainly seems to be the case with Rosenthal. For all I know, she may suffer torment upon torment in front of a blank screen, but the results read as if they were a pleasure to write. Her books radiate fun the way tulips radiate spring: they are elegant and spirit-lifting."
I just finished rereading Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 for the Big Read, so the story's "There's more than one way to burn a book" message is fresh on my mind. It never ceases to amaze me how prescient Bradbury's novels can be (gigantic plasma TVs, earbud phones, etc.), so imagine my horror when I came across this direct realization from the book: Tweetfic. It's the reduction of classic novels to a single sentence. The Guardian does not sound pleased.
May is National Get Caught Reading Month and last week the Open Books team went around the city snapping photos of people in the act of reading. Check out what they caught on Flickr. Do you see people reading on a daily basis? (I mean, when you're forced to look up from your own book, of course.) Snap their photo and submit it to Open Books's photo contest and you may win a prize.
I post this Sun-Times review of the new Museum of Science and Industry Harry Potter exhibit only because I find this Powell's comment (scroll down until you get to Book News Round-up) on the review quite amusing. (And, really, we're using "squee" in print journalism nowadays? Samuel Johnson must be rolling over in his grave.)
Earlier this week I posted Ramsin Canon's review of Family Secrets by Jeff Coen. On Tuesday, Coen discussed his book on Chicago Public Radio's 848 program. You can listen online or download the episode here.
Ray Bradbury attended the Los Angeles Festival of Books last weekend and warned that it might be his last appearance at the fair unless the LA Times reinstates its Books section.
James Kennedy is all over the web this week. Check out his interview in Chicagoist where he expounds more on how his book, The Order of Odd-Fish came to be and offers some interesting thoughts on Watchmen's Comedian. The Onion's Decider talks with James about being a fantasy writer in a post-Harry Potter world and he reveals that he actually doesn't read all that much fantasy writing. And a gentleman by the name of Paul Michael Murphy has declared it The Order of Odd-Fish Week on his blog during which he will celebrate all things Odd-Fish! If you've never had the pleasure of seeing James read from his book in person, the YouTube clip on this post is a nice approximation.
Book Club selection author Elizabeth Crane (we read All This Heavenly Glory) interviews Book Club selection author Joe Meno (Hairstyles of the Damned was our first book ever) in this month's Chicago Magazine. In answer to Elizabeth's question, "What's your take on Chicago's literary scene?" Joe's answer of, "It's amazing!" is certainly one to agree with.
Author Luis Alberto Urrea participates in NPR's "This I Believe" project, saying alll life is story, and "we are the narrators." Listen and read his essay here.
We read his novel, The Hummingbird's Daughter, for our March 2007 meeting.
Now you can shop and buy books from some of your favorite local booksellers right from your iPhone with the free Indiebound for iPhone application. Using the app, you can also browse bestseller and recommendation lists and locate the nearest independent bookstore wherever you are. Support your neighbors' businesses and buy local!
You have got to see this awesome edible rendition of the scene where Jo and her compatriots arrive in Eldritch City via fish stomach in James Kennedy's The Order of Odd-Fish. Who knew fish barf could look so appetizing?
Achy Obejas has a new novel, Ruins, which takes place in native city of Havana, Cuba. NPR takes a look. The GB Book Club read her earlier novel Memory Mambo for April 2006.
Michael Crichton isn't the only zombie author, publishing works from beyond the grave. Readers and fans can expect another collection of previously unpublished stories by Kurt Vonnegut this fall. In addition to the new collection, tentatively titled Look at the Birdie, publisher Delacorte Press also plans to reissue 15 of Vonnegut's best-known works.
The GB Book Club will be reading Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut for our June meeting.
"...Ms Mun said she was spurred into adult education after a humiliating episode while working as a waitress, and eventually completed an English literature degree at Berkeley university.
"I was a minor and I worked really hard to get whatever I needed," she said. "I got a job as a waitress serving cocktails when I was only 15. I was serving these two guys and they had a bet on about me. They asked me a maths question - 'What do you call a line that touches but does not intersect a circle?' I'd left school after eighth grade and I was kind of embarrassed that I didn't know the answer.
"One guy bet that I'd know because I was Asian, while the other bet I wouldn't know because I was a waitress. I was so maddened by them that I signed up for my educational diploma," she said.
I think that's a bit of an unfair question... I went all the way through college calculus and could only guess the answer (and I'm shocked that, however wild the guess was, it was right).
Today the United States Post Office will offer for nationwide sale a stamp commemorating Richard Wright, author of our Septmeber 2008 selection Native Son. Not only is Wright known for his racially charged depiction of Bigger Thomas's plight in 1930s Chicago, but he also worked for the Chicago Post Office as a letter sorter from 1927-1930. Wright is the 25th inductee into the USPS's Literary Arts series of stamps. Julia Keller of the Chicago Tribune writes her approval of the choice.
Patrick Somerville's debut novel, The Cradle, receives a nice review in the Denver Post, as the reviewer calls the book "a lovely, finely wrought tale of unlikely redemption."
And, the Washington Post reviews The Foie Gras Wars by Tribune reporter Mark Caro, saying "if you are looking for an animal-rights manifesto...Caro is not your man."
The Guardian reports that two books by Michael Crichton "have been discovered on the writer's computer" and will be published by HarperCollins in the next 18 months. The first is titled Pirate Latitudes and is set in 17th-centurey Jamaica (man, is everyone on the pirate kick nowadays?). HC is looking for a co-writer to complete the second novel, a technological thriller, which they plan to publish next year. According to Crichton's agent, there are no plans to raid his computer for material for posthumous publication and no plans to make the Crichton name a franchise. Except for, um, just these two.
The Sun-Times reports (scroll down a little bit) that this year's recipient of the Carl Sandburg Award will be Salmon Rushide, author Midnight's Children among numerous others. Rushie will be honored at a gala dinner at the Harold Washington Library hosted by the Chicago Public Library on October 15. Local author Patrick Somerville will receive the accompanying 21st Century Award, which honors achievements by authors with ties to Chicago.
Local publisher, and friend of the Book Club, Lake Claremont Press is offering a free case of its discontinued titles for your organization, school, church or business. There are no strings attached, except that you must come to pick them up in person from the publisher (or pay $15/case for shipping). You have your choice of either (or both):
Of course, the offer is only good while supplies last, but publisher Sharon Woodhouse says, "Don't be shy—we need the warehouse space and we want to get these books into appreciative hands while the information is still somewhat current."
So, what are you waiting for? Contact Lake Claremont Press at 312-226-8400 or email lcp[at]lakeclaremont.com for more information.
The New York Times Book Review reviews Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America by Beryl Satter, an examination of "race and housing discrimination in Chicago during the 1950s and '60s," declaring that "no one can accuse the author of glossing over the messy details of life on the ground in Chicago. Neighborhood by neighborhood, block by block, slumlord by slumlord, she takes us through the complex realities of racial division, economic exploitation and local politics."
Writer Tobias Carroll has an interview with Jonathan Messinger of Featherproof Books. In it, Messinger answers questions about Featherproof's new subscription books imprint, Paper Egg. Read the full interview here.
The Chicago Blog points to a fascinating essay in The Nation examining the work of Norman Maclean. Writer Phillip Connors discusses his own strange connection to A River Runs Through It--he also lost his brother much too soon--and reviews The Norman Maclean Reader from the U of C Press.
A short story by Luis Alberto Urrea, "Mr. Mendoza's Paintbrush," is being republished as a graphic novel by Cinco Puntos Press. It has been illustrated by artist Christopher Cardinale, who visited the village of Rosario, Mexico, where the story takes place, for research. Luis Alberto Urrea is also the author of The Hummingbird's Daughter, the GB Book Club's March 2007 selection.
As noted elsewhere, the Chicago Public Library has chosen The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros for the spring selection of the One Book, One Chicago program. Longtime GB Book Club members can cross this one off their list, however, because we read it for our October 2006 meeting.
Boyle compares himself to Wright by saying, "Writing a novel and finding its structure is sort of like building a house and so forth, but one of the ways where we're different is that I need serenity to work. Wright needed this tumult of being sued, of having the press tear him to pieces, having lawyers on his doorstep, his crazy wives and so forth, enough to get his back up to the point where he had no choice but to do the work."
The Chicago Tribune has a review of The Cradle by local author Patrick Sommerville, and calls it a "surprisingly tender novel" with characters rendered with "warm appreciation of their complexity and resilience."
NPR has lots of goodies for T.C. Boyle's new novel The Women, about the life and loves of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Visit the site to read an excerpt from the book, listen to Boyle read from the novel and find links to more stories and interviews.
After a brief absence, I am catching up on some news here. The big news last week was ex-governor Rod Blagojevich's reported six-figure book deal. Everyone was all over this story. Read more about it here, here, here and here.
Friend of the Book Club (FotBC) Kevin Guilfoile has resumed his post as Chairman and Commentator for the 2009 Tournament of Books hosted by the online magazine The Morning News.
As Guilfoile explains, the Tournament of Books is an "event in which 16 of the most-hyped, best-reviewed books of the past year are seeded into an NCAA basketball-type bracket and forced to compete in a 'Battle Royale of Literary Excellence,' with the winning author being crowned Champion of Books and awarded a live rooster."
It is awards season, and the nominees for the 2009 Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America were recently announced. Chicago is overflowing with talented mystery and crime novelists, so it is no surprise to see local authors represented among the finalists. Some of them include:
Best First Novel Calumet City by Charlie Newton
Best Short Story
"A Sleep Not Unlike Death" by Sean Chercover
"Scratch a Woman" by Laura Lippman
Best Play The Ballad of Emmett Till by Ifa Bayeza
And, also of interest to Chicagoans is For The Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb and the Murder that Shocked Chicago by Simon Baatz, nominated for Best Fact Crime.
The winners will be announced on April 30. Good luck everyone!
Local publisher Featherproof has jumped into the book-of-the-month club pool by starting a new subscription-only imprint called Paper Egg Books. For $20 a year, you will receive two limited-edition titles, and the books will be designed by local illustrator Paul Hornschemeier. For more information, including how to subscribe, visit the website.
The Daily Herald checks on the health of several suburban indie bookstores, including Crocodile Pie children's bookstore in Libertyville, Town House Books in St. Charles and Anderson's in Naperville. All three share some survival strategies for the current economy.
And, The Southtown Star recently profiled The Bookie's Paperbacks & More bookstore in Chicago's Beverly neighborhood, a used bookstore which is seeing a "boost in sales" as more people hunt for deals.
More reviews of The Women by T.C. Boyle published recently. The Chicago Tribune says, "Boyle's impishness with his material, seeming ever straining to resist the outright farcical, is as prominent as the flash of Wright's ego in these pages." And, the San Francisco Chronicle gushes that "Boyle's prose moves with equal parts vigor and grace. His rhythmic, turbo-charged sentences virtually leap off the page."
The Women by T.C. Boyle is a new novel about the four major ladies in the life of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Jacket Copy has a nice round-up of some of the press about the book. NPR also reviews the book, which you can listen to here. And the Boston Globe says, "Boyle's portrait of Wright himself as an egomaniac dodging his creditors, soaking his clients, and bamboozling his women is deliciously repulsive. At the same time, Boyle does a brilliant job of exploring Wright's matchless artistic sensibilities."
"This s@#t's getting way too complicated for me." If you've read Barack Obama's bestselling memoir Dreams from My Father, you may remember he used some colorful language when describing his high school buddy Ray. As a result, when Obama recorded the audiobook version, he left us with some decidedly un-presidential, yet hilarious outtakes. The Boston Phoenix has the .mp3s.
The Newberry Library's Genealogy News blog announces that a "selection of books from the Newberry's collection are now available digitally through the Internet Archive." You can see the complete list of titles here.
Ice cubes clinked, well-inked pages flipped and conversation was lively as notable local comic book artists Tim Seeley (Loaded Bible), Mike Norton (Green Arrow, Black Canary), Jenny Frison (Hack/Slash) and many more mingled at Challengers last Saturday. A relative newcomer to the comic shop scene, the press conference highlighted their latest promotion, which involves giving away comic books. Comic books, for free. That's right. They've left "Free Comic Challenge" cards all around the city: on trains and buses, in the backs of cabs, at local bars, record stores and more. But if your spirit of adventure withers when it's below 20 degrees, you can print one off here.
This gesture reflects the inclusive spirit owners Patrick Brower and Dal Bush want to foster between fans. "You open a store to sell comics and talk to people, encourage their interests -- you don't want to be the Comic Book Guy [on the Simpsons], where you're just there to make fun of someone else," Bush said. "Every fan has to start somewhere." Challengers is located at 1845 N. Western Ave (look for the big "C"). For more information, call (773) 278-0155 or visit their website.
Jonathan Messinger at TOC brings our attention to Arielle Greenberg, an assistant professor of poetry at Columbia College Chicago, who has launched Starting Today, a blog that is featuring a new poem every day for the first 100 days of Obama's administration. [via]
"Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops, one of the largest and oldest independent chains in Wisconsin, survived the Great Depression but wasn't able to overcome titanic changes in the retail sector, exacerbated by the current economic crisis."
After 82 years in business, Schwartz will be closing its remaining locations. Read the full story here.
Missed some of Audrey Niffenegger's comic serial, "The Night Bookmobile," over at the Guardian? Fear not, as this site put together links to each of the story's panel, from first to last, in chronological order, for your viewing pleasure. (Thanks, John!)
Get inside James Kennedy's head over at Largehearted Boy and listen to the soundtrack he created for his novel The Order of Odd-Fish. Kennedy gives explanations for all of his choices, which gives us a nice little view into his mind and the creation of this great story:
"Delphine, 'La Fermeture Eclair': The first scene of The Order of Odd-Fish is a raucous costume party at Lily Larouche's decrepit ruby palace in the middle of the California desert. When I watch the movie version of Odd-Fish in my head, this is the first song--swinging orientalist ye-ye blasting as the camera prowls around, glimpsing eggplants, UFOs, and witches dancing in the tiki torches' half-light while our hero Jo Larouche slips unnoticed through the crowd, searching for her erratic Aunt Lily. 'La Fermeture Eclair' means 'zipper,' and its lyrics are about a suspicious girl protecting herself from a pushy boy--perfect for Jo's wary character."
I was just waiting for this to happen...the art of writing has finally been reduced to a reality television series. The Write Stuff will air on the CW Network in June and will feature writers competing for a one-book deal by Hollygrove Publishing, a marketing plan designed by a New York Times bestselling author and a two-year contract with a publicity team. Theoretically, this will give them everything they need to have a successful writing career. That's a nice prize and I'm not necessarily opposed to the reality-competition-TV-genre in general - it certainly worked for Project Runway and Top Chef isn't bad at all - but somehow it feels incredibly insulting to reduce the writing process, which can take years and years and not just a half-hour quick-round challenge, to this sort of treatment. What's next - the Next Top Post-Modern Painter? The Next Top Architect? The Next Top Yoga Instructor? (Okay, I could see the last one actually happening.)
Anyway, if this doesn't sound ridiculous to you and you think you have what it takes to have your writing judged by a group of people on TV every week, then get your stuff together and audition on January 24 at the Comfort Inn in Aurora (4005 Gabrielle Lane, 60504). Local authors Tony Lindsay, Steve Mayfield, Jane Jordan, Michelle Larks and Donna Deloney will join other authors on the panel of judges. Maybe we'll see you on the CW in June. Not that I'll be watching.
Powell's interviews Nami Mun, Korean author and current Chicago resident, about her debut novel Miles From Nowhere:
"This book isn't necessarily 'pleasant' to read, I guess, but I can say that it's emotionally honest, and, I hope, unflinching. I wanted to try and depict life as it is really lived by runaways, throwaways, sex workers, and addicts, and in no way did I want to beautify anything for fear of offending. But, of course, life on the streets isn't all about brutality and pain. There are funny, loving moments, too, which hopefully my readers -- whether they be booksellers, soccer moms, priests or prison guards -- will connect with."
One of my favorite bookstores, Unabridged in Lakeview, has joined us on the internets with a brand-spankin' new blog. It's seriously new, having launched six days ago (if you get up close to your computer, it still has that new-blog smell). There's not much on it yet, but they do bring to your attention that photography books, cookbooks and various other coffee table books are 40% off right now, which is nice because after Christmas, it's all about getting presents for yourself.
The New Year is upon us and the Reader will get you started learning about some great new local authors with their 9th annual fiction issue. This issue includes pieces by Jona Meyer, Rosaleen Bertolino, Latoya Wolfe, Ben Greenman and the wonderful James Kennedy. If your impending resolution is to get more fiction under your belt, this would be a good place to start.
Have you ever wondered how some of your favorite writers organize their days? The blog Daily Routines posts information on the lives of writers, artists and "other interesting people," all taken from books, newspapers, magazines and other websites. Some locals you could get to know: Saul Bellow, Ernest Hemingway, J.M. Coetzee, Philip Roth and Roger Ebert.
UIC Professor Lennard J. Davis, author of the newly published Obsession: A History, has some interesting thoughts on Axl Rose and the ridiculously long-awaited release of Chinese Democracy:
"In some ways, we might regard this as the latest act of a tortured genius in the great tradition of other tortured geniuses. The nineteenth century abounded with them, from Captain Ahab and his obsessive quest of his white whale to Frenhofer, Balzac's tortured painter, and Claude Lantier, Emile Zola's novelistic representation of Cezanne. What these driven people have in common is the desire to create, to capture, and to produce something extraordinary. And yet, they all end up ruining the thing they want and destroying themselves in the process."
They're stationed in Madison, which doesn't really make them local, but Bleak House Bookshas published some local works, most notably the great Chicago Blues, which I reviewed two Octobers ago. So, I feel sufficiently justified in linking to them here, especially when it's for the purpose of spreading the word that they're offering free books this holiday season. You pay for shipping, but that's it! Nothing else! There are a few things that are unavailable, so be sure to read the website carefully for what you can get and the rules for getting them. It's just a little bit of love from an independent publisher who's trying to spread some good words.
"Now the author has decided to take this bitters-soaked little fruitcake of a book, tack on a few extra stories from his more recent publications, garnish it with one that is entirely fresh and wrap the whole thing in a shiny new jacket. Well, pardon me for feeling as if I've been regifted!"
Time Out Chicago has a nice write up of the new No Coast bookstore in Pilsen:
"And that's what makes No Coast such an intriguing contribution to the city right now--aside from Quimby's in Wicker Park, no space offers the kind of diversity in stock, and certainly not on the South Side. The studio also offers a series of open workshops and a monthly screenprinting 'lock-in,' where studio members are available for 24 hours to teach the craft. The space has played host to screenings, music shows (including one to launch the store, pictured above), and will help launch the latest Eye Rocket zine on December 11 at 7pm."
I've been trying to curb my Obama-related literary postings now that it's been some time since the election has passed, but it seems like you just can't get away from one person or other either commenting on how Obama will increase literature awareness or how some previously published book relates, in some cases quite marginally, to his election. This story in the Guardian does the latter. Apparently a Brazilian writer published a serialized novel in 1926 in which a black politician is elected the 88th President of the United States. While existence of the book, in itself, is not particularly noteworthy, except maybe for the fact that it was published so long ago, what is worth noting is that the book was conveniently republished around election time, with the disclaimer that "any resemblance to actual events is pure coincidence," and was a hit. Well, that's making the market work for you. The fact that the story's protagonist and our President share a similar skin color is merely a coincidence, but I hope it's the only one - in the story this President is found dead on the day of his inauguration. I can't say I'd find reading that kind of thing comforting in the coming days.
Local authors Sean Chercover and Wendy McClure have some suggestions for gifts this holiday season (bet you can't guess what they are!):
Says Chercover: "Okay, I know that we're all in for some serious belt-tightening, but here's the thing: You will probably buy a few Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa gifts for your loved ones this year. You may not be as lavish as in years past, but you'll probably buy something, right?
"Right. So please, make that something a book."
(Check out the comments section, too, where Chercover makes an interesting point about gift cards, something I hadn't considered before.)
And says McClure: "Even if there's only one book on your holiday shopping list, buy it new, and even better, buy it from a brick-and-mortar bookseller that you'd miss if it weren't around, because it's been coming to that lately for a lot of places. Booksellers might have to wear barrels, people!"
(There is a person celebrating an all-book gift exchange in her comments - how I wish my work would adopt this idea. If I could count on my secret Santa actually asking me what I wanted, I might participate in the gift exchange instead of just sitting there like a Scrooge while everyone opens their presents.)
"And throughout its run the magazine took it upon itself to defend Chicago from those who claimed it was overrun by crime, it stank, its government was corrupt, its streets were wind-beaten. So went the litany at the time. 'Chicago,' declared one editorial, 'happens to be, by common consent of the writing gentry, the Gomorrah of the moment.' The magazine thundered against such calumny, defending the city's 'gusto and glamour' in issue after issue."
The diaries of University of Chicago graduate Susan Sontag will be published in three installments, beginning in December (according to Amazon). The first will be Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963, which begins when Sontag was just 14 and reveals the development of her bisexual orientation. The diaries have been compiled by Sontag's only son, David Rieff, who speaks of the difficulties of compiling such personal material in this Independent article.
Years ago there was a magazine called The Chicagoan, a competitor of The New Yorker covering arts and culture in our city. The magazine had been forgotten for some time until historian Neil Harris discovered some long-lost issues hiding the University of Chicago's Regenstein Library. His subsequent research on the magazine can be found in the newly published The Chicagoan: A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age. Cory Doctorow clearly loves it, as does Julia Keller at the Tribune. It sure would make an impressive addition to one's coffee table collection, wouldn't it?
More speculations on what our soon-to-be president will do for literature. For one thing, a black president? No longer a courageous work of fiction. [via]
The Sun-Times gets in on it too with thoughts on an Obama book club. Sure, Obama's interest in literature might spark an increase in national interest in literature, but would you read Thucydides just because you saw it in the President's hands? (I'd like to be all snobbish and say that the presidency would have no effect on my literary interests whatsoever, but you know, I just might be convinced to dig out my old copies of the Greek lit too.)
"But will Obama's election have some impact on literary culture? The bare-bone facts bode well. Obama does not just respect language: he is an accomplished writer. His two memoirs are remarkable for their craft and complexity. More importantly, Obama's story--the biracial son of an immigrant raised partly in Indonesia, educated at Harvard, proposing social reform--will, briefly, but triumphantly, become the nation's own. He could radically return the country's narrative back to possibility and promise, and away from punishment and division."
The longlist for the Impac Dublin prize has been announced. Any fiction books that have been published in English, including those that have been translated into English, are eligible to be nominated for the prize by libraries around the world. Among the 147 contenders are Chicago authors J.M. Coetzee for Diary of a Bad Year, Philip Roth for Exit Ghost and Joshua Ferris with our 2009 Book Club selection Then We Came to the End. Check out the full list of nominees at the Guardian.
It's weird, but I always kind of think of Michael Chrichton as a YA author. I suppose that this is because I was in middle school when I was introduced to his books and began reading them heavily. I don't think I've picked up a Chrichton since graduating high school, certainly not in my post-college years, but I still think of him fondly as one of the first "grown-up" authors I loved. I was saddened to hear of his death yesterday at the age of 66. Here are some obituaries and memories of the man who brought us The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park and ER:
Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Barack Obama's victory during post-election coverage on ABC:
"This is Joe Lewis, it's Jackie Robinson, and it's sort of the opposite of what the great African-American novelist Richard Wright wrote in his book, I think it was Native Son, where the character, Bigger, in that book is walking down the street, I think it was written about the South Side of Chicago, and he had no hope and he had no prospects and he knew that growing up African-American in an urban area, in a society that was governed and dominated by whites, that at the time legally prevented him from having opportunities, he didn't have the kind of hope and opportunity that he should have had. And there's a plane that flies overhead in that novel and he looks up at that plane and he says, 'Fly that plane, white boy. Fly that plane,'* because he knew it couldn't possibly be an African-American flying the plane in the late 1940s. Now look where we are today. And if that young boy in that novel was walking down the street today, he could look up to the sky and he could dream big dreams and all he's got to do is see Barack Obama and he could say, 'Everything's possible in America if you believe and if you're willing to work hard and believe in the American dream.' And as President-elect Obama just said, 'Yes we can.'"
[*Actually, Bigger says, "I could fly one of them things if I had a chance." But I only know that because I looked it up, so I'll cut the Governor some slack.]
Interested in learning more about Barack Obama's speaking and writing style? Listen to this 2004 Eight Forty-Eight interview with DePaul English Professor Gerald Mulderig.
[Full disclosure: I'm currently taking Mulderig's class, during which we studied the style elements of Obama's 2004 and 2008 DNC speeches. Remarked the Prof. after we heard his final comment, "Thank God I said that."]
In this MSNBC article, Newberry Library Vice President James Grossman, among other historians, gives his first take on the Obama victory:
"It is impossible to understate the symbolic significance of a nation with our past choosing an African-American to our highest position of leadership. The message to black children is unmistakable. The message to white children is different, but equally unmistakable. To one we are saying: 'yes you can.' To the other, we are saying 'yes they can.'"
In the wake of the election, President-elect Obama's (I am still in awe each time I say that) book The Audacity of Hope is back up to #3 on Amazon's bestseller list. His 2004 memoir, Dreams from My Father, is up at #8 in paperback and #12 in hardcover. Powell's lists Dreams from My Father as the #2 bestseller today, with the audio version of The Audacity of Hope at #20. The Sun-Times lists an influx of books that are being published about the Prez-elect.
Accordingly, the Telegraph reports that Obama's Scottish publisher, Canongate Publishing, is set to strike gold. Over at the Guardian Books Blog, Obama's speaking style was analyzed yesterday and today they comment on how his exceptional writing ability speaks well for his ability to lead. You can also check out this July Salon article to learn what's lining his bookshelves.
As Stephen Colbert might say, it's a good time to better know your future president. (The Book Club better knew Obama back in October 2007.)
It may seem that I stumbled upon this a few days too late: the Guardian published an article last Thursday on literary ways to celebrate Halloween, namely through the stories of Ray Bradbury. "[The] real Hallowen feeling - ," they say, "the onset of an extended period of darkness heralded by the death and decay of the natural word and a seemingly thinner veil between what we know and what we fear - can only be delivered by Ray Bradbury." And while it is true that Bradbury has a knack for delivering up the unknown and the feared and the shaded truths of life, I'd say that no time is not a good time to delve into some Bradbury. The plot in "The Murderer" is frightening simple for its resemblance to modern reality: in a world where electronic noise - phones, televisions, radios - is constant, a man is imprisoned for wanting some silence. (To think that this was written in 1953...) Are the words and motions that we associate with love the same as love itself? This is the question Bradbury poses in "I Sing the Body Electric!" Yes, there is the perennially spooky Something Wicked This Way Comes, with the appropriately named Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade and Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show, but you can never really go wrong with any of his story collections or novels (might I recommend our September 2005 selection, Dandelion Wine, one of my all time, top 5 with a bullet, desert island, favorite books?). Just don't wait until next Halloween to find that out.
Throughout the month of November, Orange Alert Press is offering free shipping on orders of their debut publication Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine by local author Ben Tanzer. The first ten orders of the month will receive signed copies of the book and all orders in November will receive a limited edition Orange Alert Press pin by MidwestLove Art & Design, a chapbook from Kendra Steiner Editions and a copy of their mix tape Orange Pulp. It's a pretty sweet deal. The orders must be placed through Orange Alert's website - you've got 27 more days to claim your copy.
There are a multitude of newspapers and blogs reporting on the death of Studs Terkel, remembering his contributions not just to literature, but to society overall. For most, as it is for all of us in Chicago, it is a personal loss. Here are just a few of the people offering their tributes:
National Novel Writing Month is approaching fast and writers across the country are getting ready to write 50,000-word novels in the span of November's 30 days. Sure, you've got your paper, your pens and pencils, your laptop and your Mr. Coffee ready to go, but how ready are you to write? If you're having trouble at the starting line or find yourself lagging through the middle, here are some local sources of inspiration:
NaNoWriMo's offical site has separate sites for specific regions. On ChiWriMo you can post questions and thoughts to the forums and get responses from local writers, share photos through flickr, participate in a live chat, find writing resources and keep up to date on NaNoWriMo events.
Story Studio Chicago offers Write-a-Thons where you can come and write for a full 12 hours in their studio space. The Write-a-Thons aren't free, but the $12 admission includes wireless internet access, snacks, drinks, manuscript reviews and exercise breaks so you're really getting your money's worth. This year's Write-a-Thon will be on Saturday, November 22, from 9am-9pm at 4043 N. Ravenswood, #222.
There are currently no MeetUp Groups for local NaNoWriMo participants, but who says you can't be the person to start one? Go meet some other writers to share your progress and commiserate over the inevitable writer's block.
Open Books has a series of NaNoWriMo events, starting with a kick-off brunch on November 1 and ending with a 15-hour grand finale write-fest on November 30, with several write-ins in between. All of Open Books's events are free at their River North location, 213 W. Institute Place, Suite 305.
David Sedaris has a piece in this week's New Yorker musing about undecided voters and his own history with voting:
"I look at these people and can't quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention?
"To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. 'Can I interest you in the chicken?' she asks. 'Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?'
"To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.
Time Out Chicago talks to Egyptian writer Alaa al Aswany whose latest book, Chicago: A Novel, revists his time as a student at the University of Illinois:
"It was my only dream to be a novelist...I had this intention to open my eyes, to understand, to meet people. In Chicago, I didn't just learn dentistry. One of the most important aspects of American culture to me was learning how to analyze exactly what you want."
You can hear al Aswany further discuss his work on Monday when he joins Victoria Lautmann for Writers on the Record at the Harold Washington Library.
The Sun-Times reports that local author Aleksandar Hemon and local poets Reginald Gibbons and Patricia Smith are finalists for the National Book Award.
Are you trying to save a few extra pennies these days? Or maybe you just want to dust off that old resolution to "use the library more." Well, using the Chicago Public Library just got even easier.
Ian Olsen-Clark, the man who brought us the original Chicago Public Library bookmarklet, has created a new and improved catalog search bookmarklet that works with CPL's revamped online catalog.
See an interesting book mentioned on someone's blog, a news website or while surfing your favorite online bookstore? Before you add that book to your virtual shopping cart, highlight the title, the author or the ISBN number and click on the "CPL Catalog Look-Up" bookmarklet button in your browser to see if the Chicago Public Library has it.
If the library has it, you can find out if a copy is available at your nearest branch. If not, use the library's new online holds function to place the book on hold and have it delivered to your favorite branch for pickup.
Near instant gratification, and it's FREE. The Chicago Public Library catalog search bookmarklet is an excellent tool that will help you take advantage of CPL's many resources, enriching your life at no cost to you. That's a money-saving tip I can get behind.
You know how Whole Foods rewards you for bringing your own shopping by giving you ten cents back on your total purchase? Now, instead of just helping the environment with your conscientiousness, you can also help improve literacy. When you go to Whole Foods now through October 31, you can request that your dime be given to Open Books, a local non-profit bookstore and literacy community. This applies to five of the Whole Foods locations in Chicago (excluding the Cicero location). It's an easy way to do two good things at one time.
Publishers Marketplace now has Bookstore Maps, an excellent new tool that allows you to find "independent, specialty, chain and college bookstores throughout the country, and survey the book retail landscape in any region." You can search by store name, state or zip code, but they also have a number of regional maps, including one for the Chicago area. The Chicago map currently lists 139 stores, from 57th Street Books in Hyde Park to Wonderland Books & Toys in Rockford, Ill. Stores are also color-coded, indicating whether it is a chain store, college bookstore, independent or specialty bookshop. Very nicely done. Check it out.
I wish I could say we planned this—wait, yes, we totally planned this—but Richard Wright was born 100 years ago today. The Writer's Almanac marks the occasion, and you can celebrate with us on Monday when we meet to discuss his best-known novel, Native Son.
Fantagraphics is publishing a new, deluxe-edition of Ghost World, which includes annotations by Clowes, a new introduction, the Oscar-nominated screenplay by Clowes and Terry Zwigoff, and lots of ephemera from the graphic novel and the film.
Michael Harvey, author of the crime novel The Chicago Way, has a new novel coming out titled The Fifth Floor, and this promotional trailer for the book is garnering attention for its "consistent visual aesthetic," as GalleyCat described it. Check it out:
• "In this one woman's book, I drew a plank. Then it looked like it would be a sign, like you'd have in a yard. So I wrote 'Abortions, $3'. She was upset, so I changed it to $13." David Sedaris talks about signing books.
In the Washington Post, a friend of Richard Wright's also looks back on the author's legacy, recalling that while he was living in Paris, Wright confided, "I'm a Negro. I'm a former communist. I'm married to a woman who's not only white but a Jewess. I'm trying to live in a country whose language I'll never really learn. Small wonder I have enemies!"
You can connect with us online here anytime, but remember you can also connect with us in-person this Monday, August 11, when we meet at The Book Cellar to talk about our current book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Hope to see you there.
Okay, the headline is cliché. But last week the Chicago Public Library announced The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe for the Fall 2008 selection of the "One Book, One Chicago" program. Check out the link above because there are lots of copies still available. Grab them while you can.
To celebrate, the city is screening the 1983 film version of The Right Stuff, starring Ed Harris, Dennis Quaid and Sam Shepard, at Grant Park on Thursday, August 14 at 8pm. Visit the library website for more information.
"What set Horan's life going in an entirely new direction was the moment she sat down with a yellow legal pad and a pen and began to tell a story. What truly mattered was the moment she decided that—long odds be damned—she would write about what intrigued her, in the way she wanted to, and try to get it published."
Dorothy the New Woman? In a timely article, the Guardian UK writes about The Wizard of Oz, our current book club selection:
"Dorothy in the book is definitely a modern heroine, if not a New Woman; she is the predecessor of many a plucky, stoic, staunch girl lead — neither a milksop nor a tomboy, but a little girl who embarks on her adventures in a spirit of curiosity, wonder and self-reliance."
"Hemon’s fiction has always been daring: Nowhere Man uses three or maybe four different narrators to rub in the silhouette of Jozef Pronek’s complicated life. The Lazarus Project is in some ways bolder still. It alternates chapters describing Brik’s travels with chapters imagining Lazarus Averbuch’s existence in the early twentieth century. It is both a historical fiction and an inquiry into the limits of historical fictionalizing."
It's official: the oft-talked about Brad-Pitt-and-Jennifer-Aniston-owned movie version of Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife is slated for release on Christmas of this year. Playing the lead rolls of Henry and Clare are Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams, neither of which I'd ever have imagined for the roles although both are sure to make this interesting and moving story sufficiently saccharine for the general movie-going public. I suppose I should just be happy that Brad and Jen were never in the runnings themselves.
The Telegraph lists its "50 Best Ever Summer Holiday Books." Picks include The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger and A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway.
The Lovable Losers Literary Revue is hosting an essay contest for fans of Chicago's lovable losers (a.k.a. the Cubs). Tune in this Sunday to "Memories of the Game" on WRMN, 1410-AM, scheduled to air from Noon to 5pm, to hear some of the best entries received so far. The contest continues through the summer and will conclude with at the Revue's September event with Rick Kogan. If you want to share your favorite story about life as a Cub's fan, visit the website to find out how to enter.
Chicago is losing another indie bookshop. Kate the Great's is closing July 25. Right now they are having a going out of business sale. All used books are 50 percent off. Visit Kate the Great's while you still can at 5550 N. Broadway.
Did you know 2008 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of author Richard Wright? Through a happy coincidence we are reading his acclaimed novel Native Son for our September book club meeting. The Times Literary Supplement recently featured a biographical article about Wright, where you can learn about his exile to France and the possible reasons why he's been neglected by critics since his death in 1960. [via]
How often does the Book Club have a reason to link to a video on YouTube? Not very. In fact, this is a first. But you have every reason to watch this neat video using photos and snippets from The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon. [via]
Books and writers with a Chicago connection in the news:
• Eliot Asinof, author of the book Eight Men Out about the Chicago Black Sox scandal of 1919, has passed away. [via]
• Chicago-born rapper Common has started The Corner Book Club for teens through his Common Ground Foundation. Currently the online book group is reading Long Way Gone, Memoirs of A Boy Soldier by Ishmaell Beah.
• Nancy Horan, the author of Loving Frank, a fictionalized account of Frank Lloyd Wright's love affair with Mamah Borthwick Cheney, talks about how she was "concerned that those who revere Wright's work might be angry that her novel would tarnish his legacy." [via]
1. 1984 by George Orwell
2. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
3. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
4. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
5. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
6. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
7. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
8. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
9. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
10. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Quarterly Conversation has a review of Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut in its latest issue, and notes, "Armageddon in Retrospect stands as a vantage point from which to survey Vonnegut's life's work, and his work has always been about war. Against war, to be precise; this book can be considered the devoted pacifist's final diatribe on his favorite subject."
• Aleksandar Hemon resists labels, according to the Los Angeles Times. The writer talks to the Times about his new book, The Lazarus Project and says, "What I like about literature are the transformative possibilities."
• Powells.com also has an excellent, lengthy interview with Hemon talking about The Lazarus Project. He tells the interviewer, "Memory is always incomplete. We always add things to it. It's impossible to perfectly remember things that happen to us."
• Last week the Tribune reviewed Elizabeth Berg's new story collection, The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted, and declared, "You love these stories. You ride their waves. You think you're in for an afternoon of sweet distraction, but soon a certain gravity sets in. Soon you're admiring not just Berg's quick-fire prose, but her compassion and her clarity, her capacity for twining pathos into comedy, for making her readers care."
Author L. Frank Baum was born today, May 15, in 1856. We will be reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz this summer for our August meeting. For fun, check out the fabulous digitized collection of "Oziana" from the University of Minnesota Libraries.
Round-up of recent reviews of books with a local angle:
• Both The Seattle Times and the Chicago Tribune review The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon. Seattle writes that Hemon "delivers a startling finish with a poignant twist," while the Trib calls him "a majestic talent."
• Armageddon in Retrospect, a collection of previously unpublished work by Kurt Vonnegut, gets the review treatment in The New York Times Sunday Book Review.
Local author Keir Graff, who is also a senior editor at Booklist Online, has a new short story in the May issue of Booklist. The publication, which has been around for more than 100 years, reviews new books, but this is the first time it has published a story. "Reading is My Business" is described by the author as "a hard-boiled metafiction about book reviewing—with a very local angle," and you can read the complete text online.
But, there are two great reasons to make Chicago Comics your stop for Free Comic Book Day on Saturday: local comics artist Jeffrey Brown and former Disney animator Christian Slade will be in-store signing books and comics from noon to 4pm.
Chicago Comics is located at 3244 N. Clark St. Call them at 773-528-1983 or visit the website for more info.
The Society of Midland Authors recently announced the winners of its annual awards. SMA is open "to authors who live in, were born in, or have strong ties to" states throughout the Midwest, including Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. This year's award winners and runners-up include several writers from the Chicagoland area, including Judith Testa, who won in the biography category for her book Sal Maglie: Baseball's Demon Barber, and Tony Romano, a finalist in the adult fiction category for his novel When the World Was Young.
The awards banquet will be held on Tuesday, May 13, at the Hotel InterContinental. It is open to the public. Tickets are $60. You can find out more on the website.
Ray Bradbury's classic novel Dandelion Wine was our September 2005 book club selection. Now you can make your own dandelion wine thanks to WikiHow. According to the tutorial's author, April and May are the best months for harvesting dandelions. This depends, however, on whether you are able to find a lawn or field in the Chicagoland area that still supports dandelions. Most spots have been thoroughly poisoned with pesticides and weedkiller.
Battleground Chicago by Frank Kusch has been republished by the University of Chicago Press to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the 1968 Democratic Convention. Find out more about the book at the UofC Press website, and even read an excerpt.
Benjamin Kunkel is rereading Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut and writes about it for the Guardian, calling the book "a funny and despairing vision of the last judgment done in comic-book style."
American Book Review compiled a list of the 100 best first lines from novels. The opening lines from Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Herzog by Saul Bellow, recent book club selection Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, plus many more writers with a local connection made the list.
• "Mr. Wonderful" by Daniel Clowes, which was serialized in the New York Times, has been nominated for an Eisner Award in the "Best Short Story" category. Chris Ware is also nominated for no less than three awards for Acme Novelty Library #18, Best American Comics 2007 and Sundays with Walt and Skeezix.
The Telegraph claims to have designed the perfect library, consisting of just 110 books. Titles are broken down by genre, from classics to literary fiction to sci-fi and children's books. A few writers with local connections made the list, including Ernest Hemingway, Philip Roth and past book club selection Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. Check out the full list here.
Perfectly coinciding with our reading Middlesex this month, Jeffrey Eugenides has a new story in a recent issue of the New Yorker. And, the story is set in Chicago. I expect everyone to be prepared to discuss it on Monday, in addition to Middlesex.
The Poetry Center of Chicago is accepting applications for its summer residency program. According to the Center's guidelines, one poet will be awarded a month-long poetry residency with housing. This residency is open to poets who have published no more than one book of poetry, not including self-published work. In addition to housing, the poet will receive a $1,000 stipend. The poet is responsible for his/her own travel and meal expenses. The submission deadline is Friday, May 9, 2008. You can download the application from the Poetry Center website here.
• The Denver Post reviews Windy City, the new political novel by Scott Simon, and calls it "nothing less than a passionate love letter to Chicago and its political machine."
• Tony D'Souza writes a long essay about Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee for the NBCC blog, in which he argues that the novel is "the definitive work on South Africa’s present state."
I've been MIA the last few weeks, mostly laid up in bed with a nasty flu and feeling very sorry for myself. But that's in the past, and we're overdue for a new question in Ink.
Thanks to everyone who responded to the last question about donating books. I was not aware of the community boxes someone mentioned, and I wholeheartedly endorse donating to the Newberry Library Book Fair, although in my personal experience, the book fair has a tendency to expand my book inventory more than it lessens it.
But this time I want to hear about e-books and e-book readers. Amazon.com claims it cannot keep up with demand for its Kindle e-book device, yet I don't know anyone who owns one. Do you? Do you read e-books or own an e-book reader? Why or why not? Leave your comments above in Ink.
• Scott Simon has written a new novel titled Windy City: A Novel of Politics. You earn no points for correctly guessing the story takes place in Chicago. The Washington Post has a review and says the book, "for all its emphasis on the sausage-factory venality of big-city politics, seems intended mainly as a big, sloppy valentine to the cultural jambalaya that is 21st-century Chicago." Awww. NPR also recently talked to Simon about the novel, and not only can you listen to the interview online, but you can also read the first chapter of Windy City.
Don't like the Gapers Block Book Club? Just want to try something new? Centerstage has a round-up of a few other local book clubs. For even more options, try Reader's Circle, an online database of book groups around the world, all contributed by users. Hey, we're listed there, although, ahem, I might need to update our entry.
• The Boston Globe has a review of Bleeding Kansas, the latest novel by Sara Paretsky, saying it "may not be a conventional mystery, but it is a suspenseful page-turner nonetheless."
• Bookslut reviews Ellington Boulevard by Adam Langer in its March issue, and explains that the novel is "a very different sort of book from Langer's earlier efforts: less personal, more full of spectacle, but ultimately one of the most enjoyable stories in recent memory."
What a difference a day makes. The Chicago Public Library has unveiled a radical web makeover. The shiny new website also includes a new online catalog that is faster, prettier and more user-friendly than the old, clunky search. And, finally, library users can place holds on materials through the online catalog. See something you want? Just click "Place on Hold" and enter your library account information, and the item can be sent to your nearest branch library for pickup. Awesome—and long overdue. Congratulations, CPL!
Local author and playwright Dwight Okita is one of ten finalists for Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Award with his novel The Prospect of My Arrival. Set in Chicago in 2025, the novel follows the consciousness of a fetus that has been inserted into the body of a 30-year-old man who must now decide whether or not to be born. You can read excerpts of this book and the work of the other nine finalists on the Amazon page and then vote for your favorite. The winner gets a publishing contract with Penguin to market and publish their work. That's a pretty sweet prize and it's kind of nice that the authors don't have to move into one house together and have their petty squabbles videotaped only to be voted out one at a time week by week. Don't get any ideas, Bravo. (Thanks for sending us the info, Mark!)
Need a quick read? Featherproof has two new mini-books for you to choose from: Women/Girls by Amelia Gray and In the Dream, by Jay Ponteri. Print, fold, staple and you're on your way.
...Tom Wolfe. Also going to Tom Wolfe is this year's Chicago Public Library Carl Sandburg Award, although the award won't actually be given until October, during the Chicago Book Festival. I wonder what Wolfe will wear to the ceremony.
The Morning News starts its fourth annual Tournament of Books on March 7, and Coudal Partners has opened the betting window. Lay $10 on the line for whichever book you think has what it takes to win it all, and you could be one of ten bettors to win a "huge prize package" (contents to be named later, but judging from past Coudal contests, it'll be worth it).
All the proceeds will go to First Book, "a nonprofit organization with a single mission: to give children from low-income families the opportunity to read and own their first new books." So you're not only having a little fun, but you're also helping teach kids to read. Everybody wins!
I understand the temptation to steal books from the library (not that I would do it or am advocating it, but I do understand a book’s inherent appeal), but a sculpture outside the library? The Sun-Times reports that the Umanita sculpture adorning the Newberry Library went missing over the weekend. The stainless steel piece, created by Chicago artist Virginio Ferrari, is six feet tall, weighs over 150 pounds and was attached to its marble base with a steel bolt - whoever wanted it clearly went through a lot of trouble to take it. With the sculpture valued at $65,000-$70,000, it’s unlikely the library would have the funds for a replacement, so don’t make it worse by forcing them to replace your stolen books, too.
• Mark Lawson compares the Oscar-nominated movie There Will Be Blood with Oil!, the Upton Sinclair novel on which it is based (Sinclair is also the author of The Jungle).
• Romance, suspense, young adult and children's book author Phyllis Whitney passed away last week. She was the children's book editor for the Chicago Sun, a predecessor of the Sun-Times and penned 76 books. Her obituary can be found in the Sun-Times and the Guardian has a nice profile of the author and her work as well.
The Guardian profiles the University of Chicago's Sudhir Venkatesh, whose memoir Gang Leader for a Day details his experience as a graduate student researching gangs in the Robert Taylor Homes. Venkatesh reveals why he's the "black sheep of [his] discipline," describes his research method of "hanging out," and talks about why he feels guilt but not regret.
In the Guardian, Jeffrey Eugenides traces the origin of the love story, all the way from ancient poetry of Catullus to the stories of Alice Munro, James Joyce and Vladimir Nabokov. After a year of reading and researching love stories for his collection My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead, which takes its title from one of Catullus's poems, Eugenides discovered that love itself is not necessarily the subject of a good love story:
"The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims - these are lucky eventualities, but they aren't love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name."
Our August 2005 Selection Heat Wave is coming to the stage, thanks to local playwright Steven Simoncic, Live Bait Theater and Pegasus Players. Chicago Magazine talks to both Simoncic and author Eric Klinenberg about the book's adaptation and whether a social disaster in 1995 is still relevant today. (Check out Slowdown for info on catching one of the preview shows.)
Five Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowships in the amount of $15,000 will be awarded to young poets through a national competition sponsored by the Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry. Established in 1989 by the Indianapolis philanthropist Ruth Lilly, the fellowships are intended to encourage the further study and writing of poetry. Applicants must be us citizens between the age of twenty-one and thirty-one as of March 31, 2008.
The University of Illinois's Rare Book & Manuscript library is dealing with a problem far worse than book worms -- mold infestation has forced it to close for several months. The Sun-Times reports that approximately 15,000 books may be affected in this collection, which includes papers from Carl Sandburg and pages from the Gutenberg Bible. The collection is valued at more than $1 billion. Thankfully, officials say the damage does not appear to be irreparable nor does the problem pose a health risk. The library is expected to close on February 25 and reopen on May 5.
• The Chicago Tribune reviews Adam Langer's new book, Ellington Boulevard, and declares the novel "proves that this gifted satirist and storyteller can move with ease from city to city and character to character."
• The Sun-Times books blog looks at My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead, the collection of love stories edited by upcoming book club author Jeffrey Eugenides.
• The 10th Annual Love is Murder Conference, dedicated to writers, publishers and readers of mystery and crime fiction, is going on this weekend at the Rosemont Wyndham O'Hare in Rosemont. Visit the website for all the details.
• Sara Paretsky has been nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award for her memoir Writing in an Age of Silence. The NBCC blog profiles the book and has an interview with Paretsky.
• The Guardian talks to Studs Terkel about his life and his memoir Touch and Go. When Gary Younge arrives at Terkel's home in Chicago, Terkel asks the British journalist, "Why was [Tony Blair] such a house boy for Bush?"
• Publisher's Weekly alerts us to a new book by Richard Roeper titled Debunked! Conspiracy Theories, Urban Legends, and Evil Plots of the 21st Century. Oh, please let it be true. It is scheduled to be published by Chicago Review Press in June.
Another round-up of recent Chicago-lit related stories from around the web:
• Jeffrey Eugenides talks to the London Telegraph about the anthology of short stories he edited, My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead. Proceeds from the book are being donated to 826Chicago. The book club will be reading his book Middlesex for our April meeting.
• Daniel Clowes, Aleksandar Hemon, George Saunders and Chris Ware have all contributed stories to The Book of Other People, an anthology edited by Zadie Smith.
• After finishing Diary of a Bad Year by Coetzee, reviewers moved on to Bleeding Kansas by Sara Paretsky. Read reviews of Kansas at the Chicago Tribune, New York Times and Washington Post.
• NPR has a story about Richard Wright's daughter, who is publishing her father's unfinished novel, Father's Law. The book club will be reading his book Native Son this year for our September meeting.
• Last, but certainly not least, registration is now open for winter and spring seminars at the Newberry Library. Seminars of interest to book club members include "From Oz to Wicked: The Wonderful World of L. Frank Baum," "At Home with Hemingway," "Richard J. Daley: Life and Times, Myths and Realities" and "The White City: Art and Culture at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893."
This week in Ink I'm asking a very typical end-of-the-year question: What is your pick for best book of 2007? This could be a book published in 2007, or maybe just the best book you read this past year. Let us know above in Ink.
Have you been leaving your Christmas shopping until the last minute? Books make great gifts and local area booksellers and publishers have got you covered.
The Book Cellar staff loves The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, and the store will be open until 1pm on December 24 for you real last-minute types.
Graham Cracker Comics has several locations around Chicago, but the Naperville store earns a special mention for its "No Sleep 'Til Xmas" event. The store will be open for 32 hours straight, from 11am Dec. 23 to 7pm Dec. 24, and will include food, Nintendo Wii and other gaming events. As the website says, "Tired of spending the holidays with your family? God knows we are. So why not squeeze in a few hours hanging out at your favorite comic shop?" Brilliant.
Quimby's is promoting its limited-edition tote bags, perfect, as the staff claims, for the "nerd that's impossible to shop for during the holidays."
The Seminary Co-op Bookstores announce they have "lots of new titles for those hard-to-shop-for readers in your life." Maybe you know someone who would love to receive The Origins of Reasonable Doubt: Theological Roots of the Criminal Trial by James Q. Whitman or History in a Glass: Sixty Years of Wine Writing from Gourmet by Ruth Reichl, both stocked at the Co-op right now.
Staff favorites at Unabridged Bookstore in Lakeview include Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford and The Laments by George Hagen.
Used Books
If anyone on your list might appreciate a special used, rare or out-of-print title, Bookworks, Myopic Books, Selected Works and Powell's are just a few of my favorite places.
The University of Chicago Press has dozens of titles listed in its special holiday gift guide. From The Colorful Apocalypse: Journeys in Outsider Art by Greg Bottoms to Ice: The Nature, the History, and the Uses of an Astonishing Substance by Mariana Gosnell, there is something for everyone from the U of C Press.
• In the New York Times Sunday Book Review Rachel Donadio wonders why J.M. Coetzee left South Africa and asks, "Were his 2002 move and his taking of Australian citizenship last year a betrayal of his homeland, or a rejoinder to a country whose new government had denounced one of his most important novels as racist?"
• Check out Fifth Wednesday Journal, a new biannual print literary journal based in Lisle, IL.
• E.L. Doctorow reviews Studs Terkel's memoir, Touch and Go, and says, "The memoir is a literary genre given to narcissistic indulgence, but you will find nothing of the sort here."
Nominations for the 50th Annual Grammy Awards have been announced, and Barack Obama tops the list in the spoken word category for his recording of The Audacity Of Hope: Thoughts On Reclaiming The American Dream. In 2006 Obama won the Grammy for spoken word for the recording of his memoir Dreams from My Father, which we recently read for the GB Book Club. Obama's fellow nominees this year include Maya Angelou, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and Alan Alda.
Or, "Reason Number 182 Why Newspapers Are Hemorrhaging Readers"
Critical Mass, the blog of the National Book Critics Circle, reports that the Chicago Sun-Times is cutting its Books section in half. This comes just a few months after the Trib moved its own Books section from Sundays to Saturdays, thus ensuring that it will never be read. After the move, Sun-Times began to crow about having "the only books section on Sunday." Maybe the new tagline should read, "now 50 percent less literate!" Way to go, Chicago papers.
I've been dealing with a wicked cold and nursing a sick cat, so I'm behind on my links once again. But here a just a few Chicago-lit related stories you may have missed recently:
The NPR show "On The Media" usually focuses on how the news is reported (or not reported, if appropriate). This past week's episode switched to a different medium: books. In addition to explaining the Kindle, it talked about how much of a difference Oprah and Amazon can make, and whether or not people are reading less as the recent NEA study discussed. Worth a listen.
Audrey Niffenegger writes a fairy tale for The Guardian. And, speaking of Niffenegger, the Renaissance woman has an exhibition of new work at Printworks Gallery going on now through December 29.
This has been one of those weeks, but I would like to close some tabs and catch up with some recent Chicago-related lit news from around the web:
The Christian Science Monitor has a short Q&A with Karen Abbott, author of Sin in the Second City.
UofC grad student Meredith McGuire recently won the First Chapters Romance Writing Competition sponsored by publisher Simon & Schuster. She will receive a $5,000 advance for her novel The Shadow's Kiss and see it published by S&S next year. Way to go.
Roth realizes that as he ages, he is one of the relative few who have this kind of time for reading. "The revolution that began with the movie screen, and the TV screen, which led to the decline of the literary culture, has just been accelerated by the new technological revolution," he says. "People are just not interested in reading a book two or three hours a night."
Fantagraphics, the publisher of the Eightball series by Daniel Clowes, has a few thoughts about the Connecticut English teacher who resigned after parents objected to his giving a copy of Eightball #22 to a freshman student. The commentary includes:
"Some are arguing that Eightball was a far too mature choice for a teacher to give a 13-year-old girl and clearly grounds for dismissal. Perhaps in some parts of the country, yes, but consider this school's approved summer reading list, which includes authors like Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, Augustyn Burroughs, Sylvia Plath, Graham Greene, and many more. In light of this rather progressive list, it's hard to believe that Eightball crosses any lines that any number of other titles from the approved list absolutely obliterate."
Cultural Chicago has a nice little piece detailing a short history of chicago crime fiction, starting from the genre's birth in England to the current crop of local writers who carry on the tradition.
• Craig Yoe, the editor of the excellent Arf comics anthologies, will be in Chicago tomorrow, September 19, giving a free lecture at Columbia College Chicago. It is open to the public. You can catch him and YOE! Studio co-founder Clizia Gussoni tomorrow at 6:30pm at 623 S. Wabash, Room 203. Call 312-344-7380 for more information. [via]
If you've ever considered joining a book club, but wanted to know more about proper etiquette (Do you have to read the whole book? Who decides what to read?), the Sun-Times offers the first in a three-part series to help you out. Among those interviewed are the vice president of the Great Books Foundation and our own co-moderator, Alice Maggio. Parts two and three to be published on Wednesday and Sunday. (And don't forget, new members to the GB Book Club are always welcome.)
• Interested in writing for a literary publication? The University of Illinois at Chicago is inviting submissions for the inaugural issue of the Packingtown Review. Visit the website for more information. [via]
• Just in time for our October book club selection, Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama has finally been published in the UK, and the Independent has a review.
Every Friday is Quotable Friday on the book club blog, where we highlight a notable passage from a book with a Chicago connection. This week's quotable is from Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury, our September 2005 book club selection.
"So, with the subtlest of incidents, he knew that this day was going to be different. It would be different also, because, as his father explained, driving Douglas and his ten-year-old brother Tom out of town toward the country, there were some days compounded completely of odor, nothing but the world blowing in one nostril and out the other. And some days, he went on, were days of hearing every trump and trill of the universe. Some days were good for tasting and some for touching. And some days were good for all the senses at once. This day now, he nodded, smelled as if a great and nameless orchard had grown up overnight beyond the hills to fill the entire visible land with its warm freshness."
• Today marks the birthday of Richard Wright, author of Native Son and the memoir Black Boy. He was born in Roxie, Mississippi in 1908 and died in 1960. You can find out more about his life and works here.
During this lovely three-day weekend, consider spending a few minutes weeding your bookshelves, and donating those old books to the Hyde Park Co-op Used Book Sale. They need your donations right now for the Co-op's annual Columbus Day weekend book sale. You can bring your donations to the lower level of the Hyde Park Co-op at 1526 E. 55th Street, or call 773-324-0750 to arrange for pick-up. Proceeds from the sale benefit the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference.
• The Guardian recently published an excerpt from JM Coetzee's new novel, Diary of a Bad Year. The book club will be reading Disgrace by Coetzee for November. And would you like a review to go with that excerpt?
• The Chicago Public Library has just announced that the fall selection for One Book, One Chicago is The Crucible by Arthur Miller. You can download the complete .pdf guide here. Not coincidentally, The Crucible is also part of the Steppenwolf Theatre's lineup this autumn.
I know it's only August, but there will be only one thing on my holiday wishlist this year: A History of Chicago by Bessie Louise Pierce, Volumes 1, 2 and 3. I promise to be good for the rest of the year. Thank you.
Pierce's 3 volume history has been out of print for decades, but the good folks at the University of Chicago Press have finally reprinted it in paperback, making this classic and essential work available to a new generation. The Chicago Tribune also applauds its return.
• Last weekend the Chicago Tribune reviewed Tribune writer David Mendell's new biography of Barack Obama, simply titled Obama. The online review includes video of Mendell talking about the book. Next month the book club will be reading about Obama in his words, as we tackle his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father.
"The only record I could listen to straight through was Guns n' Roses' Appetite for Destruction. When everything else was wrong, that record made it right. I could go back to it, always. No matter what, that record would make me feel all right. Appetite for Destruction. Guns n' Roses. That was it. That was my record. 'It's So Easy,' 'Nightrain,' 'Out ta Get Me,' then classics like 'Paradise City,' 'Welcome to the Jungle,' and probably the greatest song ever, of all time: 'Sweet Child o' Mine.' What was it about that song? I loved that song so much it sometimes made me want to kick a hole in the wall."
In this week's Quotable Friday excerpt, narrator Brian Oswald tells us about his favorite album in Hairstyles of the Damned by Joe Meno, our April 2005 Book Club selection.
Critcally-acclaimed writer George Saunders grew up on Chicago's South Side, and his new collection of essays, The Braindead Megaphone, will be appearing on store shelves in just a couple weeks. But right now he is blogging on Amazon.com and recently posted an interview with himself which includes:
Q: Wasn’t Bill Clinton the President of America?
A: Yes. Yes he was.
Q: I miss him. I wish he was still President. (A brief silence of mutual nostalgia for 1993)
Admittedly a bit older, but the Newberry has published a number of their more recent acquisitions online. If you're a fan of antique books (or maps or jigsaw puzzles), the scans of the materials they've posted are really neat.
Quimby's has posted a list of what's new in their store on Quimblog. Also interesting: a list posted of Quimby's bestsellers for the beginning of August. What are their readers interested in? "...evidently they are interested in both learning how to be funny and learning about female serial killers."
From the "won't someone please think of the children" department: A mother from Oak Lawn wants to ban the award-winning novel Fat Kid Rules the World by K.L. Going from the summer reading booklists of suburban Alsip, Hazelgreen and Oak Lawn School District 126. The book includes swear words and addresses drug and alcohol use. Read the complete story.
The Midwest Bookseller's Association recently announced the winners of the 2007 Midwest Booksellers’ Choice Awards, and guess which book won in the best fiction category? Yes, sir, the winner is Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, our August book club selection. You have just one week left to finish before our discussion on Monday, August 13, at The Book Cellar.
The Chicago Public Library Foundation recently announced that Sara Gruen is the 2007 recipient of the foundation's 21st Century Award. In addition, celebrated poet Nikki Giovanni will receive the 2007 Carl Sandburg Literary Award.
Coincidentally, just as we are introducing Water for Elephants as our August book club selection, the New York Times has an article about the book's enduring popularity. According to the article, "Despite the presence of not one but two Oprah Winfrey selections in bookstores, it is a sleeper hit from last year that has muscled its way to being a big paperback read this summer." A perfect summer read was exactly what we thought, too, and apparently the paperback is currently outselling both Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Go, little book, go!
The Chicago Public Library is having what it says is its "first-ever summer reading program designed especially for adult readers." The first-ever? Really? Well, then, the program booklet titled "City of Big Readers: Summer Reads for Adults" [.pdf] is long-overdue. It includes an excellent collection of Chicago-themed book lists organized around different topics, such as "Sidewalks and Skyscrapers," which includes books on Chicago architecture. The program guide also includes many past GB Book Club selections, including The Adventures of Augie March, Memory Mambo, The Man with the Golden Arm, Coffee Will Make You Black, The House on Mango Street and many more. So, GB Book Club members have already conquered the first part of the program: reading at least two books listed in the booklet. Then just fill out the registration form in the back of the guide, return it to your nearest CPL branch, and receive your free travel coffee mug. Congratulations!
Critical Mass, the blog of the National Books Critics Circle board of directors, posted an interview with Cheryl L. Reed, the books editor at the Chicago Sun-Times. Reed is quoted saying, "My main thrust has been in highlighting local authors and mainstream authors who come to town. We do a lot more interviews with authors now and I encourage our reviewers to take an attitude. I want our section to be entertaining and engaging even if readers don't go out and buy all the books we review."
In March 2006, the Gapers Block Book Club read I Sailed with Magellan by Stuart Dybek, a critically acclaimed collection of loosely connected short stories. Now the book has been adapted for the stage by Claudia Allen and is enjoying its world premiere at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater. It only runs through July 15, so don't delay.
And, are you a subscriber to the Book Club mailing list? If not, now might be a good time to join (hint, hint). See the right-hand column for sign-up information.
The Boston Globe reviews Elizabeth Berg's new novel, Dream When You're Feeling Blue, and declares that it "reads a little like a made-for-TV movie on the Lifetime channel — entertaining in the moment, but ultimately unmemorable." Ouch. In May 2007 the GB Book Club read one of Berg's earlier novels, The Year of Pleasures.
The Denver Post recently looked at Sara Paretsky's new memoir, Writing in an Age of Silence, which explores her "coming of age in 1950s and 1960s America, where the women's and civil rights movements helped her develop the writing voice that would become her fabled Chicago detective V.I. Warshawski."
Last week the Sun-Times also reported that the Chicago Public Library has ordered a whopping 1,000 copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which is scheduled to be released on July 21. Patrons will not be able to reserve a copy. Instead, the books will be available on a strictly first-come, first-served basis. Suburban libraries are also stocking up, and hundreds of people have already placed holds on the copies. Good luck!
The Sun-Times reported last week that Borders bookstore in Oak Park was ordered by a federal judge to reinstate a wrongfully fired employee and to pay the employee more than $300,000 for unpaid overtime and "time and expenses lost due to the company's retaliation against her." The employee, Clarice Prange, "worked 4,170 hours of unpaid overtime from 2001 to 2004 in hopes of winning a promotion and on the promise of compensatory time off." Way to go, Borders.
Ah, who doesn't enjoy a good "top ten" or "best of" list? So easy to write. So easy to argue about. Who should've made it that didn't? Who made it who shouldn't have? Who cares? This week New City released its annual Chicago Lit 50, with Oprah Winfrey leading the list of movers and shakers, while the Chicago Tribune lists its 10 favorite area bookstores.
The Midwest Independent Publishers Association recently announced their 2006 book awards, and our friends at Lake Claremont Press won several awards, including first place and a merit award in the "Midwest Regional Interest" category for Politics of Space: A History of Zoning in Chicago by Joseph P. Schwieterman and Dana M. Caspall and A Cook's Guide to Chicago by Marilyn Pocius, respectively. See the full list of winners on the MIPA website.
Crossing California by Adam Langer is about the intertwined relationships of three families living in West Rogers Park in the late 1970s, and it was our July 2005 book club selection. But now, through June 24, you can see the world-premiere stage adaptation of Crossing California at the Lifeline Theatre. Both the Trib and the Sun-Times have stories about the play. Tickets are as low as $14 (for students with ID), so what are you waiting for? Find out more at the Lifeline Theatre website.
Donna Seaman, host of the Open Books literary program on WLUW, has launched a new Open Books Radio website. The site includes downloadable .mp3 files of her interviews with authors like Joe Meno, Audrey Niffenegger, James McManus, John McNally and many more. Definitely worth a visit.
The venerable Studs Terkel turns 95 on May 16, and In These Times has an interview with the writer about his milestone birthday and his long-awaited memoir, Touch and Go. [Edited 5/16]
So, you may have heard that the Chicago Tribune is moving the Books section from Sundays to Saturdays beginning May 19. Yes, lame. My favorite part is where the letter states that "moving the section to Saturday will separate it from the Sunday newspaper, which already is bursting at the seams with essential reading." Like Transportation? Or the insipid and irrelevant Q section? Right.
The National Books Critics Circle responded to this and the recent elimination of the books editor at the Atlanta Journal Constitution by starting the Campaign to Save Book Reviews. There's been some great interviews and posts on the NBCC blog about the place of books criticism in modern journalism.
"What newspaper publishers and editors don't seem to get is that people who read books also tend to read newspapers. Our fates are tied together. Book readers often make up our most educated and informed newspaper audience. While they'll throw out the daily paper within minutes of reading, book readers tend to keep books sections longer. They'll stack them for weeks or tuck them into their purses and shoulder bags, foisting them upon bookstore clerks to help them find their next great read."
Reed concludes, "While the Trib's move makes the Sun-Times books section the only game around on Sundays in Chicago, it also means that inevitably there will be fewer readers cultivated, fewer points of views disseminated and, ultimately, fewer authors discovered, some in our own backyards."
I used to hold on to the Tribune Books sections, and often updated my to-read list after reading reviews in the paper. Will I still be able to do that after May 19? I don't know. How do you find new books to read or discover new authors?
The Tribune picked up the story of Women & Children First's financial woes. The article reiterates what the Windy City Times reported last week. Co-owner Linda Bubon is quoted in the Tribune story saying, "We both really want the store to keep going. But we really need to get the point across to people: You can't take us for granted. You can't enjoy browsing in here, and buy your books on the Internet. You can't bring your children to Story Hour, and buy your books at Borders."
It's good to see this story getting picked up by other media outlets.
Women & Children First has been a popular and respected independent bookstore in Chicago for almost 30 years, but the Windy City Times reports that the store may close before the end of this summer if people fail to support the store with their book-buying dollars. Co-owner Ann Christophersen is quoted as saying, "What it ultimately comes down to is: whether people in the community, and the city as a whole, decide it matters enough that we exist and then make their shopping decisions based on that. We want people’s support, and we need it now. By that we mean, that they buy their books here."
So stop browsing Amazon already, folks, and get over to 5233 N. Clark St. and lend your support.
In the bigger they are, the harder they fall department, the Sun-Times reports that Borders is looking to sub-let four of their Chicago stores, including the Lincoln Park store at 2817 N. Clark St. and the more recent location at 755 W. North Ave. If Borders can find tenants for these locations, the bookstores will close. Is this a ray of hope for Chicago's beleaguered independent bookshops? We'll see.
The Chicago Public Library has announced the Spring 2007 selection for One Book, One Chicago: James Baldwin's Go Tell It On the Mountain. The story spans a single day in the life of fourteen-year-old John Grimes and has been hailed as a masterpiece for its exploration into the black migration from the South to the North. As always, the CPL will host a plethora of events focusing on the book, from a spoken word and song performance to film screenings to neighborhood book club discussions. You can keep checking the CPL's calendar of events for updates, but Slowdown over on the main page will also have you covered with events being posted as they're announced.
Can you be a Chicagoan if you spend your entire work week in the city but retire to the suburbs every night? What about those who leave the city and drive the 'burbs everday? Neil Steinberg ponders this in his Sun-Times column, citing authors Nelson Algren and Carl Sandburg as two Chicagoans whose ties to the city fall in that grey area -- Sandburg, after all, lived mostly in Elmhust while Algren left Chicago in 1974, never to return. Steinberg concludes that the city belongs to those who keep it in their hearts, but maybe we're just eager to claim those writers who have made the city memorable as part of ours.
Dave Eggers' recent novel What is the What is a nominee for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award, and today the NBCC blog has a profile of the book, along with information on how to donate to organizations helping the Sudanese in the United States and Sudan.
Elizabeth Taylor lets us know how Studs Terkel is doing and digs up a great old essay about Terkel's work from the December 13, 1999 issue of The Nation, in which John Leonard writes, "To be sure...Studs talked to folks whose names we recognized, but the larger point was to listen to those who hadn't been heard—whose signals had been buzzed and jammed by the celebrity culture's static cling."
The Believer has a nice, long interview with Richard Powers in its February issue. Powers is an Evanston native and the author of several books including The Echo Maker, which recently won a National Book Award.
Elizabeth Crane, the author of our February book club book, All This Heavenly Glory, has a new story titled "What Happens When the Mipods Leave their Milieu" being serialized this week on Five Chapters. You can read all the parts here. [via the author's blog]
Publisher's weekly has an interview with Chicago artist Paul Hornschemeier about his new graphic novel, The Three Paradoxes. In the interview he shares, "I made the colossal mistake of simultaneously quitting my day job, taking on writing and drawing The Three Paradoxes and contributing regularly to Mome. Which is all well and good, but as it turns out, I have to pay my bills and rent, and though you'd think an independent cartoonist would make absolute mountains of revenue from his two and a half readers, it turns out this isn't quite the case."
Mayor Bart Peterson of Indianapolis has declared 2007 to be The Year of Vonnegut, to recognize the literary achievements of hometown hero, Kurt Vonnegut. Festivities include "One Book, One City" book discussions, films, music and...crafts?
"Why is it that members of the same family get appointments in several sections of government and only large firms seem to get representation on boards dealing with zoning and construction?"
Is Saul Bellow beyond criticism? Sam Tanenhaus thinks so. But, book club members who didn't quite finish The Adventures of Augie March last year may feel differently.
The Daniel Clowes Bibliography is one of the most comprehensive resources about the writer/artist. And, it just underwent a major update. Clowes is best known for his graphic novel, Ghost World, and the 2001 film adaptation of the novel he co-wrote with Terry Zwigoff. Clowes is originally from Chicago.
Author Sidney Sheldon passed away this week at the age of 89. He was a best-selling novelist, playwright, screenwriter and director, and received numerous awards throughout his career, including an Oscar, Tony award and Edgar Allen Poe award for mystery writing. His film screenplays included Easter Parade (1948) and the screen adaptation of Annie Get Your Gun (1950). On TV, Sheldon wrote the scripts for "I Dream of Jeannie," "Hart to Hart" and "The Patty Duke Show." Sheldon was born, and grew up, in Chicago. Read the obituaries at The Seattle Times, The Guardian and CNN.
The Midwest Booksellers Association now lists events from member bookstores on its website. Since the service just started, the events listings are a little thin, but hopefully the idea will catch on. The MBA is a nonprofit trade association for independent booksellers in Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. The group currently boasts more than 250 members.
Lumino Magazine has a brief profile of Quimby's Bookstore in Wicker Park and declares that "if you have a niche, hobby, or alternative lifestyle, this is the place to read up on it."
As promised, Oprah announced a new selection in her book club on Friday, and the winner is Sidney Poitier's The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography. You know, I might just read this one.
Oprah Winfrey is set to pick a new book for her Oprah's Book Club this Friday, Jan. 26. It will be her first selection since choosing Elie Wiesel's Night just over a year ago. We wait with bated breath.
The End, a new collection of short strips by Chicago artist Anders Nilsen hits shelves today. [via] I recently read Nilsen's graphic novel, Monologues for the Coming Plague, which is excellent. It's well worth seeking out.
The nominees for the National Book Critics Circle Awards have been announced, and What is the What by Chicago-native Dave Eggers has been nominated in the fiction category. You can check out the full list of nominees at the NBCC website. You can also read a series of partial excerpts from the book at The Believer site, starting here with Part One.
The Sun-Times remembers the first Mayor Daley today as we near the 30th anniversary of his death. They've reprinted both the original story and Mike Royko's tribute, which ran the day after his death. (The tribute is also printed in the 1988 editon of Royko's Boss, which I expect all of you to be reading for January.)
United States Artists, a nonprofit arts organization, awarded one of their $50,000 fellowships to Chris Ware, the only Chicago author on the list of the first fifty recipients.
From the main page, a group of Harry Potter enthusiasts is scoping out Chicago for the site of a week-long Harry Potter conference scheduled for August 2008. While the conference will provide a platform for an academic discussion of the books, more jovial activities are also planned. There will be a welcoming dinner where participants will sit at their "house table" and a Muggle version of Quidditch (turns out Soldier Field was a little too pricey). No word yet on outrageous protests due to the wizard and witchcraft themes, but I'll keep you posted.
Forbes has an interesting article on the history of book burning, citing Anthony Comstock's 1866 New York Society for the Suppression of Vice as the original fire behind the, um, fires. It dates back much further than that, though, with speculations that the most famous book burning was at the Royal Library at Alexandria in Egypt (the exact date is disputed, but suffice it to say it was a long, long time ago). Unfortunately, the practice of book burning is still alive and the article introduces us to two Michigan pastors who held burnings of the Harry Potter books and one Maine pastor who, unable to get a burning permit, cut the books up instead. Says notorious free speech proponent Ray Bradbury (my literary hero and the author of our September '05 Book Club pick) of the pastor in Maine: "He sounds like a stupid man...he should just go somewhere, sit down and shut up." Amen, Mr. Bradbury. Amen. [via]
For a related story in old-but-still-good news, check out this father who, though never having read the seminal Bradbury work, pushed to have his daughter's school district remove Fahrenheit 451 from the curriculum. This occurred during Banned Books Week, no less. Something tells me the blinding irony is completely lost on him. But a bright spot can be found in this update that tells of fellow students circulating a petition in support of the book. They seem to have gotten Bradbury's message. [via]
Chris Ware recently appeared at the Wisconsin Book Festival with fellow comic artist Marjane Satrapi for the Wisconsin Public Radio's "To the Best of Our Knowledge" program. If you missed it because you were, you know, in Chicago, the WPR website has the entire talk, unedited, which you can download in mp3 format (scroll down to "Websites" to find the link) and Isthmus has a video of Ware's segment. [Thanks, So-Called Austin Mayor.]
September 23-30, 2006 is Banned Books Week, an annual event sponsored by the American Library Association designed to remind all of us in the United States to excercise our intellectual freedom. Below is a list of a few banned books by authors with a Chicago connection. Pick one up at a local library and say to everyone you know: "I read banned books."
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser This classic novel about a young man who drowns his pregnant lover was first published in 1925 and was based on a true story. It was banned in Boston, Mass. in 1927 and burned by the Nazis in Germany in 1933. [via]
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms is the story of Frederic Henry, an American ambulance driver on the Italian front during World War I, who falls in love with Catherine Barkley, an English nurse he meets while recovering from injuries in the hospital. The book was originally published in 1929 and banned in Italy the same year. It was later banned in Ireland in 1939 and has faced several documented challenges over the past several decades. [via]
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway A young American professor uses his sabbatical to go and fight in the Spanish Civil War.
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway Once, twice, three times a banned author. Papa Hemingway's first full-length novel, which was first published in 1926, was also banned several times. The Sun Also Rises is about a group of American and British expatriates living in Paris after World War I.
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair We read this classic Chicago story about Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant who goes to work in the city's notorious stockyards, for the Book Club last year. Among other incidents, The Jungle was "banned from public libraries in Yugoslavia" in 1929 and "burned in the Nazi bonfires because of Sinclair's socialist views" in 1933. [via]
Native Son by Richard Wright This violent and tragic novel about Bigger Thomas, a young black man who accidently kills a white woman in 1930s Chicago, has been challenged many, many times since its publication in 1940 for its graphic language and sexual content.
The Chicago Public Library officially announced today that the Fall 2006 selection of the One Book, One Chicago citywide book club is Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. Interpreter of Maladies is a best-selling collection of short stories which won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Visit the official One Book, One Chicago website to find out more, and mark your calendar for October 9 at 6pm, when Jhumpa Lahiri is scheduled to appear at the Harold Washington Library to talk about the book.
Are you someone looking to meet new people? Or maybe you just can't get enough of our July 2006 book club pick, The Man with the Golden Arm. In either case, consider checking out "Nelson Algren's Chicago," a class being offered this fall through Continuum, Loyola University Chicago's new continuing education program. According to the course description, the class will focus on The Man with the Golden Arm and Algren's prose poem, Chicago: City on the Make.
I heard an unconfirmed rumor that the Fall 2006 selection for One Book, One Chicago may be Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, which the Gapers Block Book Club read last year. True or not, the official announcement for the next pick for the citywide book club is due later this month, so we'll have to wait and see.
In case you didn't know, 2006 marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Jungle, so the book has been receiving much renewed attention this year.
"But for all its packaging, the book still carries a whiff of homework, and if we already dutifully absorbed the idea that the turn-of-century meat industry was brutal and exploitative as adolescents, what's to be gained from reading it again?"
"One hundred years ago, Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, his gut-churning exposé of the meatpacking industry that schoolchildren still read today in their history classes. A well-merchandized sensation, it sold 100,000 copies in the first year, millions after that, was almost immediately translated into seventeen languages, spurred an uptick in vegetarianism, greased the way for the Meat Inspection and Pure Food and Drug acts, and transformed its 27-year-old Socialist author into a celebrity."
"It is difficult to think of a book, let alone a novel, that has forced the state to respond in such a comprehensive manner. And yet, while Sinclair was delighted with both sales and fame, it was not quite the response that he intended. He had dedicated the book to the "Workingmen of America" and had set out to make an emotional appeal to the nation over the plight of the working poor and the prospects of a socialist alternative. Instead he had generated a public panic about food quality."
If you missed reading the The Jungle last year for the GB Book Club, now may be the perfect time to pick it up.
"No critic alive has reviewed more movies than Roger Ebert, and yet his essential writings have never been collected in a single volume—until now."
The University of Chicago Press is publishing Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert this fall. The anthology promises to collect some of the best of Ebert's writing over the past forty years, including interviews, reviews and essays. Visit the publisher's information page to view the full table of contents. The Chicago Blog also has an excerpt from an advance review of the book.
We all know how great and fun a good book club can be, so it's exciting that 826CHI has started their own. Called "Globiblio," their club focuses on reading authors from all over the world. The meetings will be on the first Tuesday of the month and participants are encouraged to BYOB and BYODIBTCWETMIYSD (Bring Your Own Dish Inspired by the Country We Explored that Month If You So Desire). Upcoming reads include JM Coetzee of South Africa, Michael Crummey of Canada and Jaroslav Haske of Czechoslovakia. Room is limited, so sign up if you're interested by emailing info[at]826chi[dot]org.
As it celebrates its 100th year of publication, the Chicago Manual of Style will also celebrate a new birth, this one of the digital variety. Scheduled for release in September, the Chicago Manual of Style Online will feature a fully searchable version of the 15th edition along with added tools for editors, writers and publishers. The only drawback is that it'll cost you $25 for one year of use, but if you register as a member you'll be notified of the release and be offered a free 30-day trial. It could really be worth it.
Richard R. Guzman, editor of the recently published anthology Black Writing from Chicago: In the World, Not of It?, was recently on WBEZ's "848" show. You can listen to the segment online. [via]
The folks at the Chicago Public Library alerted us to the complete schedule of July book club discussions at library branches throughout Chicago. This month groups are reading books such as Dragon Bones by Lisa See, Old School by Tobias Wolff, Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond and more. So, if one book club just isn't enough for you, check it out.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has an interview with J.A. Konrath, author of the popular Jacqueline Daniels mystery series and an instructor at the College of DuPage in suburban Glen Ellyn. Find out more about Konrath at his official website.
One of the first books we read for the Gapers Block Book Club was Upton Sinclair's classic muckraking novel, The Jungle. Now, 100 years after the publication of that book, there is a new biography of the author. The book is Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair by Anthony Arthur, and it has been getting many positive reviews. Read what the Chicago Sun-Times and USA Today had to say about Radical Innocent.
I've been on a major biography kick lately, and I might have to add this one to the bunch.
— Alice Maggio
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This Month's Selection:
November 2009
Travel Writing
by Peter Ferry
In this debut novel, high school English teacher Peter Ferry witnesses a fatal car accident and becomes obsessed with learning about the life of the victim, Lisa Kim.
Meet & Discuss
Join us at The Book Cellar at 4736-38 N. Lincoln Ave. (map) to discuss the book. We'll meet on Monday, November 9, at 7:30pm. New members are always welcome!
November 9 Travel Writing by Peter Ferry
October 12 Lords of the Levee by Herman Kogan and Lloyd Wendt
September 14 The Echo Maker by Richard Powers
August 10 La Perdida by Jessica Abel
July 13 Every Crooked Pot by Renee Rosen
June 8 Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
May 11 Passing by Nella Larsen
April 13 Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
March 16 The Book of Ralph by John McNally
February 9 A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean
January 12 A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
The Gapers Block Book Club is a reading group dedicated to reading fiction by Chicago area authors and nonfiction works about our city. We read a new book every month, and new members are always welcome.
In Person
The book club meets on the second Monday of the month at The Book Cellar bookstore in Lincoln Square (map).
By Email
Sign up for the book club mailing list to receive reminders about upcoming meetings and other special announcements.
Editors: Alice Maggio & Veronica Bond, bookclub@gapersblock.com
The Young Chicago Authors program will soon travel to Washington, D.C. to receive the 2009 Coming Up Taller Award, to be bestowed on them by Michelle Obama. The Coming Up Taller Award is a project of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities that recognizes and supports after-school and extra-curricular arts and humanities programs for children, honoring "programs that offer exceptional learning experiences in the arts and the humanities and that have a tangible effect on the lives of young people as evidenced through improved academic scores, enhanced life skills, and positive relationships with peers and adults." As written in their mission statement, YCA "encourages self-expression and literacy through creative writing, performance and publication," with programs geared toward ages 13-19 that feature, among other things, poetry slams, a female-oriented webzine called "GirlSpeak" and the opportunity to be published in their own print magazine "Say What." Says Dr. Robert Boone, founder of YCA, in a press release, "Young Chicago Authors is deeply honored to accept this award on behalf of all of the young people and teachers who have made creative writing a living part of Chicago." Congratulations to everyone who has put their time and hard work into the program--the award is undoubtedly well-deserved.
In this debut novel, high school English teacher Peter Ferry witnesses a fatal car accident and becomes obsessed with learning about the life of the victim, Lisa Kim.
