- Last I heard, books didn’t have a ratings system. Last I heard, despite the movie ratings system, kids got their hands on R-rated movies anyway. Last I heard, Wendy Day hadn’t laughed once since the late ’80′s. (via The Millions)
- Vonnegut (and others) on Buchwald. (via Rake)
- Ian Rankin is interviewed by the Inverness Courier. Apparently, Inspector Rebus has a run-in with George W. Bush in the penultimate Rebus novel, The Naming of the Dead.
- At MetaxuCafe, Damon Garr wants to know how much you read. If I had to peg down a number, I spend perhaps at least three to four hours a day reading something, much of that during my commute time. I generally try to get in a lengthy reading session on the weekend. There’s often nothing more satisfying than five or six uninterrupted hours immersed in a book. I read constantly on planes, which is why I enjoy traveling. (I was able to finish two and a half books on my last flight.) I still manage to have some semblance of a life, despite all this. And of course, like any addict, I constantly crave more, which, now that I think about it, probably makes me more obsessive about books than I realized.
- Also at MetaxuCafe, Bud Parr takes a look at James Meek’s The People’s Act of Love. I haven’t read this yet, but I’ve received somewhere around seven copies of this book in the mail. Really, seven copies? Do you take me for a caffeinated hydra?
- Another reason to like Hardy: he wrote love poems to his wife at 72. It’s too bad he didn’t have any Viagra. He really could have shown Emma a good time, particularly if he thrusted in time with the meter. (via Kenyon Review)
- Mark Sarvas talks with NBCC president John Freeman.
- Robert Redford has demanded an apology for Iraq. Yeah, Redford, that’ll show ‘em. I hereby demand an apology from Redford for all the meetings he’s shown up hours late for and all the people he’s expected to deify him over the years.
- When used bookstores go horribly wrong.
- Sarah has a list of the Edgar Award nominees.
- The 20 Richest Women in Entertainment.
- Stephen Colbert meets Bill O’Reilly.
- Matt Bell on Ander Monson’s latest.
- Victoria Beckham a must read? I don’t think so, Penguin.
- Andy Warhol’s films revisited. (via CultureSpace)
- Joan Acocella on House of Meetings.
Roundup
– January 19, 2007Posted in: Roundup
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
Seven copies of The People’s Act of Love? Surely you intend to hold some sort of contest that I can win so you can mail me one. Right?
The used-bookstores-go-horribly-wrong link (which concerns a private residence converted into an utterly chaotic “store”) brings to mind two stores which were similarly disheveled. One was Zimmerman’s Used Books in Louisville, which closed around 1983. The place, in business nearly a century, was almost impassable in its last couple of decades. But perhaps understandably so, since its owner was still running the place when he died at age 101 in 1976, and his son, who succeeded him until entering a nursing home when the store closed, was already suffering from Alzheimer’s when his dad was living. The advantage to the disorder, though, was that if one saw a book one wanted in there, it would still be there three years later – even a first edition of Beckett’s “Stories & Texts For Nothing” for $7. Another such example was a bookstore in downtown San Francisco – I forget the name – which I used to visit in the 1990s. It was as disorganized as the store described in the link, but instead of being in a house it was in a building that seemingly was the size of a 747 hangar.