Issue # 156
Meredith Sue Willis's
Books for Readers # 156
September 25, 2012
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In this Issue:
Two Books on Religion
New Feature! Almost Heaven White-Water Outfitters and Book Club
Announcements and More
Thomas D. Praino's short story "Carmen's Blood Song"
Good Reading Online
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It seems that people are beginning to take a look at the world of the Born Again/ fundamentalist Christians from the inside out. I recently wrote an outside-reader evaluation of a memoir about that world for a publisher, and one of my students in an advanced novel class was writing a novel set among Catholics with a rigid practice that was at once exotic and very familiar to me.
And now here comes Troy Hill's strange and hilarious A REVELATION. Hill is a playwright, poet,
The story is told by a friendly, everyday, super-contemporary girl to whom the Rapture and end times unfold just as she was taught they would. The whoosh up to Heaven and the battle with the Antichrist don't stir her family as much as the fact that she falls in love with a Muslim boy. The lovers are funny and realistic in how they are separated by their different expectations. Aazim is a nerd with a good body and far more romantic than Dee, who is feisty and brave and stands up for the outsider. The first half of the book is all teen age struggles with cultural differences in an atmosphere of xenophobic suspicion.
In order to communicate with Dee, Aazim trains himself to write English in Face Book shorthand (I Lv U 4ever). Dee, who knows she shouldn't love someone who hasn't accepted Jesus Christ as his Personal Lord and Savior tries to play the field, but keeps turning back to Aazim. Both sets of parents, needless to say, want to throw obstacles in the path of love.
The second half of the book is something else again. Matter-of-factly, as experienced by Dee, we see angels, The Lord, and all sorts of beings described in the Book of Revelation. Scholars have a lot of interesting things to stay about the Biblical Revelation, by the way– mainly that it was never meant to predict the future and is probably about Emperor Nero and the Roman Empire. For Dee and her family, however, this is a script for the future, which is how Troy Hill plays it in the second half of the novel. There are beasts, there are terrible tribulations on earth. Dee gets to be an assistant to an angel named Sheeba and open the gates of the Fiery Pit. (Dee is qualified to do this because she's still a virgin-- Angel Sheeba apparently isn't eligible herself). Towards the end, after several confusing (but Biblically accurate) Battles and Beasts and 666 stamps on your choice of forehead or hand– Dee finally shouts that it is all Unfair, and switches sides.
I would have liked more of the Pre-Rapture story: the fundamentalist girl and Muslim boy falling in love. Still, the mixing of iPhones and Fiery Pits and the creatures with eyes all over their wings is brilliantly done and unlike anything I've ever read before. Give give this one a try–especially if you like to see ideas carried to their logical and entertaining extremities.
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If you don't care for apocalyptic fantasy, try Donna Meredith's touching THE GLASS MADONNA. This story is set mostly in the mid twentieth century among families who worked the vast glass factories in north central West Virginia. Much of the book takes place in the small city that had the hospital where I was born, Clarksburg. It is the story of a family, and a young woman, particularly that young woman's attempt to make a marriage work and then to move on when it does not. Sarah's husband turns out to be abusive, but she is stronger than she
One of the best things about the novel is that we know Sarah has many talents and is ambitious and loving– but it doesn't stop her from getting in a hole. And, even more important, getting in a hole isn't the end of her life. Much of the novel is about how she slowly, and with help, climbs out again. One support comes from her father, an alcoholic, who manages to pull himself together at important junctures.
There is a mystery about who Sarah's grandmother is, and some cross-cut stories from the past about the grandmother and others, as well as some passages from her husband's point of view. In the end, though, it is Sarah's story: her mistakes, her determination, and her passion for the traditionally male-only profession of glass blowing. One of the great assets of this novel is the information and sense of work life that it brings to us: life in the glass factories, but also Sarah's discovery of her talent as a teacher. In the end, she becomes an independent woman, and finds a way to practice her art as well.
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Look also for Donna Meredith's new nonfiction book, MAGIC IN THE MOUNTAINS: THE AMAZING STORY OF CAMEO GLASS, and her earlier novel THE COLOR OF LIES at her website, http://www.donnameredith.com.
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MORE NOTES ON RECENT READING
I've just finished James Wood's book HOW FICTION WORKS, one of a handful of excellent books that I've
used over my life as a guide to reading and a point of departure for thinking about writing. My earliest, which I read shortly before I went off to college, was John Ciardi's HOW DOES A POEM MEAN.
James Wood talks a lot about how Gustave Flaubert essentially invented the modern novel, so I finally read A SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION. I found it hard to get into: difficult to identify with Frederic Moreau (or anyone else), as the entire cast of characters with one or two minor exceptions is deeply selfish and unappealing. Yet– here's the real magic-- somewhere towards the last quarter, whether because I made the big commitment of reading so long, or because there was some critical mass of Flaubert's accumulation of detail and the recurrence of all those people (always with a slightly new angle, a slight refraction of light), I was suddenly caring for the wasted lives and sadness of change. The novel which began random and frivolous had become rich and resonant. How did Flaubert make that happen? What if I hadn't known this was a classic? Would I have kept reading?
Also in the nineteenth century mood, I reread George Eliot's SCENES FROM CLERICAL LIFE, her very first published fiction. She was not a beginning writer, only a beginning fiction writer, and these stories show her moving toward the novel, her
real form. In the longest story, "Janet's Repentance," we have the first of Eliot's tall, dark haired, intelligent but flawed women. Janet yearns to be active in the world, but lets a brutal husband drag her into alcoholism.
The clerics in the stories are mostly admirable in different ways, especially Mr. Gilfil, who isn't very pious, but had a great love, and Mr.Tryan who is evangelical and sweet but morbidly self-sacrificing because of a bad act in his youth.
Then, from the very end of the nineteenth century, I read J. McHenry Jones' HEARTS OF GOLD, brought to my attention by Phyllis Moore in Issue 131 of this newsletter. This is the one published novel of a man
who was a college president and extremely active in education and fraternal organizations-- someone who is not primarily a novelist. It has some amateurish writing and some wildly melodramatic scenes, but other parts are breathtakingly good.
Jones himself and his major characters are all members of the educated elite of African Americans of their time. Jones shows off the clever repartee of young doctors and journalists and teachers, and some of it grates on the ear, but there are also many scenes that pop off the page– the description of a lynching, for example, without flourishes and flowery language, and the description of the horrific convict lease mines, which were a privatization of convict labor after Reconstruction that in many ways circumvented the abolition of slavery and was a precursor of our present prison system with its vast holding of young black men.
Above all, Jones writes with conviction. He is proud of his upper class "Afro-Americans;" he grants his women characters a lot of energy and self-reliance; he creates a satisfyingly white villain who seriously considers marrying a mixed race woman to get her inheritance– but decides instead to kidnap her friend and to forge a will. This ubiquitous character is at the heart of much of the melodrama, but he also functions as an emblem of the pervasive animus of white people toward the struggling blacks.
I enjoyed and recommend this book from West Virginia University Press 's African American project. It is not high literature (Flaubert would probably sniff at it), but it is a vital hybrid of idealism, love story, melodrama, and some brutal facts about African-American life after the end of Reconstruction.
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Finally, just to prove that I also read contemporary books (although this one is set in the court of Henry VIII!), I read BRING UP THE BODIES by Hilary Mantel. This novel continues her portrait of Thomas Cromwell and the Court of Henry VIII, begun in WOLF HALL (see notes in Issue 142) and tells how he manufactured the court case necessary to have Anne Boleyn (and a number of others) beheaded. Cromwell does this in pragmatic service to the King, but he is also also perhaps taking revenge for the downfall of his mentor, Cardinal Wolsey.
He plays a brutal and deadly game with more enthusiasm that we might like.
I read an online review of it in the NEW YORKER (by James Wood, mentioned above) that was admiring, but found that Cromwell's thinking process to be anachronistic because it seemed too real. Wood's example is Cromwell thinking about his son, and listing his qualities. Wood sees this as something modern-- to detail one's child's qualities. But it reminded me of a passage in a Michel de Montaigne's essay in which he lists his own qualities, bad and good, and Montaigne, of course, was a rough contemporary of Cromwell.
SOMETHING DIFFERENT: TWO BOOKS ON RELIGION
Joel Weinberger reviews THE ESSENTIAL TALMUD by Adin Steinsaltz and PERMISSION TO BELIEVE by Lawrence Keleen: "[THE ESSENTIAL TALMUD] was a solid intro to the structure and thought process of the Talmud. I started reading this because I've started doing 'Daf Yomi,' reading a page of Talmud a day, and this has been a good jump start in understanding what I'm reading. A lot of the really good stuff is the contextual information about the Talmud. While the tractates themselves are fairly straightforward as to their content,THE ESSENTIAL gives a great historical and religious context for what the Talmud is, where it came from, and why it's important.
"A note on the author and his style: Steinsaltz is considered one of the absolute great modern Talmud scholars, and is definitely a religious figure. Thus, there is inevitably a religious view on the Talmud within the book. However, the book is about as objective as you could hope, given that it is a religious text. While the author makes assumptions at times, and certainly shows a reverent awe for the Talmud, he also is candid about the historical context and the authors.
"A few relatively minor complaints. Steinsaltz could have provided more examples. He often describe parts of the Talmud, for example how the Sages would tell stories, without providing examples. Similarly, the book could use some deeper explanations such as on the logical techniques of the Gemara.
"A valiant attempt at his goals, but Kelemen falls well short [in PERMISSION TO BELIEVE] from my view. And this is coming from a Believer. To me, chapter 2 is the only chapter that I find truly compelling. In fact, the morality argument is effectively how I came to believe, and Kelemen makes a fine run at the argument. Additionally, chapter 5 on Jewish history as an indicator of the Divine is interesting, but ultimately falls flat."
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DREAMA FRISK RECOMMENDS
Dreama Frisk writes to say she is reading something "which is close to having a friend beside me: The Paris Review Interviews vol. 11. There is an introduction by Orphan Pamuk. The interview with Isaac Bashevis Singer particularly strikes me. His belief in his own writing is a model and very down to earth."
THE ALMOST HEAVEN WHITE-WATER OUTFITTERS AND BOOK CLUB READS MARY LEE SETTLE'S O BEULAH LAND
We are beginning a new feature in the Books for Readers Newsletter, which is occasional review discussions from an online book club.
They say of themselves: "The Almost Heaven White-Water Outfitters and Book Club is a group of avid readers reluctant to tackle any real West Virginia rapids but eager to dive headlong into the written word, especially words about West Virginia or Appalachia. Periodically, we join via email to discuss our latest choice. As we do, we'll offer our comments, provide a rating, and hope you'll enjoy the ride. In the raft are June Langford Berkley, Charles Lloyd, Eddy Pendarvis, Carter Taylor Seaton, and Phyllis Wilson Moore. Tyler Chadwell and Terry W. McNemar join us occasionally. Each member is from West Virginia and several are authors in their own right."
This month's discussion was Mary Lee Settle's O Beulah Land. Read it here.
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PROSE NARRATIVE OF THE MOUNTAIN SOUTH
Phyllis Wilson Moore writes articles the literature in West Virginia and other parts of Appalachia and the Mountain South. Take a look at one of her book lists at The Literature of the Mountain South .
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READ ONLINE
The Fall 2012 issue of THE INNISFREE POETRY JOURNAL, is now available on a computer near you at www.innisfreepoetry.org. The focus is on the poems of Martin Galvin, whose most recent book is SOUNDING THE ATLANTIC.
Don't miss Sondra Spatt Olsen's story "The Sigh of the Hard-Pressed Creature" . This journal is putting neglected wonderful writing from small magazines online for contemporary readers.
ANNOUNCEMENTS, NEWS, CONTESTS, WORKSHOPS, READINGS ETC.
Special for e-readers: Thomas D. Praino's short story "Carmen's Blood Song is a lovely tale of gypsy life and death in Spain. Inspired by Garcia Lorca's poem, "El paso de la siguiriya," it dramatizes the passion and pain that flower from a people's art.
Ken Bain's new book is just out from Harvard University Press: WHAT THE BEST COLLEGE STUDENTS DO. It is a study of highly creative people and how they got to be that way-- and how anyone can be creative. An excerpt appeared recently in the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal . Here also is a link to an article that appeared in Inside Higher Education about the book. The book received the 2012 Virginia and Warren Stone Prize for an Outstanding book on Education and Society.
If you're in San Francisio: There is a Litquake event on Sunday October 7, 2012 at 2:00 at Bird and Beckett Bookstore, 653 Chenery Street San Francisco, CA 94131-- FIVE WRITERS WHO CAME OF AGE IN THE RADICAL '60. Sunday, Oct. 7, 2012 at 2:00 P.M.. The panel includes Elaine Elinson, Hilton Obenzinger, Jonah Raskin, Nina Serrano, and Barry Wildorf.
Rosary O'Neill's latest anthology AFTERLIFE: GHOSTLY COMEDIES has just been published. There will be an open celebration at the Hudson Opera House, 327 Warren Street in Hudson, New York, on Sunday, October 28, 2012 from 1:30 to 2:30 PM.. For more information please call the Hudson Opera House at 518-822-1438 or visit their website. http://www.hudsonoperahouse.org/
The Unbearably and The Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses Perform for Global Event: 10000 Thousand Poets for Change @ A Gathering of the Tribes. 285 E. 3rd Street (between Avenues C and D), NYC Saturday, September 29, 7:00 – 10:00 PM, donation.
The final volume of Barry Wildorf's 70's trilogy is now available: THE FOURTH CONSPIRATOR, "a journey to the dark side of 'family values.' " The trilogy follows protagonists Nate Lewis and Christina Lima from their origins in Gloucester, MA through San Francisco to Mendocino County during the turbulent 1970s. The paperback can be purchased at Wildorf's website, and it is available as an E-book at Amazon:.
The prestigious SMALL MAGAZINE REVIEW has picked MOBIUS, THE POETRY MAGAZINE for the 5th consecutive year as one of the best poetry magazines. Staff includes Editor-in-Chief Juanita Torrence-Thompson is assisted by Senior Associate Editor Dominick Arbolay, Associate Editor and proofreader, Cindy Hochman of Harrison/Hochman "100 Proof," Proofreader Barbara Hantman all in NY and Ellaraine Lockie and Bill Roberts from the West Coast and mid-west. See website soon and watch for announcement of MOBIUS' special 30th Anniversary New York reading at: www.mobiuspoetry.com .
Issue # 157
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Meredith Sue Willis's
Books for Readers # 157
November 4, 2012
Alice K. Boatwright Herta Muller Reamy JansenIt looks better online! -- Read latest changes and corrections online
MSW Home
In this Issue:
Recommendations for Gift-Giving Season
Dolly Withrow Reviews A Land More Kind Than Home
Wanchee Wang Reviews Loud in the House of Myself
The E-Reader Report with John Birch
Announcements
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For Back Issues, click here.
I want to begin this issue with a book of Vietnam War novellas, COLLATERAL DAMAGE by Alice K. Boatwright. The stories are linked by men and women damaged in the war itself or in service during the war or in the long and continuing aftermath of the war. There is a late 60's story, an 80's story, and a 90's one. The first one, "1968: Getting Out," is narrated by Toby Woodruff, who represents his generation's existential confusion. Torn between refusing to participate in the war and working against it, like his friends, or actually going to war, he fumbles for a middle ground. He joins the Navy believing he can get a noncombatant job. Then, when he realizes he is shipping out to the war zone, he takes a bottle of Seconal and barely survives. The bulk of the story takes place in the navy's psychiatric unit as he tries to find his way out.
Here the story is structured as an interesting reshuffling of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. There is a wildly charismatic and bitter burn victim and an obsessive-compulsive but sensitive giant. The unpleasant ward is not, however, a snake pit where the objective is to raise hell against the
system. There is plenty of violence and suffering, but it isn't the staff versus the patients. There is no individualized force of evil comparable to Big Nurse. Everyone is confused, and everyone is in pain. Toby, in fact, gets out. He figures out what he wants and works towards it, intermittently, in concert with his psychiatrist. The story's violence feels earned, and Toby's descent is followed by a slow lifting up.
The second story, "If I Should Stay," centers on one Thanksgiving of a dysfunctional family. The Vietnam connection is that the oldest son of the family has been wounded physically and psychologically in the war. He is not a point-of-view character, but everything seems to radiate from his damage. He had been the leader of the younger generation, particularly of a rock band. The main characters are his sister, Jane, and her husband, Raz., who was in the band. Raz has recently gone sober after years of alcoholism. Another brother, also a band member, has been abandoned by his wife. The professor father spends his time in his study and compares everything to the Brontës. The mother makes everyone crazy trying to have a perfect holiday. Jane, too, seeks family harmony, and is shocked to discover that sobriety doesn't necessarily encourage it. Boatwright works by drawing all the lines from the central damage: direct ones, indirect ones, the ones that are murky mixes of what would probably have been dysfunctional without the war, but are worse because of it.
She does many things well in this story, including some some beautifully executed transitions between scenes. She seems to know how to use spaces and rests as well as high notes and action. One jump cut follows what appears to be an impasse between wife and husband as they fall asleep in separate twin beds in Jane's old bedroom. The next section starts the next morning, and it turns out that Raz has gone into her bed and made love. In the final sections, Jane and Raz part for the holiday, and possibly forever, but maybe not. They are each in places with potentially life threatening situations; Jane fantasizes about a possible pregnancy; neither one of them knows what is going to happen-- hence the title, "If I Should Stay." Unresolved stories often strike me as as muzzy and vague: this one is precise and rings like a bell.
The final story, "Leaving Vietnam," is about the sister of a dead 19 year old soldier. She is arriving in Vietnam on a photography assignment 20 years after the war. She falls in love with the country and the people she meets. She eats, she reconciles with a lover/work partner, she thinks about her life and how she has held back from loving, even her own daughter, (who happens to have been fathered by Toby from the first novella). This story is the most obvious in its exploration of collateral damage as it includes the bombed buildings and rubble of Vietnam itself, as well as the damage to the woman's ability to love.
All three stories recognize pain and estrangement and even violence as part of the quotidian. Explosions and shooting are not cathartic, and the book doesn't hang the whole Vietnam Was on one individual's experience. Rather, Boatwright creates a many-voiced work in which more people live than die, and damage is as everyday as aging. It is about repercussions of events forty, thirty, and twenty years ago, but you feel the march of time into today, and the continuation of struggle and hope..
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Hunger, an early novel by Nobel Prize winning Norwegian Knut Hamsun, has some of the qualities of the Man From Underground and other of Dostoyevsky's tales of self-conscious suffering down-and-outs. It apparently has a lot that is autobiographical, too, as its young narrator
essentially goes crazy from hunger. He is too proud and eccentric to make the best of his chances, and sometimes you can't tell if he's behaving the way he does--strange antic teasing of strangers (one of these strangers actually turns into an almost-love affair), missing appointments, impetuously giving away money that he desperately needs for food-- out of eccentricity or the effects of hunger.
The details of serious, long-term hunger are delineated with shocking precision: hair falls out, you throws up when you get a real meal. Some of the embracing of ugliness reminds me of Charles Bukowski-- the vomit, the rooms with no heat. But, in fact, Hamsun's character does slowly improve his status. He seems to have people who know him and occasionally do him good turns. He ends the novel by signing on a steamer as a seaman.
Saved? Well, maybe. In real life Hamsun tramped around, worked all kinds of jobs, as a man could do at the end of the nineteenth century if he had a strong back. Unfortunately, Hamsun also, later in life, after the Nobel, became a great fan of the fascists. He was a racist, admired the Nazis, reached out to Hitler, and actually wrote a eulogy for him.
I'm sorry I read the biographical details, because I was drawn in by the book.
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Another translated book, recommended here in this newsletter as a political novel of great literary value, was THE LAND OF GREEN PLUMS by Herta Müller, also a Nobel Prize winner. This
novel is stunning, tight, vivid and awful. Seven young people, more or less friends struggle for spiritual survival under the Romanian dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu. One of the women is an informer, but also a loving friend. Some of them kill themselves, but there are also deaths by murder and cancer. There are crude interrogations and dangerous efforts to escape. The narrator's father is a former SS man who warns her that green plums will poison her, but the ever-present official guards of the régime stuff their faces with the plums all the time. It's a novel that kept me off balance with its combination of flat assertions and indirection. It is a beautifully detailed world of personal pain and social psychosis told in extreme close-up.
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I also read Henry James's WHAT MAISIE KNEW. It is a strange and wonderful book. Sometimes James is too precious for me, but in the end he always
manages to do something amazing. Here it was the stripped down story telling, the tight focus on six people (so tight that there are speaking parts for only maybe three or four others). The plot is the dispostion of the little girl Maisie whose parents have divorced—and what amounts to her moral corruption. Don't misunderstand, this is not about sexual exploitation or Bad Seeds: it's about a little girl who wants to be loved and becomes far too knowing and sophisticated far too early in life. It has some concrete things: food and scenery and a handful of objects, but mostly it is made of endless dialogue and narratiion of Maisie's developing perceptions.. He never attempts to capture her little girl voice, and he never even touches on her sense of her own body– but somehow, remarkably, he tells a gripping story and captures what the child goes through and how she grows. Only Henry James. It isn't a very long book, and I read it on the Kindle for free or next to free, and it's probably worth trying if you have been thinking about testing the Jamesian waters.
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And, finally, also read with pleasure, Stephen King's CARRIE. Is there a special name for novels made up of some straight omniscient narration along with fake book excerpts,
news feeds, scientific studies, court transcripts, etc.? It has the energy and at least potential depth you expect from King (I'm the big expert on King now, having read two of his books), but also his lack patience for polishing. His description tends to be ample but not refined; he piles up a lot of detail without narrowing it down to the best. He says that though this was his first published novel, it was not the first written. It has rough places, and some of the fake scientific writings are embarrassingly bad, but the story telling, the circling in on events, is excellent. You know what's coming– that is, you know this one will die and this one will live, but not how those things will happen. The lack of dependence on straight shock is a real strength of what I've read so far in his books. With novels, especially today, you have to offer something besides shock, which movies can provide so much better: the smashing glass, the gush of blood, the scream scream scream). King did well with his high school girl characters, too. Carrie really is sympathetic, and you never doubt that you would have had the same break down in her circumstances. The forces of evil here are completely human: the only thing you have to accept is telekinesis-- not so much, really. Well worth the suspension of disbelief.
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A COUPLE OF BOOKS I REALLY DIDN'T LIKE MUCH
I expected to like WICKED, the WIZARD OF OZ as retold by the Wicked Witch of the West, by Gregory Maguire. It's a pastiche and a parody that keeps its sly winks going and doesn't seem to love its characters very much. Elphie, our ostensible heroine, just seems to go crazy at the end with no motivation other than Maguire's desire to match up his ending with the original WIZARD OF OZ book. Many ends are left loose, and Elphie's love affair is just stuck in. The dialogue, always a little tricky in other worlds and fantasy, uses current, colloquial expressions and stops just short of pop culture references. Does it appear I didn't like this book? It just seems to me that Maguire is saying I'm clever, and I can do as I please because it's magic, and Oh by the way, would you like to compare royalty statements? There were some good scenes, and a lot of good ideas, but nothing worked out in a way that was intellectually or even dramatically satisfying to me.
Then there is Rachel Higginson's RECKLESS MAGIC, which is also doing very well thank you without any appreciation from me. This was Higginson's first book, self-published as an e-book, and it took off. It's very inexpensive, and it has some fun stuff and some storytelling momentum. It is more authentic, IMHO, than Maguire's book. That is, I think Higginson really believes in her narrator and her story of magical teenagers. The remarkable thing is that it seems largely unedited: there are typos, failures of grammar, and--probably most grating to me--misuse of words. For example, someone sits down on a duvet in a living room. A duvet is a big comforter for a bed, right? Didn't she mean a hassock or a pouffe or a tuffet? A lot of stuff like that. I read part of an interview with her, and she says she has hired an editor for her earlier books. Is this, then the new paradigm? You self-publish as an e-book, and then, if the book takes off, you hire an editor to clean it up for you.
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RECOMMENDATIONS FOR GIFT GIVING SEASON: PRESSES AND BOOKS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED
With gift-giving season approaching, I want to note some presses and books with unusual, interesting offerings. You'll surprise your giftees and support the nascent future of literature.
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First, take a look at TWO WAYS OF NOT HEARING – POEMS BY REAMY JANSEN. This lovely chapbook from Finishing Line Press has just 9 poems, but gives a sense of much more ground covered– partly because some of the poems are several pages long. One excellent one called "Voices, How I Became a Sensitive Soul," is a sort of family epic in brief statements. Dan Masterson calls it "one of the most revealing poems we have in captivity."
Another one I liked particularly was "Gum," which is about how "In 7th grade cool boys/ in Chinos and/Girls with breasts brand new/ Poodle skirts and/ White ankle socks/They knew what to do/ with gum." Perfect lineation and clear, beautiful phrases that bring powerful memories out of the darkness to the light—not the way so much poetry seems to me to be about making the quotidian into portentous puzzles. "Living With Spirits," a poem about a boy's relationship to his parents' drinking, is one of my other favorites. It's a wonderful small book of poems, a little like a good friend of enormous intelligence and intense good will speaking urgently into your ear about what is really important.
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Next, consider Dissident Books which says of its titles: "In an intellectual landscape that's largely homogenous and spineless, Dissident Books offers independent visions and accounts to those who have grown tired of adult lullabies. Our books are for readers who have both the stomach and the desire for the undiluted, no matter how strange, ugly, or sad it might be." See the website at http://www.dissidentbooks.com/ with a new edition of H.L. Menchken's NOTES ON DEMOCRACY and DON'T CALL ME A CROOK! A SCOTSMAN'S TALE OF WORLD TRAVEL, WHISKEY, AND CRIME by Bob Moore.
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For something entirely different, try some historical fiction THE GHOSTS OF WALDEN by Jack Hussey, which was reviewed in this newsletter at http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/bfrarchive126-130.html#ghosts on BOOKS FOR READERS.
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Two excellent books of essays set in Appalachia are journalist Norman Julian's latest, TRILLIUM ACRES (See http://www.normanjulian.com/ ) and blogger and feature writer Fred First's recent WHAT WE HOLD IN OUR HANDS: A SLOW ROAD READER from Goose Creek Press our of Floyd, Virginia (See http://www.scribd.com/doc/13153504/What-We-Hold-In-Our-Hands-a-Slow-Road-Reader-Press-Release) or http://www.fragmentsfromfloyd.com/stuff/
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Also consider AFTERMATH: STORIES OF SECRETS & CONSEQUENCES from Main Street Rag Publishing Company. This will include Ed Davis's short story "Dragon-Slayer" along with a whole host of others. The book is scheduled for release this December and will sell for $14.95, but you can get it until November 20 for only $8.50 + shipping by placing an Advance Discount order from the Main Street Rag Online Bookstore or, if you are more inclined to pay by check, they are $12.50 each, including tax and shipping. Visit http://www.mainstreetrag.com/Aftermath.html for details.
DOLLY WITHROW REVIEWS A LAND MORE KIND THAN HOME BY WILEY CASH
Set in North Carolina, near Asheville, the plot of this novel revolves around an evil preacher who leads snake-handling services. Newspapers are pasted over the windows so no one can see inside the church, which gives us a clue. One blurb compares the book to a Greek tragedy. I agree. A blurb on the back of the book also declares the dialogue to be pitch-perfect. Appalachian characters, lacking formal education, say in one paragraph that someone is "lying down" and a few pages later, a character is "laying down." Characters "sat" objects down (past tense). As an Appalachian for more years than I'll admit, I've never heard any Appalachians say they sat something down. As a grammarian-linguist, I don't think the dialogue is pitch-perfect, but here's something else I think: it doesn't matter a whit. Wiley Cash is a storyteller, an Appalachian, too, and a current English professor at Bethany College in West Virginia, having come to West Virginia from—you guessed it—North Carolina. The evil-preacher theme could easily have been a cliché since Davis Grubb and countless other authors have used the evil preacher figure, but the theme is not at all worn out in Cash's hands. His Preacher Carson Chambliss with his chilling smile is original. Cash is his own insightful thinker, and a good one. He has written a winner, and I recommend his book without hesitation.
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Read Dolly's piece on "Remembering the sounds, sights and smells from childhood" at http://dailymail.com/foodandliving/myturn/201209160035
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WANCHEE WANG REVIEWS LOUD IN THE HOUSE OF MYSELF BY STACY PERSHALL
I read this book because the author is teaching memoir writing at Gotham Writers Workshop in New York and I was considering taking her class. As it turns out, I'm not taking her class but not because I didn't like her book. Pershall gained notoriety in 2001 when her attempted suicide was broadcast on the Internet.
Growing up in small-town Prairie Grove, Arkansas, she suffered from borderline personality disorder, bulimia, and bipolar disorder, which rendered her a social outcast at school. Her sensitive nature was evident early on as she felt the need to take care of her mother: "I felt sorry for her and didn't want to leave her side. When she was with me, I did whatever I could to make sure she was having fun, and I took this upon myself with a resolute determination." Her bulimia began when she sought to lose weight to hold on to a boy: "Take the oversensitive girl…and give her a boyfriend who tells her she's fat but he might love her if she wasn't, and you're off to a roaring start."
The book chronicles her descent into ever more erratic and extreme behavior, triggered by failed relationships, disappointed expectations, and a perpetual sense of not fitting in. Her tone though, avoids self-pity or whining; instead, it is bracingly frank and honest: "I fell apart with a whole new level of tragedy and drama…I found the black hole inside me and lived there, and as a prelude to a decade-long battle with the mental health care system, it was strangely peaceful…That winter I simply waited to disappear." The years of mental illness and pain finally culminate in her suicide attempt. She eventually finds healing through dialectical behavioral therapy, a new mood drug, and interestingly enough, tattooing her body. One understands that her stability has been hard-won and will root for her to maintain dominance over her inner demons.
THE E-READER REPORT WITH JOHN BIRCH: HOW TO BROWSE AN E-BOOK BEFORE YOU BUY IT
How often have you bought an e-book only to find after the first chapter or two that you're not going to like it? It used to happen to me often, and was disappointing even if I'd downloaded it for only a few dollars.
Here's a solution, read a chapter or two of the book in a preview on Amazon.com –- not for the Kindle section, but in the site's regular book pages. Look at the picture of the book's cover and click on the words "Look inside" above it. You'll be able to read dozens of pages before you decide whether to buy the whole book. This works for any brand of e-reader you're using, a Kindle, Nook or whatever.
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See John Birch's blog-- it contains about two dozen of his short stories and articles: www.JohnBirchLive.blogspot.com .
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MORE READING
Phyllis Moore says BEAUTY BEFORE COMFORT by Allison Glock is an interesting memoir. See Kirkus Review at https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/allison-glock/beauty-before-comfort/#review .
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Bob Bender recommends Michelle Alexander's THE NEW JIM CROW: MASS INCARCERATION IN THE AGE OF COLOR BLINDNESS. He says it is a "Powerful indictment" and "a compelling and informed narrative." He offers excerpts from the Introduction: "In each generation new tactics have been used for achieving the same goals—goals shared by our founding fathers....Denying African American citizenship was deemed essential to the formation of the original union. "The arguments and rationalizations that have been trotted out in support of racial exclusion and discrimination in its various forms have changed and evolved but the outcome has remained largely the same. An extraordinary percentage of black men in the US are legally barred from voting and subject to legalized discrimination in employment, housing, education, public benefits and jury service as once were their parents, grandparents and great grandparents."
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WORST BOOK REVIEWS
Phyllis Moore brings our attention to Publisher's Weekly on the Thirteen Worst Reviews of Classics
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DREAMA FRISK ON THE JAMES RIVER WRITERS CONFERENCE
Dreama Frisk went to the James River Writers conference in Richmond, Virginia, in October. She writes: "A [conference] highlight was hearing Tom Robbins interviewed. He received the Literary Lifetime Achievement Award from the Library of Virginia. I have not read him at all, but I was moved by how centered he is in the profundity of writing. He is 84. One of the things I remember him saying, 'If you know what you're doing (when you are writing fiction), you probably shouldn't be writing.' Also, and this was questioned, 'I never leave a sentence until it's as perfect as I can make it. So there isn't a word that hasn't been gone over 40 times.'"
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READ ONLINE
Poem about Chuck Kinder and John Sinclair on their birthdays Nov. 1, 2012:
http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/verse-don-paul-word-passed-down-through.htmlSondra Spatt Olsen's story "The Sigh of the Hard-Pressed Creature" . This journal is putting neglected wonderful writing from small magazines online for contemporary readers.
ANNOUNCEMENTS, NEWS, CONTESTS, WORKSHOPS, READINGS ETC.
Donna Stanley Meredith's l latest book, Magic in the Mountains has been juried into "The Best of West Virginia" at Tamarack. It tells the amazing story of Kelsey Murphy and Robet Bomkamp, who spearheaded the development of cameo glass at Pilgrim and Fenton in West Virginia.
Alan Senauke has a new CD of "buddhistic songs" called EVERYTHING IS BROKEN: SONGS ABOUT THINGS AS THEY ARE. The songs include pieces by Bob Dylan, Bernice Reagon, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits, as well as traditional numbers rewritten by Alan and a song or two of his own. Learn more at http://www.clearviewproject.org/
David Weinberger's book TOO BIG TO KNOW has just won two big prizes: best book of the year from getAbstract's International Book Awards. (getAbstract is a German company that sells abstracts of books.) The prize was a crystal statuette and a 4.5-kilogram bar of Toblerone candy! The book also won the World Technology Award in the field of Media & Journalism. See my review of the book at http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/bfrarchive146-150.html#issue149
Presenting Homeward Bound by Howard Waskow A Book Launch and Celebration of a Rich Life's Work. Come share wine, cheese, and the company of Bell Chevigny, Jan Clausen, Arthur Waskow, Dan Waskow, Phyllis Berman and Barbara Kane. Wednesday, November 14 at 7 p.m. at Book Culture 536 W.112th St., between Broadway and Amsterdam, New York, N.Y. (tel: 212-8651588) Subway stops: Cathedral Parkway or 116th St (Columbia) #1 subway
"...a rare gift for those seeking more satisfactory relationships in their own lives, for those working with others to achieve such relationships, and truly for anyone interested in a deeper understanding of family dynamics." --Irene Elkin, Psychological Researchers and professor emerita, University of ChicagoPoet Burt Kimmelman in conversation with George Spencer. Mr.Kimmelman also recites from his poems: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLZCp_Bh0YU and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BGIRmvIu4U
A youtube of Suzanne McConnell reading from Slaughterhouse Five for Banned Books week at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Se08V3DP1A .
Lisa A. McCombs has a new y. a. novel set in West Virginia: RASPBERRY BERET. Learn more at http://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-Beret-Mrs-Lisa-McCombs/dp/1478304065/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1350762928&sr=1-2&keywords=McCombs%2C+Lisa .
Special for e-readers: Thomas D. Praino's short story "Carmen's Blood Song is a lovely tale of gypsy life and death in Spain. Inspired by Garcia Lorca's poem, "El paso de la siguiriya," it dramatizes the passion and pain that flower from a people's art. Look for it on Amazon.
The final volume of Barry Wildorf's 70's trilogy is now available: THE FOURTH CONSPIRATOR, "a journey to the dark side of 'family values.' " The trilogy follows protagonists Nate Lewis and Christina Lima from their origins in Gloucester, MA through San Francisco to Mendocino County during the turbulent 1970s. The paperback can be purchased at Wildorf's website, and it is available as an E-book at Amazon:.
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Meredith Sue Willis's
Books for Readers # 158
December 17, 2012
Carpenter Stendhal Achebe.
Final Call -- Master Class in Prose Narrative with Meredith Sue Willis
January 2013 -- Click mswclasses.html for details.
It looks better online! -- Read latest changes and corrections online -- MSW Home
In this Issue:
Farm City; Tom McCarthy's C.; Stendhal;
Chinua Achebe; Myra Shapiro; Victor Depta
Recommendations for Gift-Giving Season
What It Means to Be Addicted to Books: Phyllis Moore
Almost Heaven White Water Outfitters Book Club Discuss Voices of Glory
Review of First Wheel of Time Book
Wanchee Wang Reviews
The E-Reader Report with John Birch
Announcements
Free e-mail subscription to this newsletter.
To create a link to this newsletter, use this permanent link .
For Back Issues, click here.
I've been hard at work finishing up the semester at NYU plus visiting some schools. At periods like this, my reading becomes totally unsystematic, just the joy of picking up a book and going to some other place. I've read a used book my sister didn't finish and thought it might like; C. by Tom McCarthy; which I came across on my library's e-book borrowing list; my third and favorite Chinua Achebe novel so far, and, at long-last-- inspired by James Wood in How Fiction Works-- I either read or re-read The Red and the Black, Stendhal's masterpiece about the young working class Julien Sorel who wants to be Napoleon and rises high in society but repeatedly undercuts himself with his class resentment and his love life.
I actually thought I had read The Red and the Black back in college, but now I'm thinking I might instead have read a few passages in French class. At any rate, it felt entirely new too me, wonderful and frustrating and sad. It is set after the Revolution and Napoleon, during the reign of Louis Phillipe, the so-called citoyen-roi who was a Bourbon, but had a bourgeois life style and affect. Rather against my will I found myself rooting for the misguided, intense, highly talented young hero. I didn't like his great love, Mme. de Rênal, so much, although I absolutely believed in her wishy washy semi-religious sensuality. On the other hand I did enjoy the tortured, bored, aristocratic Mathilde who is all about sneering at her suitors and the whole world until she finds herself reluctantly falling for Julien.
She makes the first move and insists on his coming to her bedroom. I was a little stunned that they just did it, right there, had sex. Stendhal narrates sex with the same simplicity and candor as he narrates the bloody and gruesome parts at the end (spoiler alert: I'm about to tell Julien's fate).
After many vicissitudes and adventures and false starts, Julien is imprisoned for attempted murder of Mme. de Rênal and refuses to fight for his life. The very end of the novel is technically brilliant, in my opinion. Julien's execution is delivered with no pyrotechnics, just slips by, and is immediately followed by a flashback in which Julien asks a friend to buy his body and give it repose in a cave on a mountainside, then we get the scene of the burial and Mathilde coming to the cave to imitate the lover of her ancestor and kiss the severed head– so romantic and comic and macabre. Finally, we return to the day of the execution and Julien enjoying the freshness of the day as he walks to the guillotine. They don't make 'em like that anymore, or, at least, not with Stendhal's confidence.
Chinua Achebe's A Man of the People is serious and funny, with considerable irony toward its narrator, western educated, a sometimes feckless lover, and a would-be politician of a narrator. In the end, however, Odili, for all of his quirks and indignation, stays the course, does not sell out, and even gets the girl. It's a bit of an African All the King's Men (about a big shot corrupt politician who started out caring for the ordinary people), but I like Achebe's book better because there is less Southern pomposity and lugubrious suffering. Achebe's people are constantly on the move, and talking! Everyone talks with fascinating switches in language and level of diction. Sometimes he interweaves passages of pidgin, which I often didn't understand but who cares, and also traditional proverbs. This particular style of speaking with proverbs, which apparently is traditional at least in Nigeria, is at once ornate and practical, offering support for your argument and entertainment as well. There is a whole cast of wonderful characters, including the delightfully vigorous and wildly corrupt man of the people, Minister Nanga. There is Odili's father and Edna's father and Mrs. Nanga, who is too "bush" for her husband's aspirations, as demonstrated by how her skirt catches in her butt crack. It's a lovely complex, politically astute, and cheerful novel.
I also liked, but was less enthusiastic about Novella Carpenter's memoir of farming in Oakland, California, Farm City: the Education of an Urban Farmer. This was a solid book, very much worth reading, but I laid it down between sections (named for the largest animal raised and slaughtered up to that point: thus, Turkey, Rabbit, Pig). It was as much about the neighborhood where Novella and her long suffering boyfriend Bill set up housekeeping as about farming-- conflicts with local gang bangers and city officials and property owners over how much of a farm is appropriate within city limits, on someone else's land. Essentially Carpenter sets herself the question of exactly how far can you go with a (borrowed) empty lot and amazingly uncomplaining neighbors in growing crops and livestock. She makes the omnivore's case for both caring for her animals and eating them, although there is more than a little of the ick factor with how she keeps talking about the big pig as if he were a deceased family member, even as she learns how to make sausage out of him under the guidance of a semi-famous restaurateur.
Finally, I read Tom McCarthy's self-consciously post modern exercise in symbols and intellectual games, C. It's quite readable and more fun that I expected-- and this with me making zero effort to figure out the signs and codes and meanings. I just don't care for that stuff. I read it for the story, for the journey, with admiration but not caring much about the characters, which I believe would be just fine with McCarthy.
Here's what some reviewers said: Jennifer Egan in The New York Times says that McCarthy "fuses a Pynchonesque revelry in signs and codes with the lush psychedelics of William Burroughs to create an intellectually provocative novel that unfurls like a brooding, phosphorescent dream."
The July 2010 review in The Guardiansays "...McCarthy's art world affiliations, and the rather arts-institutional intellectual currency he trades in, also raise the suspicion that his end product might turn out to be a bit pretentious, in the style of Deleuze-loving architecture theorists or Lacan-quoting gallery notes. This suspicion isn't totally off the mark, yet McCarthy is a talented and intelligent novelist; however pretension-prone the scene he's interested in might be, his writing is tight and lucid, and he has a functioning sense of humour."
I'm quoting these both out of laziness, and, frankly, because I'd rather let someone else talk about the games. I see a lot of modern literary theory and literature that is influenced by it, and, indeed, a lot of the word play in James Joyce-- as games.
Still, I never thought of giving up on C. Serge, the main character, appears at several points in his life: growing up on a silk farm/deaf school with eccentric parents and sister, living with early wired and wireless communications. His sister rather arbitrarily drinks cyanide. He goes to a spa with his tutor to be cured of something called "black bile," which turns out to be more like adolescent blue balls. Next he attends World War I as a flyer, killing a lot of Germans in a haze of drugs. He loves the patterns of the world seen from above. Actually loves the war. Then spends time in London doing more drugs and attending séances. A high point of the novel is when he figures out how a séance table tipping is accomplished and breaks the hearts of various people who think they've been communicating with their dead families. Finally, he goes to Egypt maybe as a spy, and while he's there picks up some kind of blood poisoning from an insect bite and dies with many colorful and possibly but not probably meaningful hallucinations.
A lot of the scenes and events are extremely well told and funny. McCarthy kills off his characters at whim, to prove randomness of life, I suppose. I tended to skip the philosophical and symbolic stuff after a few lines, just the way I would skip some of, say, Proust's pages of pink hawthorn description. It's a taste, to like this stuff. Chacun à son goût. I'm not a big fan of Regency romances either, but I'm sure there's one out there I'd enjoy.
SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT SELF-PUBLSIHING AND GIFT-EXCHANGE
Lewis Hyde writes about art and the market economy. He says, ".....there are categories of human enterprise that are not well organized or supported by market forces. Family life, religious life, public service, pure science, and of course much artistic practice: none of these operates very well when framed simply in terms of exchange value. The second assumption follows: any community that values these things will find nonmarket ways to organize them. It will develop gift-exchange institutions dedicated to their support."
– Lewis Hyde, "On Being Good Ancestors," The Gift (New York: Vintage, 1979-2007) pp 379-379.
MARLEN BODDEN'S NOVEL COMING OUT FROM A MAJOR COMMERCIAL PRESS IN EARLY 2013-- Watch this newsletter for a Review:
Learn more at http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/07/11/self-published-slavery-novel-scores-world-wide-book-deals/
JOEL WEINBERGER ON ROBERT JORDAN'S WHEEL OF TIME NOVELS
Well, I've waited a long time to read The Eye of the World. I received it as a gift 15 years ago, but basically refused to read it because I was afraid Robert Jordan would never finish it, and I didn't want to commit to a series that would potentially be left unfinished. My fears were somewhat founded, as, unfortunately, Robert Jordan did not live to finish the series. However, the last three books have been completed (as authorized by Jordan's estate) by Brandon Sanderson and, apparently, are excellent. Over a decade after receiving it (and after throwing myself head first into A Song of Ice and Fire, for which I have many of the same fears), and after it became clear that Sanderson was (more than competently) finishing the series, I decided to jump into The Wheel of Time.
The main appeal of this series, to me, is the expansive world that Jordan has created. The mythos that he has built, and the deep, complex history of the world, are fascinating, and this is what kept drawing me in. At first a bit overwhelming, the mythos becomes more manageable and clearer as the book progresses, although by the end I was still confused on many important points (it would have been helpful if I had been aware of the very helpful glossary at the back of the book while I was reading it).
As for the writing itself, I was a bit disappointed. Jordan doesn't really have a lot of subtlety. In addition, he's in a tough spot because he's writing about young teenagers for the most part, and its hard to make a novel for adults to take seriously about/from the perspective of teenagers. Unfortunately, I found some of the writing, especially about some of the love interests, to be pretty weak and not terribly interesting or believable; while Jordan wanted me to care about the characters and their relationships, I often found myself thinking that I was just reading about lame, immature crushes.
Overall, I am very pleased with the book and look forward to reading the rest of the series. While I'm not invested in any particular characters at this point, I'm fascinated by the universe Jordan has created and am greatly anticipating advances in the greater story arc.
On a side note, a problem I generally carry in most fantasy novels (although this is certainly not a show stopper for me) is the use of magic as a deus ex machina. A lot of fantasy books and series tend to put forth a magical set of characters that wield magic in basically unpredictable ways, and the limits of their powers are left, at best, ambiguous, and at worst unbounded (a Song of Ice and Fire is a notable, wonderful exception to this). Now, I went into the Wheel of Time with the understanding that in Jordan's world there are well defined rules about magic and how it can be wielded, that there are specific limitations, and that all of this is pretty explicit and clear. Unfortunately, I didn't get a real sense of this from The Eye of World. While there were some rules established, I was constantly surprised (in a bad way) at critical moments about what a magic-wielder could or could not do. I only mention this because my expectations were set, and I was disappointed in this respect. However, I am holding out hope that this changes in the succeeding novels, and strict rules are established. As I said, rules are hinted out, so I am hopeful.
WANCHEE WANG REVIEWS Father James Martin's book IN GOOD COMPANY
I met Father James Martin, Jesuit priest and prolific writer, at an author panel and found him to be funny, articulate, and charming. He read from his first book, In Good Company, published in 2000. The passage he chose recounts his childhood exposure to Catholicism and his time as an undergraduate business student at the University of Pennsylvania. By his own admission, he "did not come from a very religious family, at least not the kind that considers themselves 'blessed' if a son decides to become a priest." After graduation, he worked at GE for six years before entering the priesthood. The book ends with his taking vows. Father Martin's story is one about abandoning a promising corporate career for a life of "poverty, chastity, and obedience."
He describes his growing disaffection with the business world (he worked at GE when Jack Welch was CEO). Under Mr. Welch's leadership, GE stock soared but the company was a stressful and demanding place to work as managers were pressured to meet their monthly targets. During this time, Father Martin began reading Thomas Merton, and a pull towards the spiritual proved irresistible for him. In his first two years as a novice, he performed manual labor, visited the sick, and cared for the dying in the slums of Kingston, Jamaica, all of which is detailed with humor and in uncomplicated prose. Because his story is so fascinating, I wanted to know more about how his faith evolved and how he adjusted going from the corporate world to the spiritual. Instead readers are presented with a straightforward re-telling of the events. In the end, a deeper examination of his personal and emotional life would have enhanced the reading experience.
Fifty Shades of Addiction: Confession of a Reader by Phyllis Wilson Moore, 2012
Your mother was right, you ruined your eyes. Worse, now you can't hear and read at the same time.
You have battled a sibling over the right to read a book first.
You still remember the year you didn't get a book on your birthday.
You still have your childhood card game of "Authors" and play it with any kid willing to sit still.
You know the title of the first book you ever read and how old you were at the time.
You have your first library card and keep it in the safety deposit box along with your will.
You have used the internet to purchase the books on your first library card. They are stored in archival boxes under the bed.
You have read the ketchup label.
You had at least one book confiscated by a classroom teacher.
You've been punished for hiding a work of fiction inside a textbook.
You've read in most places with a light, including a dorm's bathroom shower stall.
Your mother threw away at least one book she called "smutty"; you retrieved it.
You buy multiple copies of books you really like and keep one copy hidden from view. You loan the others.
You don't really want library books because you have to return them but you keep the library on speed-dial just in case. Relatives know not to mess with a book you are reading.
For vacation, you pack more books than clothes.
You refuse to take a cruise until you get a Kindle.
You carry a book in the trunk of the car.
The postal service thinks you own stock in Amazon.com.
Your significant other has no ideas how many books can be ordered after midnight.
You have two shopping carts at Amazon.com.
You recently reread Bambi.
Your stack of "to reads" is as high as your unfolded laundry.
You get anxious if your stack of unread books is too tall or too short.
No one believes you when you say, "I will… I will… just let me finish this chapter."
You arrange your books according to authors who like or dislike each other; only friends can touch.
You read more than one book at a time.
You sneak newly acquired books into the house when no one is looking.
No one better mess with your autographed first editions with dust covers.
You begin to twitch if asked to list your ten favorite books.
You know which book you'd grab if the house caught on fire.
You finish reading a novel at a doctor's office by allowing other patients to go ahead of you.
Your nieces and nephews open your Christmas gifts last, and with a groan.
For presents, you ask for dissertations about the works of authors.
Your significant other knows you really want the dissertations.
You've ignored the smell of cake burning until there was a good break in the story.
You've missed a bus stop while reading.
You once read a book from back to front.
You get a "warm fuzzy" feeling when you walk past shelves of books.
You have gifted all the people you like with at least one book, including the people who don't like to read.
You have given a novel as a wedding gift.
When someone asks if you've read every book on your shelves, you say, "No", then add, "That has nothing to do with it."
THE E-READER REPORT WITH JOHN BIRCH: HOW TO FIND BEST SELLERS, AND HOW DEDICATED E-READERS ARE LOSING OUT TO TABLE COMPUTERS
The Sunday New York Times Book Review provides the absolutely best weekly list of traditional and e-book fiction, non-fiction, and a section it calls "Advice, how-to and miscellaneous" best sellers. Bbut where can you look if you don't subscribe to the Times? The answer may well be The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, a Texas newspaper that publishes weekly lists of best selling print and e-books. You'll find it at http://lubbockonline.com/books/books-best-sellers
***People who read e-books are moving away from devices like the earlier versions of Kindle and Nook. Instead they're choosing tablets like the iPad and the more sophisticated Kindle Fire.
So says the authoritative Innodata website. It reports that "nearly 40% of readers now use a tablet computer, up from about 35% a quarter ago." Innodata's quoting an e-book study carried out by reference book publishers Bowker with the Book Industry Study Group. "By comparison," the study says, "nearly 50% of readers of e-books cite a dedicated e-reader as the device they use most often to read e-books. That's down from just over 50% a quarter ago and it's below 50% for the first time since the inception of the study."
The authors credit the multi-role Kindle Fire with a 17% market share among e-book readers. According to the report, smartphones and desktop and laptop computers are only preferred by less than 10% of ebook readers.
See John Birch's blog-- it contains about two dozen of his short stories and articles: www.JohnBirchLive.blogspot.com .
THE ALMOST HEAVEN WHITE-WATER OUTFITTERS AND BOOK CLUB READS DAVIS GRUBB'S VOICES OF GLORY
Our raft guide for this rafting adventure was Moundsville, West Virginia's, Davis Grubb, author of several novels and short story collections and a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction for his novel The Night of the Hunter. On this trip, we set out to experience his novel The Voices of Glory (1962).
We attempt to describe our reading experience by comparing it to a white water rafting trip on the New River in West Virginia. In case you don't white water, a Class I section of the river is a calm stretch, while a Class VI stretch is the upper limits of a navigable experience and might even be dangerous. There are grades in between, but Class VI is as wild as it gets... Read the full discussion here , and also see what they thought of Lark and Termite and O Beulah Land) .
ANNOUNCEMENTS, NEWS, CONTESTS, WORKSHOPS, READINGS ETC.
Myra Shapiro's new book of poetry is just out: 12 Floors Above the Earth.Tony Hoagland says: “Like Grace Paley or Stanley Kunitz, Myra Shapiro possesses a cultivated, tough-minded voice, and an unflinching human commitment to know more. Whether she is asking hard questions about the flickering strangeness of sexuality, solitude, or religion, her special intelligence finds the difficult hinges and pressure points of life. And, because she does not hide from what she finds, her probing is both beautiful and moving. ‘In longing you close your eyes,’ she says, and ‘in wonder you open them.’ 12 Floors Above the Earth is a wonderfully alert and honest collection of poems. It is also darkly witty.“
Victor Depta' s new book is Twofold Consciousness: Poetry and Essays on Mysticism, available from Blair Mountain Press and fromAamazon.
He writes: "We all know how ephemeral emails are. They add up by the hundreds until our computers remind us of the overload. We touch
the delete key and hours of our lives simply vanish. For me, that fact became distressingly pertinent because, after I retired and moved away from campus, a student friend and I began an email correspondence on the subject of mysticism. I soon realized that I was investing too much thought and energy in the subject to have it disappear with the touch of a button. So I made hard-copies.
"After a few months I decided that, with so much material, I might shape it into a book, a collection of epistolary essays. I couldn’t use his emails. He was too busy pursuing an M.A. for that kind of editorial collaboration, so I re-worked my responses for coherence and continuity and published them as Twofold Consciousness: Poetry and Essays on Mysticism. He had been troubled by Buddhism and its lack of ultimate, metaphysical meaning, so my essays addressed the issue of meaninglessness in relation to mysticism (the experience of enlightenment) and to existentialism (our daily lives). I made distinctions between the self, consciousness, self-consciousness and pure consciousness. Self-consciousness is described as an epiphenomenon of language, while the alienation from material reality is made tolerable by the ecstasy of the enlightened experience, by pure consciousness, and by compassion rising out of meaninglessness. During the restructuring of my emails, I saw that the poems I had been writing for the past two years dealt with the same subject of spiritual meaning, so I included them as an integral part of the book."
The book is Twofold Consciousness, ISBN: 978-0-9768817-7-3 $15.00 Blair Mountain Press 114 East Campbell Street Frankfort, Kentucky 40601 502-330-3707 www.blairmtp.net.
The Everett Southwest Literary Award for Okalahoma and New Mexico writers, judged by Lee K. Abbott, will be accepting short story manuscripts of 125+ pages until January 1, 2013. A $5,000 award will be given for the winning short story manuscript by an author living in or writing about Oklahoma, Texas, or New Mexico. Submission Guidelines and more at http://www.uco.edu/la/english/everett/index.asp .
Donna Stanley Meredith's l latest book, Magic in the Mountains has been juried into "The Best of West Virginia" at Tamarack. It tells the amazing story of Kelsey Murphy and Robet Bomkamp, who spearheaded the development of cameo glass at Pilgrim and Fenton in West Virginia.
Alan Senauke has a new CD of "buddhistic songs" called EVERYTHING IS BROKEN: SONGS ABOUT THINGS AS THEY ARE. The songs include pieces by Bob Dylan, Bernice Reagon, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits, as well as traditional numbers rewritten by Alan and a song or two of his own. Learn more at http://www.clearviewproject.org/
A youtube of Suzanne McConnell reading from Slaughterhouse Five for Banned Books week at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Se08V3DP1A .
FOR GIFT GIVING SEASON: PRESSES AND BOOKS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED
With gift-giving season approaching, I want to note some presses and books with unusual, interesting offerings. You'll surprise your giftees and support the nascent future of literature.
First, take a look at TWO WAYS OF NOT HEARING – POEMS BY REAMY JANSEN. This lovely chapbook from Finishing Line Press has just 9 poems, but gives a sense of much more ground covered– partly because some of the poems are several pages long. One excellent one called "Voices, How I Became a Sensitive Soul," is a sort of family epic in brief statements. Dan Masterson calls it "one of the most revealing poems we have in captivity."
Also consider AFTERMATH: STORIES OF SECRETS & CONSEQUENCES from Main Street Rag Publishing Company. This will include Ed Davis's short story "Dragon-Slayer" along with a whole host of others. The book is scheduled for release this December and will sell for $14.95, but you can get it until November 20 for only $8.50 + shipping by placing an Advance Discount order from the Main Street Rag Online Bookstore or, if you are more inclined to pay by check, they are $12.50 each, including tax and shipping. Visit http://www.mainstreetrag.com/Aftermath.html for details.
Next, consider Dissident Books which says of its titles: "In an intellectual landscape that's largely homogenous and spineless, Dissident Books offers independent visions and accounts to those who have grown tired of adult lullabies. Our books are for readers who have both the stomach and the desire for the undiluted, no matter how strange, ugly, or sad it might be." See the website at http://www.dissidentbooks.com/ with a new edition of H.L. Menchken's NOTES ON DEMOCRACY and DON'T CALL ME A CROOK! A SCOTSMAN'S TALE OF WORLD TRAVEL, WHISKEY, AND CRIME by Bob Moore.
For something entirely different, try some historical fiction THE GHOSTS OF WALDEN by Jack Hussey, which was reviewed in this newsletter at http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/bfrarchive126-130.html#ghosts on BOOKS FOR READERS.
Two excellent books of essays set in Appalachia are journalist Norman Julian's latest, TRILLIUM ACRES (See http://www.normanjulian.com/ ) and blogger and feature writer Fred First's recent WHAT WE HOLD IN OUR HANDS: A SLOW ROAD READER from Goose Creek Press our of Floyd, Virginia (See http://www.scribd.com/doc/13153504/What-We-Hold-In-Our-Hands-a-Slow-Road-Reader-Press-Release) or http://www.fragmentsfromfloyd.com/stuff/
Joel Weinberger writes, "I hereby release my Goodreads review under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License."
Meredith Sue Willis's
Books for Readers # 159
February 1, 2013
MSW Home
In this Issue:
Ashes Rain Down by William Luvaas;
Green-Silver and Silent Poems by Marc Harshman;
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding; Pamela Erens on THE GOOD EARTH;
Wanchee Wang Reviews THE BOY By Lara Santoro;
Joel Weinberger on AMERICAN PSYCHO; The E-Reader Report with John Birch
White Water Rafters on Oradell at Sea
Announcements; Good Reading Online and On the Air
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For Back Issues, click here.
There's nothing quite as comforting as a good-humored dystopian novel on a day of sleet, rain and snow. I just finished William Luvaas's ASHES RAIN DOWN: A STORY CYCLE, from Spuyten Duyvil Press. Luvaas is a well known teacher, editor, novelist and much published short story writer. He calls this a story cycle, which is to say that it is a set of closely tied stories. It is not plotted like a novel, and that is perfectly appropriate for its world– a
"California hillbilly" community called Sluggards Creek during a time of troubles in the near future or not-so-far-in-the-future. The land, the weather, the relationships are constantly fraying and falling apart and being patched back together. Rivers have swelled and overflowed; St. Louis is one casualty among many. There are droughts and fires and plagues of blue bottle flies that seem to cause personality changes. In one story a chunk of California slides into the Pacific– and floats west toward Japan. There are destructive rains and a terrible wind.
Characters, especially the recurring Lawrence Connelly, have to face up to changes in people as frightening as the changes in the weather– ultimately in himself as well There are a lot of aging Vietnam war veterans and perhaps a few too many people who think they are still in the Sixties. What's wonderful here, though, is not the weather troubles or the never-detailed "Forever War." These things are terrifying, but not so different from what we hear about today, except so far we don't have quite so many, not yet.
What's wonderful is Luvaas's people and their web of relationships and their stubborn determination to cope. Some of them cope by moving from the half of the house the tree crushed to the half where it didn't. Or, if the garden dried up, they cook cactus fruit or a lizard (which makes everyone sick). There is an epidemic of typhoid fever that a lot of people recover from.
I appreciate the way the stories end, as each day of our lives end, with some ups, some downs, some hope, some despair. A lot of mourning and craziness. It's not the kind of harrowing, nearly unrelieved horror of, say, Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD. There are a reasonable number of people who still consider themselves part of a community, willing to help each other, at least occasionally. Displaced killer hordes are rumored to be coming from the abandoned cities, but they never show up. A family of trashy wanderers moves in on a lone woman, but they are mostly violent to each other.
It's hard to give a flavor of these stories– I think the salient point is that there is a lot of comedy in the heart of this book– not hysterical comedy, or cruel comedy, just the everyday comedy we all live with but don't always pay attention to. Even the deeply suffering Gil Ridley who gives his wife the grace of a mercy killing and is tortured by it, surrounds himself with little ceramic caricatures of presidents his wife made (the two Bushes, of course, but also, slyly, the three Clintons). Lawrence locks his dogs in the cellar to keep them safe from the terrible wind, and forgets where they are. A woman he once loved passionately comes back to town, and he about goes crazy with lust for her plastic legs– she was at the World Trade Center, but that's not where she lost her legs. It's this kind of quirky humor that runs through these stories without ever pushing them over the top into farce or silliness.
Maybe hard to give the flavor, but it is well worth tasting
I also read a book of poetry, Marc Harshman's new GREEN-SILVER AND SILENT POEMS, a lovely book that creates the out-of-doors, ridges, rills, rocks
and skies in your mind in a way I can't quite fathom. One poem called "Setting the hook," about fly fishing, says,
Impossible, the patience, but it comes,
is welcomed, fed by the air and solitude
as much as the magic, liquid pull of the fish itself;
Sometimes a single phrase knocks your socks off: "the herring flash of the northern lights" in "Going North for the Winter." Some-times it's the whole poem, a lovely one called "Oxford" in which he focuses not on the medieval stones of the university but on plants and farm animals. I'm especially fond of his prose poems, short blocks of wonderful images in language like "In Time for Supper" that begins "He flinches at the sight of his mother's bra and panties strung along the still clothesline." Marc, who is the new Poet Laureate of the Great State of West Virginia, has reviewed for this newsletter, and is an award-winning writer of children's books. His home page is http://www.marcharshman.com.
Finally, I re-read of Tom Jones, which hardly needs my recommendation, but I happily give it! I pretty much hated it when I read it in the spring of 1968 in my English novels course with Professor Irene Tayler at Barnard. I was more interested in SDS and occupying the administration building at Columbia University and trying to stop the war in Vietnam, and the novel offended me. This read, in my pending decrepitude, I found it rollicking (everyone says that) and good humored, and I'm not all insulted. The women are, in fact, active, sexual, and even assertive. I completely missed that 45 years ago.
I especially enjoyed the hints of what life was like in the 1700's. How people don't know anything beyond a few miles away, and there was no regular transportation. Sophia Western and the other women as well as the men ride horseback all night, for hours. The social classes interact pretty regularly, especially when the lower classes aren't too sure of whether the others are real "quality" or not. And clothes seem totally to make the person, sex is pretty ordinary, humor heavy-handed. Fielding manages to be at once cheerful and misanthropic, and most of the characters seemed to be motivated primarily by money, except Sophia and Tom and Squire Allworthy.
And no one is very good at understanding motivation. Critics have been so exercised over the "flat" or at least unchanging of the good people and th
e bad that they seem to be missing that the characters themselves don't have a very good sense of what's beneath the surface of one another. As if they are seeing flat characters which means being easily duped.
Well, the bottom line is that I really enjoyed the book. It was a far less prudish time than Victorian days, and, as the preface in my old sneeze-producing paperback copy says, it is also highly organized: there is an introductory essay for each volume, and the plot developments follow neatly even as they rollick along. Sophia and Tom are easy to feel for, although neither one is all that interesting as an individual. They are, however, interesting in motion, in situ. Sophia (from that preface again) is the anti-Clarissa-- she runs away, but keeps her virginity and good sense. She holds herself away from all the men, including Tom, till he has gained a proper position in society. His impossibly bad luck is wonderfully satisfying as you know the wheel or fortune will lift him up again. He discovers that Mrs. Waters is his mother-- and then that she isn't, but knows who his mother is! You have to love Squire Western popping up frequently to call all the women, including his own daughter Sonia, bitches, and how he drinks himself insensible every night.
Tom leads with his libido, is the "natural" man, but is also dependably warm-hearted, helping out even the highwayman who robs him to feed his family.
It's the entire thing that's such a pleasure, the convoluted but always clearly explicated plot, the wheel of fortune taking Tom down and bringing him back up. The women with sexual appetites who don't end badly just because they had affairs. Sexual appetite doesn't equal tragedy for the women, a worthy idea in itself after too much Dickens. In spite of distance in time and so-called flatness, it is so wildly alive.
I also read an excellent if too detailed biography of Fielding (Henry Fielding: A Life by Donald Thomas). The last quarter is especially moving, with Fielding in his early forties becoming a London magistrate trying to clean up crime in the streets. Meanwhile he spends several years dying of terrible gout, and "dropsy" (probably congestive heart failure), which was treated by having his swollen belly "tapped" every couple of weeks– essentially a sharp-ended tube was popped in to drain ten to fourteen quarts of fluid.
It makes you appreciate 2013.
Melanie Vickers Recommends Some Great Middle Grade Novels
Melanie Vickers writes: "I continue to read and study middle grade books similar to what I am writing. The style and stories most appealing to me are Karen Cushman's The Midwife Apprentice, Kate DiCamillo's Because of Winn Dixie, Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphin, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's Shiloh, William H. Armstrong's Sounder.
"All focus on themes I want in [my own novel about] an adolescent discovering his/her strengths during adversity, solving problems and relying on an animal for love and support."
Shelley Ettinger on Naked Singularity, Infinite Jest, Publishing, and a lot more
Shelley Ettinger's blog Read Red is always worthwhile, but this one is especially interesting: http://readwritered.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-naked-singularity.html
JOEL WEINBERGER on AMERICAN PSYCHO by Bret Easton Ellis
So, one has to start with the brutality of the book. It is incredibly brutal. Bloody, bloody, bloody. And, at a certain point, it's hard to get by this.
Now, for the rest. For the most part, I really enjoyed the book. It was a fascinating look at materialism and what it really comes down to. At times, the lists and lists of clothing designers and popular restaurants becomes tedious, but I actually found that it really drove the shallowness of the characters home.
But the brutality. It just became difficult to read at a point, and, frankly, after a while I lost track of what the point was.
Wanchee Wang Reviews THE BOY By Lara Santoro
A single mother in her forties, Anna finds herself drawn to her neighbor's son, a young man some twenty years her junior. Against her better judgment, she succumbs to the inexorable pull of an affair with him. In the hands of a lesser writer, The Boy could have been nothing more than a titillating affair. Instead there are no titillating details à la Fifty Shades of Grey, just lots of descriptive prose that make us feel the longing that Anna feels: "Tight in her skin, hot in her head, she resolved a thousand times to leave but didn't. Every time she looked up, he was there, his eyes fixed knowingly on hers." The author has created a complex character whose flaws and past sins manage to evoke sympathy. Even at the end, when Anna does something irresponsible, one cannot help but feel sorrow for the consequences and wish for a different outcome.
Pamela Erens on THE GOOD EARTH by Pearl S. Buck
This book has a mysterious magic. It's taken me decades to get around to reading it, but now I understand why it has been required reading for so many English-speaking schoolchildren. Its style is deceptively simple, with strong overtones of King James Bible--parataxis, syntactical inversions. The
content is rich and complex, treating of human evil and human selflessness, temptation, reversals, the cycle of birth, youth, aging, and death. Every single character is highly individual and indelible.
To move from abstraction to the concrete: the story is of Wang Lung, a poor Chinese farmer who takes the only wife available to him--a slave in the household of a rich local family. This wife, O-Lan, lacks physical grace and beauty, but turns out to be extremely hard-working, infinitely resourceful, and as deeply committed as Wang Lung to the small plot of land he owns. With her help and thrift, he begins to expands his holdings, refusing to give them up even when bad harvests threaten them with starvation. His bond to his "good earth" is non-negotiable. O-Lan bears him several children, each of whom has his or her own fate.
Eventually, Wang Lung becomes wealthy himself--and that is when his troubles truly begin: he is tempted to take a mistress, his eldest son becomes a spendthrift, his freeloading uncle moves in... and "there is no peace in this house!" as he constantly and piteously cries.
The Good Earth is not a long book but it is a big one, full of human longing, struggle, and significance.
THE E-READER REPORT WITH JOHN BIRCH:
Pew Research Finds Drop In Readers Of Printed Books
Readers of e-books in the US increased from 16% of all Americans aged 16 and older to 23%, according to Lee Rainie and Maeve Duggan of the Pew Research Center. They also find that the number of people who read printed books in the previous 12 months fell from 72% of the population ages 16 and older to 67%. Not surprisingly, Pew's Internet & American Life project research shows that the move toward e-book reading coincides with an "increase in ownership of electronic book reading devices." In all, the number of owners of either a tablet computer or an e-book reader such as Kindle or Nook grew from 18% in late 2011 to 33% in late 2012. As of November 2012, some 25% of Americans ages 16 and older own tablet computers such as iPads or Kindle Fires, up from 10% who owned tablets in late 2011. And in late 2012 19% of Americans aged 16 and older own e-book reading devices such as Kindles and Nooks, compared with 10% who owned such devices at the same time a year earlier
'SHADES OF GREY' BOOST SALES OF E-BOOKS
Digital publishers in Frankfurt for the world's biggest book fair reported that the advent of e-books has led to increased sales of erotic fiction. Peter Ferris, a non-executive director of the British group Accent Press, explained that erotic fiction books are ideal for e-books, because many bookstores aren't comfortable stocking printed copies of them. Ferris claims that the sales increase is largely due to the success of E.L. James's "Fifty Shades of Grey" --- Brits spell it with an 'e' -- which rapidly became a trilogy after starting life as an independently published e-book. It was eventually published in print by Vintage Books and soon became the fastest-selling paperback book of all time, surpassing J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. X-cite, an imprint of Accent Press, is the U.K.'s largest publisher of erotic fiction, and the company anticipates that it's e-book sales for the year ahead will be three times higher than its printed book sales for 2011.
It's Nearly Here – The Bookless Library!
You won't believe it, but the city of San Antonio, Texas, has announced plans to open America's first bookless public library system. It will be housed in offices currently used by the city's tax and other departments, and is scheduled to open in the fall, with an initial collection of more than 10,000 e-books that will cost $250,000. The library will also provide 100 e-readers for patrons' home use. San Antonio's mayor, Judge Nelson Wolff, said that the new library is not intended to be a replacement for the city's existing library system. Mayor Wolfe said he expected some losses of the e-readers, each of which will cost $100, but added, "we do have your name, and we do have your address. Check the book out for two weeks just like a library book. After two weeks your e-book will go dead, so you won't have anything worth keeping." But that's not all. The start-up cost of the whole project will be $1.5 million. There will be a full staff to provide help for patrons with research and school homework. In addition there will be 50 computer stations, 25 laptops and 25 tablets for on-site use.
John Birch's current blog post, www.JohnBirchLive.blogspot.com is "Tough Assignment," about his experience in India after the world's most devastating industrial accident.
The White Water Rafters Discuss ORADELL AT SEA
I'm honored that the White Water Rafters discuss and share their conversation about my novel, ORADELL AT SEA here. I'm embarrassed, but I've lived in the northeast long enough to overcome my bashfulness!
CLICK HERE to read the discussion.
READ ONLINE AND ON THE AIR
Suzanne McConnell, an editor at BELLEVUE LITERARY REVIEW, introduces an excellent short story by Joan LeeGant here: http://blr.med.nyu.edu/content/editors-picks/sistersofmercy
"Make Good Art:" Neil Gaiman's video's commencement address about being an artist: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/21/neil-gaiman-commencement-speech_n_1534005.html
It's the two hundredth anniversary of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE– read an article in FINANCIAL TIMES: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/76ad7de0-5995-11e2-ae03-00144feab49a.html#axzz2Hn7BW8tv
WBAI-NY (99.5 FM) 3 POETRY SUNDAYS WBAI Sunday, January 27, 11am-noon Poet Hugh Seidman hosts fellow poets Lawrence Joseph, D. Nurkse, and Susan Wheeler. Broadcasting at WBAI/NewYork 99.5 FM Streaming live at www.wbai.org Archived for 90 days at www.wbai.org Archived: www.catradiocafe.com .
ANNOUNCEMENTS, NEWS, CONTESTS, WORKSHOPS, READINGS ETC.
The Kenyon Review is pleased to announce the 2013 KR Short Fiction Contest. The contest is open to all writers who have not yet published a book of fiction. Submissions must be 1200 words or fewer. There is no entry fee. The Kenyon Review will publish the winning short story in the Winter 2014 issue, and the author will be awarded a scholarship to attend the 2013 Writers Workshop, June 15th-22nd, in Gambier, Ohio. Additional info here.
For those of you with itunes and other Apple mobile devices, Danimaris Fonseca's picture book for children The Avocado Tree has just been published. https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-avocado-tree/id591312339?mt=11
Reading and publishing party to celebrate the publication of William Luvaas's new short story collection: Ashes Rain Down: A Story Cycle at Dixon Place in New York on February 5, 7:30-8:30 p.m.. Dixon Place is at 161A Chrystie Street between Rivington and Delancey; (212) 219-0736. Copies of the book will be available at the event and can also be purchased directly from the publisher after February 1 (www.spuytenduyvil.net) or on Amazon. Also, Luvaas's novels, Going Under and The Seductions of Natalie Bach, are now available as Ebooks from Foreverland Press: www.foreverlandpress.com and everywhere Ebooks are sold.
Pamela Erens, whose new novel VIRGINS will be published by Tin House in Summer 2013, has a lovely post on the Tin House blog about John Updike's sentences: http://www.tinhouse.com/blog/20854/20854.html
Wanchee Wang has a bylined interview/profile in her university alumni magazine: http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0113/pro05.html.
Now available on Nook, Kindle, I-Pad, etc. -- Marion Cuba's (see her essay in issue # 110) novel SHANGHAI LEGACY about the psychological damage done to a woman who lived through deplorable conditions in Shanghai during World War II. Shanghai was one of the few places where German Jews could get a visa to leave Germany, and this is about one of the families that went– and how their suffering under the Japanese occupation was visited on the narrator Maya, whose life is ostensibly satisfying and certainly comfortable, but no less damaged for all that. What is most fascinating is this ghetto that most of us know little about– in Shanghai. One of the great reasons the great genocides and holocausts are so horrible is how the precious fabric of ordinary life is rent beyond repair and even into the next generation.
Love is the theme of Ang-Lit.Press's fourth fiction anthology LOVE IN ISRAEL. The successor to Israel Short Stories and Tel Aviv Short Stories, the new anthology is a salute/tribute to Israel's 65th anniversary. Though the settings and themes are quintessentially Israeli, the narrative voice is that of the "insider/outsider" - the Anglo (English-speaking) resident. Among the authors is Hannah Brown (see my review of her book IF I COULD TELL YOU) Many of the stories reflect Israel's complicated reality. "A major advantage of a short story anthology like ours," says Ang-Lit. co-founder/editor Shelley Goldman, " is that there is no chronological order. You can jump from Haifa, to the Negev, wherever, whenever you fancy. The stories, like their 45 authors, reflect and celebrate the vast diversity of readers' tastes and interests. It is the perfect genre for the frenetic 21st century – an instant literary fix for commuters, bedtime or occasional readers. "
Jeremy Osner has a poem video on The New Inquiry. http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/sunday-reading-46/
ON BARCELONA (http://onbarcelona.blogspot.com/) is inviting submissions: "Looking, as always, for work. No reading fees, no contest fees, no SASEs, no guidelines." Email halvard@gmail.com
Gemini Online Magazine contest– $4 entry fee: http://www.gemini-magazine.com/index.html
See Linda Marshall's new website. Terrific books for children with a Jewish theme.
THE WRITING LIFE WITH ELLEN BASS February 8 - 10, 2013 Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA. This workshop will help keep the channels open. For more information, click here. To register, call Esalen at 831-667-3005.
MORE WITH ELLEN BASS: TRUTH AND BEAUTY May 28 - June 2, 2013 Taught by Dorianne Laux, Marie Howe, and Ellen Bass at Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Taos, NM. Marie Howe, Dorianne Laux, and Ellen Bass are poets who work to tell the truth in ways that show us the beauty of life, even in the midst of heartbreak and loss. If you want to encounter more truth in your poems, to express it in the most beautiful way possible, to craft poems that reflect the inextricable marriage of truth and beauty, love and death, the luminous and the ordinary, please join us for this special workshop. For more information about this workshop, visit the page here. To register, email Jen Petras at jpeachtree@yahoo.com.
Myra Shapiro's new book of poetry is just out: 12 Floors Above the Earth.Tony Hoagland says:
“Like Grace Paley or Stanley Kunitz, Myra Shapiro possesses a cultivated, tough-minded voice, and an unflinching human commitment to know more. Whether she is asking hard questions about the flickering strangeness of sexuality, solitude, or religion, her special intelligence finds the difficult hinges and pressure points of life. And, because she does not hide from what she finds, her probing is both beautiful and moving. ‘In longing you close your eyes,’ she says, and ‘in wonder you open them.’ 12 Floors Above the Earth is a wonderfully alert and honest collection of poems. It is also darkly witty.“
Victor Depta' s new book is Twofold Consciousness: Poetry and Essays on Mysticism, available from Blair Mountain Press and fromAamazon.
He writes: "We all know how ephemeral emails are. They add up by the hundreds until our computers remind us of the overload. We touch
"After a few months I decided that, with so much material, I might shape it into a book, a collection of epistolary essays. I couldn’t use his emails. He was too busy pursuing an M.A. for that kind of editorial collaboration, so I re-worked my responses for coherence and continuity and published them as Twofold Consciousness: Poetry and Essays on Mysticism. He had been troubled by Buddhism and its lack of ultimate, metaphysical meaning, so my essays addressed the issue of meaninglessness in relation to mysticism (the experience of enlightenment) and to existentialism (our daily lives). I made distinctions between the self, consciousness, self-consciousness and pure consciousness. Self-consciousness is described as an epiphenomenon of language, while the alienation from material reality is made tolerable by the ecstasy of the enlightened experience, by pure consciousness, and by compassion rising out of meaninglessness. During the restructuring of my emails, I saw that the poems I had been writing for the past two years dealt with the same subject of spiritual meaning, so I included them as an integral part of the book."
The book is Twofold Consciousness, ISBN: 978-0-9768817-7-3 $15.00 Blair Mountain Press 114 East Campbell Street Frankfort, Kentucky 40601 502-330-3707 www.blairmtp.net.
"I hereby release my Goodreads review under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License." -- Joel Weinberger
Meredith Sue Willis's
Books for Readers # 160
March 13 , 2013
My Very First Published Novel is Back as An E-Book:A Space Apart
(First Published by Charles Scribner's Sons)
Now in all E-Book Formats!
With a New Afterword
for Kindle
for Nook
for All E-Reader formats
It looks better online! -- Read latest changes and corrections online -- MSW Home
In this Issue:
Politerature!
More Politerature
Children's Picture Book for Passover
Joel Weinberger on Scientology Book
The E-Reader Report with John Birch
Announcements; Good Reading Online and On the Air
Free e-mail subscription to this newsletter.
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For Back Issues, click here.
ANNOUNCING POLITERATURE!
Shelley Ettinger and I have begun a conversation about politics and literature at a site called Politerature. There are book reviews (mostly of novels) and also dialogues between the two of us. Here's part of the "About Politerature:"
Politerature is an idea that begins with the assertion that politically informed literature can be of the highest quality. We believe that there are excellent books—some of them popular, others less well-known, some written in English, many originating in other languages—that express and embody political ideas. We believe that raising consciousness about racism or colonialism or women’s and LGBTQ oppression, about war and intervention, about class and unions, is a worthy task for fiction. We intend to pay attention to the books that take on this task.
The crux of what we are seeking is to honor and develop a kind of literature that runs counter to the conventional wisdom that true art cannot be political. On the contrary, we believe that many books at all points on the ideological spectrum– including those we find abhorrent and those that insist they have no ideology– are, in fact, political. Our focus will be literature that is politically progressive and leftist: this is what we call Politerature. We are seeking books that rise to the heights of complexity in story, language, character, and political experiences and ideas. In cases where such books don’t reach the heights, we applaud the effort.
Finally, we assert that political fiction can open minds, inform, give insight, inspire, strengthen, and arm. We need these things. Can books change the world? That’s one of the questions to be addressed here. We already know that we love books and we want to change the world. Those passions converge in Politerature.....
I've had a busy couple of months getting the Politerature website/blog off to a start with Shelley Ettinger (and we are getting a lot of suggestions of politically progressive novels (including "Backchannel Contributor" below). I've also been preparing two old books for republication, my first novel, A Space Apart as an e-book and—coming soon—Blazing Pencils, a reprint of a book for young writers about writing fiction and personal essays. Getting books back into print and into digital format seems increasingly important to me for us writers who are in for the long haul. I don't know if it was exactly a choice in my case—getting rich as a flash-in-the-pan best selling author would no doubt still tempt me—but the game has changed drastically since A Space Apart was first published in 1979. I'm going for a longitudinal career—trying to have all my books available in whatever formats exist.
Meanwhile, I have been reading between projects and my teaching work. I want to recommend first the deeply engrossing The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. I read it as a borrowed library book on the Kindle so the photographs weren't as enjoyable as in a big format hard copy book, but the true story was plenty just as a narrative. It's about a poor woman named Henrietta Lacks who dies young of a virulent cancer, and whose cancer cells were grown and used, and continue to be grown and used, for vast amounts of research. Many many lives have been saved, but no permission to use the cells was ever given. It brings up endless issues of medical racism and who owns our bodies.
It is also a real page turner, and, in addition, a glimpse into the lives of people whose lives are damaged by poverty (and, underlying that, slavery and racism). The family is also, however, full of love and energy. Skloot builds relationships with them, and writes about their reactions to her, and hers to them. She worked on this research for a long time, and I wondered— as did the Lacks family— exactly what Skloot was living on. Also, she does not, to my taste, make enough of the role of syphilis in the story. It is likely that syphilis suppressed Henrietta Lacks's immune system and made her cancer even more invasive. And I also still don't get why you can do research on cancer cells and get results that are true for normal cells.
My last caveat is that while the complex issue of profit from sick people's tissue is central to the book, in the end Skloot more or less says, Well, kids, that's capitalism. I could have used more critique; I don't believe that the only thing that has advanced medicine over the years has been the profit motive.
Still, this is meant to be a recommendation of a fascinating book.
I also read Carolina de Robertis's novel The Invisible Mountain so I could say I'd read all the
books on the Politerature banner , and I am so glad I did. Set Uruguay and Argentina, it is a three generation story that begins with family legends that have overtones of Cien Años de Soledad. I found that section least satisfying and liked much better the daughter who is a working class poet who runs away and becomes a kept woman (in Argentina) who parties with Peron and Evita. Her daughter becomes a Tupamaro and spends some terrible long years, more than a decade, in prison. The politics in this novel comes out of real lives naturally and easily: in one branch of the family, everyone is a communist. An uncle goes to fight for the revolution in Cuba. Che Guevera makes an appearance as a young doctor. All of this is simply part of the milieu, as is the suggestion that part of what finally ends the repression is that Uruguay has some history of the practice of democratic institutions, so even after many years of oppression and repression, there are those who remember a different political system..
Last, I want to mention Ross King's wonderful The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism. This is about the artists around Paris during the years before and after the Paris Commune of 1871. One of the strengths of this book for me is how it sketches in the background. I think I may finally have begun to get a mental outline of the various numbered empires and republics of France during the nineteenth century. The most powerful part of the historical background, however, is how Paris, shaken by losing the Franco-Prussian war, breaks out in the amazing
and partly woman-led Commune, which is followed by terrible, bloody reprisals from the ruling class.
The heart of the book, of course, is the lives and work of the artists. It focuses on Manet as the representative of the future and Meissonier representing the past. It was a time and place when everyone knew everyone else—Manet and Courbet and Monet and Degas and Cezanne and the whole crew hung out in cafés together, along with the writer Zola (see Germinal on the Politerature banner above) and others. It was a time when the public was truly offended and shocked by paintings in which people wore contemporary clothing (Manet's Dejeuner sur l'herbe) or when a female nude stared back at the observer (Manet's Olympia above). A conventional painter of military triumphs like Meissonier got rich, but the future was with Manet and the others.
Short Reviews and Books Received
Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg is the memoir of the summer the author's teen-aged daughter became manic-depressive. It was very gripping, very New York City story, reading like a novel, with terrific momentum and wonderful city characters both on the streets and in the hospitals. The middle class family lives in a grubby apartment with broken air conditioners and a half-friendly half-exploitative landlord. Then there is the brilliant, horrifying mania of Sally, who, we learn from the afterword, has recovered, been sick again, recovered again, and so on.
Greenberg wisely makes it the story of one heart-rending summer.
Fred Arment's thriller The Synthesis is readable and fast-paced with the the main character repeatedly being chased and whisked off and saved by unknown people. There are conspiracies and conspiracies against the conspirators, with the main plot element a financial plan to stop history. Intrerestingly, Arment's nonfiction book released in 2012 is called The Elements of Peace: How Nonviolence Works. This is a guide to nonviolent conflict resolution with case studies of methods for maintaining or achieving peace. It would have been interesting to see some nonviolent conflict resolution in the novel. But maybe by definition that would not have been a thriller.
Smithereens by Susan Taylor Chelak is a dark novel about a teenager who has been desultorily playing at suicide when a mysterious girl from Kentucky arrives on the scene and moves in with her family. The narrator's mother used to send money to the girl. There are various mysteries, but mostly there is learning to be "bad" and a dark climax. I especially liked the stranger, Frankie. I'm a sucker for bad girl teenagers. It's a terrific capturing of a portentous, semi-suicidal world reminiscent of Stephen King and some of Joyce Carol Oates' work.
The mystery Black Water Rising is by Attica Locke, a Hollywood script writer who was reportedly named for the 1971 Attica rebellion. It's a fine book with a suffering sleuth hero, an African-American former SNCC defendant-now-lawyer, trying to make a living, getting sucked into dirty stuff. The plot turns on oil business and and a longshoreman's union struggle. There are several interesting racial subplots, and an interesting thread about the main character's relationship with a former SDS'er now mayor of Houston. I don't find this female SDS mayor particularly believable, but it's lots of fun. The novel is told in the present tense, which works because of its movie scenario chops, always telling us what we're seeing. It also works because of many substantial flashbacks, especially between the main character and the mayor. Locke does the man's point of view really well, and I like it that his religious, lumpily pregnant wife turns out to be good in a crisis, not just a convenient motivation for male protectiveness. And I really like the grungy Houston background!
New from Presa Press two new collections by Eric Greinke: Traveling Music and Selected Poems: 1972 - 2005.
THE E-READER REPORT WITH JOHN BIRCH: New Website Rivals Amazon as Platform for Promoting New Books.
A new website, Goodreads.com, allows devoted bookworms to share their favorite titles, rate books they have read and to share lists of what they plan to read next, and why. They can do this to every subscriber to the site, or to an exclusive homemade list of people they want to reach. Goodreads.com already has 15 million readers, and is adding members all the time.
According to the New York Times, it's "rivaling Amazon.com as a platform for promoting new books."
The site also plays host to roughly 20,000 online book clubs for every preference, whether you're only interested in, say, biography, novels about paranormal romance, or an individual author.
Believe it or not, there are more than 300 clubs devoted to Paranormal Romance alone!
Read John's latest posts on his blog: www.JohnBirchLive.blogspot.com-- a growing collection of some of his short stories, articles and essays
DEBORAH GERSONY ON STEPHEN KING'S ON WRITING: A Memoir of the Craft
Deborah Gersony writes of Stephen King's Memoir/how-to-write book: "I was most interested in how he approaches the work—does he plot everything out carefully, start with a character study or a theme? What was interesting and made sense to me was that he starts with a difficult (or in his case demonic) situation that he happens to think of at random, puts one or two characters (thinly drawn at first) into it and then sees how they get out of it. As they emerge from their bad situation, their personalities and back stories emerge for him as well. He writes 2000 words a day. Research and the overall theme of the book (what he is really trying to say in the end) comes last and is important for the final revisions. He never seems to worry about endings, just let's them happen, somehow. Also, amazingly, he generally has an entire rough draft in 3 months! I haven't read many of his books, but I thought 11/22/63 was skillfully done, if a little loose and long. I think his down-to-basics approach is helpful for someone like me who hasn't written a novel before."
MORE BOOKS FOR WRITERS
Deborah's note led me to think about some of my favorite books about writing and literature. Some of them are practical guides, like the one I wrote, others are about the basics of literature (the very first book I ever read that taught me how literaure really works was Ciardi's How Does a Poem Mean?). There are also a couple of books recommended by students and friends that I haven't actually read myself. Also see one writer's recommendation below of a genre novelist with lots to teach all kinds of writers.
Booth, Wayne C.— The Rhetoric of Fiction
Burroway, Janet— Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft
Ciardi, John — How Does a Poem Mean?
King, Stephen —On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Anne Lamott — Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Paglia, Camille — Break, Blow Burn (How her favorite poems work)
Sexton, Adam — Master Class in Fiction Writing: Techniques from Austen, Hemingway, and other Greats
Silber, Joan — The Art of Time in Fiction: As Long a It Takes.
Willis, Meredith Sue — Ten Strategies to Write Your Novel
Wood, James— How Fiction Works
Zuckerman, Albert—Writing the Blockbuster Novel
VALERIE MARKWOOD RECOMMENDS A NOVELIST FOR NOVELISTS TO STUDY
"Lee Child [is] an excellent mystery writer [and] a good example of great openings, structure, etc. He used to be in TV – production & script writing. I haven't read all of his books, but ... below are the ones I've liked & didn't.
Killing Floor
Persuaders**
Die Trying
One Shot
Trip Wire (n.g.) stopped after 10 pgs.
The Enemy (n.g.) stopped after 10 pgs. "
PHYLLIS MOORE ON MARGARET MILLET
Says Phyllis Moore: "I'm thinking [Margaret Millet] she grew up in WV. At age 18 she wrote a poem 'Silicosis in Our Town' about Hawk's Nest tunnel tragedy. She may have met or known Muriel Rukeyser as I found the poem in a book about Rukeyser's work on Gauley Bridge. Millet married Sender Garlin and they both were dubbed 'communist' as they were for the working class, etc. He was Jewish.
"She has quite a nice record of labor-type protest poetry. Her long poem 'Thine Alabaster Cities' is about the failure of the American dream and racial turmoil in Mississippi related to two legal cases. [One of her poems] reflects on the feelings the woman who accused Emmitt Till might have had after his death. So far, I can't find much about her except she and Sender moved to Boulder at retirement and he died there in 1999. One of their three children, a son, is probably the prominent Boulder attorney and activist, Alexander Garlin. His name matches. Her other son's name is Victor and her daughter's name is Emily. I'm trying to track down her WV roots through census records, etc."
"BACKCHANNEL CONTRIBUTOR" SUGGESTS FICTION WITH POLITICAL CONTENT
A regular reader and contributor to Politerature (a blog on progressive novels ) recommends taking a look at Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain. It just won the National Book Critics Circle award. The article linked contains a link to a longer description of the book on the National Book Critics Circle website.
"Also," says Backchannel Contributor, "take a look at The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, which also won an award. I recently read it: powerful!" For an interview with Kevin Powers where he "talks ... about the frontline between fact and fiction in his The Yellow Birds ...." see http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/13/kevin-powers-the-yellow-birds
JOEL WEINBERGER on Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright.
Going Clear was a surprisingly good read, which is surprising in its own right as I certainly went into the book expecting to enjoy it. However, as my expectations were to leave the book angry as I often do after reading about Scientology, I have instead found myself with a much more complex set of emotions about the Church and the religion, which I think is a testament to Wright's straight, (mostly) objective approach.
The book covers several major topics regarding Scientology in great detail: the history of the founder L. Ron Hubbard and his creation of the Church, the modern workings of the Church under the current (probably abusive) leader David Miscavige, and the story of Hollywood writer and director Paul Haggis. My only real complaint about the book is the Haggis portion of the story is effectively a rehash of the very well written New Yorker piece by Wright, and it doesn't really add much to the rest of the narrative he builds. But it certainly isn't bad, so my complaint here is pretty limited.
While presenting the history of the Church, Wright plays it straight the entire way. He does a good job avoiding editorializing, although his opinions are pretty readily visible in his presentation. The real key is that by presenting the facts straight, without common commentary that is heard about Scientology and its beliefs, Wright is able to separate the "crazy" from the false and dangerous. And this is a vital distinction that is not made nearly enough, because the "crazy" portion is really no more crazy than any other religion, with resurrection, parting of seas, or visits to heaven (and I say this as a pretty religious fellow myself). Wright's presentation makes it clear that the real problems, if they are true, lie in the Church, not the religion per se (although the Church would greatly prefer if you didn't separate the two).
Wright's book makes for a very well written introduction to Scientology for outsiders. It requires no background in knowing what the Church is about or who this Hubbard guy is, as many articles do. It's a fascinating read even for someone like me who had a pretty strong interest in the Church's actitives beforehand.
READ ONLINE AND ON THE AIR
Check out this wonderful blog by a young writer named Jessica Ong-- it's all about a failing parent and growing up Chinese-American and much, much more.
ReamyJansen had a good entry about book critics on Critical Mass, the National Book Critics Circle blog.
ANNOUNCEMENTS, NEWS, CONTESTS, WORKSHOPS, READINGS ETC.
William Luvaas essay on revision at Glimmertrain: http://www.glimmertrain.com/b74luvaas.html "Talent can be overrated. Patience will more likely bring virtuosity and success."
There is a new website for Alice Boatwright's COLLATERAL DAMAMGE.
Standing on Both Feet: Voices of Older Mixed Race Americans...
.... by Cathy J. Tashiro is just out in paperback (Paradigm Publishers, 2013). It's about people of mixed race focusing on on an older population. It's on Amazon Here and also available directly from the publisher here.
Gradually the World: New and Selected Poems, 1982 - 2013 by Burt Kimmelman...
..., will be published this fall officially but the book is up at the publisher's website (BlazeVOX [books[): http://www.blazevox.org/index.php/Shop/new-releases/gradually-the-world-new-and-selected-poems-1982-–-2013-by-burt-kimmelman-337/
Poems of Ecological Sanity & Climate Crisis
Hosted by Daniela Gioseffi Friday 7PM April 12, 2013 Free and Open to the Public Downstairs Auditorium Hall at Poets House 10 River Terrace New York, NY 10282 Please join eco-poetry.org for a reading, refreshments & talk regarding eco-poetics & climate change. Presenters include: Alfred Corn, D. Nurkse, George Guida, Fran Castan, Vivian Demuth, Burt Kimmelman, Gil Fagiani, Pat Falk, Daniela Gioseffi, George Held Eliot Katz, Maria Lisella, Rob Marchesani Nancy Mercado, Maria Terrone, Paola Corso, Juanita Torrence-Thompson http://www.poetshouse.org/programs-and-events/other-events/poems-ecological-sanity
Aurora Project Spring Writers Retreat
Aurora Project Spring Writers Retreat, May 2-15. Call 304-342-1213 or email motherwit@suddenlink.net .
ON BARCELONA ....
On Barcelona is inviting submissions: "Looking, as always, for work. No reading fees, no contest fees, no SASEs, no guidelines." Email halvard@gmail.com
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:
An email digest of magazines and publishers open to submissions: write CRWROPPS-B@yahoogroups.com to join the list.
ED DAVIS
Poetry Reading, March 22 I'll also be doing a poetry reading on March 22 at 7:30 p.m. at Montage Cafe in Greenville, Ohio. Poetry, food, and music--I'd love to see you there! New Poems Published Three of my poems—"Aunt Hazel's Jewelry," "Communion," and "Footwashing"—have been published at the online literary magazine Blue Ridge Literary Prose and are available for viewing at blueridgeliteraryprose.wordpress.com.
Announcing the Tenth Annual 2013 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize
Submission deadline: April 30, 2013 Submit a manuscript of 48-84* pages of original poetry in any style in English. The manuscript must not have been published previously in book form, although individual poems appearing in print or on the web are permitted. Entries may consist of individual poems, a book-length poem, or any combination of long or short poems. Collaborations are welcome. Click here to read more. (Please note: Manuscripts longer than 84 pages may be considered, but please contact us before submitting.) CHARLES BERNSTEIN to Judge 10th Annual Contest
CHILDREN'S PICTURE BOOK FOR PASSOVER
The Passover Lamb by Linda Elovitz Marshall Illustrated by Tatjana Mai-Wyss tells the story of a farm family that happens to be Jewish. When a favorite sheep gives birth to triplets but rejects one of the lambs, the family has to decide how to save the lamb– AND make it to Grandma and Grandpa's for the Seder!
Based on a true story that happened to the author, it would be an especially terrific seasonal gift for a child you know– but a lovely story for anyone any time.
"I hereby release my Goodreads review under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License." -- Joel Weinberger
ABOUT AMAZON.COM
The largest unionized bookstore in America has a webstore at Powells Books. Some people prefer shopping online there to shopping at Amazon.com. An alternative way to reach Powell's site and support the union is via http://www.powellsunion.com. Prices are the same but 10% of your purchase will go to support the union benefit fund.
For a discussion of Amazon and organized labor and small presses, see the comments of Jonathan Greene and others in Issues #97 and #98 .
WHERE TO FIND BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS NEWSLETTER
If a book discussed in this newsletter has no source mentioned, don’t forget that you may be able to borrow it from your public library as either a hard copy or a digital copy. You may also buy or order from your local independent bookstore.
To buy books online, I often go first to Bookfinder or Alibris. Bookfinder tells you the book price WITH shipping and handling, so you can compare what you’re really going to have to pay.
A lot of people whose political instincts I respect prefer the unionized bricks-and-mortar bookstore Powells (see "About Amazon.com" above) that sells online at http://powellsbooks.com.
Another source for used and out-of-print books is All Book Stores .
Also consider Paperback Book Swap, a low cost (postage only) way to get rid of your old books and get new ones by trading with other readers.
If you are using an electronic reader like Kindle, Nook, or Kobo, get free books at the Gutenberg Project—mostly classics, but other things as well. Libraries now lend e-books too!
RESPONSES TO THIS NEWSLETTER
Please send responses to this newsletter and suggestions directly to Meredith Sue Willis . Unless you instruct otherwise, your responses may be edited for length and published in this newsletter.
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LICENSE
Books for Readers Newsletter by Meredith Sue Willis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.meredithsuewillis.com. Some individual contributors may have other licenses.
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BACK ISSUES:
#160 Carolina De Robertis, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Ross King's The Judgment of Paris
#159 Tom Jones. William Luvaas, Marc Harshman, The Good Earth, Lara Santoro, American Psycho
#158 Chinua Achebe's Man of the People; The Red and the Black; McCarthy's C.; Farm City; Victor Depta;Myra Shapiro
#157 Alice Boatwright, Reamy Jansen, Herta Muller, Knut Hamsun, What Maisie Knew; Wanchee Wang, Dolly Withrow.
#156 The Glass Madonna; A Revelation
#155 Buzz Bissinger; reader suggestions; Satchmo at the Waldorf
#154 Hannah Brown, Brad Abruzzi, Thomas Merton
#153 J.Anthony Lukas, Talmage Stanley's The Poco Fields, Devil Anse
#152 Marc Harshman guest editor; John Burroughs; Carol Hoenig
#151 Deborah Clearman, Steve Schrader, Paul Harding, Ken Follet, Saramago-- and more!
#150 Mitch Levenberg, Johnny Sundstrom, and Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns.
#149 David Weinberger's Too Big to Know; The Shining; The Tiger's Wife.
#148 The Moonstone, Djibouti, Mark Perry on the Grimké family
#147 Jane Lazarre's new novel; Johnny Sundstrom; Emotional Medicine Rx; Walter Dean Myers, etc.
#146 Henry Adams AGAIN! Also,Fun Home: a Tragicomic
#145 Henry Adams, Darnell Arnoult, Jaimy Gordon, Charlotte Brontë
#144 Carter Seaton, NancyKay Shapiro, Lady Murasaki Shikibu
#143 Little America; Guns,Germs, and Steel; The Trial
#142 Blog Fiction, Leah by Seymour Epstein, Wolf Hall, etc.
#141 Dreama Frisk on Hilary Spurling's Pearl Buck in China; Anita Desai; Cormac McCarthy
#140 Valerie Nieman's Blood Clay, Dolly Withrow
#139 My Kindle, The Prime Minister, Blood Meridian
#138 Special on Publicity by Carter Seaton
#137 Michael Harris's The Chieu Hoi Saloon; Game of Thrones; James Alexander Thom's Follow the River
#136 James Boyle's The Creative Commons; Paola Corso, Joanne Greenberg, Monique Raphel High, Amos Oz
#135 Reviews by Carole Rosenthal, Jeffrey Sokolow, and Wanchee Wang.
#134 Daniel Deronda, books with material on black and white relations in West Virginia
#133 Susan Carpenter, Irene Nemirovsky, Jonathan Safran Foer, Kanafani, Joe Sacco
#132 Karen Armstrong's A History of God; JCO's The Falls; The Eustace Diamonds again.
#131 The Help; J. McHenry Jones, Reamy Jansen, Jamie O'Neill, Michael Chabon.
#130 Lynda Schor, Ed Myers, Charles Bukowski, Terry Bisson, The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism
#129 Baltasar and Blimunda; Underground Railroad; Navasky's Naming Names, small press and indie books.
#128 Jeffrey Sokolow on Histories and memoirs of the Civil Rights Movement
#127 Olive Kitteridge; Urban fiction; Shelley Ettinger on Joyce Carol Oates
#126 Jack Hussey's Ghosts of Walden, The Leopard , Roger's Version, The Reluctanct Fundamentalist
#125 Lee Maynard's The Pale Light of Sunset; Books on John Brown suggested by Jeffrey Sokolow
#124 Cloudsplitter, Founding Brothers, Obenzinger on Bradley's Harlem Vs. Columbia University
#123 MSW's summer reading round-up; Olive Schreiner; more The Book Thief; more on the state of editing
#122 Left-wing cowboy poetry; Jewish partisans during WW2; responses to "Hire a Book Doctor?"
#121 Jane Lazarre's latest; Irving Howe's Leon Trotsky; Gringolandia; "Hire a Book Doctor?"
#120 Dreama Frisk on The Book Thief; Mark Rudd; Thulani Davis's summer reading list
#119 Two Histories of the Jews; small press books for Summer
#118 Kasuo Ichiguro, Jeanette Winterson, The Carter Family!
#117 Cat Pleska on Ann Pancake; Phyllis Moore on Jayne Anne Phillips; and Dolly Withrow on publicity
#116 Ann Pancake, American Psycho, Marc Harshman on George Mackay Brown
#115 Adam Bede, Nietzsche, Johnny Sundstrom
#114 Judith Moffett, high fantasy, Jared Diamond, Lily Tuck
#113 Espionage--nonfiction and fiction: Orson Scott Card and homophobia
#112 Marc Kaminsky, Nel Noddings, Orson Scott Card, Ed Myers
#111 James Michener, Mary Lee Settle, Ardian Gill, BIll Higginson, Jeremy Osner, Carol Brodtick
#110 Nahid Rachlin, Marion Cuba on self-publishing; Thulani Davis, The Road, memoirs
#109 Books about the late nineteen-sixties: Busy Dying; Flying Close to the Sun; Looking Good; Trespassers
#108 The Animal Within; The Ground Under My Feet; King of Swords
#107 The Absentee; Gorky Park; Little Scarlet; Howl; Health Proxy
#106 Castle Rackrent; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; More on Drown; Blindness & more
#105 Everything is Miscellaneous, The Untouchable, Kettle Bottom by Diane Gilliam Fisher
#104 Responses to Shelley on Junot Diaz and more; More best books of 2007
#103 Guest Editor: Shelley Ettinger and her best books of 2007
#102 Saramago's BLINDNESS; more on NEVER LET ME GO; George Lies on Joe Gatski
#101 My Brilliant Career, The Scarlet Letter, John Banville, Never Let Me Go
#100 The Poisonwood Bible, Pamela Erens, More Harry P.
#99 Jonathan Greene on Amazon.com; Molly Gilman on Dogs of Babel
#98 Guest editor Pat Arnow; more on the Amazon.com debate
#97 Using Thomas Hardy; Why I Write; more
#96 Lucy Calkins, issue fiction for young adults
#95 Collapse, Harry Potter, Steve Geng
#94 Alice Robinson-Gilman, Maynard on Momaday
#93 Kristin Lavransdatter, House Made of Dawn, Leaving Atlanta
#92 Death of Ivan Ilych; Memoirs
#91 Richard Powers discussion
#90 William Zinsser, Memoir, Shakespeare
#89 William Styron, Ellen Willis, Dune, Germinal, and much more
#88 Sandra Cisneros's Caramelo
#87 Wings of the Dove, Forever After (9/11 Teachers)
#86 Leora Skolkin-Smith, American Pastoral, and more
#85 Wobblies, Winterson, West Virginia Encyclopedia
#84 Karen Armstrong, Geraldine Brooks, Peter Taylor
#83 3-Cornered World, Da Vinci Code
#82 The Eustace Diamonds, Strapless, Empire Falls
#81 Philip Roth's The Plot Against America , Paola Corso
#80 Joanne Greenberg, Ed Davis, more Murdoch; Special Discussion on Memoir--Frey and J.T. Leroy
#79 Adam Sexton, Iris Murdoch, Hemingway
#78 The Hills at Home; Tess of the D'Urbervilles; Jean Stafford
#77 On children's books--guest editor Carol Brodtrick
#76 Mary Lee Settle, Mary McCarthy
#75 The Makioka Sisters
#74 In Our Hearts We Were Giants
#73 Joyce Dyer
#72 Bill Robinson WWII story
#71 Eva Kollisch on G.W. Sebald
#70 On Reading
#69 Nella Larsen, Romola
#68 P.D. James
#67 The Medici
#66 Curious Incident,Temple Grandin
#65 Ingrid Hughes on Memoir
#64 Boyle, Worlds of Fiction
#63 The Namesame
#62 Honorary Consul; The Idiot
#61 Lauren's Line
#60 Prince of Providence
#59 The Mutual Friend, Red Water
#58 AkÉ, Season of Delight
#57 Screaming with Cannibals
#56 Benita Eisler's Byron
#55 Addie, Hottentot Venus, Ake
#54 Scott Oglesby, Jane Rule
#53 Nafisi,Chesnutt, LeGuin
#52 Keith Maillard, Lee Maynard
#51 Gregory Michie, Carter Seaton
#50 Atonement, Victoria Woodhull biography
#49 Caucasia
#48 Richard Price, Phillip Pullman
#47 Mid- East Islamic World Reader
#46 Invitation to a Beheading
#45 The Princess of Cleves
#44 Shelley Ettinger: A Few Not-so-Great Books
#43 Woolf, The Terrorist Next Door
#42 John Sanford
#41 Isabelle Allende
#40 Ed Myers on John Williams
#39 Faulkner
#38 Steven Bloom No New Jokes
#37 James Webb's Fields of Fire
#36 Middlemarch
#35 Conrad, Furbee, Silas House
#34 Emshwiller
#33 Pullman, Daughter of the Elm
#32 More Lesbian lit; Nostromo
#31 Lesbian fiction
#30 Carol Shields, Colson Whitehead
#29 More William Styron
#28 William Styron
#27 Daniel Gioseffi
#26 Phyllis Moore
#25 On Libraries....
#24 Tales of the City
#23 Nonfiction, poetry, and fiction
#22 More on Why This Newsletter
#21 Salinger, Sarah Waters, Next of Kin
#20 Jane Lazarre
#19 Artemisia Gentileschi
#18 Ozick, Coetzee, Joanna Torrey
#17 Arthur Kinoy
#16 Mrs. Gaskell and lots of other suggestions
#15 George Dennison, Pat Barker, George Eliot
#14 Small Presses
#13 Gap Creek, Crum
#12 Reading after 9-11
#11 Political Novels
#10 Summer Reading ideas
#9 Shelley Ettinger picks
#8 Harriette Arnow's Hunter's Horn
#7 About this newsletter
#6 Maria Edgeworth
#5 Tales of Good and Evil; Moon Tiger
#4 Homer Hickam and The Chosen
#3 J.T. LeRoy and Tale of Genji
#2 Chick Lit
#1 About this newsletter
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