Of Bookmarks, Brothers, and BAD (with an Office Girl and a Swamp thrown in for giggles)

I got my Albatros bookmarks the other day and I'm digging using them.  It really may be a better bookmark, simple, elegant, and clever.  I would prefer they were re-usable.  We live in the golden age of adhesives so I can only guess this is a simple adjustment to make.  

Karen Russell won the New York Public Library Young Lions award for Swamplandia!  The award is for American authors under the age of 35 who show promise.  She was a finalist for her previous collection St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.  As if I haven't pimped her enough on this blog, I strongly encourage you to read her work.  

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt is out in paperback and continues to rack up awards, especially in his native Canada.  The new cover isn't nearly as enthralling as the original and whoever decided there was need to change it should be taken out and horsewhipped.  However it's what's between the covers that counts. 

Joe Meno's upcoming Office Girl is a winner.  I'll post more about it closer to its July pub date but be on the lookout for this one from those cool cats at Akashic Books.

Paul Fussell passed away yesterday at the age of 88.  A cultural critic with a sharp eye and an acid tongue, his book BAD or the Dumbing of America had a strong grip on me when I read it 20 years ago. I'm re-reading it now and find he is still dead on the money.  I can only imagine what he must have thought about the ubiquity of the Internet and cell phones, reality TV and the demise of empathy, honor and shame in American culture today.  Was he ahead of his time or have we as a society just gotten worse? 

Me, The Mob, And The Music: One Helluva Ride with Tommy James and the Shondells

Admit it.  You can name three or four Tommy James tunes off the top of your head.  How about these: Crimson and Clover, Crystal Blue Persuasion and I Think We're Alone Now.  All great pop songs. All number one records.  All memorable.  All embedded in our ears.  And that's without mentioning Mony, Mony, Hanky Panky, Draggin' the Line or a mess of other singles that charted high.

 

Let me say, right off the bat, I'm not some secret Tommy James freak who has been waiting all my life for this memoir.  In fact, I doubt only the true Tommy James freak, of which there must be some somewhere, have been waiting all their lives for this memoir.  Still, when I saw this was being published, it made me think about Tommy James and the Shondells and their place in the scheme of rock 'n' roll.  What was it like for a lightweight hitmaker like Tommy James to hit it big while the Beatles, the Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and other more influential musicians were at the height of their popularity and creative output?  Hoping for an answer to that question made me want to read this memoir. 

So there's the "Me" and the "Music" of the title.  What of "the Mob"?  Ah, yes, the story of Roulette Records, the baby of Morris Levy, a notorious label chief who was so mobbed-up, he gave his bodyguards their own labels.  A guy so cutthroat, he actually cut throats.  Thing is, he knew a hit when he heard it.  Tommy James came along after a long dry spell for Roulette so Levy made him a star.  Along the way, Levy invented the cut-out and the K-Tel label as a way to double dip from his own publishing empire.  Shrewd, mean and loyal.  That was Morris Levy. 

No great revelations here, of course: kid comes from nothing, makes it big, mobster screws him out of millions, too much booze, too many pills, James finds Jesus (I do wish Jesus would talk to James about his hair!  He sports a rather frightening coif these days), record label folds like a house of cards, prison, cancer, oldies circuit.  Sounding like every cliche imaginable, Me, The Mob, and The Music is a highly readable story that I couldn't put down.  Honest.

Getting Graphic

Mythology: The DC Comics Art of Alex Ross

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Here we have two examples of successful storytelling within the same medium, one that is usually derided as being "kid stuff" or low-brow.  Both pack a punch but in very different ways.

Alex Ross creates comic art like you've never seen. While you've seen images of Batman and Superman a million times during your life, often not even seeking them out, when you come across Ross' work and give it just a moment or two to seep in, it will stop you in your tracks.

Mythology provides the reader a look inside the gorgeous artwork and gives us a sense of Ross' process which ultimately gives a greater sense of the man.  Owing a debt to the great comic artists that came before him, especially Neal Adams, Ross has elevated the art form.  His process uses live models and, most surprising to me, after drawing in pencil, he paints everything.  Surprising in that most comic artists start with pencil, then hand off to an inker and then hand off to another person, a colorist, to finish things up. His use of light is one of the especially effective and distinguishing characteristics of his work.  The realism is so intense, it's almost as if Norman Rockwell was hired to draw Superman or Captain Marvel. 

Here's a video showing Ross at work:

 

Satrapi's Persepolis is a very different book though every bit as wonderful.  Unlike Ross, Satrapi uses black and white art to tell her story of growing up in Iran before and during the Islamic Revolution that ousted the Shah and installed the theocratic government of the Ayatollah Khomeini.  It is young girl's story of feeling powerless in a world that turned the world upside down. 

The honesty with which Satrapi writes is remarkable.  To show us how she could be a bratty, know-it-all adolescent, to share with us her parents real tears and fears, to shed light on the sizable population that were not Islamic radicals gives us real insight into the human issues.  All these years later, I think we assume everyone in Iran was in favor of the regime change and that now everyone is a fundamentalist and has been since the late '70's.  In Persepolis, Satrapi shows us otherwise and I am most grateful for her moving, funny, sad story.

It's World Book Night!

Today is a very special day in the world of books and reading.  It is the inaugural World Book Night here in the U.S. and I am so very proud to be a part of it.

The idea is to get books into the hands of people who don’t read much but would like to read more. Thirty different, acclaimed books were carefully chosen and tens of thousands of people across the country are giving these books away today, myself included. I was lucky enough to give away a favorite of mine, Peace Like a River by Leif Enger.  I read the book prior to starting this blog so there's no review handy but I will say it's an absolutely marvelous story, beautifully written, about faith, family, and personal conviction.  Leif Enger's prose is gorgeous and breathtaking and if you trust me at all, do yourself a giant favor and pick up a copy of this book.

World Book Night began last year in the UK and this is the first year the U.S. has been involved. Other countries will follow suit and the aim is to give away one million books in a single day across the world.

Publishers, printers, and wholesalers made these special paperback editions available for free and authors and agents waived their royalties.  Indie bookstores, chains, wholesalers, and libraries nationwide are on-board as are organizations like the American Booksellers Association and the American Library Association. Even UPS helped out by shipping these thousands of books for free.

As a World Book Night giver, I received twenty copies and gave them away today at work and in my neighborhood.  As I handed them out, I congratulated the recipients for being part of something much bigger and hoped they will love Peace Like A River as much as I do.  Now it's out of my hands and in theirs.

If you'd like to learn more, please go to www.worldbooknight.org and mark your calendars for next April 23.  

Many thanks to Leif Enger and to Carl Lennertz, el queso grande of WBN, for allowing me to play my tiny part.   Well done, Carlo.  You did it!

Everybody Says Hello by Michael Kun

Occasionally, there are characters in books that I like so much or find so compelling, I wish the author would revisit them.  However, even for the authors who created the character from their own minds, hearts and experience, that is often too tall an order, the result unsatisfying or forced.  Updike was successful with Rabbit Angstrom as was Roddy Doyle with Paula Spencer.  I'm happy to say Michael Kun succeeds in catching us up with Sid Straw in his latest novel, Everybody Says Hello.  

We were first introduced to him almost ten years ago in The Locklear Letters and now we are afforded the opportunity to see how he has fared since.  This time, we meet up with Sid as he's heading from his beloved Baltimore and a broken relationship to start over on the West Coast in a new position at a computer company.  

Like its predecessor, Everybody Says Hello is an epistolary novel and Sid is a letter-writing dynamo.  (I especially loved the postcards he sends his young nephew that draw his sisters' ire.)  Unlike most epistolary novels, there is no correspondence; every letter is 'From the Desk of Sid Straw' and with every letter, nothing goes as planned. In his well-meaning zeal, each letter he writes makes a little mess turn into a bigger one and from there, well, the police are called, disputes arise with questionable hotel managers and his new life suddenly begins to unravel before it starts. 
 

Despite the fact that his biggest problem is that he just can't get out of his own way, Sid is a likable, kindhearted guy.  He is a pleaser, a romantic, and something of a nebbish.  If Leo Durocher's maxim was correct, Sid Straw, the epitome of 'nice guys', not only finishes last but he's also been guilted into sweeping up the joint, doing the dishes and cleaning the ashtrays.   Among his writing talents, Kun makes you feel like you know Sid.  He's your nutty uncle or your old roommate and he drives you a little crazy but he means well and he's always been SO good to you and in a pinch, he'd do anything for you.  Other writers might have foregone that sense of humanity for laughs but Kun succeeds in telling all sides of Sid's exploits in a clean, concise way without sacrificing anything.  Best of all, Michael Kun is damned funny; in my mind, he's one of the funniest novelists writing today.  


Though letter-writing has gone the way of the dodo,sadly, I would be curious to see how Sid is doing ten years from now.  Michael Kun, are you listening?

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

Before Passover passes me by, here's the perfect title to accompany all that matzah you might be eating.  


People of the Book is a remarkable novel whose main character is a book, the celebrated Sarajevo Haggadah.  The haggadah is read during the Passover seder that commemorates the exodus of the enslaved Jews in Egypt.  Think Charlton Heston in the Ten Commandments. You know, "Let My People Go!", parting of the Red Sea, killing of the firstborn, Yul Brynner as Pharoah, the whole bit.  Throw in some songs, some wine and a reminder what a tremendous disappointment I was to my parents and it's like you're at the table with us. 

A magnificently and uncharacteristically illustrated version, the Sarajevo Haggadah is believed to have been created in Spain in the 1400's.  At some point in the 16th century, it turned up in Italy and then at the very end of the 1800s, it was sold to the National Museum of Sarajevo.  During World War II and the long, ugly Bosnian wars, the Haggadah was hidden and kept safe, in one instance by the museum director, himself a Muslim.  You can read Brooks' fascinating New Yorker piece about the Haggadah and the museum director here: http://goo.gl/74ykP

In broad strokes, those are the facts.  What Brooks does then is piece together a dazzling work of fiction by imagining who wrote it, who commissioned it, who illustrated it, and who kept it safe in a longer narrative broken up by period pieces and some contemporary conspiracy.  

Having never read her before, I can say Brooks is a gifted writer, given to clean prose, believable dialogue and a tremendous nose for research.  There are some contrivances along the way but they don't take away from this ambitious and satisfying book.  

Happy Passover.

Build A Better Bookmark...

...and the world will beat a path to your bookshelves?  

We shall see if this happens but I'm so intrigued by the Albatros bookmark.  Let's be honest.  I've nothing against the bookmark as it exists. It is a perfectly functional piece of equipment that has served me well with thousands of books.  I think what I like about the Albatros is the thought that went into the design, making the bookmark practically sexy (Yes, I used 'sexy' and 'bookmark' in the same sentence.  Who woulda thought?).  As well, the idea of innovation as regards the bookmark is something I would have never pondered.  Big ups to its creator, Oscar Lhermitte. 

After watching this video, see if you're not as excited about this as I am:

http://www.indiegogo.com/Albatros-bookmarks-1

The Albatros bookmark will hit the market in a month or so and I am anxious to try mine out.