This week's book haul

Added to the shelves:
Song Yet Sung by James McBride: The author of The Color of Water brings us the story of Liz Spocott, a woman troubled by dreams as she attempts to escape slavery in Maryland. Liz dreams of the state of African-Americans in modern day, and McBride makes no attempt to hide the fact that this novel is a social commentary on today's Af-Am community and an investigation of slavery.

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson: This is the story of Laurel Hawthorne, a woman with a perfect life until the ghost of her next door neighbor, Molly, visits her in the middle of the night. Molly has died, and Laurel must determine the cause. As she seeks the answer, she begins to find out about her family's shadowed past, the true state of her marriage, and the girl who stopped swimming.

A Dangerous Age by Ellen Gilchrist (coming out in April/May 2008): (from the book jacket) The women of the Hand family are no strangers to controversy or sadness. Those traits seem, in fact, to be a part of a family heritage that stretches back for generations. As Louise, Olivia, and Winnifred Hand come face to face with the Iraq war, they find they must face other things as well.

Currently reading: Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath by Kate Moses. Each chapter is named after a Plath poem, and Moses style resonates like Plath's poetry. It's hard to remember that Wintering is fiction, as it feels like I'm reading Plath's journals.

The Love Story by behind Gone with the Wind by Marianne Walker. This is probably the cheesiest title anyone could have chosen, and it's sad that this unacademic title introduces such a well-written and thoroughly researched work about the Marshes. Walker details the lives and times of Margaret and John, and it was clear that GWTW was the child of their union. She raises interesting points, the most provactive being that John may have written sections of his wife's novel, like, namely, the first chapter.

Six Word Memoirs

These have been popular around the blogosphere lately, and I didn't know why until I read last week's Publishers Weekly. Evidently, Smith Magazine asked authors to boil their lives down to six words. Henry Alford, writing for PW, included a few they may have missed.

Here are my favorites:

James Joyce: Irish poor Catholic alcoholic no commas
Hemingway: All my sentences: about this length.
Margaret Mitchell: Posthumous nightmares re Carol Burnett, drapes
Ian McEwan: Formerly gothic, but, suddenly Keira Knightley

Henry Shukman's The Lost City

The Lost City is a great adventure tale, but it is not, though the opening would attest to the contrary, rife with great meaning. Unfortunately, Jackson Small, the protagonist, is too uni-dimensional for his journey to be anything more significant than one man's hunt for meaning in a forest. Jackon's relationship with Connelly scars him, and he desires only to find that kind of relationship again. When he does, with Sarah, the beautiful grad student and Ignacio, the young boy with an uncanny knack for navigating the jungle, the tale is basicly over. What comes after is the adventure part, which is the strongest aspect of the story. Shukman's poetical abilities show up in beautiful descriptions of wind, sky, and desert. Jackson's hunt for La Joya and the descriptions of the scenary keep this novel interesting. Jackson's character development does not.

The Lost City came out last week.

David Fulmer's The Blue Door

There are few more satisfying things than a great mystery, and Fulmer's new The Blue Door fulfills all the promises of a first rate detective story. Fulmer's prose beats along like jazz, and his characters, deftly drawn and multi-layered, interact to create tension and drama. The ending is wholly unexpected. Beyond the great mystery plot, though, is the work of a master craftsman. Fulmer knows how to build a plot and create full-blooded characters. Each sentence is crisp, and the pacing is perfect. There is never a dull moment.

Reading Fulmer merely undergirds my thinking about genres. The publishing industry divides literature up by topic, and certain topics do not, according to reputation, exhibit great writing. One could argue that the mystery/suspense/thrillers fall into this category. The known authors of different genres are recognized because they execute good stories, not because they are competent at the craft of writing. The 'great/good writers' live in the 'literary fiction' genre, a term both silly and increasingly un-prescriptive. I bring this point up only because I wonder how many other great executors of the craft of fiction are out there in fantasy or romance that I am not reading because I consider myself a literary fiction person?

All this to say, that even if you don't like mysteries, read Fulmer. He's a master of the story, regardless of which genre you might prefer.

Wasserstein's The Elements of Style

We visited friends in New York a few weeks ago, and took a drive through Greenwich, Connecticut. I have not spent much time in the northeast, but I've read some Edith Wharton, and the stories about the New York rich never fail to fascinate me. I think most people are fascinated by people who have ultimate freedom, and having lots of money is a great way to achieve that. However, ultimate freedom doesn't mean you're happy, though I resist the comforting temptation of some to justify the elegant wealth of certain people by saying that they must be unhappy in order to have that much money. It's the same specious argument that says all thin people are starving, but that might be another post. Regardless, big houses can mean a lot of things, but for Wasserstein's Elements of Style it means dysfunction and unhappiness.

I was told that this novel made a stir when it first emerged among the Upper East side set. I don't live in NYC, so this little hiccup escaped my notice, but I could imagine the real horror of seeing yourself in one of Wendy's characters. None of them, except the single, to be pitied, relatively poor pediatrician had any real morals. The rest of the characters were social climbers, husband-stealers, and fashionably dressed women with far more money than sense. It was pretty great reading about them. A few moments of humility allowed for some sympathy, but mostly Wasserstein paraded the worst of worst across her pages.

Ultimately, this novel is a cheaper, more poorly written version of Gatsby with the same 'they recede into their money' moral at the end, but it was a fabulous read. It was great for my plane ride home, and perhaps it's all a pack of lies (fiction's native habitat), but it was fun (in a grimacing kind of way) thinking that people like that actually exist.

If you liked this, you might also like:

The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald - similar themes and reckless, privileged people

The House of Mirth by Wharton - same sorts of people in 1880's New York

The Glitter and the Gold by Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan - a memoir from the wealthy of the wealthy. Although set in turn of the century, still a wonderful insight into monied NY society and the real impact that environment has on people.

The Nanny Diaries - same sorts of folks

The Devil Wears Prada - same reason as The Nanny Diaries

Lit Bloggers

An interesting article at Chekhov's Mistress called to mind a piece I read in Publishers' Weekly over the weekend. Jessa Crispin, the founder of Bookslut was interviewed, and I was impressed with her philosophy about book blogs: excellence will rise to the top. There are good book blogs and bad book blogs, but from the print side, the word is that none of them are up to print standard.


In contrast to book blogs, food blogs have been embraced by print publications. The blogger Molly Wizenberg, behind Orangette, was asked to write a column for Bon Appetite. Heidi Swanson at 100 Cookbooks published a cookbook of recipes originally created for her blog. Clothilde at Chocolate and Zucchini gives talks on NPR. Yet, in the book world, there has been mainly enmity and negativity between the blog and print world. (Though, Jessa Crispin's interview in PW is a great start.)


Print writers argue that book bloggers do not engage in critical debate, and this dearth of substance makes them substandard compared to print. William Skidalsky at Prospect Magazine says "I don’t think the blogosphere comes close to providing such a [critical discussion] space at present, largely because it is completely unregulated." Because book blogs have not been embraced by the print world, there is very little standardization. For food blogs, it's easy to tell which blogs are considered good because, to grab a used example, the good ones end up in Bon Appetite. Other food bloggers have only to look at the aforementioned food blogs to determine a goal. In contrast, book blogs have no such markers for differentiation, beside kudos from other book bloggers and the number of comments under a post.

Book blogs are seeking a form, a standard, to determine excellence. In the wild and woolly world of the internet, where there are no mediators or judges, it might be helpful to have print writers select blogs that provide examples of good reading/criticism/insight into the reading life/experience. As for providing good criticism, some blogs do and some blogs don't, but not all blogs provide great criticism all the time. Blogs are not lit crit journals and they are not the New York Times Review of Books, but that does not mean that they cannot have a separate form that embraces qualities from standard critical sources.

The book blog is still in its infancy, and unlike recipe blogs and political analysis blogs, there is a tremendous range of possibilities for the book blog. It's not as easy to be a great book blog as it is to be a great food blog. Partly that has to do with limited audience and lower barriers to entry: everyone has to eat, not everyone has to read. Also, the range for food blogs is not as broad as the range for book blogs. There are only a few ways to present a recipe, and a myriad ways to present a piece of book analysis. Plus, cooking something takes the fraction of the time of reading a book, so food bloggers are able to post often. In the blogging world, frequency is critical if you want to maintain readers, and the time spent reading a book and preparing a post burdens the book blogger. To maintain readership, the book blogger is forced to post short, "bitty" pieces to keep a daily or multi-day presence over a week.

Yet, none of these issues are insurmountable, and I think the increased number of book blogs will begin to create a place for, as Jessa Crispin says, 'excellence to rise to the top.' Currently, we are still primed to believe that print writing is better; editing and peer mediation has something to do with that, and in general I agree. But there are some wonderful examples of book blogs that are creating a great written product far from the print world: Bookslut (interviews, reviews), So Many Books (reading journal), BookWorld (great writing), and The Reading Experience (sharp analysis). As these blogs continue to grow and become more solid in their form, a general range of book blog excellence will emerge. Perhaps these blogs will be picked up by print, perhaps not, but I think that the print media must start looking to book blogs as a different form of book analysis rather than continuing to whine that they are not up to print standard.

To Read, Write, or do both

'I didn't start writing until late high school and then I was just diddling. Mainly I loved to read and my writing was an outgrowth of that. I always individuate myself from other writers who say they would die if they couldn't write. For me, I'd die if I couldn't read.' - Junot Diaz

I had an interesting conversation over email with a friend the other day about a group of "reluctant readers," people who don't like to read. It was interesting because this group of people are all self-professed writers, yet they admit to disliking reading. We were both puzzled; how can you write well if you don't read well? In my opinion, you can't.

Ken Jennings Trivia

Ken Jennings is coming to the Literary Center at the Margaret Mitchell House tonight, and it should be a lot of fun. I was on his site yesterday, and you can sign up for weekly trivia quizzes. They come to your email box every Tuesday. You get the answers the following Tuesday with the next quiz. You can even send in your answers to get prizes from Ken, which sounds great, but I don't think I"ll get anything. These questions are (mostly) super hard.

A few examples from this week:

Which seed gives Tahini its distinctive flavor? (I knew this one: sesame seeds...err..right?)

Good luck on this one: What unusual distinction is shared by these U.S. states, and no others? Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming? (As a hint, Bill had Massachusetts in his original list, but I now believe that it doesn't *quite* qualify.)
Hmmm...I put volcanoes...haha!

To sign up: www.ken-jennings.com