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For quite a while, I’ve been noticing various items on the book blogs and sites in my feed reader and think, “That again?” Evidently, I’m not alone as King Rat (a.k.a. Philip Weiss) kind of brought it home in a post he did on book blogging topics he’s done with on his blog.
Like him, there’s a variety of topics I’m just tired of reading about — and certainly don’t want to write about — that still seem to show up consistently in the book blogosphere. Now I admit I may have discussed s one or two of these in the past but it’s gotten to the point I’m fed with up certain tropes. Ignoring the all too often inane so-called memes that continue to persist, the topics include:
- Bookstores/printed books are dead/dying.
- Ebooks are killing/saving the book.
- How to start/write/promote a book blog.
- Blogging in or about a “blogathon” or a reading “marathon.”
- Book trailers and blog tours.
- Zombie and vampire books.
- I know it is literati blasphemy but… DFW
Now I realize that some of this topics are “important” and their persistence often results from stories in the traditional media. Still, to use a colloquialism from my workplace, continuing to post about them is like “barking up a dead horse’s ass.” Admittedly, there’s a few subjects I may be guilty of barking about, such as “real” book reviews vs. book blogs, literature in translation or the importance of the public library. If they annoy you, pass them by — just as I have been doing and plan to do for the topics above.
The road to truth is long, and lined the entire way with annoying bastards.
Alexander Jablokov, “The Place of No Shadows”
My friend Paulette Tobin has an article about Grand Forks, N.D., now being without a full-service bookstore carrying a full line of new books. This is particularly shocking when you consider the city, with a metro area population of just under 100,000, is also home to the University of North Dakota. Plainly, we’re not talking a community of illiterates.
The city’s plight results from the fact the B. Dalton store in the local mall, the last in the country, closed at the end of 2010. That means the city is left with the university bookstore and an independent store that specializes in used books. More important, “city and business officials haven’t heard of any other bookstores interested in opening here.”
Barnes & Noble, which owned B. Dalton, used to run the UND bookstore but lost that contract nearly two years ago, according to Paulette’s story. Yet Barnes & Noble says it isn’t interested in opening a store in Grand Forks and, given the financial struggles Borders is facing, it’s hard to imagine that chain would consider doing so. And when a town has to look to chain bookstores for salvation, that may say a lot.
Paulette indicates that about a third of the retail space at the UND bookstore is devoted to new releases, bestsellers and general fiction and nonfiction. Yet the store’s hours are limited; it closes at 5 pm on Saturdays and Sundays. Given that a campus bookstore probably isn’t all that attractive to the average individual to begin with, you don’t even have the choice of heading there to peruse the shelves on a Saturday evening. And wandering the shelves is one of the joys of any bookstore and, at least in my experience, a major contributor to the decision to purchase books.
So, for the time being, Grand Forks residents are left with online vendors and the town with a reputation of a college town that can’t support a full service bookstore.
Where is human nature so weak as in a bookstore!
Henry Ward Beecher, Star Papers
Given that it’s the Board of Directors that really picks the finalists, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that, once again, none of my personal books of the year and at best one of the books I voted for is on the short list for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award. At least I’ve read a few of them this time so, rather than repeat the complete list, I’ll simply mention those and why they didn’t end up getting my vote in the awards process. I should also note this is limited to the categories in which I read one of the finalists or voted (thereby excluding, for example, the biography and poetry categories, respectively).
I read two of the fiction finalists and am thrilled to see there are two works in translation on the list. I read both Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom and one of the works in translation, Hans Keilson’s Comedy in a Minor Key.
As I think I’ve indicated before, to me Freedom‘s buzz was stronger than its content. I’m certainly not disappointed I read it but it was a long stretch from being on my best novel of the year list. And for whatever reason, Keilson’s books just didn’t grab me. I think Keilson does a far better job getting the reader invested in Comedy in a Minor Key than Death of the Adversary, the other Keilson work I read this year, but as much as I love translated literature, it wouldn’t be on my best of list. I’m guessing my favorite novel of 2010, Emma Donoghue’s Room appealed to more of a mainstream readership than literary critics tend to represent. If Keilson is among this year’s finalists, then Hans Fallada’s Every Man Dies Alone unquestionably should have been among last year’s.
I also read two of the autobiography finalists, Christopher Hitchens’ Hitch-22 and Patti Smith’s Just Kids, which I read this past week. I’m not surprised either is among the finalists given the nominating process and the make-up of the organization and its board of directors.
Just Kids is marvelously written but two things, both somewhat idiosyncratic, kept me from really liking it. First, I’m not very familiar with Robert Mapplethorpe’s work (and, to be honest, some of his subject matter don’t interest me) and I have only a general familiarity with Patti Smith. Greater knowledge or appreciation of either would have increased my interest in the book, although I can’t say reading it sent me out to explore either more thoroughly. The one I feared would exist is there and that’s that the book is as much a story of New York City and its art scene of the late 1960s and early 1970s as anything. The extent of your interest in or familiarity with those will undoubtedly impact your view of the book.
Hitch-22, meanwhile, is undeniably Hitchens and Hitchens is a critics critic. The problem is that his experiences are so different from most anyone else that it often seems as if he is boasting or name dropping when he is not. There is also an element of his writing, something anyone who’s read him knows or should know, that can be a bit off-putting even though it makes him who he is. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that” (to borrow an unliterary phrase) but my enjoyment of the book wasn’t such that I would consider it among the best of the year.
Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea is the only nonfiction finalist I’ve read and I believe was on my ballot. The “problem” it suffered is one of timing. Released just before the end of 2009, I read the book in February. I was quite impressed with it but its impact lessened over the months and in light of what I thought was the best nonfiction work of the year, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. (Quite frankly, I can’t believe that book is not a finalist, again perhaps reflecting that it was too mainstream.) As a result, I honestly can’t recall if it was listed on my ballot, which should not reflect poorly on the book itself. Still, the fact it didn’t have a great lasting impact may say as much as anything.
In the end, it’s totally irrelevant what I voted for or didn’t, especially since the process is such that those votes aren’t that significant in the overall scheme of things. It’s just that, once again, there seems to be something resonating in my comments that suggests why I have such a poor record in casting votes for this award. This is a literary award. As such, the literati undoubtedly impact what works are selected. Being an inveterate reader does not make one literary-minded, let alone render them a literati. Unquestionably, being an illiterati in flyover country is a significant drawback to knowing what the “best” books are, whatever that may mean.
I divide all productions into two categories: those I like and those I don’t like. I have no other criterion[.]
Anton Chekhov, March 22, 1890, The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov
Blog Headline of the Week
Blog Lines of the Week
Worthwhile Reading in the Interweb Tubes
- Responding to Another (“Predictably enough, the symposium on “Why Criticism Matters” in the January 2 New York Times Book Review primarily if unwittingly illustrates just about everything that’s wrong with literary criticism as practiced in most general-interest print publications.”)
- A manifesto for the simple scribe – my 25 commandments for journalists (“Words have meanings. Respect those meanings. Get radical and look them up in the dictionary, find out where they have been. Then use them properly.”) (via)
Bookish Linkage
- I was thrilled to get the email announcing that Melville House is launching The Neversink Library, which “champions books from around the world that have been overlooked, underappreciated, looked askance at, or foolishly ignored.” So thrilled that I immediately sent an email asking if MH would consider a subscription package for the books.
- The 16 contenders for the 2011 Tournament of Books have been announced (as have the judges). I’ve read three (Room, Freedom and Super Sad True Love Story.)
- The Milliions plays with Amazon’s auto-complete search.
- Bob Dylan reportedly has a deal to write six more books, two of which would be the second and third volumes of his memoirs.
- Edward Champion is brave (or crazy) enough to take on all of the books in the Modern Library’s list of the top 100 novels of the 20th Century.
- So there’s a book coming out based on the concept of what the world would be like if Princess Di had lived. Although likely contrary to how it will do on the bestseller lists, I can’t help but ask, “Who gives a rat’s ass?”
Nonbookish Linkage
Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
Some things you just can’t make up: “The Louisiana Supreme Court has ordered the permanent disbarment of an attorney who, among other things, brought a sixteen year old “assistant” into the Bunkie Detention Center to perform oral sex on two incarcerated clients while the attorney captured the encounter on videotape. The reason? He said he needed semen samples to overturn their convictions and achieve their immediate release (from jail).”
Lawyer Says Dropping His Pants Was Educational Rather than Sexual
The National Lampoon takes control of a Swiss village’s dog tax law: “Regarding taxes on dogs, the authority plans, failing to quickly obtain the settlement of arrears, to demand the slaughter of animals whose taxes are not paid at the expense of their owners[.]”
In an unrelated dog development, druggies break into house — to snort dog ashes.
I sort of wonder about the phrasing in an opinion suspending a Wisconsin attorney, which said “stress alone should not cause an attorney to be repeatedly untruthful.” So are there acceptable causes for an attorney repeatedly lying? (I know, I know, it opens the door to a whole raft of comments and jokes but….)
“A golfer whose right arm was ripped off and eaten by a 10-foot alligator says he never would have tried to play a shot near the water hazard if the course had warned him there were alligators about.”
Stupid legal threat of the young century. And when you make such a stupid threat, you get fired.
Matt Taibbi suggests we create the Supreme Court of Assholedom.
Theatergoer Says Clown Attacked Him
Like my daddy used to say, if worst comes to worst, we’re screwed.
Steven Wright, When the Leaves Blow Away
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