John Banville’s The Sea

In the never-ending quest to read the books that have sat unread on my bookshelf for several years, I picked up The Sea. Perhaps its soothing, green-toned cover drew me to it, or perhaps it was the fact it was on the top of the stack. In any case, I didn’t know quite know what to expect. The blurbs on the back cover raved about the writing, as blurbs tend to do, but they weren’t far off. When literary prose is
as captivating and intelligent as Banville’s, it hardly even matters what the storyline is. Take for example this line: “What are living beings, compared to the enduring intensity of mere things?” This is the kind of sentence that stops to make you think, and it captures the melancholia that pervades this story about a man coping with a death by trying to find comfort in an uncomfortable past.


Banville, John. The Sea. New York: Vintage International, 2005.

Damon Galgut’s In a Strange Room

I’m always on the quest to read more international literature, and as such, I rely a great deal on Europa Editions, who specialize in publishing and translating literary bestsellers from around the world. I especially gained a significant amount of respect for them when I heard Muriel Barbery, the author of The Elegance of the Hedgehog (and one of my favorite books), speak at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books about what a collaborative translation process went through with Europa Editions. Even though In a Strange Room is not a translation, I still consider the Europa Editions insignia as a stamp of literary approval, and Damon Galgut’s book was no exception—especially as a finalist for the Man Booker Prize.

What I liked most about this book was the way it captured the tension—that comes with traveling—between experience and the feeling of being removed from that experience. In my humble opinion, true traveling is not only a journey between one geographic point and another, it is also a personal journey dependent on deep internal reflection on one's self and one's culture. Often, there is little distance between having the experience and reflecting on the experience. Galgut captures this two-state experience with shifts between the first and third pronouns as he refers to himself. Switches between “I” and “he” parallel the experience of traveling and knowing you are having experiences, but also feeling as if you are looking at yourself as part of a story or narrative. His shifts also serve to echo his transitions between feelings of connectedness and feelings of isolation and loneliness. It was easy to identify with his moments of deep connection with strangers he met as he lets change and companionship dictate his travels, which quickly changed to moments of isolation and loneliness upon the consideration of the unarticulated relationships with his companions. 

Galgut, Damon. In a Strange Room: Three Journeys. New York: Europa Editions, 2010.

The Time I Met The Subversive Copy Editor

I have a long relationship with style guides. For most of my academic career, I was loyal to MLA. We were close, and I loved the laissez-faire attitude it had—almost anything went in the relationship so long as you were consistent. But at a certain point, I just wanted more from a style guide. It wasn’t MLA; it was me. APA and I got to know each other well because of some freelance work, but we never got serious. I admire its brevity and attention to social scientific concerns, but we are just friends. CMOS, however, is the style guide love of my life. Its big, comprehensive index; its bright, colorful jacket; its sturdy, thick binding; its detail-oriented rules and abundant examples—what’s not to love about The Chicago Manual of Style? 

So, imagine my excitement when I got to meet the editor of the CMOS online Q & A forum, Carol Fisher Saller (@SubvCopyEd), who just happened to pay a visit to the University of Illinois Press last week, which just happens to be my place of employment. Carol Saller is a manuscript editor at the University of Chicago Press, and many know her as The Subversive Copy Editor. Her book by the same name is a delight to read, and the cover is pretty darn amazing, too.

 

She signed my book!

In all the excitement of meeting her, I apparently referred to University of Chicago Press as University Press of Chicago—how embarrassing! I had a zillion questions for her: As a manuscript editor, how was the process of having your own manuscript edited and put through production? Or was it perfect already? Do you have any other books in the works? What is the process of updating the new editions of the CMOS like? How do you come up with rule changes? Is it like 12 Angry Men with everyone seriously debating in a room? Do you have a running list between editions? What’s on the list right now? Will you sign my book? 

 I didn’t get to ask all my questions—I had to hold back on my crazy vibe—but that didn’t matter. Hearing her speak was wonderful. We even found out that she got her start as a freelancer in the Chicago office of our very press! She is a great storyteller, and she was a charming guest. She shared many stories of the various types of submission the Q&A receives, and she discussed the large, dedicated following of the style guide and the Q&A. One thing is certain: I’m not alone in my appreciation of CMOS.

Saller, Carol Fisher. The Subversive Copyeditor. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2009.

Chloe In Memoriam

I know this blog is usually about reading-type things, but what's the point of having a personal blog if you can't write about whatever you want? Today, I want to write about Chloe, who went to cat heaven this morning.

Chloe is my mom's cat. In fact, I got my mom Chloe as a birthday gift when I was in high school. It was a kind of sneaky affair. My mom had wanted a cat for awhile. She had grown up with a cat, but my dad sometimes has trouble with allergies (as it turns out, his cat allergies aren't all that bad). One year, though, my dad inadvertently booked reservations at the Grand Canyon over her birthday weekend, and so he was away. In my mind, this created the perfect opportunity for my mom to get a kitten. For her birthday, we went to the Humane Society to get a cat, and we came home with Chloe. For her first few weeks, as she got used to her new home she lived in my bedroom, and I got to play with her to my heart's content. Who doesn't love being woken up by an adorable, rambunctious kitten? Throughout her kittenhood, Chloe was a playful, friendly, good-natured cat. Occasionally, you'd go to pull out a chair from the kitchen table and find it strangely heavy because this was one of Chloe's prime napping spots. As an adult, she was motherly towards the other cats in the house, and her favorite spot just happened to be wherever my mom was. It is awful to lose a pet who had been a part of our family for so long, but the memory of the happiness she brought us will certainly outlast our sadness today.

"Used Battery's Only"

This is clearly an apostrophe disaster of epic proportions. In a mere 12 words, the person who wrote this sign managed to use an apostrophe twice where no apostrophe belongs! What is truly special to me is that the apostrophe is not only used incorrectly twice, but it is used incorrectly in two different ways. As you can see, the first apostrophe is used instead of adding an "ies" to properly pluralize the noun battery. The second apostrophe is added to the verb creating some sort of mutant contraction.

Upon seeing this sign, my first impulse was run through the store, find a red Sharpie, and add some edits. Then, on second thought, I decided to take a picture and blog about it instead.

Jamie Ford's Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

I came by this book in what just might be the best way possible: a UIP colleague with good taste in books recommended it, and it was free. I admit that when I first heard the title, I was skeptical. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet sounded like it could easily be a romance novel or a Nicholas Sparks book—neither of which I am much interested in reading. However, the book got off to a good start based on its opening setting alone: Lake View Cemetery in Seattle. Now, normally this location would not necessary be appealing, but I had just coincidentally finished The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein, which also takes place in Seattle and features Lake View Cemetery, so I found myself feeling like I was part of a meta literary situation. Could Henry Lee of Bitter and Sweet have crossed paths with Racing’s Denny as he walked his dog Enzo through the streets of Seattle and by the cemetery? How old would Denny have been during 1986 when Henry Lee was exploring his past? If we took the fictional cemetery plots in each story, would they be near each other? As these two literary worlds collided in my imagination, I found myself getting drawn into the two worlds of Henry Lee: his past and his present. 

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is the story of a teenage Chinese boy, Henry, and his Japanese classmate Keiko as they experience Japanese internment. The fact that her and her family are tragically carted away by the government puts a damper on their blossoming romance, but the most interesting aspect of the book is Henry’s existence in three different racial climates and his position as an outsider in all of them. Henry and Keiko meet when they both receive scholarships to an otherwise all-White school. Their scholarship has them on lunch duty and cleaning after school, and their classmates make their lives difficult through their mocking and racism—even though Henry is Chinese, and Keiko identifies as American, the students call them both Japs and traitors. Henry is American-born to strict, traditional Chinese parents, and Henry struggles to belong among them due to his father’s racism and resistance again modernity. Henry’s friendship with Keiko and the fact that non-Asians do not distinguish him as Chinese allows him to navigate the Japanese neighborhood and witness firsthand as Japanese families hide or destroy their family heirlooms to avoid being accused of being traitors and are taken from their homes. The only situation in which Henry and Keiko share a sense of belonging is in their experience of the truly American tradition of jazz music.

Throughout the novel, the narrative switches between 1986 Henry and 1940s Henry. The narrative switches are quite an effective strategy that weave his past experiences with the modern reopening of a hotel where Japanese families hid their precious belongings before being interred. (The discovery of the items on the news was the event that inspired his reminiscences in the first place.) As Henry looks for traces of Keiko in the newly discovered stash, he finds himself opening up about his past to his son and resolving long-held issues of anger and guilt toward his father and the disappearance of Keiko. The personal relationships make this book endearing, and the historical aspects of the Japanese internment that are the basis for the story make the book a worthwhile read.

Ford, Jamie. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. New York: Ballantine Books, 2009.

Garth Stein's The Art of Racing in the Rain

The Art of Racing in the Rain was published early in 2008, but I didn’t hear about the book until early in 2009 when Garth Stein came to Changing Hands for an author event. I can’t recall if I went to the bookstore for the event specifically, or if I was there on a book buying binge and decided to stay for the event, but I remember how engaging Stein was, and I added it to my To Read list. I told my Dad about the book, and for the first time I can recall, my father mustered up his inner bookworm and beat me to reading a book, and he was a fan.

The plot of The Art of Racing in the Rain is perfectly fine as far as stories go, but it is the narrative perspective that is the true treat: the narrator is a dog. The entire story is told by Enzo, a dog named after a legendary racecar driver and owned by a talented driver who struggles to balance his dream of racing with his familial duties and hardships. Garth Stein created an intriguing dog and smartly called attention to the fact that Enzo is an unusual dog in his powers of perception and human-like will power, that, as a reader, it becomes easy to buy into Enzo as a trustworthy narrator. Everyone is inclined to think that their dog is special: that their dog almost knows what they are thinking. Well, Enzo’s loyalty and insight into his person’s life helps to confirm this thought in us all and makes is possible to entertain the notions of what is going on in our own pet’s mind.

This is a heart-warming, heartstring-pulling, and heartfelt story. It is a sweet read with a unique charm. While it has its literary moments, its biggest appeal is Ezno. What could be less cliché than a third person narrator who is, in fact, man’s best friend? Especially one who so elegantly articulates thoughts like, “I will often admire a beautiful sunrise, but I will never consider the sun as a champion for having risen.”

Stein, Garth. The Art of Racing in the Rain. New York: HarperCollins, 2008.

12/12/12

Today is 12/12/12 and unless someone comes up for a cure for death or we completely redo the Gregorian calendar system, this is the last time I expect to see the day, month, and year all be the same number. I clearly couldn't resist creating a blogpost to commemorate the day! Is it the luckiest day in our lifetime? Who am I to say? All I know is, I hate to pass up a good reason for a happy hour celebration, and I like to think that in 89 years, people will be just as excited for 1/1/01 as people were today for 12/12/12.

Theodore Weesner’s The True Detective

When I first heard about The True Detective, I was very excited to read it. The book was described as a literary true crime novel and was compared to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Having read In Cold Blood fairly recently, I still had its hauntingly good prose and timeless story on my mind. I enjoyed In Cold Blood so much, I was eager to read something as suspenseful and impactful, but I’m not sure that The True Detective lived up to the task.

The True Detective is about a child abduction that occurs in a small town in Maine. The plot line is simultaneously driven by the stories of the abductor and abductee, and the sheriff and child's family in search of the perpetrator and his victim. While In Cold Blood is a literary account of noteworthy actual events, The True Detective is literary fiction of plausible events. And, while Truman Capote methodically captures the timeless themes of fear, violation, and guilt that resound as much today as when the book was written, Theodore Weesner does not succeed in conveying the universality of the issues of family, race, and honesty that he incorporates throughout the text. This failure may be in part due to my impressions that Weesner’s characters are often reduced to stereotypes—possibly the most interesting character, the detective, is typified as a portly, small town lawman with a heart of gold. Instead of feeling like I was reading a classic, I felt like I was reading an artifact of what would have been timely and sensational at the time it was written—the way someone might feel about the racier parts of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in thirty years, which probably won’t seem racy at all by then.

As should be apparent, my main problem with The True Detective is based on its comparison to In Cold Blood—a comparison that, for me, it failed to live up to. In its own right, however, The True Detective was not a bad book. With the exception of the unbearably confusing and lengthy attempt at character development in Part I (I maintain that if these 100 pages or so were simply cut, the book would begin with a much more engaging narrative strategy and the best parts of the novel would be preserved), I was truly compelled to keep reading the story. It was similar to the experience of getting sucked into a Lifetime movie or a Law & Order marathon, and depending on your tastes, these are not necessarily bad things. At the very least, this story serves as a reminder of why we should all teach children not to get into cars with strangers. At most, this book is a steady thriller that keeps you invested in the physical and emotional welfare of all the characters.

Weesner, Theodore. The True Detective. 1987. New York: Astor + Blue Editions, LLC, 2012.

Libboo: Get a Good Buzz Going

Remember those times when you've read a really good book by a really awesome author and all you wanted to do was yell from the highest mountain, the tallest building, and the spire-iest spire how wonderful the book was so everyone else would read it and share in your utter delight? Well, except for the yelling and the mountain and the building and the spire, Libboo looks like it has your Twitter handle written all over it.

The new publishing startup is calling all book nerds to sign up for a pilot program and start a buzz about books. Not just any books, books that make you go, as they put it, asdfghjkl. That’s right, ASDFGHJKL! And could they have made the explanation to get involved any simpler or any more adorable?

So, Libboo is looking for buzzers. What makes a good buzzer? Someone who is passionate about sharing the books they love. And by passionate, I mean a yell-it-from-a-mountain-building-spire type of person who is interested in curbing that desire to yell into an abyss and transform that energy into involvement with Libboo. I hear that buzzers even get rewards like free ebooks and sweet perks like working with authors directly.

Libboo is gearing up this fall and I’m told they have partners and supporters ranging from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to the National Literacy Trust and the BBC. The whole point of Libboo is to help authors (whether they have a traditional publishing deal or have self-published) increase their chance of success by pairing their books with the correct buzzers. If you think you were born to be a buzzer, I strongly recommend you email Katherine@libboo.com to get involved. She’s the good-humored type of gal that every publishing startup needs, and this sounds like a pretty sweet gig. 

LIBBOO PRESS RELEASE 8/4/2012

Calling all book lovers!

 Libboo is launching its pilot and wants YOU to be a buzzer.

BOSTON, MA (8/14/12) - The publishing industry is evolving, and in response, Libboo has created a community that will allow fans—or “buzzers”—to interact with and promote the authors they read and love. With the launch of its pilot program this fall, Libboo will provide buzzers with the opportunity to earn rewards like free e-books, access to exclusive content, and the ability to connect with the authors they buzz about, all by doing what they love: geeking out about books.

The Libboo pilot will be a three-month program that will help authors get discovered, and significantly increase their influence and books sales through the use of Libboo’s proprietary technology. Upon the launch of the pilot, buzzers will be matched with books they will love and want to talk about. They will then be rewarded for spreading the word about those books. All buzzers will have the chance to earn free e-books to distribute amongst their friends and followers, and each month for the duration of the pilot, Libboo will give away e-readers packed with every book from the pilot to the top three buzzers that month.

A buzzer is an influencer who is passionate about books. Buzzers enjoy both finding and being the source of awesome content. People go to buzzers for recommendations, and then take action based on the recommendations given. Libboo will harness the power of buzzers and use that power to help talented authors gain visibility and promote their work.Why should you be a buzzer? The more important question is, why not? You already read books and talk about them, so why not help out some great authors by spreading the word about their books, and earn some awesome rewards in the meantime? Visit www.libboo.com to register for the pilot or email Katherine Pereira at Katherine@libboo.com for more information.

With partners and supporters ranging from TechStars to the BBC and a number of the world’s largest publishers, Libboo seeks to help authors, whether they have a traditional publishing deal or have self-published, increase their chance of success by pairing their books with the correct buzzers. Readers and buzzers, on the other hand, are recognized and rewarded for bringing that talented author to the universe. As a proud partner of the National Literary Trust, Libboo believes in transforming lives using the power of reading.