Consuming Books One Page at a Time

Okay, to be upfront about this book, I didn’t read it!  I read the reviews about it!  Herewith are some of the reviews I found for you, so you don’t have to read it either!

Jay McInerney reviewed How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard, translated by Jeffrey Mehlman (Bllomsbury) in the November 11, 2007, issue of The New York Times Sunday Book Review.

Listen to the NPR interview with Bayard. 

Read Sam Anderson’s review for New York Books.  Anderson is the winner of the 2007 Balakian Award for Excellence in Reviewing  from the National Book Critics Circle. 

Read Lauren Mechling’s CBC News interview titled Faking It!  Mechling is a young writer, co-author with Laura Moser, of the Tenth Grade Social Climber teen books. 

And my favorite quote on the subject:

“There’s a certain kind of conversation you have from time to time at parties in New York about a new book. The word ‘banal’ sometimes rears its by-now banal head; you say “underedited,” I say “derivative.” The conversation goes around and around various literary criticisms, and by the time it moves on one thing is clear: No one read the book; we just read the reviews.”  Anna Quindlen (author of five best-selling novels: “Object Lessons,” published in 1991; “One True Thing” published in 1994 and made into a movie in 1998 starring Meryl Streep and William Hurt; “Black and Blue,” a selection of Oprah Winfrey’s book club and made into a movie starring Anthony La Paglia and Mary Stuart Masterson, which aired on CBS; ”Blessings,” published in September 2002, and “Rise and Shine,” published in 2006.)

How cool is this site?  Stop, You’re Killing Me (SYKM)  As the tag line says, “A website to die for…if you love mysteries.”  This site is a great resource for lovers of mystery, crime, thriller, spy and suspense books.  They list 2,500 authors, with chronological lists of their books, over 28,000 titles.  They have search options for Award Winners, Location Index, Job Index, Historical Index, Diversity Index, Genre Index, Read-Alikes, Magazines, What We Read, What’s New, and Alphabetical Author and Character.  There’s even a SYKM store that carries a variety of items, including T-shirts, hats and bags, and posters.

Louise Penny worked for many years as an award-winning journalist with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Luckily for us, she quit to write crime fiction. Penny has written three novels, all in the A Three Pines Mystery series.

The first novel, Still Life, sets the scene of the small rural village south of Montreal, Three Pines. The village is not on a tourist map, being off the main road. Pastoral and a little out of step, those that found the village were surprised and then delighted to stop and embrace it.

As with any good cozy or mystery, the main characters are somewhat eccentric. Many are artists, with true talent, and some are self-proclaimed artists, with little talent. Still Life, begins with the death of a local artist, Jane Neal, a beloved figure in the town.  With Jane’s death, comes the introduction of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec. Gamache is a man of integrity and honor, much to the dismay of those in power at the Sûreté .  Gamache and his team of investigators deeply believe in poking and prodding any and all suspects to find the truth, whether that truth uncovers long-held secrets.  This novel won the Arthur Ellis Award from the Crime Writers of Canada and the New Blood Dagger from the British Crime Writers’ Association.  In the U.S., it received the Dilys Award for the book that the members of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association most enjoyed selling that year. 

The second novel, A Fatal Grace, is about another murder, of course.  This time, the woman murdered, CC de Poitiers, is a newcomer to the town.  The polar opposite of the victim in the first novel, CC is reviled by the townsfolk.  There are many suspects for this murder.  For a hugely funny take on who would be cast if A Fatal Grace was made into a movie, read this excerpt from an interview with Penny.  I was delighted to find out what a great sense of humor she has!

In The Cruelest Month, Penny’s third novel, some of the main characters of the village decide to celebrate Easter with a seance at the Old Hadley House (what’s wrong with hunting eggs, pray tell?).  But, as the saying goes, something wicked this way comes, and one of the participants is killed.  Why and how is Madeleine Favreau scared to death?  Lesa Holstine, a book reviewer for Library Journal and Blogcritics Magazine, calls Penny a master storyteller.  I have to agree.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale is a non-fiction account of a true crime.  Summerscale writes the book in the manner of a Victorian crime novel, reminiscent of Wilkie Collin’s Moonstone.  The crime, the murder of a small boy, stolen from his bed, and his body dumped into a privy, was the most shocking crime of 1860 in England.  The detective assigned to the case, Jonathan (Jack) Whicher, was one of eight men who made up the recently formed Scotland Yard.   Whicher was considered the finest detective at the time, a figure of mystery and glamour.  Charles Dickens (yes, that Dickens), a friend of Whicher’s, lauded Whicher and his colleagues in a series of magazine articles in 1850.

The case, known as the Road Hill Murder (from the name of the house where the murder took place), horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection.  Whicher was brought to the case late; two weeks had passed.   It took him a week to follow the case from the beginning to the end, reviewing all the prior documentation and interviewing everyone involved.  He quickly came to the conclusion that someone within the family had killed three year-old Saville Kent.  Throughout the account of the crime itself, Summerscale weaves in the story of the growing phenomenon of the English detective in fiction.  

The Daily Mail gives the book a great review, calling the murder the “original whodunit, a classic country house mystery, complete with locked doors, a missing weapon and an unfathomable motive.”

Summerscales previous book, The Queen of Whale Cay, won the Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread biography award.

Lovers of horror will delight in The Ruins, based on the acclaimed thriller by Scott Smith, whose previous novel inspired the 1998 Oscar-nominated crime drama, A Simple Plan. This heart-pounding roller-coaster ride follows six friends who get far more than they bargained for during an archaeological trip to the Mexican jungle. But, according to the NY TImes, the movie doesn’t live up to the book.

Helen Hunt’s directorial debut, Then She Found Me, is about a schoolteacher who longs for a child of her own in the face of her crumbling marriage, the death of her adopted mother and the discovery of her biological one.  The adaptation is from Elinor Lipman’s first novel.  The cast is fabulous:  Helen Hunt, Bette Midler, Colin Firth, and Matthew Broderick!

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter premiered on Lifetime Network on April 12th. Dermot Mulroney, Gretchen Mol and Emily Watson bring to life Kim Edward’s heart-wrenching story of a doctor who, upon discovering that one of his newborn twins suffers from Down syndrome, makes an impulsive decision that will forever alter the lives of everyone involved. 

Life Before Her Eyes by Laura Kasischke stars Uma Thurman, Evan Rachel Wood, Eva Amurri, and Oscar Isaac.  The story from Kasischke’s third novel revolves around a school shooting and the impact on one student who survives. 

Children’s Literature: The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (Scholastic Press) 

Besides the Book Sense Book of the Year Award, Selznick has won the 2008 Caldecott Medal for The Invention of Hugo Cabret.  His previous work The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins also won a Caldecott Honor.  When Marian Sang won the Robert F. Sibert Honor in 2003.

Selznick combines the elements of picture book, graphic novel and film in Hugo.  He was inspired to write the story after reading a review of Edison’s Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life by Gaby Wood.

Children’s Illustrated:  Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity  by Mo Willems (Hyperion Books for Children)

In addition to this year’s Book Sense Book of the Year Award, Mo Willems has won the Caldecott Medal for three picture books, including his latest, Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity.  Previous wins were for Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! and the first Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale.  His Elephant and Piggie series for early readers has won the 2008 Theodor Suess Geisel Medal for There Is a Bird on Your Head (Hyperion).  Willems previously worked as a writer and animator on Sesame Street from 1996-2002 and won six Emmy Awards

The winners of the 2008 Book Sense Book of the Year Awards are voted by the owners and staff of American Booksellers Association member bookstores.

Non-fiction:  Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver with Stevel L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver. Drawings by Richard A. Houser.

Barbara Kingsolver, author of  many best-selling novels, has written a non-fiction account of living in Southern Appalachia with her husband Steven Hopp, and her two daughters, Camille and Lily.  For those who do not know, Kingsolver is originally from Kentucky.  She never imagined staying there, though, and left to attend DePauw University in Indiana where she majored in biology.  She earned a Masters of Science from the University of Arizona, majoring in biology and ecology.

In 2004, she and her family took off for a year back to Appalachia (actually to a farm they already owned in Virginia) with  the vow to buy only food raised in their neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it.  In an interview with Meredith Maran for Salon.com, Kingsolver says she is “fascinated by the subtle antipathies expressed by our country’s urban culture against rural concerns.”

Though there are vegans who believe the family did not practice complete sustainable eating (going meatless), most reviews have been positive.  Treehugger.com calls it “full of irony, wit and love,” and a “must read.”

Marjorie Kehe of The Christian Science Monitor says Kingsolver “adds enough texture and zest to stir wistful yearnings in all of us.”

The winners of the 2008 Book Sense Book of the Year Awards are voted by the owners and staff of American Booksellers Association member bookstores.

Fiction:  A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead/Penguin)  A Thousand Splendid Suns went back to press almost daily its first week on sale, building to 1,255,000 copies in print in the U.S. Rolling into its second week, the book continued to fly out of stores, with another 150,000 more copies printed. The current in-print total for A Thousand Splendid Suns is over 1,400,000.   A Thousand Splendid Suns debuted as the #1 book in the nation, and it held the top position for 4 straight weeks. In addition to being #1 on The New York Times hardcover fiction list, it was also #1 on nearly every national bestseller list, including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, Publishers Weekly, and Fort-Wayne Journal-Gazette.

Can Hosseini write a bad book?  The man is incredible.  In 2003, The Kite Runner was an instant bestseller and award winner, too.  The novel has stayed on the NY Times Bestseller list for over two years and was printed in 42 languages.  Among the awards were the Book Sense Bestseller List Sensation, Boeke Prize, Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, ALA Notable Book, Alex Award, Borders Original Voices Award 2003, Entertainment Weekly’s Best Book 2003, San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year 2003, and Literature to Life Award.

In 2006, Hosseini was named a U.S. Envoy to UNHCR, The United Nations Refugee Agency.

Ekaterina Sedia’s  second novel, The Secret History of Moscow (Prime Books), is blurbed by some highly thought of writers.  Neil Gaiman, author of American Gods, Neverwhere, and Anansi Boys, says The Secret History is “a lovely, disconcerting book that does for Moscow what I hope my own Neverwhere may have done to London.”  Jay Lake, author of Mainspring, calls the novel “a jewel of a book.”  Booklist calls her wrting “beautifully nuanced prose.”  Not bad company for a fantasy writer, or any writer for that matter!

Sedia’s first novel, According to Crow (Five Star Books) was published in 2005.  Her next novel, The Alchemy of Stone, is due in June 2008.  She is at work on another novel, The House of Discarded Dreams, which will be released in 2009.

Established in late 2001 by Sean Wallace, Prime Books specializes in publishing dark horror, science fiction, and fantasy in the following book formats: trade paperback, hardcover, and mass-market paperback.   Prime Books has a long list of fantasy authors, including Theodora Goss, Mike Allen, Matthew Rossi, and Michael Cisco.

WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR., 82, died February 28, 2008. He was the popular host of one of television’s longest-running programs, “Firing Line,” and founded and shepherded the influential conservative magazine National Review.  He also found time to write more than 50 books, varying from sailing odysseys to spy novels to dissertations on harpsichord fingering to celebrations of his own dashing daily life.

He edited at least five more. The more than 4.5 million words of his 5,600 newspaper columns, titled “On the Right,” would fill 45 more medium-size books. His collected papers, which were donated to Yale, weigh seven tons.

STEPHEN MARLOWE, a prolific writer of popular fiction best known for his crime novels featuring the globe-trotting private eye Chester Drum, died on February 22, 2008, in Williamsburg, Va.  He was 79. Mr. Marlowe wrote more than 50 novels in a range of genres, from crime to science fiction to historical fiction. The Chester Drum books combined elements of the hard-boiled detective story and the international espionage thriller. 

ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET, an author and filmmaker who was one of France’s most important avant-garde writers in the 1950s, died on February 18.  He was 85. As a novelist, Mr. Robbe-Grillet helped establish the New Novel, a genre that rejected conventional storytelling. As a screenwriter, he was best known for his work on Alain Resnais’s “Last Year at Marienbad” (1961), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award.