The Twilight of the Book Industry? Maybe Not.

Right in the middle of the excitement about the opening of the latest movie based on Stephanie Meyer’s phenomenally selling Twilight series, it’s interesting to think about what all of this hoopla says about books and where we are with them now.

When the film, The Twilight Saga: New Moon, opens later today, it is expected to break ticket records. The first film, Twilight, grossed more than $190 million in North American revenues after it opened last year.

While much is said about just why Meyer’s series is so beloved, what interests me today is what this rabid outpouring is saying about the book industry.

Let’s face it: one way or another, book publishing has had a rough year. Much of it self-inflicted. Between shaky international financial news and the uncertainty many parts of the industry are forecasting through the final arrival of the electronic book, the industry has been stumbling. And through the stumbles we hear the chanting of cynical voices about the death of the book. It has always been thus, but now it’s more.

And then there is Twilight. And then there is The Lost Symbol. And then there is just about anything J.K. Rowling would care to put her name on. Others, as well. Books that create excitement and cause line-ups and watercooler chatter. And no: bestsellers do not an industry make, but they sure don’t hurt anything. For one thing, a book that is discussed, is talked about, is pressed on even friends who usually do not read gets a culture talking about books. More importantly, it spreads the very real joy of reading around. It gets people reading who might not otherwise have had a chance to be properly exposed to the full body experience of being immersed in a good story and the emotional virtual reality that reading offers.

The publishing industry, like so many others, is going through changes. Sure, things in the future are going to be different. But millions of girls and young women excitedly sharing a book that they feel simply must be read indicates a certain vibrance for that future. And not all change is bad.

Art & Culture: Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation by Elissa Stein and Susan Kim

It was bound to happen sooner than later. Someone just had to write FLOW: The Cultural Story of Menstruation (St. Martin’s Griffin). I only wonder why no one did it sooner. But I'm glad it was written on my watch.

FLOW isn’t just a book; it's a movement. It’s sparking debate all over the Internet, from the editors at Redbook, who unceremoniously and unfairly dismissed it (is Redbook still a magazine for women?) to those at The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast, who celebrated it. Then there are all those people in the blogosphere and the Facebookosphere who seem unable to stop singing its praises.

And here’s the thing: FLOW deserves it. It’s not a breakout book (yet), but it sure is a breakthrough. It’s stimulating sometimes heated conversation about a subject that was, until now, taboo. And that’s the point the book’s authors, Elissa Stein and Susan Kim, are making. Menstruation isn’t something to be ashamed of or decried; it’s something to be explained, understood, and celebrated.

Written in a hip, funny voice (and designed with an accessible yet edgy sensibility), FLOW tells it like it is -- or rather, like it’s been for too many years. For example, did you know Lysol was marketed as a douche for 40 years as a way to kill post-sex sperm and make the vagina smell nicer? Did you know the age for a girl’s first period has dropped over the last 200 years from 17 to 13? Did you know that the first pad was marketed in 1896? And did you know -- here comes the hate mail -- that there’s really no such thing as PMS? (Don’t blame me: Research proves that hormone levels do not change during periods.)

But that’s just scratching the surface. As it turns out, periods are woven throughout our culture. To see it, you’ve just got to look a little harder. FLOW looks at language, history, politics, sex, religion, marketing, scent, and more. And sprinkled in among all the cultural, corporate, and personal stories are full-color reproductions of the advertising used to sell feminine products over the last half century or so. In each, you’ll find images and language that perpetuated what we all thought about periods (if you thought anything at all). From From Dr. Scott’s Electric Corsets to The Hite Report, from Tampax to New Freedom, from Kotex to Carrie, it seems Stein and Kim have left nothing out. Frankly, if reading the whole book isn’t your thing, just study the illustrations; their images and words will give you a sense of what’s been going on.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been telling friends about FLOW, to gauge thier reactions. Some have been fascinated, some repulsed (shame on them!). But no one’s been unwilling to admit there’s a story here that deserves to be told. They don’t know what it is, but they sense, every one of them, that there is one. Even better, more than a few (women and men) told me they’d be buying it for their daughters; after all, they said, the girls are going to learn about periods eventually, so they may as well get the whole story. They should learn about it, understand it, and yes, be proud of it. Go with the flow, indeed.

The Week in Tweets

It’s not actually meant to replicate all of January Magazine’s activity on Twitter over the last week. Rather, since we manage to cover so much over there that we just don’t have time to get to properly here, it makes sense to hit some of the highlights. After all, a lot of what Twitter is about are the links. Here are a few of the ones we’ve recently thought were noteworthy.

Hard to believe it when you see her on the road promoting her latest book -- or books-signing device -- but Margaret Atwood turns 70 today. Of course, the book she’s been promoting most recently is The Year of the Flood. It’s fantastic. January Magazine’s 2000 interview with Atwood is here.

Like a lot of outfits, massive Harlequin Books is scooting towards their idea of publishing’s brave new world. Their answer, a romance self-publishing imprint called Harlequin Horizon, has been raising some eyebrows.

When he died in 1977, Vladimir Nabokov’s heirs found instructions that his work in progress, The Original of Laura, was to be burned. That book was published yesterday. Not everyone thinks it was a swell idea.

“The parsley explodes muscle.” Here’s a bit of silly fun: the 10 worst translations. Ever.

A statue and a check? It’s awards season. Most recently, the 2009 Governor General’s Awards and the 2009 National Outdoor Book Awards. (Though they aren’t the same thing. At all.)

Seriously, Seth Godin? The Los Angeles Times’ Carolyn Kellogg seems almost weirdly annoyed with something Godin posted to his blog.

The New Oxford American Dictionary has chosen their 2009 Word of the Year. Seriously: “unfriend”? What an odd choice. After all, 2009 has been all about Twitter. Facebook is just so 2007.

Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood revisited, half a century on.

The coming e-book revolution will revitalize the industry, opines leading tech analyst, Tim Bajarin: “Conventional wisdom has it that the publishing industry will benefit the most from this re-invention of the book, but while this may be true, the advent of such technologies may also lead to the emergence of a new creative class.” Bajarin says other interesting stuff, too. Bottom line? The sky is changing but probably will not fall.

The worst books of the decade? Judging by this list, The Times Online’s reading list is not as deep as ours. If we were to make such a list -- which we won’t be doing -- ours would have way more stinky books than does this one. Way.

Cookbooks: Vegan Lunch Box Around the World by Jennifer McCann

I used to know a guy who brought a cheese sandwich to work every day. Processed cheese slice. White bread. A single leaf of iceberg lettuce. Every day. I didn’t know him well. Maybe I didn’t know him at all. I’d wonder about him, though. I’d wonder about what kind of guy would do that -- perhaps even find comfort in it. The same sandwich. The same processed cheese. Every day.

I avoided getting to know him too well.

The thing is, there’s just so much terrific stuff to eat for lunch. I know that. Really. I do. At least, I thought I did. But Jennifer McCann knows it better. Vegan Lunch Box Around the World (Da Capo) is her second collection of vegan lunches. Though I have yet to see the first one, 2008’s Vegan Lunch Box, I suspect that it’s terrific, because the sequel is no one’s idea of an also-ran: it’s really very good.

Though both books have that scary word -- vegan -- in the title, there’s nothing to be frightened of here. McCann’s success lies in her approach to cooking without animal products: she treats it like a big, fun challenge. As a result the food she creates -- and would help us create -- could be enjoyed by anyone. Potato salads, sushi rolls, tagine, African-style greens, orange couscous: 125 recipes in all. The fact that all of this great food is vegan makes us want to stop and think: in a world possessed of this much abundance and all of these wonderful possibilities -- without even eating meat products -- who would ever want to eat a cheese sandwich every day?

If you’ve ever wondered how to shake up your noontime meal, have a stroll through Vegan Lunch Box Around the World. It’s possible you’ll come away from it looking at many foods in an entirely new way.

Art & Culture: Public Art in Vancouver: Angels Among Lions by John Steil and Aileen Stalker

Every city needs a book like Public Art in Vancouver (TouchWood Editions) a kind of walking tour through the public art -- all the public art -- in the city of Vancouver, Canada.

“The character of a city is revealed by its public art,” the authors point out in their introduction, “what it collectively places on its streets and walls and in its public spaces.”

Most of the book, however, is given over to that art in well-organized sections that begin with a map that indicates each artwork under discussion in that section. Each piece of art is given one third to one quarter of a page that includes a small but clear photograph, the name of the piece, the year it was installed and a little about how it came to be where it is. And so you have, for instance, the iconic Girl in A Wetsuit from Stanley Park. We’re told it was installed in 1972 and that there was initially talk “of recreating the Little Mermaid from Copenhagen’s Harbour, but luckily, a West Coast image was used instead. Many people refer to her as a mermaid, but she is a scuba diver with flippers.”

This is a fantastic, well conceived and executed book. I hope TouchWood is planning on adding other cities and making it a series.

A Cabin of One's Own

I have long been fascinated by the homes and haunts of writers -- where they grew up, where they lived as adults, and especially where they wrote. This particular strain of the “gentle madness” has taken me to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s House of Seven Gables, Mark Twain’s home, in Hartford, Connecticut, James Thurber’s boyhood home, in Columbus and one of my favorite places on earth, Thomas Jefferson’s experiment in architecture.

So, I was pleased to see the recent Wall Street Journal piece about Tim Cahill’s writing cabin along the edge of the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, in southwestern Montana. Cahill is one of our most prolific and entertaining travel writers, the author of A Wolverine is Eating my Leg, Pass the Butterworms, and Lost in My Own Backyard. Cahill is also a founder of Outside Magazine.

Cahill has owned his 500 square foot cabin since 1991 and uses it as a retreat for week-long writing stretches when he feels the need for isolation. The rest of the time, he resides in his home in Livingston, about an hour away. A daily hiker when he’s in residence, Cahill tells reporter Alexandra Alter, “My backyard, honest to God, is pretty much the size of Switzerland,” referring to the greater Yellowstone area.

Of course, Montana has long attracted writers and fiction; the names James Crumley, Thomas McGuane and Jim Harrison. And judging from the slideshow, it sure looks like a nice place to write a book.

The Wall Street Journal piece is here.

Children’s Books: Born to Write by Charis Cotter

There’s a lot to love about award-winning children’s author Charis Cotter’s Born to Write: The Remarkable Life of Six Authors (Annick Press). Here Cotter delivers very good mini-biographies of half a dozen children’s authors: Lucy Maud Montgomery, C.S. Lewis, E.B. White, Madeleine L’Engle, Philip Pullman and Christopher Paul Curtis. Each of these, perhaps with more support material, would have been sufficient for a slender book. But combined as they are, Born to Write reads like a mini-encyclopedia of children’s authors.

By drawing connections between her half dozen subjects, Cotter goes deeper than you would expect: illustrating how early experience can shape a life and push an individual one way. Or another.

“And when they grew up,” Cotter writes at one point, “instead of forgetting what it felt like to be a child, they remembered, and put it into their books.”

As well, Cotter perfectly captures the essence of the book culture of childhood and shares that with her young readers:

If you love reading books, you know what it is like to lose yourself in a story. Your bedroom drops away and you’re in the world of the book, side by side with the hero or heroine. Your ticket to those other worlds depends on the strength of your imagination and the power of the words you’re reading. The best writers scoop you up and take you on a ride that ends only on the last page of the book.

Born to Write is a good and interesting book about books and the culture of reading. This is a good one to share with the youngsters in your life.

SF/F: And Another Thing by Eoin Colfer

I first discovered Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy when I was studying librarianship, many years ago. We used to throw quotes at each other over coffee, between classes. “Forty-two!” we would cry. “The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything!” We needed the humor; librarianship was a heavy, exhausting course which gave us very little time to ourselves.

At home, my brother was taping the radio series. We listened to it and developed a passion for that. The story was over-the-top hilarious. It became a television series and a movie and recordings.

I loved the first two books. The third was not quite as good, though it was still very funny. Since then, I have listened to Douglas Adams reading the talking book and decided I liked it better than the first time around. The fourth book came along and it was not as good as the third. It still had some fun, but it was almost serious. In it, Arthur Dent got a girlfriend, Fenchurch, but she suddenly disappeared from his side and never returned. The fifth book, Mostly Harmless, was such a disappointment to me that I gave away my copy and never read it again. My re-reading rarely goes beyond the second book and never past the fourth

I mention all this so it will be understood that I am a major fan of this universe, but I acknowledge that even Douglas Adams, who created it, had lost the plot, so to speak, by the end. So when I heard that Eoin Colfer, author of the wonderful Artemis Fowl novels, had been commissioned to write a sixth book in the series, I was in two minds about it. If Douglas Adams couldn’t keep it up, how could anyone else, even Eoin Colfer? But the author’s widow had approved him and of course, I was curious to see how he would get Arthur, Ford and Trillian out of the impossible situation in which they had been left at the end of Mostly Harmless.

And Another Thing has been written to celebrate the 30th anniversary of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. It starts with a summary of the story so far, written in an Adams-esque style. It may have been to refresh the reader’s memory, and in any case, Douglas Adams did it himself. It may have been for any potential new readers, but my advice to these readers is not to read it till they have read the original. There’s no point. And Another Thing... was clearly written for people familiar with the universe.

I must admit, Colfer does a good job of getting Ford, Arthur, Trillian and their daughter, Random Dent, out of the fix they were in at the end of Mostly Harmless. I couldn’t imagine how it could be done, but he did it.

He makes a fairly good fist of Adams’s style, except for an irritating tendency to stop for asides. Douglas Adams did it, but nowhere near as often.

The story brings back a lot of characters from the third book, Life The Universe And Everything, including Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged. He was the green-skinned immortal who was trying to liven up his eternal existence by insulting everyone in the universe in alphabetical order. Now, he has returned and he wants to get rid of the immortality; we learn that his insults are aimed at getting someone to kill him.

The original character was there as a single joke. He was funny. Now he has become, of all things, a romantic interest for Trillian. He isn’t funny anymore.

Zaphod Beeblebrox is back too, with one head; the other one has replaced Eddie as the ship’s computer on the Heart of Gold. He has a quest of his own: helping Wowbagger get killed. This involves searching for the Norse god Thor, original owner of Wowbagger’s ship.

Also in the novel are the Vogons, who are still trying to wipe out the last humans to tie up loose ends -- not only Arthur and Trillian, but a colony of middleclass Earthlings who have bought the Magrathean-built planet Nano. The Vogon captain, Prostetnic Jeltz, who destroyed Earth in the first novel, is back, with a son who may not agree with him.

The story bounces around from one storyline to another, but all the ends are tied, although the very end suggests there may be more to come.

I got the occasional chuckle out of this book, but no more. It starts well enough, but just isn’t funny. A friend of mine suggested that Tom Holt might have been a better choice, but personally, I don’t think anyone could handle it.

Eoin Colfer is a brave man to have had a go at something like this, which has a passionate fandom. I commend him for it. I don’t believe anyone could have done it, but he has done as well as anyone could and at least he seems to be a fan.

If you are completist, buy it by all means -- hey, if you’re reading the book at all, you almost certainly are a completist. At least this story extracts our heroes from an impossible situation.

Art & Culture: My Beloved Wager: Essays from a Writing Practice by Erin Moure

“Writing is always and forever a social practice. The varying discourses in a society either shore it up or challenge it. And discourse isn’t something we walk away from when we set down our pen.”

My Beloved Wager: Essays from a Writing Practice (NeWest Press) is like an intellectual dance through Erin Moure’s three decade (thus far) career as a writer and translator. It’s not always an easy dance. “The framework,” she writes at one point, “can we avoid it? Can we speak outside a framework? A guide or friend? A restraint on vision? Can we ignore it? Can we say ‘pure sound’? ‘I am a woman is full of consequences’ … for we are part of a representational system, a system of behavioural laws, of social conditions that have privileged the (male) gaze.”

Not well known even in her native Canada, Moure is, however, deeply respected and very well published. Her thoughts on the writing life are complicated and even -- sometimes -- a little angry but it’s an interesting journey through a well-lived creative life.

Do Not Adjust Your Set...

If you checked in on January Magazine late yesterday or earlier today, you might have encountered an out of service message. An unexpected surge in traffic over the last few months caught us -- and our servers -- unaware. We’re now bolstered for our increased popularity so will be able to withstand even future surges. Meanwhile, our face is red to have been caught so unprepared. After all these years, you’d think we’d know better.

Thanks for joining us. All of us here at January enjoy your participation in our ongoing conversation about books.

Broadcast Journalist Wins Canada’s Richest Literary Prize

I don’t understand why everyone keeps talking about Linden MacIntyre’s “surprise upset” in winning the 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize for The Bishop’s Man (Random House Canada). OK, actually: I do understand. I’m just not in the mood to dance the CanLit dance of literary vs. commercial novels. It’s a song that’s been playing through the Canadian media all autumn. It’s all been said -- more or less been said -- and no one appears to be listening, so I’ll keep my soapbox under my desk for the moment.

But the 2009 Giller...

At the risk of sounding unsportsmanlike (and I wasn’t in the race, so you can call me what you like) the biggest Giller surprise this year was that Margaret Atwood’s fantastic and luminous The Year of the Flood (McCLelland & Stewart) didn’t make the shortlist. Ditto Douglas Coupland’s very thoughtful Generation A (Random House Canada). If you’re a Canadian who follows literary stuff, it’s possible you have a few favorites of your own to chip in. Still, Coupland gets weirdly overlooked when the time to hand out CanLit trophies comes around. Atwood has won her share but -- oh! -- The Year of the Flood is breathtaking.

But, clearly, I digress.

The winner of the Scotiabank Giller prize was announced at a mondo gala in Toronto last night that was wildly tweeted about. (In fact, January tweeted the results within about an a minute of the announcement being made last night. How fun is that?)

MacIntyre picked up a check for $50,000 as author of the best Canadian novel or short story collection published in English. The other finalists won $5000. each. Those finalists were:

• Kim Echlin, The Disappeared (Hamish Hamilton Canada)
• Annabel Lyon, The Golden Mean (Random House Canada)
• Colin McAdam, Fall (Hamish Hamilton Canada)
• Anne Michaels, The Winter Vault (McClelland & Stewart)

The 2009 Giller prize judges were US author Russell Banks, UK author and journalist Victoria Glendinning, and Canadian author Alistair MacLeod. Of the winning book, the jury remarked:

The Bishop’s Man centres on a sensitive topic -- the sexual abuses perpetrated by Catholic priests on the innocent children in their care. Father Duncan, the first person narrator, has been his bishop’s dutiful enforcer, employed to check the excesses of priests and, crucially, to suppress the evidence. But as events veer out of control, he is forced into painful self-knowledge as family, community and friendship are torn apart under the strain of suspicion, obsession and guilt. A brave novel, conceived and written with impressive delicacy and understanding.

I’m not sure how surprised everyone should be that MacIntyre won. (Especially considering Atwood wasn’t in the running. But we did that already.) He is, after all, a respected and well known journalist. He’s co-host of CBC television’s The Fifth Estate, an investigative journalism program. He’s won nine Gemini Awards for broadcast journalism and his most recent book, the memoir Causeway: A Passage from Innocence was critically acclaimed and also won some significant awards.

Fiction: Ray of the Star by Laird Hunt

2009 has been an incredible year -- a breakthrough year, perhaps -- for fiction that pushes the boundaries of storytelling and, certainly, of genre. Perhaps the most visible of these was China Miéville’s incredible The City and the City. If you liked that one and have been hungering for something that approaches the tone and originality of Miéville’s most recent creation, it seems quite possible to me that you’ll also like Laird Hunt’s fourth novel.

In most regards, the two books are almost nothing alike, but for a few important things. In both novels, dynamic young authors have reached beyond what is usual and what has been done to tell their imaginative – and entirely different -- stories in new and compelling ways. In both of these examples, they are mostly -- though not always -- successful.

Like The City and the City, Ray of the Star (Coffee House Press) is set in an imaginary European city. In Hunt’s book, however, the city we think of most is Barcelona. The stories are as reflective of the cities they’re not set in, as well. Where The City and the City is skillfully cold and distant, the world Hunt creates here seems to vibrate with warmth and light.

New Today: Heart’s Blood by Juliet Marillier

Young scribe Caitrin, fleeing an unwanted marriage with a violent cousin, finds herself on Whistling Tor, whose chieftain, Anluan, needs a scribe to do a summer’s work, translating Latin documents. Anluan’s family has been cursed for a century, since an ancestor conjured up a ghostly horde from the Otherworld and then couldn’t either control them or send them back. Anluan can handle them as long as he stays on the Tor, but if he leaves, the spirits could go on the rampage. They want to go back too, and something -- or someone -- is driving them insane, unable to control themselves. There may be a counter-spell in the Latin documents that will help. Everyone is relying on Caitrin to find it.

Despite the curse and the fact that Anluan can’t be the chieftain his people need, Caitrin finds friends on the Tor, some of them supernatural, and also finds love.

Heart’s Blood is a Gothic-style romance that has moved the story of “Beauty and the Beast” to mediaeval Connacht, a part of Ireland facing imminent invasion by Normans from England. Anluan is not a fairytale Beast, but crippled by a childhood illness. The “heart’s blood” of the title is a plant used to make very expensive ink, but also has a much more important use, as Caitrin finds.

It’s an interesting setting for the story, and it works. Western Australian-based novelist Juliet Marillier’s other Celtic fantasies are set in Ireland and she knows her period well. She reminds her readers that Irish law was fairer to women than the laws in other places at the time. Women had positions of responsibility and they had more property and inheritance rights.

The story is very readable; it was my first time reading one of this writer’s books and it won’t be my last. It is, admittedly, something of a Mary Sue. But I have been known to enjoy Mary Sue when well-written and at least this one is lacking long-lost princes, quests, elves and high priestesses. The only evil sorcerer is the hero’s ancestor, who was unpleasant and stupid, but hardly Sauron. And I must admit that “Beauty and the Beast” is a fairytale I like, and the author has done a good job of putting it into an historical context.

If you haven’t read Juliet Marillier’s other books, this one might be a good place to start, as it is a stand-alone and not part of a trilogy.

Cookbooks: Gordon Ramsay’s Maze by Gordon Ramsay and Jason Atherton

There are cookbooks that make you instantly want to rush to the kitchen and prepare your tools and there are those that make you want to curl into a comfy chair and peruse. Gordon Ramsay’s Maze (Key Porter Books) is of the latter type. To be honest, I can’t imagine anyone being inspired to actually cook from reading this book. But there’s plenty to look at and to be inspired by and perhaps even to envy.

My first hint that this would be the case came from the foreword: it’s written by Ferran Adriá, the mad genuis chef behind Barcelona’s El Bulli, possibly the most visible practitioner of molecular gastronomy in the world.

While the food in Gordon Ramsay’s Maze is not that, neither is it especially Gordon Ramsay. Maze is the Ramsay owned and backed London restaurant helmed by Ramsay and Adriá protégé, Jason Atherton. Maze has been one of those incredible restaurant industry success stories: people line up, book far in advance and pay vast prices for a peck at Atherton’s food. And a peck is all they’ll get, too. In many ways, it seems the antithesis of Ramsay’s hearty and gorgeous “keep it simple” fare. Atherton’s food is fussy and beautiful. Ramsay has called it “modern tapas” but it really seems much more than that: perhaps the place where tapas meets molecular gastronomy. Food that is fueled by imagination and technology as much as the desire to produce beautiful food from, say, local ingredients. I can not imagine, for instance, the circumstance that would lead me to try my hand at Asparagus with Quail’s Egg and Pink Grapefruit Hollandaise or Mango Soup with Lychee Granita. How about Pineapple Carpaccio with Fromage Frais and Lime Sorbet? Even the simple sounding things appear overworked and precious, but this is as much due to food styling as anything else: sweet little portions artistically arranged. For example, Perfect Scrambled Eggs with Tomatoes on Toast is beautifully framed and shot. From an aesthetic stance, it’s a gorgeous photo. It also looks entirely unappetizing: a runny mess of yellowish material on toast that looks overdone.

Gordon Ramsay’s Maze is a beautiful, interesting book. It’s stunningly photographed, well organized and the recipes are sensibly put down and shared. I know this is entirely subjective -- the nature of review -- but there was little here I found inviting. I say this knowing full well that this may well be an early glimpse of the food that is to come.

Another thing: I know this is likely silly and it was something I tried to overcome but, ultimately, could not: though he owns the restaurant, sticking Gordon Ramsay’s name in this book’s title seems deliberately misleading. It may be Ramsay’s joint, but this is Jason Atherton’s book.

The Richest Literary Prize

You’ll have to forgive us if we don’t reproduce the entire longlist for the IMPAC Dublin, the award that calls itself the “world’s most valuable annual literary prize for a single work of fiction published in English.” It’s a very long list.

Nominations have come from 163 libraries in 123 cities and 43 countries worldwide. The authors of the longlisted books, announced by the Lord Mayor of Dublin last week, hope to win the €100,000 award but, as any bookmaker worth his salt will tell you, the odds aren’t that good for any one title: the longlist comprises 156 novels representing authors from 46 countries.

Of the longlisted books , some will resonate more strongly with January’s readers than others. Here are a few of them: Louis Bayard (The Black Tower); C.J. Box (Blood Trail); Joseph Boyden (Through Black Spruce); Andrew Davidson (The Gargoyle); Kenneth J. Harvey (Blackstrap Hawco); Patrick Lane (Red Dog, Red Dog); Ursula Le Guin (Lavinia); Dennis Lehane (The Given Day); Toni Morrison (A Mercy); Walter Mosley (Diablerie); Stewart O’Nan (Songs for the Missing); Richard Price (Lush Life); Philip Roth (Indignation); Salman Rushdie (The Enchantress of Florence); Anne Simpson (Falling); Tom Rob Smith (Child 44); David Wroblewski (The Story of Edgar Sawtelle) and many others.

The complete longlist is here.

Cookbooks: The New Best of BetterBaking.Com by Marcy Goldman

I feel as though, until now, I’ve been shuffling along in the dark. Having now experienced the flaky, buttery goodness of BetterBaking.Com, how did I ever attempt a flan or pie crust without it? This is the good stuff. So good, it’s better than anything mother ever made.

Author Marcy Goldman is a Montreal-based pastry chef who’s written for Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, The New York Times and many others. As that CV would imply, Goldman writes clearly on a topic she obviously loves: how to make baking better.

The New Best of BetterBaking.Com (Whitecap Books) includes over 200 recipes as well as Goldman’s sharp and ever-present advice. As might be expected -- and as is only right in a beautifully produced and illustrated cookbook -- the recipes are the stars, here. Hotel School Cream Cheese Rugalach. Tiramisu Cheesecake. Blackberry Wine Crunch Biscotti. Fried Parmesan Pizza Wedges. I could go on (I want to go on.) but you get the idea. Goldman’s endeavors are so successful because she pushes the envelope. That’s why The New Best of BetterBaking.Com isn’t just another baking book. It’s better.

National Bookstore Day Today: Let’s Shop!

Let’s face it: bookstores have had a pretty rough ride this year. Between the (cheerfully monikered) economic meltdown (cue scary music now), the rising tide of electronic books and the hardcover price wars of earlier this autumn, there must have been at least a few days in 2009 when some booksellers just didn’t even want to get out of bed.

All of this leads us to the Publishers Weekly-sponsored National Bookstore Day, the idea being that bookstores are front and center on one day: November 7th. Says PW:

Event organizers are hoping promotions tied to the day will attract local and national media coverage -- and, in turn, draw new customers into bookstores. “The number of stores already signed up meets our rosiest hopes for this first year. Many of the stores celebrating National Bookstore Day are recognized nationally as leaders, so we're gratified that this idea has been endorsed by these savvy booksellers,” said Ron Shank, PW group publisher. Among the offerings that bookstores are planning are author signings, children’s activities, discounts, extended hours, free refreshments, marathon “read-aloud” events, raffles and writing contests.

Though the idea is laudable, here at the 11th hour, National Bookstore Day doesn’t seem to have gained the traction garnered earlier this year by American thriller author Joseph Finder’s grassroots “Buy Indie Day.”

Even so, every conscious step taken moves us in the right direction. The message is one to cherish and remember: books are important. So are the people who buy, make and sell them. The place books have in our lives is of value: it’s meaningful to us. And if we take all of this as read, it behooves us to do everything in our collective power to keep independent bookstores not only strong and out there, but going. And how do we do that? We try to raise awareness. We raise readers. We spread the word.

And then we shop.

Children’s Books: Death on the River by John Wilson

In Death on the River (Orca Books), veteran children’s author John Wilson weaves a compelling tale with his first person, present tense account of the final days of the American Civil War.

We see the horrors of war through the eyes of Jake Clay, a young soldier who enlisted after his brother was killed in battle. Young Jake is wounded and taken prisoner in his very first battle:

I come to with a pair of Rebel soldiers holding an ankle each and hauling me, upside down, over the breastworks. I feel like my head is going to explode every time it bumps against a log. It doesn’t, but I keep blacking out.

John Wilson has written over 20 books for this age group, all of them focused on illuminating some aspect of history for young people. He does a great job. In fact, sometimes in Death on the River if anything it’s too good an illumination. Though he (thankfully) brings little of the actual gore, we feel the horrors of war very keenly. It’s a lesson it’s always good to remember: one we are not able to forget.

Non-Fiction: Harvard Business School Confidential by Emily Chan

It would be inaccurate and possibly even ridiculous to suggest that Harvard Business School Confidential (Wiley & Sons) distills four difficult years into one very lucid book. And yet, when you read it, that’s more or less how it makes you feel.

We get right down to business from the very beginning: there’s just no messing around:

Most parents and teachers would tell you: Study hard in school, get a good job, receive a good salary, and live happily ever after.” …. There is nothing wrong with getting a good job if you just want a stable life …. However, to most Harvard Business School (HBS) Students, “getting a good job” is a means, not an end.

HBS, author Emily Chan tells us, “teaches you to differentiate between two types of income: linear and investment” and then she goes on to explain “How Money Works” in a chapter of the same name. If you’re not a Harvard Business School Grad; if you’re just a normal schmuck, like me, some of this is absolutely mind-blowing stuff. Chapter headings offer hints as to why: “Speak So People Will Listen,” “It’s Who You Know,” “You Can Negotiate Anything,” and my personal favorite, “Plans Are Nothing.”

A year-and-a-half, maybe two years ago, I wouldn’t have cared about a whole lot of this stuff. Now, though: the world has changed. There’s things I didn’t care about then that I know I need to care about now, before it’s entirely too late. Harvard Business School Confidential gives one the feeling that understanding it all is an attainable goal.

Fiction: The Chief Factor’s Daughter by Vanessa Winn

I had the rare delight of traveling to the city of Victoria on the southernmost tip of Vancouver Island twice during the time I was reading The Chief Factor’s Daughter (Touchwood Editions). It’s not that I’m a super-slow reader, either. Rather, my life aligned in such a way that, not only was I in the city on which the action in Vanessa Winn’s debut novel centers, I even had cause to sit near historic monuments and some of the locations in the book and just contemplate the rush of time while her story swirled through my mind, fresh: still at the ripest point of enjoyment. That’s the biggest pay off on historical fiction. It takes your hand and walks with you. Actually strolling the sites was an unnecessary bonus, but it enhanced even that.

Though The Chief Factor’s Daughter starts off dry and distant, the rhythms of the lives of Winn’s characters sweep you along, if you let them. Winn has worked closely with history and it shows. Her detail has a rich and authentic feel that doesn’t always lend itself to breathtaking storytelling. Never mind, though. Once the reader is immersed, it’s an easy story to find your stroke with and swim along.

The daughter in question is Margaret Work, a proper young lady raised in good English fashion who is socially hampered by the matter of her birth. Though Margaret’s father is the chief factor at Fort Victoria, her mother is Métis and so Margaret and her siblings find the pool of potential mates in Victoria to be limited. To make matters more difficult, Margaret has set her mind on a marriage that will involve her heart, something her mother approves and so we find Margaret in her mid-20s and heading ever more deeply into spinsterhood.

The Chief Factor’s Daughter is a quiet, elegant book. It deals with an important piece of regional history but, even that falls second to what this book does best and the thing that all successful historical fiction must do: it transports us out of time, out of mind.

New Today: Inklings by Jeffrey Koterba

The debut work of writer, musician and political cartoonist Jeffrey Koterba is published today. Inklings (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) tells the author’s own story with the aid of strong graphic elements, without the maudlin self-pity often associated with works of that genesis.

In his bio, Koterba tells us that “during the summer of 1978 [I] was struck by lightning and lived to tell about it.” He makes it sound like an advantage -- a thing to have survived and gained strength from, rather than a horrid obstacle which had to be overcome.

That pretty much describes all of Inklings. Koterba’s inky stylings are luminous, yes. But so is the spirit that drives them. Inklings is an almost rabidly optimistic look at a difficult childhood and coming-of-age from the hands of a fiendishly talented artist.

If Inklings is just the beginning, I can hardly wait to see what is yet to come.

Cookbooks: The Foodie Handbook by Pim Techamuanvivit

The very first paragraph of The Foodie Handbook (Chronicle Books) describes the journey on which you’re about to embark:

Relationships that matter most in our lives are often complicated. Think of the one with your mother or your current love, and perhaps the most perplexing, food. These liaisons can be fraught with love, hate, joy, fear, trust, suspicion, and a whole lot of other emotions. Sometimes it is nearly enough to make us wish we were orphans, turn us celibate or, worse yet, vegan.

Many foodies have met Techamuanvivit through her food blog, Chez Pim, where the Silicon Valley dropout brings foodie stuff to many thousands of visitors every week. The Foodie Handbook is better. And why? Because it is the physical embodiment of Techamuanvivit’s passionate, knowledgeable spirit. Foodie lore, recipes, advice from Techamuanvivit and other, more famous, chefs: it’s all here, just as on Chez Pim. But the book stuffs the blog into the shade. You can hold the book in your hands, flip through it, bury yourself in it and learn. And enjoy. The (Almost) Definitive Guide to Gastronomy is what the book is subtitled. And it’s that -- sure it is. But, oh, so much more.

New Today: The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell

The is a brand new and greatly improved edition of a modern classic: the National Book Award-winning The Great War and Modern Memory (Sterling). Originally published in 1975, it was named one of the most important non-fiction books of the 20th century by the Modern Library. In his preface, author Paul Fussell explains his book succinctly:

This book is about the British experience on the Western Front from 1914 to 1918 and some of the literary means by which it has been remembered, conventionalized and mythologized. It is also about the literary dimensions of the trench experience itself.

The new Sterling edition is greatly enhanced. Photographs, illustrations, maps and other ephemera from the period illuminate what was already a good and celebrated work. This new edition takes on a very good work and makes it better and, ultimately, more useful.

New in Paperback: The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder

It’s not that Warren Buffett gave Alice Schroeder permission to write his biography, The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life (Bantam). He hand-picked her, a move typical of the man many consider to be one of the most successful business people in the world. And typical of Buffett’s style, he chose right.

Former Morgan Stanley analyst Schroeder’s in-depth portrait of Buffett is better, even, than one might imagine. Buffett gave Schroeder full access: spending many hours with her and talking candidly about his personal life and his business. Nor is The Snowball simply sunshine. The Oracle of Obama comes across as extremely human: strong, assured, deeply intelligent, but flawed, of course, and sometimes even frail. More importantly, The Snowball delivers on the promise every biography makes but few can dish up: careful readers leave feeling as though a secret has been shared -- several, really -- and that the answer to an important question is within reach.

When the book was released early in 2008, The Los Angeles Times said, “The Snowball is likely to remain the most authoritative portrait of one of the most important American investors of our time.” We agree.

Art & Culture: Best Music Writing 2009 edited by Greil Marcus

2009 marks the tenth anniversary of the Best Music Writing anthologies edited by music journalist and scholar Daphne Carr and published by Da Capo. As befits an anniversary edition, this anthology is stunning with contributions from some of the very top names in music writing, and letters, as well.

As guest editor Greil Marcus points out, Best Music Writing 2009 is not meant to be an almanac:

It is not a record of the best or worst or most important what-happened-in-music of 2008, the year from which all of the pieces here were drawn …. I distrust the notion that something has to happen in any given year that in the future we will look back upon as a portent of something or as an example of something else.

What we have, instead is, quite simply, the best. The most passionate, the most deeply felt, the most well-crafted and stated and sharply rendered. Over 30 pieces reflect all aspects of the music business and all types of music. You’ll recognize some of their names. Jonathan Lethem. Aidin Vaziri. Carrie Brownstein. David Remnick. Stanley Booth.

If you appreciate reading about music, you’ll enjoy Best Music Writing 2009. It does not get better than this.

Children’s Books Shadow of the Leopard by Henning Mankell

Internationally bestselling author Henning Mankell talks about the first time he met Sofia. He was in Mozambique in the early 1990s. Passing a hospital, he spied a small girl in a wheelchair and he stopped to talk with her. “I still don’t know why,” he says on his blog.

Though Sofia’s story didn’t come to him all at once, he was able to piece it together over time. Sofia and her sister had been running at the side of a road when a landmine was detonated. Sofia’s sister died instantly. Sofia herself suffered many injuries. And Mankell, ultimately, was compelled to tell her story.

Today, many years later, Sofia is one of my closest and dearest friends. No one has taught as much as she about the conditions of being human. Nor has anyone taught me more about poor people's unprecedented power of resistance. Those who are forced to survive at the bottom of society in a world we all share and inhabit; so unjust, brutal and unnecessary.

Though Mankell is best known for his Curt Wallander novels, his books for children are very, very good and, in his own country, extremely admired. Three books into his Sofia series (after Playing With Fire and Secrets in the Fire) Sofia is a young woman of 20 with two children of her own and another on the way. Her domestic challenges turn life-threatening when her ex-partner drags her into the savannah and leaves her to die.

Shadow of the Leopard (Annick Press) is classified as a children’s book, but I’m not entirely sure why. Though the young adult readers this book is intended for will certainly enjoy it, adults will also be compelled by Sofia’s story and Mankell’s commanding voice.

Have A Novel Inside of You? Get it Out!

If it’s true that everyone has a novel inside of them, National Novel Writing Month -- NaNoWriMo -- is meant to be the tool to force it out. From their Web site:

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

The goal of NaNoWriMo is for participants to write a 50,000 word novel by November 30th. Start... now.

The NaNoWriMo Web site is here.

Cookbooks: Savory Baking by Mary Chech

The title is misleading, and not in a helpful way. It offers the idea that this will be yet another book on being a better baker. The fact is, Savory Baking (Chronicle Books) is so much more than that.

You don’t need to read very far to understand what I’m saying. White Cheddar-Zucchini Pancakes. Hazelnut Waffles. Buckwheat Blinis with Warm Bing Cherries and Crème Fraiche. Fig and Rosemary Spread. Caprese Salad. And, yes: some of these things are meant to go with other -- baked -- recipes. And, yes: there are more baked items in Savory Baking than not. But still, it is a book beyond the expected, filled with tempting savory versions of a lot of recipes that are quite often sweet.

Author Mary Chech was named one of the top ten pastry chefs in North America. She is an award-winning pastry chef and cooking instructor. That combination shows both in the innovation she brings to Savory Baking as well as the clear and sensible way she tells us to make her creations.

Savory Baking includes recipes for every meal of the day, plus snacks. This is beautiful, well-conceived food, temptingly styled and photographed, clearly shared and quite beyond expectation.

The Emergence of the Curmudgeon

Many people still remember when Martin Amis was the enfant terrible of the British literary scene. Then he matured into the hot, cool guy who’d make pithy observations on other artist’s work while producing a fairly dazzling stream of work of his own.

From there, it’s inevitable, right? First enfant terrible. Then hot guy. From there it’s only a matter of time until you hit curmudgeon. This last seems to have arrived quite recently when Amis publicly said British celebutant -- and sometime author -- Katie Price “has no waist, no arse ... an interesting face ... but all we are really worshipping is two bags of silicone.”

Amis was talking -- perhaps not directly -- about the state of publishing and the thought that celebrity authors were taking the profit from other, more worthy authors. (Not to mention any names.) But though Price requires no defense (she’s off having fun, probably doesn’t give a fig for Amis’ opinion and acknowledges that her books -- the ones intended for grown-ups, anyway -- have all been ghostwritten), the remark was the sort that invites comment. And some have.

Writing for The Guardian’s book blog, Jean Hannah Edelstein comments that Amis’ problem is not with Price, but with women. Plus, Edelstein adds, it likely all stems from his move towards crumudgeonliness, anyway:

When writers like Amis, or Philip Roth -- who declared this week that novel-reading would be a fringe activity in 25 years -- make their apocalyptic proclamations about the state of publishing, it seems apparent that their pessimism may in fact be rather strongly influenced by anxiety that their new work no longer carries the kind of cultural clout they have grown used to, not because people aren't reading novels, but because people aren't reading their novels. And part of the reason for that may be that with the bulk of modern consumers of fiction being women, the particular brand of literary writing in which a particular aptitude for fellatio suffices as characterisation for a woman is less interesting, or resonant, than it once was.

Edelstein’s piece makes many other points, is amusing if nothing else and it’s here.

Happy Birthday to Ezra

Ezra Pound was born on this day in 1885. From Writer’s Almanac:

Pound was born within a few years of James Joyce, William Carlos Williams, D.H. Lawrence, Marianne Moore, Hilda Doolittle, and T.S. Eliot, and he was instrumental in promoting the careers of each one of these writers -- as well as many, many others. He was a champion of modern poetry and prose; Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair proclaimed that it was Ezra Pound “more than anyone who made poets write modern verse, editors publish it, and readers read it.” He was extraordinarily generous with his clout, often described as “the poet's poet.” Pound’s mantra was “Make it new.”

Pound died in Venice, two days after his 87th birthday. His legacy survives.

Stephen King to Enter the Twilight

Early in 2010, Vertigo will publish a five book series of graphic novels told by dark overlord Stephen King and short story writer Scott Snyder.

The series will feature American cowboy vampire Skinner Sweet and was originally conceived of by Snyder who had approached King for a blurb and ended up with a co-author.

“I love vampire stories,” King told The Guardian, “and the idea of following the dark exploits of a uniquely American vampire really lit up my imagination. The chance to do the original story -- to be ‘present at the creation’ – was a thrill. I owe big thanks to Scott Snyder for letting me share his vision, and sip from his bucket of blood.”

The Guardian points out that King is only the most recent author to add the graphic novel to his list of mediums.

Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin and twist-in-the-tale novelist Jodi Picoult have both recently dabbled with comics, but although his bestselling books The Stand, The Talisman and the Dark Tower series have been adapted into graphic novels, the American Vampire series will be the first original comic-book writing King has done.

The Guardian’s story adds much detail and is here.

Birthday Brilliance

While it’s true that great writers can be born on any day of the month or week, it does seem as though there are certain days where the muses have sprinkled extra magic. October 27th is one of those. Today is the birthday of at least three of the really greats: from both now and then.

Dylan Thomas was, says Writer’s Almanac, “the man who called himself ‘a freak user of words, not a poet’ but who was one of the most popular poets of his generation.” Thomas was born in Wales on this day in 1914. He died in New York while on a book tour in 1953.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Fulbright scholar and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Sylvia Plath was born in Boston on this day in 1932, she committed suicide in 1963 and won the posthumously won the Pulitzer -- for her Collected Poems -- in 1981.

Zadie Smith, who was born in London on this day in 1975, created an exquisite sensation with her debut novel, White Teeth, published before she graduated from college. Writer’s Almanac says that, “while she was cramming for her final exams, she banged out 100 pages of a potential novel. Those hundred pages started a bidding war among London publishers, and Zadie Smith wound up with a six-figure book contract before she'd even graduated from college. That novel became White Teeth (2001), which was compared to the work of Charles Dickens, with a huge cast of characters -- Bengali Muslims, Jews, Jamaicans, Nazis, Jehovah’s Witnesses, animal rights activists, Islamic terrorists, and old English men. It sold more than a million copies.”

Zombie Success Story Tops One Million

The usually elegant Three Rivers Press is quick to point out that their “2003 sleeper hit,” The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks, was at the vanguard of the current zombie movement. From a Three Rivers Press release:

The Zombie Survival Guide has spurred countless other books on zombies, along with its own line of products such as The Zombie Survival Guide Journal that gives people a chance to record their to-do lists and survival strategies, and The Zombie Survival Guide Flashcard Deck, created to provide private citizens with an emergency crash course in basic zombie survival techniques.

The Zombie Survival Guide has sold over 1,000,000 copies and sent author Brooks back to Zombie land for a couple of novels. Brooks has said his inspiration for The Zombie Survival Guide was the Y2K scare. “I wrote The Zombie Survival Guide for me,” says Brooks, “stuck it in a drawer for a while, and never imagined it would be published, let alone be this successful. I think its longevity is due largely to its realistic tone. Take out the zombies and it is still a general disaster survival guide.”

Kafka Controversy Continues

Eighty-five years after his death, the author of The Castle and Amerika is at the heart of a strange controversy. From The Guardian:

Israel’s National Library is calling on a German museum to hand over the original manuscript of Franz Kafka's novel The Trial to correct a “historical error”, in the latest unravelling of a complex dispute over the writer's legacy.

The manuscript was sold at auction by Sotheby's in 1988 for almost $2m to a book dealer acting on behalf of the German government and is stored in the Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach. Now the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem, which collects all works published in Israel, says that The Trial should be returned to the country in accordance with the final wishes of Max Brod, a friend of Kafka and the executor of his will.

The full story is here.

Cookbooks: The Entertaining Encyclopedia by Denise Vivaldo

Today I dropped by my local Home Depot only to be met with a shock: the rows upon rows of barbecues I’d seen there just a few weeks ago had disappeared and been mysteriously replaced with ... fake Christmas trees and decorations. After I’d recovered and had gotten my too-hard-beating heart under control I stopped and took stock. After all, the time between when you see the first Home Depot Christmas tree of the season and when seasonal entertaining begins is not necessarily very long.

Upon my return home, I remembered the copy of The Entertaining Encyclopedia (Robert Rose) by Denise Vivaldo that I’d been perusing for the last few weeks. Suddenly its presence in my lair made sense.

Vivaldo is, after all, a sort of catering queen to the stars. Los Angeles-based, she’s catered the Academy Awards Governors Ball and she’s cooked for some of Hollywood’s top names. That being the case, it seems as though she’s a good person to look to advice for when it comes to holiday entertaining -- or any other kind, for that matter.

“It might sound too simple to be true,” she begins, “but the best way to ensure that your guests are having a great time is to have one yourself.” But it’s a big, fat book. Even in paperback. Loads of recipes, lots of advice: a lot of it, in the end, dedicated, to helping you be proficient enough with the idea of entertaining that you will have a good time, despite yourself.

The Entertaining Encyclopedia: Essential Tips and Recipes for Perfect Parties is a great primer on ... well, everything to do with entertaining. Identifying and choosing glassware. Stocking a bar. How to handle coffee service. How to garnish a plate. Choose a location. Get a hard-partying guest to leave when the party is over.

And then the food: which is fantastic. Even if you have no intention of ever hosting a party, you’ll find useful recipes here. Some very good versions of old standards -- chicken satay, cheese fondue, spare-ribs, barbecue sauce. Scones. Some sophisticated modern dishes and the thing that I found most arresting: Vivaldo’s casual approach to food. For example, an hors d’oeuvres party appears almost as magically as if it had been waved in by a wand. Several pages of elegant hors d’oeuvres that are so simple, they seem almost to make themselves. And hors d’oeuvres are, of course, just the very beginning. There are over 200 recipes in the book.

If you have questions about entertaining or planning a party, you’ll find sensible answers in Denise Vivaldo’s The Entertaining Encyclopedia.

Children’s Books: Guinevere’s Gamble by Nancy McKenzie

The Arthurian legends have inspired countless tellings and retellings though few of those have been for children. Nancy McKenzie corrected that a couple of years ago with Guinevere’s Gift, intended to be the first book in the series she is calling the Chrysalis Quartet. Guinevere’s Gamble (Alfred A. Knopf) is the second book in that series.

The strong female heroine in this series is likely to make this a book favored by girls aged 10 to 14. As Booklist said, this series puts a “feminine spin on a tale more typically focused on men.” And though Guinevere’s Gamble is the second book in the series, you will understand what’s going on with no trouble if you’ve not yet read the first one.

Comedian Soupy Sales Dead at 83

The Rap Sheet reports that pie-throwing comedian Soupy Sales passed away yesterday:

Another character from my boyhood has passed on to that great entertainment venue in the sky: Milton Supman, better known as the “rubber-faced” comedian and TV personality Soupy Sales, has died at age 83 in New York City.

Sales was also the author of several books, including My Life & Zany Times and Stop Me If You Heard It, both from M. Evans & Company.

J. Kingston Pierce at The Rap Sheet reports on Sales’ passing here.

Biography: Stitches: A Memoir by David Small

David Small’s Stitches: A Memoir (McLelland & Stewart/W.W. Norton) is fantastic. As good or better than the most celebrated graphic novels that it will inevitably be compared to. Stitches is all the more compelling because it is not a novel at all. Rather, it is a graphic telling of author and illustrator David Small’s early life.

This is David through the Looking Glass as seen by David Lynch or perhaps Tim Burton, a dark and often disturbing graphic glimpse at a childhood that many of us might have thought was best left alone. Small takes us through the dark corridors of his childhood in Detroit in the 1950s, the son of a radiologist father whose constant x-raying ultimately gives the boy cancer. And things go downhill from there.

Stitches is a huge distance from the work Small is best known for. He has illustrated over 40 children’s books and won the most prestigious awards available to him in the process. It’s not hard to see why: Small is hugely talented and his understanding of visual storytelling is complete. Stitches is undoubtedly one of the best books of 2009.

New This Month: The Midnight Guardian by Sarah Jane Stratford

On the off-chance that you’re not yet totally sick of vampires, debut novelist Sarah Jane Stratford serves up an interesting new take on the blood-sucking mythos. A sort of alternate history, with vampires, The Midnight Guardian (St. Martin’s Press) opens on Hitler’s Germany, right at the bloody center of the Second World War. By 1940, Hitler has managed to kill all the vampires in Europe and Britain’s vampires are outraged and incensed and determine to disrupt the Nazis from their course of destruction.

Stratford’s fiction clearly owes a debt to the most senior of vampire lore weavers: both Bram Stoker and Anne Rice though, certainly, her creations show little resemblance to the Twighlightish teens of recent efforts by others. This may be in part due her education: Stratford holds a Masters degree in medieval history from the University of York and the depth and clarity with which she approaches these aspects of her material really come through. You get the feeling that, in building her particular lore, Stratford is on very solid ground.

Stratford’s story is tight and she can certainly write but one just wonders if -- really? -- the world is ready for still more vampires after we’ve seen so very many. Still The Midnight Guardian is a worthwhile and in some ways thought-provoking book.

New This Month: The Last Founding Father by Harlow Giles Unger

Harlow Giles Unger is one of those authors with the talent and skill -- not to mention passion -- to breathe life into history. You don’t have to read very far in his 16th book, The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness (Da Capo) to understand this:

The world was awash with war when James Monroe was born in the spring of 1758. A dozen nations were spilling the blood of millions across four continents, and the seas between them, in what was then called the “Great War for Empire.”

In The Last Founding Father, Unger builds a case for the importance of a vastly overlooked and underrated figure, America’s fifth President, James Monroe.

Monroe’s presidency made poor men rich, turned political allies into friends, and united a divided people as no president had done since Washington. The most beloved president after Washington, Monroe was the only president other than Washington to win reelection unopposed.

There’s more, of course. A lot more. Unger delivers his material on a wave of adventure and a compelling sense of importance. You won’t ever see the early history of America in quite the same way.

Non-fiction: Good Night & God Bless by Trish Clark

Despite the weird title and the seemingly off-the-wall premise, Good Night & God Bless (Hidden Spring) is a cool little book whose time has come.

As you will not have guessed from the aforementioned weird title, Good Night & God Bless is a guide to convent and monastery accommodation in Europe. While in some cases this also means spiritual retreat, it can also just mean inexpensive and interesting accommodation in some very unexpected places.

Produced in classic contemporary guidebook form, the entries are organized by country and city. Each entry offers some history of the property, amenities, cost, local sights and travel highlights. If budget travel is on your agenda, Good Night & God Bless will make a good addition to your travel planning package.

Volume one, available now, covers travel to Austria, the Czech republic and Italy. Volume two will cover the convents and monasteries of France, Ireland and the UK and will be available early in 2010.

Cookbooks: Araxi by James Walt

There has never been a better time for a cookbook from and about Araxi, the well known restaurant at Whistler, British Columbia, established in 1981 and a local and even international favorite ever since.

A couple of things will be certain to fix the eyes of the world on Whistler for the next year or so. For starters, the portions of the 2012 Winter Olympics that demand snow will take place at Whistler, just a couple of hours by car from the host city of Vancouver.

From a foodie perspective, though, the patronage and smiling eye of famed chef and television personality Gordon Ramsay is more important still. Ramsay, who has not only called Araxi the best restaurant in Canada, has also been named as the reward for the current season of Hell’s Kitchen, the US-based reality series that sees Ramsay harassing a clutch of would-be chefs. The winner will be created head chef at Araxi under executive chef James Walt.

While the flood of interest from various angles might cause a happy bounce in Araxi’s bottom line, I suspect that none of these shenanigans will effect the food served at the restaurant in a negative way. Araxi has been a long-time favorite of mine. Like a lot of people, I love Araxi for all the things it is. World class food in a stunning location. In my memory, the menu has always been reflective of the seasons and the locale and some of the meals I’ve enjoyed there number among the most memorable of my life: beautiful food, beautifully presented and evocative of the season in which the meal was consumed.

Naturally, then, I met the announcement of an Araxi cookbook with some excitement. Though Araxi (Douglas & McIntyre) is not quite what I expected, it’s certainly not been a disappointment. The introduction might be interesting to those who are unfamiliar with either Whistler or Araxi, but no one who has eaten at the restaurant will need to be told about Chef James Walt’s locavore leanings or how well the cellar has been built and maintained. Moody black and white photos set the tone. Chef pensive, then laughing. Sparkling glassware. Artistically arranged corks. They’re good photos but, by this point, we’ve seen it all before.

The business part of Araxi is divided into three seasons: Summer, Harvest and Winter. Each of these seasonal sections offers its own introduction (more moody black and white images) and its own detailed table of contents. And then, finally, we begin.

Some of the recipes are dead simple -- Butternut Squash Soup with Pumpkin Seed Oil; Chilled English Pea and Mint Soup. Some would require all the attention of a home chef with moderate kitchen skill -- Herb-crusted Halibut with Pea Purée and Coriander Vinaigrette; Loin of Lamb with Summer Squash and Sweet Peppers. And a good many seem to be intended for the accomplished home chef to spend hours slaving over lovingly -- Saddle of Rabbit with Buttered Noodles, Carrots and Mustard Sauce; Black Forest Cake with Brandied-Cherry Ice Cream.

Stunningly photographed, well-designed, produced and even printed, I think Araxi is also meant to be one of those cookbooks you moon over and, certainly, if you’re the type who does like to do that sort of cookbook dreaming, you could not pick one better. From beginning to end, a terrific job has been done on Araxi. It’s the perfect two-dimensional representation of a truly great restaurant.

New Today: Look At the Birdie by Kurt Vonnegut

When Look at the Birdie (Delacorte) crossed my desk, my breath caught in my throat, my heart skipped a beat, my hand reached out. I’m betting that, no matter what the popular consensus gets to be, that will be the book buying public’s reaction. New fiction by Kurt Vonnegut? Where do I sign?

Vonnegut, who died early in 2007 at the age of 84, left behind an astonishing body of work, including some of the English language’s most important novels. Slaughterhouse Five, Breakfast of Champions and 17 others.

Look at the Birdie is subtitled “Unpublished Stories.” Although this is clearly an error (they’re published now, aren’t they?) it’s possible the author never intended them to be. In a foreword to the book, Vonnegut’s friend and confidant, the author and editor Sidney Offit, writes:

Unpublished is not a word we identity with a Kurt Vonnegut short story. It may well be that these stories didn’t appear in print because for one reason or another they didn’t satisfy Kurt. He rewrote and rewrote, as his son, Mark, as well as agents and editors testify. Although Kurt’s style may seem casual and spontaneous, he was a master craftsman, demanding of himself perfection of the story, the sentence, the word.

The stories might not have satisfied Vonnegut, but fans won’t be disappointed. This is vintage Vonnegut, 14 early stories that reflect the author -- and the world -- as they were.

New This Month: When Autumn Leaves by Amy S. Foster

You might not have heard her name before but, chances are, you’ve heard her words. Amy S. Foster has written lyrics for Josh Groban, Diana Krall, Eric Benet, Michael Bublé, Destiny’s Child and Andrea Bocelli. Even with that kind of star power and international coverage, When Autumn Leaves (Overlook Press) is Foster’s debut novel.

The magic in When Autumn Leaves is sweet and charming. Even, in an odd way, calming. The book takes place in a tiny Pacific Coast hamlet called Avening, where there is magic in the every day.

When Autumn Leaves is a gentle, intelligent book. Foster’s premise here provides opportunity for escape, but her lovely prose brings it right home. A lyricist’s touch, a poet’s heart and the gift for helping us delve into our own personal magic.

Biography: After the Falls by Catherine Gildiner

Ten years after the publication of Too Close to the Falls, the critically acclaimed biography of growing up Gildiner in Lewiston, New York, clinical psychologist -- and sometime writer -- Catherine Gildiner brings us another chunk of her life in After the Falls (Knopf Canada). This time out Gildiner explores her precocious coming-of-age in the 1960s.

Pretty much as After the Falls opens, Gildiner bridges her old life with the one that’s about to begin:

As the car chugged toward the top of the escarpment, I, like Lot’s wife, looked back at the town below me. I had no idea then that I was leaving behind the least-troubled years of my life. Strange, since I felt there was no way I could cause more trouble than I had in Lewiston.

On the surface of things, there’s not much here. Let’s face it: book one dealt with the childhood years of a non-celebrity. Someone who most of us probably would not be that interested in knowing more about. Book two deals with the same person’s teenage years. And a third book (one can only imagine the Falls allusions) is currently under Gildiner’s pen. But Gildiner’s successful telling of these tales is as much about her perspective as it is about her experience. That, of course, and charm. Is there sometimes too much charm? Maybe just a little. But she is an ordinary person doing -- mostly -- fairly ordinary things, but relating them in an extraordinarily skillful way. In the end, I think, she entertains us by reminding of us our own specialness. A fantastic gift.

Film rights have been optioned.

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

No one reading this lives under a rock, so I won't insult you by announcing that Dan Brown has a new book out. Heck, by now you’ve either read the book or a few of the reviews. So why am I bothering to review a book that you’ve either read by now or, if not, have little interest in reading? I suppose because, having read the book and some of the reviews myself, I’m starting to wonder if some of the reviewers actually read the same book I did.

Look, I thought The Lost Symbol (Doubleday) was really good. But it's not another Da Vinci Code, and it’s not the second coming of the genuinely brilliant and innovative Angels & Demons. It’s probably somewhere in between, if you want to know the truth. There’s no question Dan Brown can write, although his pace sometimes feels more like a rocketing roller coaster than a novel, and his characters, well, they’re sketched more than written. And I have to say, the man loves his italics, which he seems to think is an acceptable form of punctuation.

As I sit here, thinking about The Lost Symbol, this is what pops into mind: There’s this joke about some guy who says, “I was thinking in my head the other day...” blah blah blah. My kids always laugh at that -- because where else would the guy think but in his head? And there was a TV ad for Cadillac a few years back in which the announcer said something like, “This new Cadillac is longer in length than ever before.” I thought then (and still do), longer in length? As opposed to what? Longer in color?

I mention these because they illustrate the level of The Lost Symbol. The book feels, oh, it feels like we’ve all been here before. It feels so logical (in the Brownian world, at least) that it borders on the obvious. Ancient symbols. Langdon in his dependable tweed jacket, thrust into a situation he doesn’t understand. Clues that should be clear to him from the moment he sets eyes on them, except if he did there’d be no suspense (and thus, demanding that we suspend our disbelief from a much higher hook). Skeptics galore and faux bad guys. A couple of sacrificial lambs. And the inevitable, beautiful, and brainy girl whose life’s work is somehow threatened by the villain, who in this case isn’t quite a religious freak but whose freakiness is almost a religion to him. Except that Judeo-Christian artifacts and dark rituals are switched out for American-slash-Masonic ones, it’s all so damn familiar.

I can’t say I didn't enjoy The Lost Symbol. I got on the ride, I bought into the whole thing, I had a good time, and when it was over, it was very, very over. But can I ask -- and no one has, to my knowledge -- why Brown felt the need to add the ridiculous plot twist? I won’t spoil it for those two or three of you who haven’t read the thing. But my God, Dan! You had the book chugging along at a pretty good clip, and then you toss in that bit about -- well, you know -- the thing about the victim and the villain’s shared past -- and it was like you kicked me square in the pants and hurled me off the train. What gives? Let me tell you a truth your editor was afraid to: You absolutely did not need that bit. And I'll tell you something else: Your book would’ve been a lot smarter if you’d found another way to link them -- or just forgot about linking them altogether.

Here’s the thing about books like The Lost Symbol (and then I’ll shut up). You can’t argue with its sales. But in the end, it’s not really The Lost Symbol that anyone’s buying. What they’re buying is The Next Book From That Da Vinci Code Guy. The sales, in this case, have nothing to do with this book. I mean, Brown could have written a romance novel and sold a million copies the first day.

Come to think of it, maybe Brown should try that next time. Then, at least, the ride would be one we haven’t taken before.

No Mystery About Bouchercon 2009’s Excellence

Bouchercon, the 40th World Mystery Convention, is now winding down in Indianapolis, Indiana. Among the very best coverage coming out of Indianapolis this weekend has been from January Magazine’s sister publication, the crime-fiction-dedicated Rap Sheet.

The Rap Sheet team has been delivering amazing coverage from the event including results from the awards handed out there, various news items and even some fantastic interviews. Thanks to the magic of labels, you can see it all here.

Please Don’t Shoot the Pianist

According to Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, today would have been author and playwright Oscar Wilde’s 155th birthday.

His mom wrote Irish Nationalist poetry under an Italian pseudonym meaning “Hope,” and his dad was a prestigious ear and eye surgeon who served Dublin’s poor population. Oscar Wilde studied classics at Trinity College Dublin and got a scholarship to Oxford, where he became involved in the Aesthetic Movement. He grew his hair long and dressed unconventionally. He displayed peacock feathers and sunflowers in his dorm room. He professed a belief in art for art's sake. And he began to say a lot of witty things.

Among the witty Wildeisms that Writer’s Almanac shares, is an incident from his great North American tour of 1882:

Twenty-seven-year-old Oscar Wilde arrived in New York in January 1882. He went to Pennsylvania, where he drank elderberry wine with Walt Whitman. He lectured to coal miners in Leadville, Colorado, where he saw a sign on a saloon that said, “Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best,” and called it “the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across.”

Wilde died of cerebral meningitis on November 30th 1900.

Children’s Books: Smudge’s Mark by Claudia Osmond

From the outset, Smudge’s Mark (Simply Read Books) is dense and meandering and at first seems quite incomprehensible. And I couldn’t put it down. If you think those things don’t seem to go together, welcome to the club and read on. I’m still not sure I understand how it happened, but I do know I’d read another book by this author.

One of the most powerful things about Smudge’s Mark is the strong and personable voice of the narrator, Simon, a.k.a. Smudge. “My grandpa was a wicked prankster,” Osmond-as-Simon begins. “Usually after working the part-time midnight shift at the mushroom farm, he’d make his way home to 49 Stone Elements Drive in the darkness of the early morning.” And the correct response would seem to be: who cares? At this point -- the beginning -- Osmond has seemingly done nothing to insure we care at all. And yet, oddly enough, we do. It is as though, with those first simple words, Simon waltzes into our lives as though he hasn’t a care in the world. And then, layer upon layer, we learn of all the dark places: all the things that are at stake and by then we realize that while we weren’t paying attention, Osmond has somehow -- magically? -- made us care.

Smudge’s Mark is, in its own strange way, a very good book. At story’s beginning, we meet Simon in a moment of quiet, almost introspection. By journey’s end, Simon has more or less preserved life as he knows it as well as Emogen, a hidden realm with a strong connection to Earth.

Smudge’s Mark is intended for older children -- what the industry likes to call young adults -- but I suspect it will find its place with the nine-to-twelve-year-old set. The book does not try to be either Harry Potter or Coraline, but young readers who enjoyed those books are likely to respond to elements of Osmond’s debut novel.

Criminal Minds Descend Upon Indy

Bouchercon, the 40th World Mystery Convention, kicked off earlier today in Indianapolis, Indiana. And already it’s producing headlines, mostly in the form of award winners. Our sister site, The Rap Sheet, has a complete rundown of the victors and the vanquished so far. Among the happy crime fictionists this evening are Deborah Crombie (Where Memories Lie), Arnaldur Indridason (The Draining Lake), Tom Rob Smith (Child 44), Julie Hyzy (State of the Onion), and James O. Born (who walked away with the Barry Award for Best Short Story).

On Friday night, during a banquet at The Slippery Noodle bar, the Private Eye Writers of America will hand out its Shamus Awards (nominees here), while the grand announcement of this year’s Anthony Awards is to be made on Saturday afternoon (with a list of the contenders to be found here.)

Stay tuned to The Rap Sheet for further Bouchercon coverage.

Twitalicious

There is simply not enough time to report fully on the all the stories that catch our eye and float by our desks. However, we do manage to comment on a fair amount of those stories in our microblogging presence on Twitter. (Don’t let anyone steer you wrong: it’s a lot easier and faster to write a 140 character story than a real one.)

Here, then, are some of the things we’ve reported on Twitter over the last few days:

Awards, awards and then some awards: The shortlists for both the National Book Awards and the Governor Generals Awards were announced yesterday. Some surprises on both lists. And what does it all mean? Big book party time is approaching fast and furious.

The 10 Coolest Bookstores in the United States. (I’d love to see someone do lists like this for Canada, the U.K. and Australia. Any takers?) The U.S. list is here.

Here’s something not intended for your Kindle: The fur-covered edition of Dave Egger’s The Wild Things (McSweeney’s Books). The movie tie-in edition is based loosely on the book by Maurice Sendak and the screenplay co-written with Spike Jonze.

Passages: Anne Friedberg and Stuart M. Kaminsky.

National Post Books reviews Egg on Mao (Random House) by Denise Chong. We just love the title.

Lonely Planet ramps up Digital Strategy.

Though it’s yet another round-up of “links around the Web,” we could not resist this title: “Bookmarks: Terminatrix Palin, Wild Things art, and the interactive Proust questionnaire.” Quill & Quire wins our come-on-title-of-the-week award. (Did you even know we had such a thing? Me neither.)

Boing Boing brings word of this Reading Radar API mashup that adds Amazon-easy information to the New York Times’ bestseller list. Oddly useful, right? It’s here.

Kinda Boing Boing related, but not really: the delicious Cory Doctorow blows his top. “The author, activist and co-editor of the influential Boing-Boing blog,” said the Bookseller, “urged TOC delegates to ‘restore ownership to books’ and blasted publishers and rightsholders who continue to apply DRM to their content.” Go, Cory!

Bookselling megastar Colm Toibin has launched a new imprint, Tuskar Rock, with fabled agent Peter Straus.

“Crazy insane beautiful 43 seconds of pure Pop. Works with all music. A complete brain snack,” from the wonderful @DougCoupland. January’s 2001 interview with Coupland is here.

Ken Bruen has been awarded the Grand Prix de la Littérature Policière 2009 for Priest.

Emily Flake sends dispatches from the Small Press Expo in Maryland.

Biography: Imagine: A Vagabond Story by Grant Lingel

In 2005, not many credits shy of a college degree, Western New York student Grant Lingel knew he wanted something else.

“Nothing made me different than most people at twenty-two,” Lingel writes in Imagine: A Vagabond Story (Langdon Street Press). “I was broke, scared, clueless, and annoyed. College debt was up to my ears, and there was no clear direction down any particular path.” When a path didn’t present itself, he bought a one-way ticket to Mexico and, with $300 in his pocket, he left his life behind, trading in the safety of the life his middle class white American upbringing had assured him for a sea of question marks in parts unknown.

Lingel is no Kerouac and Imagine is certainly no On the Road but Lingel’s earnest ramblings have a certain youthful appeal. It’s good to know, too, that the more things change, the more they stay the same and even children of the high tech age (Lingel was born in 1983) can be called beyond the safety of their laptops, PDAs and entertainment consoles.