Monthly Archives: January 2008

Everyman by Philip Roth

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Everyman by Philip RothEveryman by Philip Roth is a short but satisfying chronicle of a life lived unapologetically. The majority of the novel, or perhaps it’s better classified as a novella, revolves around the ‘golden’ years of a man who has dealt with the specter of death through a series of hospitalizations. The beauty of Everyman is the engrossing delivery of such ordinary material. Roth is a gifted storyteller, and using his nameless character, he allows readers to empathize and relate to this “everyman.”

Everyman is about death, lust, love, family, frailty and human nature. These aren’t new themes for Roth or for the world at large. What is different is the pace and structure that Roth builds into Everyman. There isn’t a deeply rich exploration of family or vivid descriptions of modern America. Everyman starts out with the main character’s funeral. So the rest of the story unfolds almost like a Six Feet Under type of eulogy.

To me, it feels like an extended version of the ‘my life flashed before my eyes’ type of scenario. In those harrowing moments before death you relive your life in flashes, a dreamlike meta state that has no time boundaries. So, we do visit the hero in his youth and learn about his father. We see the bonding moments he’s had with his brother, how he met and fell in love with his wife and his affairs and human failings. They’re just vivid snapshots, life’s highlights, that have the most meaning and impact.

Roth creates a great amount of empathy for both the main character and those with which he interacts. It’s a literary feat that he’s able to create a clear portrait with such a brevity of words. Using the everyman device, he’s able to connect with the reader quickly and pinpoint those uncomfortable and messy areas of life that we all encounter. This is Roth at his finest, revealing the intricacies of relationships and the heartfelt turmoil that is part of everyday life.

The main character is not the quintessential everyman, since he’s colored with Roth’s unique perspective. In particular, the introspective ability to analyze and to forgive poor decisions, chalking them up to being human. There are no apologies, only the tacit knowledge that he’s screwed up from time to time, that it wasn’t optimal, but it was what happened and that … is that.

Everyman is also interesting as it pertains to longevity and medicine. Living longer due to medical advances is a double-edged sword in many respects. You get more time to experience the world and people around you, but what happens when some of those people die and parts of the world aren’t available to you anymore? Is longevity for it’s own sake worthwhile? I find these themes increasingly relevant as I (and my peers) get older.

Philip Roth has once again demonstrated why he’s one of America’s best modern writers.

Used Boks

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Used BoksUsed Boks. Yes, sometimes when I’m checking where the blog is ranking for the term Used Books I wind up typing this in instead. Based on the results it seems like Used Boks is a common misspelling. Well, not a misspelling but a typo.

But there’s also The Springboks, a South African rugby team nicknamed the Boks, who have just won their second rugby World Cup. A competing squad alleged that the Boks used rough-house tactics in a match, hence my finding them for the term Used Boks.

It turns out there are even sites like BestBuyBoks, and CheapBoks trying to make a buck off of the misspelling. Not to mention Amazon and Barnes and Nobel who buy these typos.

I recently disclosed that the misspelling of Barnes and Noble generated a lot of traffic to the blog. We’ll see if Used Boks performs similarly. Now, back to your regularly written blog.

Strong Motion by Jonathan Franzen

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Strong Motion by Jonathan FranzenStrong Motion by Jonathan Franzen is a fantastic mix of literary fiction and mystery. Superbly drawn characters, psychological punch and vivid descriptions are mixed with an intriguing mystery that revolves around the cause of a swarm of earthquakes in the Boston area. Strong Motion is the Jonathan Franzen version of Erin Brockovich. In it, he deftly and intelligently deals with issues of abortion and corporate malfeasance, while retaining the introspective flow of his dynamic characters and their intense interactions.

The novel follows Louis Holland as he deals with a dysfunctional family, middling career and conflicting love interests. Earthquakes are what set this story in motion. They kill his grandmother and bring Renee Seitchek, a seismologist, into his orbit. The paths of many characters get tangled up and converge seamlessly as they delve into his grandmother’s inheritance, which is composed of stock in a industrial chemical company.

This type of convergence-plot seems in vogue recently and it doesn’t always work. It often feels forced, and you can imagine the author struggling to find ways to unify the various plot lines and characters. The links are sometimes tenuous and there are instances when you simply must employ a suspension of disbelief to make reading enjoyable. That isn’t a problem with Franzen’s Strong Motion. The intersecting plot lines make complete sense and bring natural order to the story.

I have a habit of turning down the corner of a page that has a particular passage that I found extraordinary. Sometimes I’ll review them later and not quite know what I found so compelling, but it’s easy to understand my many markers in Strong Motion.

The hum of the fan in the window was the sound of unhappiness in its rotary progress, always developing and yet always the same, a sound that marked every second of the minutes and hours in which improvement was failing to occur.

Obviously, no one had been eager to be personally crushed by falling timbers or to see their possessions go up in flames, but for a few days in the spring Nature had toyed with the city’s expectations, and people had rapidly developed covert appetites for televised images of bodies under sheets of polyethylene, for the carnival-ride sensation of being tossed around the living room, for a Californian experience, for major numbers.

If you get your life in balance with your death, you stop panicking. Life stops being just the status quo that you hope won’t end for a long time.

If you haven’t already figured it out, Franzen likes long sentences and has a penchant for beautifully describing discontent and those things that we rarely admit to ourselves. Strong Motion is a more raw, blunt version of Franzen’s acclaimed The Corrections, which makes it different, not better or worse.

The one area where Franzen seems one-dimensional is sex. The sexual interactions between characters are confrontational and often mixed with violence. I don’t doubt that this is part of the broad spectrum of sexuality, but it seems a bit one note and distracting at times. I think it’s a red flag if I’m wondering whether Franzen just has some horrible sexual past he’s trying to work out on the page or if he’s trying to make a point through or about sexual intimacy.

I’m being hard on Franzen, but only because there’s nothing else to pick on. Strong Motion is that good. Franzen delivers gripping personal portrayals, frightening human insight as well as a taut and well plotted mystery. I highly recommend Strong Motion, for fans of The Corrections or those new to Franzen’s work.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

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Kafka on the Shore by Haruki MurakamiKafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami is another solid effort by one of the best modern writers on the planet. Sure, it’s not as absorbing and gripping as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle or as eerie and complete as Hard Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World. But that’s a massive pedigree to live up to, the former a taut, rich and uncomfortable story similar to David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten, while the latter (one of my favorite books of all time) an amazing mix of surrealism and science fiction.

Kafka on the Shore seems to borrow from both of these former works; from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, the exploration of dark themes and revealing personal histories; from Hard Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World, the surreal and a convergence of dream and reality. This isn’t a rehash though, it’s a fresh story and perspective. This time it feels more like a collage, with different ideas, images, people and perspectives stitched together in an almost poem like format.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a typical narrative style fiction novel told from three distinct perspectives, a 15-year-old runaway, an elderly dullard and an aimless truck driver. The characters start from very different places and at first it’s not altogether clear how they’ll cross paths. Thankfully, Murakami surprises the reader – or at least this reader – and doesn’t follow a paint-by-numbers plot.

The Cat from Outer Space by Ted KeyI am immediately drawn to the story when it turns out that the elderly dullard has a talent for speaking to cats. I’ve always liked cats and, as a kid, loved the idea of them talking and doing all sorts of mysterious things. What if my cats could talk to me?! What would they say? What would they sound like? At 7-years-old I pestered my parents to see The Cat from Outer Space. What can I say? I was 7.

That’s the strange thing about Kafka on the Shore. It mixes and matches style and pace. The beginning is more like an X-Files episode trying to determine the cause of unexplained phenomena, full of recollections, eyewitnesses and official interview passages. There is a horror-like vignette, like a dash of salt, added to the narrative as well. Yet there are soul searching passages of personal revelation, poignant philosophical musings, some Greek mythology, a hearty dose of sex and sly barbs at our diminishing grip on culture.

It’s tough not to fall for Murakami when he rattles off some truly gorgeous prose.

Just by looking at that happy smile, you can trace the beautiful path that a contented heart must follow. Like a firefly’s glow that persists long after it’s disappeared into the darkness.

Kafka on the Shore is about how to keep that glow alive once it’s disappeared into the darkness and the everyday, meaningless tragedies that make it difficult to do so. Not for those with delicate constitutions, or for those who want things to be neat and tidy, fully explained and mapped out. The rest of you should pick up Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami and enjoy the journey.

Online Book Reading Videos

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OpinionBook readings are a staple of bookstores, so with the explosion in video why haven’t they made the jump online? Why aren’t we seeing a thriving archive of readings from … Dave Eggers? Why isn’t there a Grateful Dead, Phish and Dave Matthews Band like following for certain authors, with old 8mm films digitally transferred and uploaded to the web and traded via BitTorrent? Wouldn’t a live web reading of the first few pages of the latest Harry Potter have been a raging success?

The strength of arguments against video for book readings have all but evaporated.

Argument #1: Video is only for the young, so there’s no appreciable market for video book readings.

Video is not just for the young. Sure, a majority of it is still uploaded by the 18-24 demographic, but uploading is getting easier and easier and that will broaden the age distribution. Recent Pew Internet & American Life Project reports indicate that 57% of Internet users have viewed an online video and 48% have visited a video-sharing site. Using these figures and the Everett Rogers Technology Lifecycle Adoption model, online video has reached a critical mass and is somewhere between the Early Majority and Late Majority. It’s no longer just Peanut Butter Jelly Time!

And about that live Harry Potter reading, who exactly would have tuned in? Your 43 year old Harper’s reading urbanite? No. Droves of tweens would have logged on and likely brought down the servers.

Argument #2: Video is expensive, both to film and upload, as well as to host and present.

Not anymore. Pure Digital Inc. has developed Flip Video. This palm sized video recorder retails for about $100 and makes uploading a breeze with a built in USB arm. Really, your grandmother can do it! (No offense to grandmothers intended). And the other side of the equation can be solved with a solution like Fliqz. They provide the whole package, from easy upload to your own customized, branded player to hosting the videos. Integration is easy, and I should know since I use Fliqz to power videos on Santa.com.

No one is really doing anything like this on a large scale. There is iReadNet, but they don’t have the built-in traffic to make it attractive to publishers, authors or booksellers. So, who could or should do video book readings?

Amazon could but, despite a return to their books, movies and music roots, I think something like this might get lost and wouldn’t be a priority on their product road map.

Barnes & Noble could particularly with the sheer volume of readings they could film and upload. But they still seem focused on the their brick and mortar operations.

Borders might be interesting since they’ve terminated their agreement with Amazon and will operate their own eCommerce destination site in 2008. They don’t strike me as the most forward thinking organization though, so this might be a stretch.

The Goliaths of the industry might not be the right fit, but what about the Davids? Alibris, Abebooks and Biblio might be good candidates. All three could benefit from the viral distribution of these videos and the added sticky value it would provide their sites. They also have access to thousands of booksellers who would be able to provide a continuous supply of new book reading videos.

Of course, any publisher could jump in and do this for their own stable of authors. Though generally allergic to technology and change, publishers should see the benefits to a video book tour: reduced costs and increase visibility of new releases. A few might do this but their sites aren’t well trafficked and it will still only cover their authors.

So perhaps it’s one of the new social reading sites like LibraryThing, Shelfari or GoodReads. They’re definitely tech-savvy and are building substantial traffic for this niche. It’s populated with users who have already invested in the site by uploading their library, rating and reviewing books. It may not be such a stretch to have these same users strike out with video camera in hand to film a reading. Or perhaps this is where social reading sites and publishers really create synergy?

Am I barking up the wrong tree? Is there simply not enough demand for this type of video? I think I’m on the right track only because I’ve missed numerous readings that I’d have liked to have attended but simply couldn’t fit into my schedule. In a society where time may be the most precious resource, book reading videos make sense. It’s time for book readings to get a Web 2.0 treatment!

What do you think? Are you be interested in online book reading videos? If so, what’s the best venue for them?

Heir to the Glimmering World by Cynthia Ozick

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Heir to the Glimmering World by Cynthia OzickHeir to the Glimmering World by Cynthia Ozick is absorbing, interesting but somewhat academic and dry at the same time. The story follows Rose Meadows, an orphan who winds up working for and living with the Mitwissers. Set in the 1930s, the Mitwissers flee Germany, find their way to New York and survive solely on the generosity of a bitter and capricious heir to a popular children’s book franchise.

There’s a lot to like in Heir to the Glimmering World. Ozick captures time and place perfectly, richly describing upstate New York and the Bronx in the run-up to World War II. In addition, the relationships between Rose and her emotionally crippled father, family friend Bertram, and Professor Rudolf Mitwisser are finely crafted, revealing a central father-daughter theme that runs throughout the novel.

Heir to the Glimmering World is about damaged and flawed individuals looking to find their place in a tumultuous world. The character portraits are as interesting as they are diverse: a son who’s only connection to his father was as the source of his books; a strident communist who’s changed her name to Ninel (Lenin spelled backwards); a cynical, gambling single father who resents the yoke of his daughter; a once shining academic star mentally broken by losing her country and profession; and an obsessed academic who hides from his family through his research.

Yet, the plot is rather aimless, and there’s no central conflict to resolve. This natural storytelling element seems to be lost in Heir to the Glimmering World. I’m not wedded to the traditional, but I am looking to connect with the story on both a intellectual and emotional level. So while the relationships that Ozick paints are intense, I don’t feel them in my gut, only in my head. They’re well documented and put on display like a butterfly collection.

For whatever reason, I felt a distance from the characters and actions in the novel. Instead of being sucked into the story, I was analyzing the story. Worth reading, Heir to the Glimmering World is thought-provoking … it just didn’t touch me.

Alibris Launches Movie and Music Marketplace

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Book NewsAlibris has officially launched it’s new movie and music marketplace. The cornerstone of this enhanced marketplace is the “powerful search experience” Alibris offers users. Now, let me preface the rest of my post by making it clear that I worked at Alibris for three years, leaving as Director of Marketing and Sales at the beginning of 2007.

It’s been a year now and I recently was forced to make a purchase through another online venue to ensure Commission Junction didn’t close my affiliate account. Though I wasn’t pleased at the threat of closure, it was interesting to revisit some of my old competition (Abebooks and Biblio) with a more objective eye. I decided I’d fill the gap in my Richard K. Morgan library and get Woken Furies.

The result was a confirmation that the Alibris search interface was superior. I’m not saying Alibris has the best inventory, or the best prices. But, in terms of finding what I want quickly and easily, they get top marks based on my experience. Let’s start by comparing author searches.

At Abebooks and Biblio all of the titles are lumped together into one laundry list sorted by price. So I have to search for the copies of Woken Furies amid all the other titles. At Alibris, each title is listed separately, allowing me to quickly find the best copy of Woken Furies. In terms of pure navigation and time savings (a big plus for me) the Alibris presentation wins by a wide margin on author searches.

But what if I was more specific and searched by title?

The gulf based on title search isn’t as wide. However, I like the synopsis at the top on the Alibris search. What’s disconcerting at Abebooks was the number of images that didn’t match the title. Images for Worlds by Joe Haldeman, Minority Report by Philip K. Dick, Market Forces by Richard K. Morgan and Harlequin’s Dance by Tom Arden are all presented. My confidence that I’m going to get the right book at Abebooks, even if it is the right image, is definitely shaken.

Having been on the inside, I know some of the downsides. Alibris only uses stock photos, not those provided by a bookseller. Yet, that uniformity is actually comforting on non-collectible purchases. In addition, there’s a sort of black hole for books that aren’t entered in a certain way or don’t match the Alibris catalog. These items do exist but are not presented in the normal search navigation. Finally, advanced search and filtering options are satisfactory at best.

Yet, at the end of the day the basic search Alibris employs is, in my opinion, better. Will it help in searching for movies and music? Yes. Is expanding into the secondary market for movies and music a good strategy? No, I don’t think so. But that’s fodder for a whole other post.

What do you think? Which online bookseller has the best search?

Advance Reading Copy and Advance Reader’s Edition

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Book OpinionsI collect Advance Reading Copies, better known as ARCs. ARCs are uncorrected proofs or galleys printed prior to the publication of a book for promotional purposes. You may also hear them referred to as an Advance Copy, Advance Readers Copy, Advance Review Copy or Advance Reader’s Edition. Either way, I find them intriguing and seek them out whenever I buy.

Advance Reader’s Editions are great because they’re scarce (print runs are very small) and you can often get the book well before it’s actually available to the general public. Better yet, they’re in soft cover format instead of a bulky heavy hard cover book. To top it all off, they’re generally cheaper than a First Edition.

An Advance Readers Copy usually has a letter from the editor in the preface and includes marketing and publicity information on the back cover. The cover art on an ARC may be completely different and sometimes there are real differences in the content, though that seems more the exception than the rule in my experience. There are frequently typographic errors in the text, though I don’t find that it detracts from my reading of the book. In fact, it’s a sort of sleuthing that I enjoy. It enhances the feeling of privilege – that you’re getting a sneak peek at the author’s work.

Collecting ARCs isn’t really mainstream, but it is acknowledged by bibliophiles and I highly recommend reading the esteemed Ken Lopez’s take on the topic. There’s also a bit of controversy about the subject from a publisher perspective, exacerbated by the used books market on the Internet. Every Advance Reading Copy is labeled as ‘Not For Sale’ on the cover, plain as day. Never mind that pesky ‘possession is nine tenths of the law’ axiom.

Scribner went so far as to put a letter on the cover of Stephen King’s Lisey’s Story that essentially pleads and browbeats recipients into not reselling the book. In this letter EVP Susan Moldow cites previous experiences in which Advanced Reader’s Editions showed up on eBay shortly after being distributed. I find it a bit shocking that a publisher is worried about such a small rounding error.

Instead, I’d like to think Scribner isn’t that shortsighted, that perhaps this was a bold, sly move to encourage people to sell copies on eBay and increase the buzz on the book. I mean really, what better way to get folks to sell these on eBay than to actively campaign against it right on the cover. Talk about a collector’s item! Fine Books & Collectibles has a nice article on the subject, including a stance on the unenforceability of the ‘Not For Sale’ language.

Unfortunately, publishers are concerned about the resale of Advance Reader’s Editions. A few times a year Alibris would get threatening letters from publishers or their lawyers demanding that we remove certain ARCs from the site. With that in mind I actually held off on my review of Zeroville until it was published. I’d purchased it as an ARC well before the release date, another great addition to my collection which includes (among others) Fluke by Christopher Moore, Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem, Jennifer Government by Max Barry, Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff and Th1rte3n by Richard K. Morgan.

Thing is I gave Zeroville a great review which might have helped the hype and sales. In my mind, Advance Reading Copies are to books what private Beta sites are to the Internet. What do you think? Are you a reader who likes the idea of an ARC? If you’re an author, what’s your take? Any publishers nosing around the blog, jump into the fray! Booksellers, have you gotten those nasty-grams from publishers? If so, what did you do?

MySpace Book Club?

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Book NewsHarperTeen (a division of HarperCollins) has partnered with MySpace to create an interactive community for teen readers. Or in other (less cool) words, a MySpace Book Club. I have conflicting feelings about this initiative. On the one hand, it’s nice to see MySpace trying to bring something of greater cultural value to their users. But it doesn’t have the best track record, what with racy photos, inane comments, pedophiles, AnNoYiNg TyPoGrApHy, questionable videos and blaring music atop ugly wallpaper. Is this really the best platform to connect with readers?

Sure, some MySpace teens read. But do they admit it? Is is cool to read? Maybe HarperTeen can help make it cool, right? Sadly, it seems a stretch to me.

While at Alibris I bought 500,000 impressions (that’s not a lot for those not in the business) on the MySpace Books page. The clickthrough rate was actually pretty decent, but unfortunately after 6 weeks (that’s a long time) they hadn’t filled even half of the impressions I’d ordered. Sure MySpace could do more to promote books (it’s not in the top navigation bar), but I concluded that MySpace wasn’t the best fit for books.

So who is? Could it be Facebook? Or Piczo? Or Amazon? I can’t say for sure. I’m all for promoting reading to our youth, but this seems like a square peg in a round hole. I wish them luck and give them both points for trying, but the cynic in me thinks this is a bust.

Company by Max Barry

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Company by Max BarryCompany by Max Barry was, to be direct, not very good. I had high hopes for Company, coming on the heels of Barry’s very interesting Jennifer Government. Unfortunately, Company has all the snappy dialog and cheeky humor but falls short on nearly every other front. My copy of Company has the image of a glazed donut on the cover, which I find an apt metaphor: sweet sugary exterior with nothing but airy dough on the inside. Oh, and there’s a hole in the middle and it’s not at all nutritious.

Barry’s aim is to explore and poke fun at large corporate business culture and their reliance on Six Sigma, KPI, TQM and other management techniques. Trust me, I’ve experienced some of these corporate torture devices and they are absolutely inane. Thing is, others have been down this road, most notably Douglas Coupland in Generation X. While not the direct assault that Barry is looking to deliver, Coupland winds up capturing the soul-sucking combination of boredom and stress far better than Barry.

In Company, Stephen Jones, a recent business graduate, joins Zephyr Holdings, the antithesis of a toxic corporate culture. His co-workers are a pale Glengarry Glen Ross and Office Space amalgamation who have no real idea what the company does or sells. There are some clever bureaucratic gags, anecdotes and insights, but not enough to offset the stale setting and hollow characters. In particular, Eve Jantiss, the model-like, amoral love interest comes off more like a caricature of a junior high version of a corporate fantasy girl.

Perhaps he’s too far removed from his days at Hewlett Packard, or there’s a cultural difference or time-zone like delay on this type of corporate satire. Whatever the reason, Max Barry’s Company is an easy read but, like a donut, you’ll search for something else to fill you up the minute you’re done.