Girls like Murakami

From The Paris Review: “There’s a difference,” remarked one colleague, “between getting a girl to think you’re smart, and getting a girl to WANT to talk to you. The following are books that will make girls want to talk to you.

—Greatest pick-up book of all time is Just Kids by Patti Smith, because every girl has read it and they ALL want to talk about it.
—Any book ever written by Haruki Murakami
—The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
—White Album by Joan Didion
—What We Talk About, When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
—The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. (Don’t question it. Just trust.)”

I was surprised to see Murakami on the list, tho he is one of my favorites. Just Kids, sure -- it *is* fun to talk about. The question was what books would make girls think a guy is hot. Probably, most books, but judging from the last entry, we're talking about college-aged readers or just after. I have no idea what books make women in their 30s and 40s think men are hot. Murakami would still be interesting, but hotness is so variable by then that even Patti Smith might not do it. Denis Johnson? Gustave Flaubert? Neil Gaiman? Margaret Atwood? They all work for me.

Men's Fiction=Not About Women?

Esquire plans to publish men's fiction ebooks:

His [David Granger, editor in chief of Esquire] definition of men’s fiction? Work that is “plot-driven and exciting, where one thing happens after another,” he sahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifid. “And also at the same time, dealing with passages in a man’s life that seem common.” At The NY Times blogs.

And scarcely feature real women, or women's lives? Remember the Little Rascals' He-Man Woman Haters Club? Why is it that men will not read fiction by and about women, while women have no such compunction about fiction by/about men? Do men spend their whole lives separating from mom? Defining themselves as "not women"? Curious. Or is most of what we call literature just not interesting to most men for some other reason?

Urban book swap, next chapter: Phone booth libraries

The ubiquity of phone booths is interesting because they are completely obsolete, unevenly distributed in outlying neighborhoods and they carry a strong sense of nostalgia with me. They've already evolved from their original function as person-to-person communication technology into their second iteration as pedestrian-scaled billboards. I wanted to see if there is a third option in that, yes, they get our eyes for advertising dollars, but they can also give value back to a neighborhood. I was most interested in turning what is perceived as an urban liability into an opportunity.

And what more can you say about books? They're the greatest things ever, and everyone should have more.

-- John Locke, Department of Urban Betterment

Of course, there have been a few glitches:

So far only two booths have been converted. There will absolutely be more. Each iteration has to be judged to see what works, both in terms of siting and how to engage the public. For instance, the first test was in a more remote block. The books were neither marked, nor were any instructions given. After a few days the books were gone. I added more, and those too were removed within a few days. After another two weeks, the shelves disappeared.

I find this story appealing, but why phonebooths? In case the person you call puts you on endless hold? Or is a boring conversationalist? I thought laundromats were the swap libraries of choice these days.

Hijacking your reward circuits

Since 1992, as the technological miracles and wonders have propagated and the political economy has transformed, the world has become radically and profoundly new. (And then there’s the miraculous drop in violent crime in the United States, by half.) Here is what’s odd: during these same 20 years, the appearance of the world (computers, TVs, telephones, and music players aside) has changed hardly at all, less than it did during any 20-year period for at least a century. The past is a foreign country, but the recent past—the 00s, the 90s, even a lot of the 80s—looks almost identical to the present. This is the First Great Paradox of Contemporary Cultural History.

Article in Vanity Fair.

Technology is changing, but fashion, weirdly, is not, and don't forget the drop in violent crime as former bad guys are riveted to their seats playing video games.

Maybe it's Internet Compulsion Disorder. Article in The Atlantic.

The right swipe on the touch screen in Angry Birds delivers an instant hit. The constant updating on Facebook pages with interesting tidbits from friends generates the warm feelings that come from close engagement with the "in" crowd. MeetMoi.com will link you up with "singles within a few miles from you who can meet you tonight" -- no need to go through eHarmony's tedious process of communicating with someone before a face-to-face meeting.

Yes, everything is getting faster and more addictive, and now even old-fashioned online dating sites are too slow! It's funny to think people are meeting in the same kinds of clothes, tho. Anything new since fleece? Should we all go back to wool sweaters? Tie dye? Big shoulder pads? Reading and writing books instead of quick online articles and blogs? Web surfing is fun, all those quick, little satisfying facts, such as that fashion has not changed very much lately.

New Jersey teens can't read Norwegian Wood

Murakami's novel of love and mental illness, because parents complained of drug and sex scenes.

They can still read Town of Cats, an excerpt from his new novel, IQ84, which will be out next month. This excerpt deals with a young man's relationship with his difficult father, and uses the device of a story -- a man lost in a town of cats -- within a story to illustrate that this weird, not self-created predicament is "the place where he is meant to be lost." His life, in other words. Teens should identify with that, no?

I loved the excerpt and am impatient for the book to arrive.

Meanwhile, I will have to be content with this Q&A with the author on Town of Cats in the New Yorker.

I could also read Murakami on talent, focus, endurance -- what writing has in common with running.

How Stephen King Really Got That Way

I loved this article at Shelf Awareness about King and the bookmobile lady who gave him Lord of the Flies, due out in a new edition with his introduction:

"Do you have any stories about how kids really are?" She thought about it, then went to the section of the Bookmobile marked Adult Fiction, and pulled out a slim hardcover volume. "Try this, Stevie," she said. "And if anyone asks, tell them you found it yourself. Otherwise, I might get into trouble."

In On Writing, King mentions The Inheritors and Pincher Martin, also by Golding, both of which I read on his recommendation, and which are worth reading, even if not as compelling as Golding's more famous book. In The Inheritors, Golding imagines early human species interacting and competing. In Pincher Martin, a man has two lives, one with pinchers. Odd little book, but one which would almost certainly have gotten more attention if published today. I was happy to find both of these and I hereby pass on the recommendation.

As far as King's work, my favorites are Different Seasons, especially Apt Pupil, The Long Walk and The Stand. The Mist is a great story, too.

Publishing is Not Dying

And the biggest surprise is adult fiction, the market for which has grown in the last couple of years. More adults are also reading YA fiction, which is fiction with young characters. It's often written more simply than adult fiction, which can mean it's an "easier" read, but can also mean it lacks the pretentious ambitions of "literary" fiction. Note that I'm not saying that ambition is wrong, just that pretentious attempts at originality are hard to read.

“We’re seeing a resurgence, and we’re seeing it across all markets — trade, academic, professional,” said Tina Jordan, the vice president of the Association of American Publishers. “In each category we’re seeing growth. The printed word is alive and well whether it takes a paper delivery or digital delivery.”

One of the strongest growth areas was adult fiction, which had a revenue increase of 8.8 percent over three years.

NY Times.

The article has inspired a rollicking discussion in the comments, with readers asserting things such as, they will not buy e-book readers until they have chosen "One App to Rule Them All"; that reading YA is like eating Snickers; that adults stopped reading deeply at age 12; that ebook readers may well go through the same technology changes as computer disks, and nobody can read 5 1/4" disks any more, so why not stick with real books unless for traveling light? That last is a good point. Current ebooks might be the 8-track tapes of the future.

And the future of books is...

Paperbacks that are smaller than e-readers. Called flipbacks, they have small, landscape-oriented pages printed on fine paper, to take up less space. At Abebooks.

Summer Book Recommendations

From the people who are concerned that we are missing almost everything (see previous post from NPR): NPR Summer Reading Lists. I have put a few on my list already, science fiction, literary fiction, crime fiction, etc. A friend tells me that the best guarantee of book sales, outside of becoming an Oprah pick, is a mention at NPR. Maybe that is why so many of these titles show up in my library's system already. I'm sure the librarians are NPR fans. I plan to buy some titles, borrow some, and maybe clone myself so I can read them all.

Speaking of science fiction, I just (finally) finished reading A Canticle for Leibowitz, the sci fi classic. Set in an abbey after the nuclear apocalypse, the centuries pass while the brothers try to make sense of the past, prevent a recurrence in the future, and preserve the "Memorabilia" and Apostolic Succession, that is, the Catholic succession of priests, on another planet, if necessary.

Let's not forget what Junot Diaz is reading this summer.

Here are Oprah's suggestions, which include at least one from NPR's list and one from the NY Times'.

What are you reading this summer?

Editors are Timid; Ebooks are Shorter; There is No E-reading in Cafes

The dystopian future is here.

Timid editors. And, I might add, most likely underpaid. Yet, "Books remain a pocket of air in an upturned boat." Jeanette Winterson, quoted in the article at the Guardian.

Are ebooks getting shorter because of smaller devices, or smaller attention spans? NY Times.

"Many indie New York City cafes now heavily restrict, or ban outright, the use of Kindles, Nooks and iPads." o rly? y is that? Does this make sense? Is it the love of books? The resistance to the spelling butchery that goes with texting? Can you even do that with a Nook? Also at the NY Times.

Keeping Books Out of Landfills and the Secret Threat of E-Readers

Sounds like a good idea. Someone will buy them. Like me, e.g. Buyer of Used Books at yard sales, etc. Even if I and everyone else who can switches to Kindles and Nooks, there are still people off the grid who will appreciate actual books for a few more years, I think. And I really have no plan to switch exclusively (or at all, to be honest) to any kind of e-reader anytime soon. I have too many real books backlogged.

That said, I spent a very pleasant half hour talking with a knowledgeable clerk and playing with the Nooks at Barnes & Noble the other day. The color Nook is definitely nice. The black and white one had side buttons I found annoying, as they have functions that you can trigger unintentionally. As soon as you try to bend the Nook like a paperback, okay, admittedly not a good idea for an expensive electronic item, there goes the page... I'm not used to handling books *that* carefully, tho I guess I could get used to it. I don't beat my books up, either.

Devotee friends claim their Kindles are great for travel, and I don't doubt it. I have lugged novels and guidebooks back and forth on long trips -- not always the same books, as I often leave the old and cannot resist the new when I'm in another country and not sure the same title is available back home. You can't duplicate that situation with an e-reader. So, are e-readers part of the whole world getting to be the same, then? Is that their secret threat? Amazon and Barnes & Noble just following GAP, Old Navy and other big retailers? Am I surprised? Are you?

Irish, Italian, Brown, Zombies, et al.

Reading outside your comfort zone to be a better person... list of 2011 reading challenges.

My favorite, and it's not an easy choice with Chunksters and Quirky Brown competition, is your very own To Be Read pile challenge. Read twelve of those, one a month. Of course, I do this anyway. The real challenge would be not to add to my TBR pile in 2011. I have over 100 on the TBR list. At the rate of only one book a month, it's like making minimum payments on a credit card balance. Hm, I have til Jan 15 to sign up...

Which twelve books shall I rescue from the pile of the unread? Actually, from the several bookshelves of the unread. Madame Bovary, the Aveling translation (I hope different translations count) will be on the list I think.

The Literary Fiction Argument vs. Stieg Larsson

I don't really get the point of the lit fic vs. genre argument-for-argument's-sake -- people are going to read whatever we want, anyway -- but I love the comments on this article:

It's ridiculous to assert that literary is the most difficult genre to write in. It's the easiest. The world and the people you write about are at your fingertips, at your disposal, everywhere you look; you spend twenty-four hours a day living and breathing them; it frees you to focus on the mysteries of the human heart. Writers of science-fiction and fantasy have to do everything writers of literary fiction do, they just have to re-imagine the entire world as well -- the language, the history, the future, the science and technology, biology. You know, the universe. Those who write in the literary genre get all that pre-packaged for them gratis.

Pick up any three literary magazines at random and give the fiction a read. You will find a few good stories that stick with you, a few that are somewhat memorable even if you don't like them as a whole, and a lot that sound as if they were written by the same person: the narrator is a self-afflicted, self-obsessed loser drifting aimlessly through awkward, ugly, and annoying encounters narrated in flat, listless prose that reflects the flat, listless lives in which they are trapped. The other end of the spectrum is the hyper-observant story whose every detail is a mildly offensive grope at profundity. I've read those stories a thousand times, and they never get any better in the retelling. And it demonstrates that 'literary' is very much a genre of fiction: if re-using the same character types, the same narrative techniques, and the same faux-artistic description isn't 'genre', then I'd like to know what is.

Silly article by man with silly name.

Reading Yenta

I love knowing what other people are reading and visualizing who they are. That is why I love these:

Book Spy

and at the NY Times. I hope the Times makes a regular feature of this.

I want to *know*, dahling.

Thumbthing Special: Paperback Reader Must-Have

Thumbthing.

Your Mind on Reading

Socrates feared that reading would undermine interactive dialogue. ... reading is different from talking.

Reading changed the nature of education completely, from the Socratic method of face-to-face dialogues to lectures supplemented with large amounts of reading. I think most of us feel that reading characterizes education now even more than classroom experience, at least after the early elementary grades. It's funny that Socrates feared that reading would ruin things. Nowadays, we're afraid that people will stop reading. I wonder what the next educational paradigm will be? And how we will work it into education, alongside lectures and assigned reading.

When a monkey sees a T shape in the world, it is very likely to indicate the edge of an object — something the monkey can grab and maybe even eat. A particular area of its brain pays special attention to those significant shapes. Human brains use the same area to process letters. Dehaene makes a compelling case that these brain areas have been “recycled” for reading. “We did not invent most of our letter shapes,” he writes. “They lay dormant in our brains for millions of years, and were merely rediscovered when our species invented writing and the alphabet.”

An alphabet in the shape of trees, fruits, etc., and people who read instead of swinging in trees and foraging for food. We read for excitement. We read recipes. As children, we draw triangular A- or M-shaped mountains and round O-suns shining on T- or Y-shaped trees. It's intriguing.

Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention by Stanislas Dehaene, reviewed at the NY Times.

Kindle for PC

Does everyone know you can get a free download from Amazon to read Kindle books on your PC. You don't have to have a Kindle.

I just found out...tempting, and interesting that publishers make the same money from e-books as from hardcovers. I still like paperbacks, tho.

*Sits on hands, does not press download key...yet*

Also interesting is this multimedia reader, Blio.

Recycle those old phone booths

I think this is a great idea, altho in my town, we have a lot of options: the library, the library used book sales, where people often buy and then re-donate books, and the laundromat across the street from the library, which is also an informal book and periodicals exchange locale.

Still, I like the idea of book kiosks scattered about. Forget what you were driving to the mall for? Pull over and read a quick story or chapter, then on your way.

What Should I Read Next?

I typed that into Google a little while ago, because, well, I was wondering, and found these sites: What Should I Read Next and Which Book. The sliders at Whichbook are fun, and both sites really do work, that is, come up with likely suggestions. Even if the books at Whichbook are often by U.K. writers who are not (yet) as available in the U.S.

And, here is an idea I'd like to see catch on, personal book consultants:

It’s called a Reading Spa and for £55 a person gets an hour of undivided attention from one of their extremely nice and knowledgeable booksellers. You sit and have tea and cake and talk about what you like, what you don’t like; they talk about what’s come out recently, what’s selling well. Based on this, they then go away and come back with a pile of books. £40 of that £55 goes towards these books, plus of course any extra you want to spend.

At the Penguin blog.

Why Do They Think Teens Read?

This article from Nashua, NH, about four stories being pulled from the high school curriculum because cocaine use, cannibalism, homosexuality and abortion are not "age-appropriate" subjects for teens. Imagine that. Are these kids allowed to watch the news?

Recently, I was going through some old poetry books, cleaning out my shelf, and I came across an anthology with Anne Sexton's For My Lover Returning to His Wife. I mean, how could poetry not be thrilling for a teenager? All that taboo stuff! I love poetry to this day!

Books -- poetry, novels, stories -- were how I found out about life, and how to think about morals and ethics. Because my parents were tolerant, I was able to read whatever I wanted, including, in college, I think, Hills Like White Elephants, the famous Hemingway story in which abortion, the subject, is never mentioned.