NewMexiKen almost bought Bob Woodward’s State of Denial yesterday — Costco had it for $17.
But then I thought, you couldn’t trust Woodward’s reporting in any other book he’s done in recent years, why think you should trust him on this one just because you like its storyline better?
Louis Menand has written a review of Charles Frazier’s new novel, Thirteen Moons. Frazier you will remember is the author of Cold Mountain and Menand’s review discusses that novel as well.
If you’ve ever tried to read Cold Mountain, as NewMexiKen has, and failed, as NewMexiKen has, you will find this review quite interesting.
A couple of items worth your time.
First, a brief blog piece from Malcolm Gladwell, “Degree of Difficulty.” Gladwell, bothered that a recent article he did for The New Yorker wasn’t appreciated as much as he would have liked, notes that “We can see all the things that someone, in a different profession than us, does. What we cannot know is the relative difficulty of those tasks.”
Next, the wonderful Peter Matthiessen writes “Inside the Endangered Arctic Refuge” for The New York Review of Books. His opening paragraph:
Wild northern Alaska is one of the last places on earth where a human being can kneel down and drink from a wild stream without being measurably more poisoned or polluted than before; its heart and essence is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in the remote northeast corner of the state, the earth’s last sanctuary of the great Ice Age fauna that includes all three North American bears, gray wolves and wolverines, musk ox, moose, and, in the summer, the Porcupine River herd of caribou, 120,000 strong. Everywhere fly sandhill cranes and seabirds, myriad waterfowl and shorebirds, eagles, hawks, owls, shrikes and larks and longspurs, as well as a sprinkling of far-flung birds that migrate to the Arctic slope to breed and nest from every continent on earth. Yet we Americans, its caretakers, are still debating whether or not to destroy this precious place by turning it over to the oil industry for development.
Malcolm Gladwell writes:
“I just had the pleasure of reading an advance copy of the new book by Michael Lewis, the author of, among other things, MoneyBall and Liars Poker. Its called the The Blind Side. It is simply sensational. It will be in bookstores October 2nd.”
There’s more on this book and other sportswriting. Don’t miss it.
Update: And here’s an article based on the book — The Ballad of Big Mike.
Today is an important day in the history of three related genres of literature: science fiction, horror, and fantasy. It’s the birthday of the science-fiction novelist H.G. Wells [1866], the horror novelist Stephen King [1947], and it was on this day in 1937 that J.R.R. Tolkien published his first novel, The Hobbit.
From The Writer’s Almanac, which has a little about each of the three.
Author Carlos Fuentes on the saving grace of literature. He begins:
Not long ago, the Norwegian Academy addressed one hundred writers from all over the world with a single question: Name the novel that you consider the best ever written.
Of the one hundred consulted, fifty answered: “Don Quixote de la Mancha” by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Quite a landslide, considering the runners up: Dostoevsky, Faulkner and Garcia Marquez, in that order.
1. According to a report in Automotive News, Ford and General Motors discussed a merger in July.
2. The price of gasoline has gone down 50 cents in a month. How much lower can it go before the election? (Thanks to mjh’s blog for focusing my thought on this one.)
3. Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez‘s favorite books include “Les Misérables” by Victor Hugo and “Don Quixote” by Cervantes. Also “Dude, Where’s My Country?” by Michael Moore.
4. Charles P. Pierce thinks the president is on the edge:
This all came back to me because, quite frankly, I think the president of the United States is getting ready to slug somebody. And, based on several recent on-camera performances, all of them readily available to anyone who wants to watch, you wouldn’t have to say anything about his momma, his wife, his kids, his dogs, or the fundamental legitimacy of his pedigree to get him to throw down on your ass like the genuine Earnie (The Acorn) Shavers. It appears that all that would be necessary is for you push a question about his policies beyond the limits of whatever talking-points he has on the subject.
… There are presidents who can rise above it, and presidents who can’t, but none of them ever looked like they were ready to toss hands because people questioned their right to torture. It’s become truly startling how close we seem to be coming to the “Because I said so, that’s why” moment.
5. John Yoo understands American history a little differently than I learned it.
But the founders intended that wrongheaded or obsolete legislation and judicial decisions would be checked by presidential action, just as executive overreaching is to be checked by the courts and Congress.
6. Path to 9/11 writer Cyrus Nowrasteh is even more delusional.
I felt duty-bound from the outset to focus on a single goal–to represent our recent pre-9/11 history as the evidence revealed it to be. The American people deserve to know that history: They have paid for it in blood.
… Fact-checkers and lawyers scrutinized every detail, every line, every scene. There were hundreds of pages of annotations. We were informed by multiple advisers and interviews with people involved in the events–and books, including in a most important way the 9/11 Commission Report.
… was born on this date in 1890. The Writer’s Almanac has this (and more):
During World War I, she was working as a Red Cross nurse, and she started reading detective novels because, she said, “I found they were excellent to take one’s mind off one’s worries.” She grew frustrated with how easy it was to guess the murderer in most mysteries, and she decided to try to write her own. That book was The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) about a series of murders at a Red Cross hospital.
Christie’s first few books were moderately successful, and then her novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd came out in 1926. That same year, Christie fled her own home after a fight with her husband, and she went missing for 10 days. There was a nationwide search, and the press covered the disappearance as though it were a mystery novel come to life, inventing scenarios and speculating on the possible murder suspects, until finally Christie turned up in a hotel, suffering from amnesia. During the period of her disappearance, the reprints of her earlier books sold out of stock and two newspapers began serializing her stories. She became a household name and a best-selling author for the rest of her life.
“The heightened security restrictions on the airlines in August made the journey back from New York interesting, as I refused to be parted from the manuscript of book seven (a large part of it is handwritten, and there was no copy of anything I had done while in the US). They let me take it on, thankfully, bound up in elastic bands. I don’t know what I would have done if they hadn’t; sailed home, probably.”
The Writer’s Almanac has a little bit about H.L. Mencken today, his birthday (1880). NewMexiKen particularly liked this, Mencken’s translation of the Declaration of Independence into American English from Mencken’s The American Language (1919):
“When things get so balled up that the people of a country got to cut loose from some other country, and go it on their own hook, without asking no permission from nobody, excepting maybe God Almighty, then they out to let everybody know why they done it, so that everybody can see they are not trying to put nothing over on nobody.”
… essayist and editor, was born on this date in 1880. Some Mencken quotes:
Two Pulitzer Prize-winning novelists, Edward P. Jones, The Known World (2004), and Richard Ford, Independence Day (1996), have published wonderful stories in recent weeks in The New Yorker — Jones, Bad Neighbors and Ford, How Was It to Be Dead?.
Enjoy, while they remain online. And read the novels, too.
BookMooch, a community for exchanging used books (book swap and book exchange and book trade).
DebbiesIdea.com. Debbie’s idea was to fill a simple need: to help a reader decide which book to read first of an unfamiliar author.
Links via Freakonomics Blog.
After six years of complaining about what an ignoramus Bush is, the left bloggers are now criticizing the President for reading too much — or lying about it.
Regular readers of NewMexiKen know that I am no fan of this president. I truly believe he is the worst president this country has ever had. I would impeach him if I were in the House and find him guilty if I were in the Senate.
But reading 60 books (the number usually associated with this flurry) in 34 weeks (so far this year) does not strike me as unbelievable. That’s just less than two a week.
If Bush reveals anything about himself, it’s that he’s competitive and compulsive. Look at the work-outs, the bike riding, the brush clearing. Why not reading?
I’ve never thought Bush stupid, just mind-bogglingly lacking in curiosity. If this compulsion to read shows some new interest in the world around him, hurrah. We’ve still got him for 874 days.
Ken Jennings has the answers to yesterday’s Capitol Statuary Hall trivia and some more Capitol trivia.
Michael Bérubé responds to a pretty good meme about books: One book that changed your life, One book you have read more than once, etc.
Speaking of books, Bob Cesca thinks “No Way In Hell President Bush Has Read 60 Books” —
Yet, he’s somehow found time to read not one, not five, not 20, but 60 books this year alone (via Crooks & Liars). According to US News & World Report, he’s in a competition with Karl Rove to see who can read more books over the course of the year. Rove is trailing by 10 books, until November when Diebold will put him up by three.
Maybe it is 60. Laura’s a librarian and maybe she introduced George to the “for Dummies” series. You know, Foreign Policy for Dummies, Economic Policy for Dummies, Military Strategy for Dummies, Healthcare Issues for Dummies, Disaster Assistance and Recovery for Dummies.
Oh, and The Constitution for Dummies.
From Bookslut:
A (very, very) small group of Clemson University students are upset that they’re being treated like adults.
Several Clemson University students have joined a member of the Commission on Higher Education to say they did not like the book the school chose for a required freshman summer reading assignment.The seven students, mostly freshman, joined commission member Ken Wingate and about 40 parents, grandparents and alumni Monday to talk about their concerns with “Truth & Beauty,” by Ann Patchett.
The book, which was a best-seller, tells the story of Patchett and a friend, Lucy Grealy, who struggled with the effects of cancer throughout her life and later dealt with drug addiction. Wingate said it glamorizes “deviant and debasing” behavior and is unhappy with its sexual content.
How did Clemson end up with the kids who weren’t smart enough to get into Bob Jones or Oral Roberts? Isn’t there some kind of correspondence school for the sheltered and whiny?
“[Bush] only read The Stranger because he’s just now getting around to his 9th grade syllabus. He read The Stranger, Catcher in the Rye, half of Treasure Island and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.”
Jason Jones, The Daily Show
… died young on this date.
Robert Johnson in 1938 at age 27.
Babe Ruth in 1948 at age 53.
Margaret Mitchell in 1949 at age 48.
Elvis Presley in 1977 at age 42.
… was killed on this date in 1057. But not as Shakespeare portrayed it. Here’s the story from the BBC:
Shakespeare’s portrait of a great tragic hero, whose fate was linked to black magic and fuelled by the fire of greed and ambition, bears little resemblance to the historical figure. Duncan (1034-40) was not Shakespeare’s venerable, elderly monarch, but a young king who was killed in battle, possibly by Macbeth, although this is not certain. We do know that Duncan was not murdered in the home of a so-called host.
Macbeth, King of Moray, was elected King of Scotland in place of Duncan’s son Malcolm, who was only a child, and for 14 years Macbeth is believed to have ruled equably, imposing law and order and encouraging devout Christianity. In 1050 he is known to have travelled to Rome for a Papal Jubilee. He was also a brave leader and made successful forays over the border into Northumbria, England.
In 1054, Macbeth was challenged by Siward, Earl of Northumbria, who was attempting to return Malcolm (later Malcolm III) to the throne. It was not until 1057 that Macbeth was killed and not by MacDuff but in battle at Lumphanan. The battle of Dunsinane and the encampment in Birnam Wood referred to in Shakespeare’s tragedy are both earlier events. The final battle was probably not between armies, but between two champions – Macbeth, who was middle-aged or even elderly, and Malcolm, still a young man. The two fought in a stone circle near Lumphanan where Malcolm triumphed. It was Malcolm, not Macduff, who beheaded Macbeth.
Freakonomics author Steven D. Levitt vacations with his family at the Wisconsin Dells and this is what he thinks about — So much for quantity discounts and Why is it that the Wisconsin Dells area is the water park capital of the world?.
… was born on this date in 1921. Haley was the author of two publishing phenomena — The Autobiography of Malcolm X (6 million copies) and Roots, which was not only a best-seller, but led to one of the most successful television series ever. Nearly half the people in the country watched the last episode in January 1977. Haley won a special Pulitizer for Roots, “the story of a black family from its origins in Africa through seven generations to the present day in America.”
NewMexiKen co-chaired a symposium at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1979, that included Haley. He was a very self-possessed and self-assured speaker, confident yet pleasant and informal. He spoke for some time without notes, telling the story about the story — that is, how he learned about his family. Along with the Archivist of the U.S. and Professor Wesley Johnson, I sat on the stage behind Haley as he spoke and could see the rapture on the faces of his listeners. To an audience of genealogists this was the Sermon on the Mount.
Subsequently it bothered me to learn he plagarized sections of the book and possibly fudged some of the genealogy. Clearly, that wasn’t right. Even so, the good his work did in educating both black and white America (and I include both books) was a legacy of major proportion.
Haley, who served in the U.S. Coast Guard 1939-1959, before becoming a full-time writer, died of a heart attack in 1992. The Coast Guard has named a cutter for him.
NewMexiKen once read that, as with every other phase, we would know when the “boomers” — those 76 million Americans born from 1946 to 1964 — were getting old when we started to see the books about trendy funerals. And so, here is one of those books, Lisa Takeuchi Cullen’s thoroughly readable Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death.
There have been substantial changes in the funeral business already. One-quarter of all Americans who die are now cremated; in 20 years half are expected to be. The floral industry has been decimated by the term “in lieu of flowers.” According to a 2004 survey cited in the book, 71 percent of Americans do not want a traditional funeral; 14 percent indicated they wanted “a party in my honor.” In a business as tradition-bound and as comfortable in its ways as any — a business where “the words tradition and history are usually engraved right on the company letterhead” — Americans don’t want morticians anymore, they want “funeral planners.”
And what are the funeral planners planning? Cullen set out to learn:
What kind of person turns a loved one into jewelry? What’s it like to watch an artificial reef mixed with the cremated remains of your parent sink to the bottom of the sea? How exactly is a modern mummy made? Where would I find a festival celebrating a frozen corpse? What’s the proper etiquette at a funeral involving animal sacrifice? Who would become a funeral director today—and why?
The most fascinating alternative to tradition we learn about from Cullen has to be turning the cremated remains of one’s loved one into jewelry.
The first step is to collect the cremains. Eight ounces of ashes can yield enough carbon to make up to ten diamonds of up to one carat each in size. Eight ounces is only a smidgen of the four to six pounds of ashes a human body produces—all of which is enough, the company says, for at least one hundred diamonds.
The carbon is turned into graphite; the graphite with pressure, temperature and a few weeks is turned into a diamond — all for just $2,500 to $14,000 depending on the size of the stone. The process is artificial; the diamonds are real.
A correspondent for Time, Cullen is a witty and charming writer whose style keeps a serious topic from becoming maudlin. She has a wonderful knack for turning a clever phrase or coining a revealing term: “end-trepreneuers,” “vigilante marketing” or, my favorite, “inebriating headline writers with a minibar of cliché opportunities.” Cullen’s infant daughter accompanied her on much of the research for the book as her “diaper-wearing assistant.”
When writing about turning a loved one into diamonds, there’s just the right touch:
This, too, is interesting to me. I had not realized that diamonds, all diamonds, could crack; I had thought the diamond was the hardest substance on earth. … As bad as I would feel cracking the stone my husband paid for by teaching fifty hours of clarinet lessons to fourth-graders, I think about how much worse I would feel if this stone were, say, my mom.
Or, about mourners scattering ashes at sea:
Of course, the practice of ash disposition at sea is hardly new. I venture to guess that many a family has gathered on a beach at dusk past the empty lifeguard stands to cast Pop-pop’s cremains into the surf. They are breaking the law. … I imagine this law is not easy to enforce. I personally have never seen federal agents skulking around the Jersey shore at twilight, arresting sad-looking families carrying bags of dust.
Cullen’s many stories about the deceased are poignant, sufficiently emotional to supply the reader with just enough attachment to make a discussion of their funeral affecting.
As Cullen herself reminds us, “death is a big, huge bummer.” It is not a subject we frequently discuss. That said, it is a subject that holds much fascination — it is the one event we all share in life. Remember Me is a masterful book because it introduces us to the topic with just the right balance of sensitivity, information, and humor.
This fascinating, informative, at times moving, at times amusing book deserves your attention. It was published August 1.
Two of America’s top authors, John Irving and Stephen King, made a plea to J.K. Rowling on Tuesday not to kill the fictional boy wizard Harry Potter in the final book of the series, but Rowling made no promises.
Reuters via Yahoo! News
This strikes NewMexiKen as a bit presumptuous of them.
Rowling said, “I’ve reached my resolution, and I think some people will loathe it and some people will love it, but that’s how it should be.”
This from Guardian Unlimited:
Not only can you judge a book by its cover, it seems you can judge the person reading it, too. According to a survey of over 2,000 adults carried out by internet pollsters YouGov for Borders bookstore, books play a crucial role in influencing our opinions of strangers. Half of those asked admitted that they would look again or smile at someone on the basis of what they were reading.
And it gets better. For those of you troubled by the lingering idea (instilled in youth by parents obsessed with the benefits of “enjoying the sunshine”) that a life spent reading is a life half-lived, your worries are over. Not only does sitting with your nose in a book positively influence others’ opinion of you, it could actually – get this – lead to sex. A third of those surveyed said that they “would consider flirting with someone based on their choice of literature”. It’s finally official, people. Reading is hot.
But before you trip off to the park clad in your most fetching sun hat and clutching your copy of the latest Jilly Cooper – be warned. Not just any book will do. Erotic fiction, horror, self-help books and the dreaded chick-lit were all, in fact, deemed turn-offs when it came to love between the covers. The genre most likely to help you pull – the itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny yellow polka dot bikini of the books world – is the classics, followed by biography and modern literary fiction
Does blogging about the classics count? Today is Herman Melville’s birthday.
Link via Bookslut.
“She was living in Scotland as a single mother, and her apartment was unheated, so she would go to the local café and write, while her daughter slept in the baby carriage. She eventually quit her job and lived on public assistance to finish the book.” (The Writer’s Almanac)
And so the book was published in 1998 and today she is a billionaire (a first ever for an author).
J.K. Rowling, 41 today.
According to another source Rowling has denied the lack of heat in her flat: “I am not stupid enough to rent an unheated flat, in Edinburgh, in mid-winter; it had heating.” Still, a good Dickensian touch, that.