Mini Readathon Time!

I've been looking forward to this mini-readathon for ages now--I even put it on my husband's calendar and last night he noticed it for the first time. I was so stealthy about putting it on there that I had neglected to explain that we'll be spending Saturday reading.

I've not put much thought into my mini-snacks this time around -- quel horreur! -- but I've been planning my reading for about a month.  I will be multitasking this mini-thon like a boss: I will be reading the first two chapters and/or the first 50 pages, whichever is longer, of a big stack of books. IN other words, I will be reading mini amounts.  These books happen to be either books I'm considering packing for vacation or books that my store's First Editions Club is considering for selection. Bam. Done and done.

I woke up this morning feeling a little wobbly in the tummy, so the silver dollar pancakes (with a nod to What Red Read) I had planned turned out to be toast and tea, and that's probably all I will consume for the rest of the day, but I will do it often and in mini amounts. And I will also intersperse my minithon with plenty of mini naps.

Here are the two stacks of books I'm going to be reading in:

How about y'all?  I know this is a slim-participation 'thon today, competing with wedding plans music festivals and new babies and the watching of the new season of Orange is the New Black, but I'm eager to check in with everybody to see how things are going.

Edited on 8 June 2014 to add:

I didn't get as much read yesterday as I'd hoped.  Napping seemed pretty important, so I napped twice.  I did find a keeper for my suitcase for vacation (Lexicon by Max Barry), a probable book for my suitcase for vacation ( The Dog by Joseph O'Neill), and possible books for my store's First Editions Club (Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel and A Sudden Light by Garth Stein).  The only book that I started reading and was surprised not to love immediately was the third book in the Jasper Fforde series.

My snacking was limited to tea and toast all day, so not especially exciting, but I feel much better today as I head to work.  I'll try to cheer on those of you who opt to 'thon today. 

Caitlin Moran's How To Build A Girl: Who Wants to Read Along?

So...a couple of years ago, HarperCollins was gracious enough to let me host a pre-publication readalong for Michael Chabon's Telegraph Avenue. This year, I've talked them into letting me host a prepublication readalong for another of their authors, and I am eager to embark on this new adventure: Caitlin Moran's first novel, How to Build a Girl.

Since I mostly learned about Caitlin Moran and her contributions to the world of smart humor + feminism for the first time from many of my fellow bloggers, I cannot wait to explore her newest book together.

It's pretty simple.  We will start with an introductory post on Monday, 7 July, and post on a regular schedule every Monday thereafter through 18 August (exact reading schedule TBD). This readalong will be limited to 15 bloggers, most of whom must reside in the US. US bloggers will be provided with a physical ARC, UK bloggers are eligible with an e-galley.  All posts must link back to As the Crowe Flies and Reads and also include a link for pre-ordering the book from either Odyssey Bookshop or another independent bookstore of your choice in the US.

Are you a book blogger who would like to play along?  Please sign up in the comments below.  I will need both an email and a physical address from all of the participants, so please send them to me at emily [at] odysseybks [dot] com.

My sincere thanks to Anne DeCourcey (my sales rep who got the ball rolling) and Stephanie Cooper in the marketing department at HarperCollins who will be sponsoring this readalong!

edited to add: Okay, y'all, I think I have reached the 15-person cut-off (some people contacted me directly, not just via this blog) but I'll come back and let folks know if it opens up for one or two people. I'll also start a waiting list. I'm sorry if you didn't get the chance to sign up in time--I usually give lots more advance warning, but this readalong came together at the last minute.  

BookExpo 2014: Or, WOW, I REALLY LOVE MY JOB

I'm lucky to be an independent bookseller who lives within easy Amtrak distance of New York City, where BookExpo has been held for the last few years.  Last week marked my 5th (I think?) BEA, which is held in the soul-sucking Javits Center.  I'm told that it's the largest book convention in the world, but I'm not going to verify that for you.  Google away and find out for yourself if you so choose.

For those of you who've never attended BEA/BookExpo before, lemme 'splain. It's exhilarating. It's exhausting.  It's big on a scale that is hard to imagine. This is the biggest of all possible big things in US publishing, and in some cases, international publishing. It would make me wince, and then cry, and then maybe hide in a corner to know how much money the biggest publishers throw at BEA.  For example, I have a friend whose father owns a small, well-respected publishing house known for its literature in translation (mostly from Arabic) and with an emphasis on travel lit and Middle Eastern cultures. His single booth, about 15 feet long and maybe 6 feet deep, with one table and little carpeting, cost over $20,000. I don't want to know how much it costs publishers with multiple booths, with cushy carpeting, spanning rows and aisles of the Javits, with big drop-down signs hung from the ceiling that can be seen from anywhere on the tradeshow floor.

Inside each women's stall

On the outside of each stall in the women's room

Stair ads and ceiling ads

For example, here is some advertising.  Multiple women's bathrooms had advertising for one book inside each stall and across the mirrors.  In the other photo you can see that it was worth it to the publisher to sprawl ads for Carl Hiaasen's new book for kids up a set of stairs. And for Adi Alsaid and Jodi Picoult, whose huge banners hang from the ceiling. NB: I shot these photos on Wednesday, the day before BookExpo really opened, which is why you can see the stairs at all.  Otherwise it would just be a mob scene.

BookExpo is also a time for publishers to wine and dine their authors and in some lucky cases, their booksellers.  This year I was very fortunate to inherit an invitation to Simon & Schuster's 90th anniversary party, which was huge and star-studded.  I say"inherit" because the invitation came just one week before the party, meaning that somebody higher up on the bookseller food chain declined at the last minute and I got to step in.  This is not a criticism; on the contrary, I was delighted to accept. Would I rather get an early invitation?  Well, sure.  But getting a late one is infinitely better than not getting one at all. I'm happy to fill in!

Though I don't have the photographic evidence to prove it, I got to meet Anjelica Huston, Hoda Kotb and Cary Elwes that night, along with the authors Rachel Renee Russell, Lisa Genova, and Kresley Cole. Dinner was in an amazing space--a converted Episcopal monastery--and while the food itself was forgettable (to put it charitably), the company was delightful.  In addition to Genova and Cole, I had the  incredibly charming Ian Chapman, former CEO and currently chief executive publisher of S&S UK, India, Australia, as a table mate.

Rumor has it that the ceiling is four stories high

The ceiling really was gorgeous

That's Kresley Cole with me, with the minstrel balcony as a backdrop

Our last course wasn't served until almost 10:00, and with my walk back to the hotel I didn't get home until well after 11:30, but it was all worth it.  Even when I had to be back at the Javits Center the next morning at 9:00 to begin my first day of back-to-back appointments with publishers to pitch my store's First Editions Club and to convince publicists that my store can easily handle large-scale events of over 1,000 guests, so they should definitely send Amy Poehler and Jodi Picoult. (They really should!)

My celebrity encounters didn't end with the Simon & Schuster dinner.  First thing the next morning, I was able to spend a moment with Anjelica Huston when she stopped by the American Booksellers Association meeting room to sign some books. She even agreed to post with Hannah and me (Hannah's the delightful manager of my store's children's department):

The day just kept on getting better when I arrived at a publisher meeting room a few minutes early for one of my appointments.  In walked The Divine Jane Lynch.  I didn't talk to her or anything, but I kept quoting her lines from Best In Show in my head while snapping a quick pic. She was only ten feet away. I was able to play it cool enough not to walk up and bother her, but I couldn't not take this picture:

Then there was the Celebration of Bookselling luncheon for indie booksellers.  There was at least one author or illustrator at every table, and Anthony Marra, who wrote the terrific debut novel  A Constellation of Vital Phenomena was at mine. I was very excited to note in the program that Rainbow Rowell was there to win the Indie Award for best YA novel, Eleanor and Park. I snapped a photo of her onstage (it's blurry), but I was utterly starstruck when Hannah and I went up to talk with her after the luncheon.  I gushed a little bit, saying that I'd been reading her ever since Attachments came out, and then Rainbow and I both gushed together a little bit about how much we adore Alice from Reading Rambo. And then I swooned a little because she took a picture with Hannah and me:

I know why there are so many songs about Rainbows

I could have gone home at that point, completely satisfied with my BEA experience, but there were two celebrities yet to be encountered.

The night before I took the train down to New York, I inherited another last minute invitation--this time to meet former Secretary of State (and, I hope, next President-to-be) Hillary Rodham Clinton. I received the email invitation one hour before the RSVP was due, and again, this is not a criticism.  I was giddy with disbelief to be one of 100 indie booksellers who gathered to hear a short address about her new memoir and then have the chance to shake her hand and be in a photograph with her. I am thankful to all of those Republican indie booksellers (though I feel that there probably aren't many) who turned down the opportunity to attend so that my name worked its way up the invitation list.

The two things I most remember about her speech are the two most common questions she was asked when traveling around the world in her capacity as Secretary of State, and one of those questions shows *exactly* how far female leaders have to go to be considered with equal gravitas as their male counterparts: (1) How do you manage to do your hair when you're on the road? and (2) How can you work for the administration of the man who was your opponent in the presidential race?

I'm sorry, but I'm pretty sure that Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Colin Powell aren't asked questions like #1.

Anyway, at the end, we all had about two seconds of face time with Ms Clinton and after our handshake, we were just turning to pose for the professional photographer when she glanced at my earrings, pushed a strand of my hair back, and asked, "Are those books?" I said yes, they were Jane Austen earrings and she said she liked them. (I can post the professional photo after S&S sends it out to us--they asked us to refrain from using our personal cameras during the meet & greet.)

That means that I've got one more celebrity to meet at BEA.  You may have heard of her. Publishers Weekly refers to her as one of six "Go-To Book Bloggers." I'm speaking, naturally, of Alice from Reading Rambo. I'm utterly baffled at my lack of photographic evidence from our time together, but trust me, it was fun.  We met up at the Peachtree booth where my DH and Carmen Agra Deedy were signing copies of The Cheshire Cheese Cat. Alice and I agreed that Carmen is worth keeping our options open for.  And anyway, I don't have my own photo, but Alice does, so I'm copying it here:

Photo credit here

That about sums up my BEA.  I spent lots of time hanging with Hannah, plus other folks from Odyssey: Joan, Ann, and Garrett. I wore my most comfortable shoes so that I wouldn't collapse after three days.  I saw my mentor and favorite father figure, John Evans, from Lemuria Bookstore. I saw two impressive-sized Lego figures.  I even drank a delicious passionfruit beverage that looked like it was covered in tadpole eggs.  I'll be sure to let y'all know if I'm to be the proud mama of some frogspawn.

BEA 2015 will need to be at the top of its game if it wants to beat BEA 2014.  And that's all I'm saying. 

Last Month in Review: May 2014

I'm guessing that Garrison's favorite song is Lean On Me

Garrison Keillor's trademark red sneakers

If you've visited my blog any time in the last month, you could be forgiven for assuming that I've been trapped under something heavy. You could also be forgiven for assuming that maybe my lack of posting was because I was feverishly reading LOTS of books.  Sadly, despite the fact that I only posted once in May, and that was write the super-easy Last Month In Review post for April, I was neither trapped under something heavy nor feverishly consuming books.

I was, however, very busy with work (Garrison Keillor!).  And don't ask me why, but for some reason I felt myself compelled to watch the movie Pitch Perfect and most of season 2, and then all of seasons 3 and 4, of Glee, a tv show I stopped watching after season 1 when it became less about the musical, geeky experience and more about the flashy guest stars and musical performances never to be believed of a high school.  

I didn't even read that much in May, but here it is.  June will be better by about 200%, I expect, because I'll start my vacation some time that month, and that means READING ALL DAY.  Plus there's the mini-thon, which I'm looking forward to in a way that rivals the feelings Persephone must have looked forward to her time with Demeter after being trapped in the underworld.  Tika, I salute you for hosting it at just the right time!

1. Lucky Us by Amy Bloom.  I love this cover, and I enjoyed a lot about the book, but the author commits the cardinal sin of the epistolary form: she puts in the letters too much information that the recipient would already know, and therefore is just trying to tell the reader.  That might be acceptable in YA books, but not in literary fiction.  

          

Fan art from Goodreads

2. and 3. The Way We Get By and Drop Dead Gorgeous by Mistful.  Oh, yeah.  I also read some long Harry Potter fan fiction.  This is Harry/Draco, where they are auror partners and where Draco has many cunning plans and is the only one who can resist Harry's part-veela allures. Shacklebolt may or may not be a robot who enjoys his sexy times with house elves.  In other words, these two stories are VERY funny and really well written.  They're also really long--about 400 pages for the pair.

4. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell.  This was a re-listen of the audio book, which incidentally I seem to prefer to the written book.  Reading all of that Harry/Draco fanfiction inspired me to listen to this audio again when I had run out of un-listened-to audio books. I also fell in love with Levi again.

5. Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique.  This is one of only two actual books that I read last month.  Go, me.  It's a debut novel set in the US and British Virgin Islands, spanning from the ceding of the USVI from the Danish up through the 1960s.  I liked it a lot.

6. The Great Greene Heist by Varian Johnson.  Those of you who are on Twitter might recognize the #weneeddiversity buzz that has been surrounding this book.  A deplorably low percentage of children's  books published in the US have main characters of color, much less feature them on the cover of the books.   My coworkers at Odyssey Bookshop and our colleagues at Eight Cousins have challenged other indie booksellers to sell as many copies of this book as we can to help put it on the bestseller lists. It's super fun, a quick read, and an homage to popular heist films like Oceans Eleven. Any readers of As the Crowe Flies (and Reads) who order the book from my bookstore will get a free ARC (or two) thrown in with your order.  Just mention it when calling (413.534.7307) or going to our website.

In a nod to Alley at What Red Read, here are some stats:

Men/Women: 16%/84%
White authors/writers of color: 68%/32%
Real books/fanfiction: 68%/32%
Books for adults/books for middle grade or YA: 32%/68%

Coming up soon: my recent trip to BEA, wherein I met lots of nifty people and had encounters with a rather surprising number of celebrities.

What did y'all enjoy reading last month?

Last Month in Review: April 2014

I've not done much reviewing lately, so once I tackle this easy post of last month's reads, I may try to be disciplined and write a review or two of books I actually completed some time ago.  How was your April? It feels around here that winter is finally behind us.  Yesterday was actually warm enough to wear flip flops, so I reckon that means it safe to get my snow tires removed from my car.  Two years ago I did that in March and naturally we had a few major snow storms immediately following.

Anyhoo, these are the books I read.  Let me know if you've read and/or liked any of 'em.  And let me know what books you were digging last month, too.

1. The Rise and Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman.  Pretty nifty book, with various international locales. Not sure I liked it as much as I liked his novel on journalism, The Imperfectionists, but it was still quite good.

2. Summer House with Swimming Pool by Herman Koch.  Another pretty nifty book.  Not to sound like a broken record, but I don't think I liked it as much as his first book translated into English, The Dinner.  But if misanthropic, unreliable narrators are your thing, this book will totally be your jam.

3. Guests On Earth by Lee Smith.  Audio book performed by Emily Woo Zeller.  Eh.  I thought this book had tremendous potential: set in the 1930s and '40s, a gentle sanitarium outside of Asheville, NC, and with Zelda Fitzgerald as a minor character.  I was pretty disappointed.

4. 'Til the Well Runs Dry by Lauren Francis-Sharma.  Colorful, rich, multigenerational story set in Trinidad.  Reviewed here.

5. Say What You Will by Cammie McGovern.  This YA features non-traditional protagonists: a girl with cerebral palsy and a boy with OCD.  Both are debilitating in completely opposite ways. I loved this book. Review here.

6. Insurgent by Veronica Roth (ebook) . This is a rare case where watching the Divergent film prompted me to read the second book in the series.  I'd read Divergent some time ago and thought it was perfectly fine, but it didn't interest me enough to plunge immediately into the second book.  For some reason, I emotionally connected with the film in a way that I didn't with the book.  Lots of folks have been down on Tris (the protagonist in the trilogy) because she's not Katniss, but frankly I do not understand why the world thinks we only need one kind of female role model. I'm Team Katniss AND Team Tris.

7. Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell.  This YA book was a re-read for me, and if possible, I liked it even more than I did the first time around. I purchased the ebook for this one because I couldn't find my ARC and I was in the mood to read it NOW.

8. I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You by Courtney Maum.  I still don't quite understand where the title comes from.  It's the story of a British man married to a French woman and it contains many of the usual tropes.  He fucks up and falls in love with another woman. His wife finds out about it right around the time he thinks he wants to start over with his wife. Pretty good for a light summer read, and Maum wrote convincingly from the husband's perspective. I won't review this one.

I also read 65-150 pages from several other books that won't pub until August/September for my work reading, including Amy Bloom's Lucky Us, Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven, Thrity Umrigar's The Story Hour, Marilynne Robinson's Lila, and Lisa Howarth's Going Away Shoes. With luck, I'll finish at least three of them because I'm smitten with what I've read so far and report on them for next month.  

Bookish Things: World Book Night, Jane Austen Earrings, etc

Y'all, I'm in that weird reading phase again for work, where I'm reading the first 50-100 pages of about a dozen books to evaluate them as selections for our signed First Editions Club -- which means I've not completed any books lately to write a full-on review.  It's not bad, because I've really liked all of the books I've been sampling, but it's a little frustrating to be forever starting new books and not having the time to finish them because I need to start in on the next one.  Thus this week you are treated to this post of Bookish Things.

April 23 of last week was World Book Night.  If you're reading my bookish blog posts, then I assume that you are pro-book and pro-reading.  If you've not already participated in World Book Night, then what on earth are you waiting for?  It's just about the best thing in the history of 21st century bookish things.  A committee composed of authors, publishers, booksellers, and librarians choose 25+ titles each year that they think will have a wide range of potential readership.  Then people like you and me can pick a book from that list and give copies of it away to non-readers.  For free.  It's an amazing program and this is the third year that I participated in it.  Join their email list NOW so that you can be notified when the giving process opens to applicants again in the fall for 2015 WBN.

I picked Peter Heller's novel The Dog Stars, one of the most gorgeously-wrought post-apocalyptic novels I've ever read, as my giveaway book. I go on and on about it here, but the short version for why I chose it is because it demonstrates that there is no story so bleak that it cannot benefit from a sense of humor and from inventive, poetic prose. My only problem was that at the time I picked this book, I had Wednesday nights off and had planned to give it away on the street corner like I did this year.  But about a month ago, my work schedule changed and now I work Wednesday nights, so what to do?

The young women of The Care Center

I joined up with Joan, my friend & colleague, to give books away on Wednesday morning at a place called The Care Center, a local nonprofit alternative learning program for pregnant and parenting teens to continue their education.  It's cool, because it offers health services and day care, too, to these young girls and women. While I cannot say that I would have chosen The Dog Stars with these readers in mind, some of them were pretty excited about it.  We also took copies of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Zora & Me,  and Code Name Verity, all of which were more age appropriate for these folks.  You can read a little more about it here on the MassLive website, including a short interview with two of the girls.

Check out those beauties.  Last year for my birthday, one of my lovely and generous co-workers gave me this pair of Jane Austen earrings.  I love that they're almost as lovely on the reverse side as they are on the front, and I like the mis-matched, old-fashioned typewriter keys that are part of the design.  I wear them all the time, but it's only recently that I've started getting lots of comments about them because I just lobbed about 8" off of my hair and now they're more visible.  I wore them to work today along with my Austen sweatshirt from Out of Print Clothing company and every customer I interacted with complimented me on them.

Real Encounter or Punk'd? You Decide...

JLaw is shocked and appalled.  I think I am, too.    

Okay, y'all.  I had a conversation with a customer today that belongs in the hall of fame.  Or else I was punk'd.  I'm not sure which, but maybe you can help me decide. Please keep in mind that for the entire length of the conversation I was surrounded by small children and their parents because I was working in the kids section during a school break week.

Man: Yeah, hi, can you tell me if you have any New Age books? I've been reading a lot of New Age books recently and I'd like to see what you have.

Me: Well, we have a very limited selection in store, and it might not be worth a trip to the store just for browsing what we have in stock.  Is there a particular author or title you might be interested in?

Man: You know, my mom started reading these books and passed them on to me.  It's a funny thing to think of your mom as reading books like that.  It surprised me what she was open to.

Me: Yes, well, reading can definitely expand one's horizons. Did you have a particular book in mind?

Man: My mom and I recently moved in together.  I don't have any certain title or anything, but the books that she's given me and that I've started reading are books that you could say opened up my mind about politics.  And lovemaking.  Yeah. I see the world differently now.

Me: (Assuming a *very* professional tone) I see. Well, I'd say we probably don't have the books on hand that you might be looking for, but I could always check our warehouse to see what could be ordered in for you.  Or you know, if you're open to to second hand books, there's an excellent store called Troubadour that is in the next town over.  I've not been there for a while, but the last time I was in, they had an extensive New Age section.

Man: Yeah, that might work.  You know, one of the things that really impressed me about these New Age books was how supportive and welcoming they are.  Like, what they say about lovemaking. They're very open about that. Like, it doesn't matter what society says.  A relationship is between two consenting adults, and if it's mutually loving, then nothing else matters... LONG PAUSE ...

Me: (Feeling *distinctly* uncomfortable now). Um, yes. The consenting part is quite essential and...

Man:...CONTINUING PREVIOUS THOUGHT...and so my mom and I are thinking of exploring our relationship...

Me: Cutting in, politely but EVER so firmly: Sir, as I said, I'd be very happy to order in a particular book if you're interested, but I'm afraid I must go.  You can call us or use our website for placing orders.

Man: Thank you for being so, um kind. I really appreciate it.

Me: You're welcome sir, and you have a good day. Bye now.

What just happened to me?  The man's voice was ringing with sincere desperation.  Or  desperate sincerity, I'm not sure which.  One of my coworkers who used to work at a big box store thinks that this was just some guy getting his rocks off.  I'm not so sure. And just which "NewAge" books are sanctioning incest these days? Gah, I just don't know what to think. I guess it's better for me to have treated it as real, even if it had been fake, than to treat it as fake with the off chance that it could have been a real customer. All I can say is that I deserved an adult beverage after responding to such a conversation in a consummately (er, bad choice of words?) professional manner. In front of children.  Without giving the game away to any customers in the store who happened to be listening to my end of the conversation.

Book Review: Say What You Will by Cammie McGovern

It is so great when books incorporate characters who are underrepresented in the media without making readers feel that they're just ticking off boxes and filling quotas, and Cammie McGovern's first book for young adults, Say What You Will , does just that.  It's the story of Amy, a girl with cerebral palsy, and Matthew, one of her peer helpers who gets her through the day at school.  You see, Amy cannot walk unassisted, or speak without her voice box & computer pad, or even eat most foods.  Up until now, her schools have always provided professional assistants to help her with all of these functions, but that has left her friendless and isolated with only adults interacting with her all day long, whether it's her parents, her teachers, or her aids. Now that it's her senior year, she has talked her parents into hiring peer helpers in the hopes that she will become better socially adjusted and make her first friends.

Sounds like this could be an After School Special, right?  Except that McGovern does a great job of keeping things pretty real and not too sappy.  Much of the book is told in a close third person narrative, getting into the heads of both Amy and Matthew, but McGovern fills in the gaps with both text messages and emails that are sent back and forth.

Before long, Amy becomes closer to Matthew than to any of her other peer helpers, and she starts to fall in love with him.  He plays his cards a bit more closely to the chest, and even if he recognized his feelings for Amy as love, his increasingly erratic OCD behavior and thinking keep him from acting on anything.  So you've got the agony and ecstasy of falling in love for the first time, but obviously in this case there are major complications. Matthew is not sure Amy is capable of having a physical relationship, and he's not sure that he's capable of even holding her hand without having to wash his hands obsessively both before and after. Amy, for her own part, tries to give out decreasingly subtle hints to say that she's ready to take their friendship to the next level, sex and all.

To complicate matters even further, Amy's parents don't really approve of her feelings for Matthew and want to push her in the direction of Sanjay, another of her peer helpers, because he's ambitious and capable and self-confident: everything that Matthew is not.  Brilliant Amy is college bound, spoiled for choice with her acceptances at Stanford and multiple Ivy League schools, while Matthew feels that he might be capable of taking a correspondence course but not much more. Basically, it's Pretty In Pink where academics play the role of class.

McGovern has a deft and comic touch when writing Matthew and Amy.  Most of the time I identified with both of these young people, and I particularly admired the ways Amy was both philosophical and practical in the face of her physical limitations. The book takes a slightly soap-opera turn in the last quarter, but even that was resolved quite well and ended up being more hopeful and pragmatic than most teen book.  I really recommend this book for all folks who enjoy YA novels, but beyond that, it's a solid read for anybody searching for an unconventional protagonist or an under-represented one.

Here's an email sample from the first chapter of the book, from Amy to Matthew, that I think gives you a flavor for the style and direction this book takes:

To: mstheword@gmail.com
From: aim high@comcast.net
Re: I'm happy! 

I just slipped into my mother's office to look at the names of my new peer helpers, and I'm so happy! Your name is on the list! I thought maybe I'd scared you by coming right out and asking you to apply.  I realize it's an unusual setup, but try not to think of it as my parents offering to pay people to be my friend. I know there's something unsettling and prideless in that. I prefer to think of it this way: my parents are paying people to pretend to by my friend.  This will be much closer to the truth, I suspect, and I have no problem with this. I'm guessing that a lot of people in high school are only pretending to be friends, right? It'll be a start, I figure. 

NB: I read an advance reading copy of this book provided by the publisher. It will be available from Harper Teen in June 2014.  The author also happens to be somewhat local to my bookstore, but I read it out of my own interest and not at the behest of either author or publisher.

Book Review: Til the Well Runs Dry byLauren Francis-Sharma

It's not often that my two discrete audiences for this blog read the same posts.  My Book Blogger posse like the bookish ones, my Anguilla posse like the travel ones, and rarely the twain do meet, but I hope that today's post might find common ground between the two. It's a novel set mostly in Trinidad during the 1950s and 1960s, a time of political upheaval and change all over the Caribbean.

Author Lauren Francis-Sharma is the daughter of Trinidadian immigrants, and after visiting her grandmother's homeland, she decided to set her first novel there.  Though I've traveled up and down through the Caribbean, I've never been to Trinidad & Tobago, a dual island country unique in the region for its multi-ethnic heritage and industry beyond the usual tourism. Oh, and of course its tradition of Carnival. Trini Carnival makes all of those poor folks in New Orleans who celebrate Mardi Gras look like a child's clumsy efforts in comparison.

'Til the Well Runs Dry opens in the tiny village of Blanchisseuse in the 1940s, where Marcia Garcia is a 16-year-old seamstress trying to earn enough money to keep food in de bellies of what's left of her family. We soon meet Farouk Karam, the man whom she will grow to love and hate in equal measure, often simultaneously.  Farouk and Marcia share the narration for the first part of the novel until their second daughter adds her voice to the chorus.

If I were to describe this book in terms of its plot, it might sound very eventful--there are secrets here that politicians might kill to keep, not to mention rape, incest, murder, imprisonment, black magic, corruption, and abandonment--but that would give the wrong impression.  These plot points are present, but they're not the defining aspects of this novel.  It's much quieter and more intimate than that.  It's the story of a family: a mother whose hard knocks began long before her first two children go missing and her husband leaves her; a father whose thrall to his own parents prevents him from being the father he is capable of being; the four children who are the issue of this relationship that is more defined by tumultuous obsession than love.

Take this family and drop them in an ever-shifting political setting as Trinidad seeks its own way in the world separate from the British Empire, and you end up with a story that is as colorful and multi-layered as the book cover would suggest.  Francis-Sharma's writing is so evocative of this tropical island that I could see, hear, taste, and smell everything she was describing. Though the narratives themselves are third person, limited points of view, the dialogue is rich with the speech patterns and idioms of Caribbean patois.

I loved reading this novel and I was completely swept up in the complications of this family and their ties to each other, knotted up so tightly and frayed by the coastal salt water that it would take a machete to hack them apart.  More than anything, Francis-Sharma was able to convincingly portray what it might be like to love somebody so fiercely that surviving such a love could only change and harden and temper you into a fierce creature yourself.

I recommend this book for readers who value strong and complicated female characters, those who enjoy historical fiction in an unusual setting, and those who, like me, have an unquenchable thirst for Caribbeana.  There was much about this book that reminded me of early Toni Morrison, and honestly, is there higher praise that I could offer on that score?

NB: I read an advance reading copy of this book that was provided at my request by the publisher.  It will be published in the US by Henry Holt on 22 April 2014. 

Pulitzer Predictions: 2014

Yay! It's Pulitzer Time!    

I do not believe I've actually ever done a prediction post like this before, but for some reason I feel emotionally invested in several contenders this year.  So let's have some fun, shall we?  I've been trolling many websites that are predicting the Pulitzer Prize winners this year.  I think some of them are right on the money and some of them are delusional (they apparently don't know the criteria for being considered for the prize).  Some of them, frankly, make me want to cry with their predictions. For good or for evil, we will know the results as of the afternoon of Monday, April 14.

The following books are all either books that I think are deserving of the committee's nod, or are likely to get the nod, or both.  I hope that y'all will chime in with your favorite picks and the most likely contenders for this year.

But first, let's explore why the Pulitzer books generate so much speculation and debate.  Why more so than the National Book Award or the National Book Critics Circle Award?  My hunch is that, unlike other major awards for book published in the US, it comes down to two points: (1) Unlike those other free-for-all awards, the Pulitzer Prize is awarded to an American writer [which means that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's fine novel, Americanah, is ineligible. not that you'd know it from the various prediction lists on the interwebz.]. (2) More importantly, also unlike those awards, there is no longlist, much less no shortlist, published ahead of the award ceremony.  The winner and the finalists are revealed at the same time.

Okay, so here goes (knuckles cracking)...My top pick for either the winner or one of the finalists is Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. I go on about it here, but it's earned tons of accolades from nearly everybody except the First Lady, who seemed to think that her review of the book was a platform for talking about nutrition in privileged families.

My other favorites would be, in no particular order, The Son by Philipp Meyer, A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki, The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri, The Woman Upstairs by Clair Messud, and  A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra.

There are other books I loved from 2014 that I think are worthy of the prize, but are total long shots: Flora by Gail Godwin and Benediction by Kent Haruf. I'd love for either of them to win, but I doubt it will happen.

Then there are the books out there that I haven't read, but which I think are strong contenders.  Namely George Saunders' story collection The Tenth of December and The Good Lord Bird by James McBride.  While I would prefer that the prize go to a book I've already read and loved, I wouldn't be either upset or surprised if one of these won.

And then there are the books that I am actively hoping will not win, because if they, I will probably have to slit my throat.  Actually, in this case it comes down to just one book: Rachel Kushner's The Flamethrowers.  I hate and revile that loathsome book. Seriously, I might have been exaggerating for effect, but this book was laughably bad, which is why it is so completely mysterious to me for it to be getting the kind of critical attention that it's been getting.  Some betting operations have even listed this book as the odd-on favorite. Ugh.


 
Which brings me, at last, to the other categories.  Other than the winners themselves, who really cares about the other Pulitzer winners beyond the fiction awards, or at least cares as much?  Harsh but true.  In a twist of irony, novels get all of the glory in a prize that was originally created to acknowledge outstanding journalism.  I don't really have a stake in the other categories, other than general nonfiction, for which I'm hoping that Sheri Fink's excellent  Five Days at Memorial puts in a good showing. It was without a doubt the finest nonfiction book I read last year. (Hint: I only read 17 works of nonfiction compared to the 100+ works of fiction, so it's not like I'm drawing from a wide base. Even so, Fink's book would stand out.)

What about you, gentle reader?  Which books that you read from  2013 deserve to be recognized by the Pulitzer committee?  Or if you want to be wicked, which books do not?

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 Edited on 14 April 2014 to gloat add: Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch is the winner!  I'm really quite pleased about this.  I'm also delighted that Philipp Meyer's excellent novel, The Son, turned out to be a finalist.  The Woman Who Lost Her Soul by Bob Shacochis wasn't even on my radar, so shame on me.  In fact, it was so not on my radar that I returned a copy of this book two weeks ago to the publisher.