Ah, the literary life...

So, you want to be an author. Before you quit your day job, check out this New Yorker article to see what you’re in for. This satiric piece take the form of a memo from an overwhelmed publisher’s representative, who doesn’t quite seem to know what book you wrote, detailing what you will be expected to do to market your book.
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The note includes a strong suggestion that you start a blog and pump out 600 words a day, making sure to include numerous pictures of yourself; then you should friend everyone you ever met on you Facebook page; also, you will be participating in the publisher’s RAP (Readings by Author by Proxy) program, in which, to save money, you will do readings at bookstores close to where you live, not only for your own book but others your publisher designates. The memo is loaded with indecipherable jargon-- e.g. “We like Reddit bites (they’re better than Delicious), because they max out the wiki snarls of RSS feeds, which means less jamming at the Google scaffold.”
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The piece presents a witty and insightful glimpse of the shaky state of the book publishing business today.

Emily Dickinson on Books

There is no frigate like a book

To take us lands away,

Nor any coursers like a page

Of prancing poetry.


This traverse may the poorest take

Without oppress of toll;

How frugal is the chariot

That bears a human soul!

And the Nobel Prize Goes to.....

The Nobel prize for literature this year goes to Herta Muller. I'll have to admit up front that I had never heard of her, but then again, some of the journalists reporting about her selection seemed unfamiliar with her writing.

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The committee that chooses the Nobel laureates in literature does not always opt for writers widely familiar in America; for instance, the list of the literature prize winners in the last ten years, include such names as Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio , Elfriede Jelinek, and Imre Kertész. It is perhaps more interesting that since 1901, when the Nobel prize for literature was first awarded, the committee has passed over such noted writers such as Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy, Robert Frost, Jorge Luis Borges, Graham Greene, Vladimir Nabokov, and James Joyce.

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Herta Muller was born in 1953 in a German speaking section of Romania, and a number of her books deal with life under Communist rule of Nicolae Ceausescu in that country. After years of persecution and censorship in Romania, the author moved to Germany in 1987.

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Only 5 of Ms. Muller's 20 books have been translated into English so far, but with her new celebribrity, this seems likely to change. You can check the Nassau Library System's holdings for Herta Muller by clicking on this link.

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We'd be interested to know who you think deserves a Nobel prize for literature.

NYRB Blog

Just a quick note to let people know that the New York Review of Books now has a blog. What took them so long?

Dan Brown Plot Generator

The big day has come and gone. What day you ask? Publication day for Dan Brown's long awaited thriller The Lost Symbol, a follow-up to the Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons.

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These three novels have a number of similarities-- an intrepid and intelligent hero meets up with an alluring heroine in a major city; the pair then deal with a conspiracy involving secret codes and gruesome villains. Also, the author uses an over-the-top writing style to unravel the plots at break-neck speed.

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Though Janet Maslin gave The Lost Symbol a good review in the New York Times, Brown's style has drawn some satiric comment, such as an article in the British newspaper the Telegraph about Dan Brown's worst sentences. My favorite among these sites though is the Dan Brown Plot Generator, which allows one to choose a city and an organization, press enter, and bingo-bango a plot appears.

I'm not sure Dan Brown is worrying too much about these sites, however, as The Lost Symbol sold a million copies the day it came out.

Trouble with Reading

The August 9 issue of the Los Angeles Times contains an article called “The Lost Art of Reading” by the paper’s books editor, David L. Ulin. He writes that “Sometime late last year -- I don't remember when, exactly -- I noticed I was having trouble sitting down to read.” He notes that with his particular job this is a problem.

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After giving some of his own background of being a voracious reader since he was a teenager, he asks “So what happened? It isn't a failure of desire so much as one of will. Or not will, exactly, but focus: the ability to still my mind long enough to inhabit someone else's world, and to let that someone else inhabit mine…. I pick up a book and read a paragraph; then my mind wanders and I check my e-mail, drift onto the Internet, pace the house before returning to the page."

Toward the end of the article Ulin says “How do we pause when we must know everything instantly? How do we ruminate when we are constantly expected to respond? How do we immerse in something (an idea, an emotion, a decision) when we are no longer willing to give ourselves the space to reflect?” The last line of the article sounds both mournful and heroic, “It's harder than it used to be, but still, I read.”

Interestingly, about a year ago Nicholas Carr had an article in The Atlantic called “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” that spoke about the same problem. We may have spotted a trend. I hate to say it, but maybe we need to turn off our computers and sit down with a book.

Book Blogs

For those of you who have read every post in the 10 Books Blog, but still crave more blogs about books, I've gathered some sites I hope you like. All have published posts in the last month. If you have a book blog you'd like to recommend, I'd love to hear about it.

Bookey Wookey

Bloggin’ about Books

Book Lust

A Common Reader

Ex Libris

Farm Lane Book Blog

A Girl Walks into a Bookstore

HPL Book Hunt

HPL Great Books Reading and Discussion Group

Incurable Logophilia

Inside Books

A Life in Books

Mysteries in Paradise

Paper Cuts

Reading Matters