Dead Tree Blog

2009-01-07T19:27:00.001-08:00

Head and Heart: American Christianities by Garry Wills

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was a sophisticated history of the Christian faith in the United States, and how it has influenced culture and politics. Wills' premise is that America has had two main strains of Christianity: Enlightment (head) and evangelical (heart). They reached synthesis at key points in our history, namely to oppose slavery and fight for civil rights for African Americans and other minorities.

The early chapters are a bit of a slog -- it's hard to keep track of all the Puritan offshoots and leaders, and Wills assumes a lot of knowledge on the part of the casual reader. The book is most entertaining when Wills examines Transcendatlism, religion and the Civil War and the evangelical awakening in the early part of the 20th century.

View all my reviews.

2008-11-16T11:29:00.000-08:00

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
I really loved this book, until I hit the last three chapters, which is where an editor needed to have stepped in to say "Enough with the mystical properties of wild mushrooms already."

Still, this was an incredibly well-written, thoughtful citique of modern American eating habits, and the political, social and economic forces that have shaped them.

View all my reviews.

2008-11-16T11:28:00.001-08:00

The Shining by Stephen King

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is one of those books that I'm glad I read after seeing the film adaptation. I wouldn't have enjoyed Stanley Kubrick's movie version nearly as much had I read the book first.

Stephen King, you may know, was not too pleased with Kubrick's adaptation. For one, he thought Jack Nicholson's interpretation of the character of Jack Torrance left little doubt that he would go insane and try to murder his family. When we meet him, he seems halfway there already.

Indeed, Jack Torrance was a far more complex character in the novel, and the film by necessity dispensed with much of his backstory. Jack Torrance of the film was clearly ill-suited for domestic life, and barely cared to conceal it. The Torrance of the novel, however, was a loving father who wanted to be a good husband. Nonetheless, he was beset by demons that cost him his job, and it was out of desperation that he agreed to become the caretaker for the Overlook Hotel.

In the book, Jack Torrance struggled against insanity, but was overcome by the hotel's malignant power. This was a tragedy in the novel; in the film, it was the subject of black comedy. Torrance was merely a horror film monster that had to be evaded and destroyed. I do give the film credit, however, for providing a more chilling ending than the book. At the end of the novel, the hotel was destroyed, its evil laid to rest. But in the film, it lived to fight another day, and Jack Torrance had become part of its dark history.

View all my reviews.

2008-11-16T11:25:00.001-08:00

A Drink Before the War by Dennis Lehane

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is the first book in the Kenzie-Genarro series, but I actually read it after I read Gone Baby Gone, which I enjoyed much more than this one. Perhaps because Lehane had already introduced his characters, he wasted much less time in exposition and backstory. I found the background about Kenzie's father tiresome, and it lacked the emotional resonance that Lehane no doubt intended. The book also seemed preachy.

Nonetheless, Lehane knows how to tell a story, and this one zipped right along.

View all my reviews.

2008-07-23T19:15:00.000-07:00

Duma Key by Stephen King

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
This may not have been Stephen King's best novel, but it's up there, and it's going to stick with me for a long time. Like many of King's recent works, the book is not so much terrifying as emotionally haunting; it is full of suspense and a heaping dose of the supernatural, but its power comes from its exploration of human grief and suffering.

Faithful readers will appreciate some of the nods King makes to his other books, though some are familiar to me from their film adaptations. (For example, there's a line that seems lifted almost straight from "Stand By Me" and there are refernces familar from "The Shawshank Redemption.") The evil China figurine Perse reminds me of the can toi from "The Dark Tower" series as well as "Desperation", but I'll need to spend some quality time on Wikipedia exploring those links.

Bottom line, King will fans will love this, but like Bag of Bones and Hearts in Atlantis, I'd recommend it as well to those who have never read him. He once again proves his chops as a writer of serious literature.

View all my reviews.

2008-06-11T17:28:00.000-07:00

I recently watched the cinematic adaptation of P.D. James' "Children of Men", a dystopian novel set in a future in which the entire human race has become infertile. This may be one of those films that I would have appreciated more had I not read the book ahead of time. It was well-made but the story, which departed significantly from the source material, seemed flat in comparison to the book.

For one thing, the novel tells a much richer story, with deeper characterization. The film, which came in at just under two hours, probably could have spent more time developing a backstory. The novel is full of details that provide a vivid and poignant picture of a world without children, one in which society is slowly dying. James alternates chapters between the third-person and the first-person perspective of her protagonist, Theo. This allows us to imagine the novel's decaying England through Theo's eyes and to learn all there is to know about him, much of it unpleasant. We barely get acquainted with the Theo of the film before he is thrust into action, becoming involved with a revolutionary group that is sheltering the first woman to bear a child in a generation.

All told, the novel is sadder and darker, with a less likeable hero and a more ambigious ending. In the film, England is ruled by an openly repressive regime whose jack-booted enforcers operate with impunity. The tyranny of the government in the novel is hidden by a veneer of paternalistic benevolence, which makes it seem somehow more insidious and chilling. "Children of Men" was one the best books I've read in the past year. The film was entertaining but ultimately forgettable.

2008-04-09T17:46:00.000-07:00

My co-worker and fraternity brother Val Brkich is organizing a book festival this summer in Bridgewater, Beaver County. More info is here.

2008-04-03T17:44:00.000-07:00

Ever break up with someone because of their book collection?

2008-03-11T16:51:00.000-07:00

I just read "The Shining" (spoilers ahead), and it's one of those books, which I've discussed before, that I'm glad I read after seeing the film adaptation. I wouldn't have enjoyed Stanley Kubrick's movie version nearly as much had I read the book first.

Stephen King, you may know, was not too pleased with Kubrick's adaptation. For one, he thought Jack Nicholson's interpretation of the character of Jack Torrance left little doubt that he would go insane and try to murder his family. When we meet him, he seems halfway there already.

Indeed, Jack Torrance was a far more complex character in the novel, and the film by necessity dispensed with much of his backstory. Jack Torrance of the film was clearly ill-suited for domestic life, and barely cared to conceal it. The Torrance of the novel, however, was a loving father who wanted to be a good husband. Nonetheless, he was beset by demons that cost him his job, and it was out of desperation that he agreed to become the caretaker for the Overlook Hotel.

In the book, Jack Torrance struggled against insanity, but was overcome by the hotel's malignant power. This was a tragedy in the novel; in the film, it was the subject of black comedy. Torrance was merely a horror film monster that had to be evaded and destroyed. I do give the film credit, however, for providing a more chilling ending than the book. At the end of the novel, the hotel was destroyed, its evil laid to rest. But in the film, it lived to fight another day, and Jack Torrance had become part of its dark history.

2008-02-26T18:55:00.000-08:00

Fifty must-read crime writers.

2008-01-23T17:57:00.001-08:00

If you've ever wondered what books Art Garfunkel has read over the last 40 years -- and who hasn't? -- then this is for you.

2008-01-12T10:49:00.000-08:00

The New York Times has had a couple of essays recently about adaptations and re-tellings of novels and classic stories, here and here.

2008-01-07T16:55:00.000-08:00

I haven't had a chance to read it, but I discovered Robert Moses' response to Robert Caro's "The Power Broker."

2007-11-25T13:53:00.000-08:00

This New York Times essay ponders what it is that turns a person into an avid reader. Which books spark the habit? For me it was probably the Hardy Boys, which seemed a bit less dated in the early 1980s than I'm guessing they do today. I read the newer tales as well as the old books that were left over from my father's and older brother's childhoods.

Having a library card helped. For a year or two when I was in elementary school my mother got us cards for the Greensburg (Pa.) library, and I checked out several books every couple of weeks. By the time I was in junior high, books were among my favorite gifts, and Stephen King and the Dragonlance chronicles propelled me into high school.

Lately, I've rediscovered the joys of the library, and the Goodreads social networking site is an endless source of book recommendations.

2007-11-22T07:37:00.000-08:00

TriggerStreet.com allows you to submit book and film manuscripts to be reviewed by others -- and you review others' manuscripts in return. Maybe I'll submit my novel.

2007-11-22T07:30:00.000-08:00

Take this for what it's worth:

2007-10-30T17:52:00.000-07:00

Slate asked some contemporary authors to name classic books that they have never read. It makes me feel a bit better about the gaps on my own bookshelf.

2007-10-26T15:39:00.000-07:00

Post-Gazette writer Mark Roth pointed me to this story about German booksellers, who are fearful now that the Swiss government has eliminated a rule, which Germany shares, that prohibited on books. This has allowed small and independent book stores in Germany to survive, while their counterparts in America and England have fallen to the big chains.

Competition from the Swiss, however, may force Germany to follow suit:

Meanwhile, opinion is divided about what the Swiss decision will mean in Germany. Michael Naumann, a longtime publisher and editor, now running for mayor of Hamburg, as Germany’s culture minister some years back won a battle with the European Union to protect Germany’s fixed-price system. He’s not too worried, he said.

“The fixed book price has worked for more than a century and has provided us with the most competitive book industry, something the market ideologues don’t quite understand,” he said.

But Elisabeth Ruge sounds fearful. She runs Berlin Verlag, the German publisher of Richard Ford and of the English-language edition of the most recent “Harry Potter,” which has sold more than one million copies here. It’s not just the Swiss market, she said, but especially the growth of the German chain stores that troubles her.

“Small literary bookshops here sell our books and other literary books,” she explained. “The chain stores don’t even see our sales reps anymore.” Her representatives visit 2,600 independent bookshops in Germany, three times every year.

I don't know what bookstores are like in Germany or the rest of Europe. But as I've said before, I believe the value of independent bookstores is overstated.

2007-10-20T08:45:00.000-07:00

Steve at Blogspotting discovers that publishers and booksellers are targeting local blogs for reviews.

2007-10-20T08:38:00.000-07:00

Dumbledore gay? Isn't the whole gay boarding school thing some kind of bad British stereotype?

2007-10-09T18:25:00.001-07:00

Quick -- who was the publisher of the last book you read? Steve Baker bets you don't know, and that's why he can't understand why authors have blogs at their publishers' websites, where readers will never find them.

2007-09-29T08:06:00.001-07:00

This Monday: a banned book reading.

2007-09-24T17:55:00.000-07:00

My colleague Robert Mendelsohn has written a new book, "The Chase for Beauty", which is described today in the Post-Gazette.

2007-09-23T09:01:00.000-07:00

The New York Times tackled the canon wars last week.

2007-09-06T18:13:00.000-07:00

Heather at Blogspotting thinks eBooks are a solution in search of a problem:

But honestly, as much as I am fascinated by the notion of having a digital version of a book, the problems it purports to address seem like none issues to me. I don't want to carry around more than one book and between Amazon online and Barnes and Noble around the corner, there really isn't that much of a wait between when I think of a book and when I get it.

There is one thing though, that a digital book could address that would probably persuade me to try these devices: a lower price. Afterall, a digital version of a book costs less to product than a physical version of it. However, this isn't an advantage that the ebook folks are talking about. So it makes me skeptical about whether they will offer enough of a price difference to make it worth my while. (link)

2007-08-29T17:48:00.000-07:00

Via the Pittsburgh Women's Blogging Society, I discovered Goodreads, a social networking site about books.

2007-08-27T14:48:00.001-07:00

At the Post-Gazette, prominent Pittsburghers recommend a book.

2007-08-18T06:41:00.000-07:00

I've discovered a new book blog, Conversational Reading. I'll add it to my list of links.

By the way, I have no idea why my links look so small. It's not a problem I've encountered on the two other Blogger templates I've used for my other blog. I may switch templates--which is a bit of pain--and see if that corrects the problem. If anyone can illuminate me in the meantime, I'd appreciate it.

2007-08-13T19:01:00.000-07:00

Here's a list of banned books.

2007-08-08T16:22:00.000-07:00

In 2002, I read this review of "Out of the Flames: The Remarkable Story of a Fearless Scholar, a Fatal Heresy, and One of the Rarest Books in the World", and I was determined to read it as soon as I could. Well, there are a lot of good books out there, so I didn't get around to picking up a copy until this spring, and I finally read it this summer.

It was well worth the wait. "Out of the Flames" is a page-turner that tells the story of Michael Servetus, a 16th-century Spanish physician and theologian whose religious writings would form the foundation of Unitarianism. They would also get him branded a heretic by John Calvin and, in 1553, burned at the stake in Calvin's Geneva.

Servetus' great sin was to reject the Holy Trinity--which he regarded as a man-made contrivance, unsupported by Scripture--and to insist that Jesus was not divine by birth but was made divine by the word of God. Even for the fathers of the Reformation, this was a bridge too far, making Servetus an enemy of Protestants and Catholics alike.

"Out of the Flames" is divided into three parts, and the first two provide an account of the life of Servetus and his relationship to Calvin who, in his jealousy and resentment, was Salieri to Servetus' Mozart. (Though unlike Salieri, Calvin's place in history has far eclipsed that of his rival.) Authors Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone also provide a concise and compelling history of the Reformation and the origins of the publishing industry, which was crucial in spreading the ideas of religious reform throughout Europe.

Servetus himself wrote and edited several books, including "Christianismi Restitutio", which ultimately led to his undoing. The book laid out Servetus' religious doctrine but veered briefly into a discussion of human anatomy, in which Servetus described what would have been a revolutionary medical discovery: He had correctly determined how the circulatory system functioned, knowledge that was lost to medical science until the British physician William Harvey, independent of Servetus, discovered it more than 60 years after Servetus' death.

Even by the standards of the 16th century, Servetus' trial was a travesty of justice. He was prosecuted under the laws of Geneva, though he was not a citizen of that city and unlike its residents had not sworn allegiance to Calvin and his church. In the ultimate act of hippocrisy, Calvin, himself a heretic in the eyes of the Catholic Church, initially had Servetus arrested by the Catholic Inquisition in France. Servetus escaped imprisonment but inexplicably stopped in Geneva on his way to Italy, and he was recognized while attending church. The Goldstones write that his execution lasted a half-hour, and that he was conscious as the flames roasted his flesh.

"Christianismi Restitutio" was chained to Servetus at the stake, and after his death, Calvin ordered every last copy found and destroyed. Three copies, however, are known to have survived, and in the final part of their book the Goldstones recount how each copy was discovered, and how it fueled interest in Servetus and his ideas in successive generations of European and American thinkers.

Here "Out of the Flames" becomes a detective story, and a well-told one at that. Nonetheless, like many fictional detective stories, the tale is convoluted at times, and I often flipped to the index to remind me which famous book collector donated which copy of Servetus' book to which great European library. Still, the book zips along, buoyed by the Goldstone's witty prose and judicious use of historical detail.

"Out of the Flames" is something of a who's who of Reformation and Enlightenment thinkers, and the Goldstones demonstrate how Servetus, either through his own writings or his influence on the Unitarian church, inspired some of the greatest minds of the past 400 years: Voltaire, Gottfried Leibniz, Joseph Priestly, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Osler, to name a few.

Servetus, despite his tragic end--perhaps because of it--is indeed an inspiration to all those who celebrate freedom of conscience, and these days, we need all the inspiration we can get. "Out of the Flames" also is a testament to the power of the written word, which, the Goldstones write, "has allowed ideas to travel from place to place, from age to age. ...The power of unleashed expression is not unique to the electronic age."

2007-08-02T16:10:00.000-07:00

Are book club members who listen to audio books cheating?

2007-07-26T15:47:00.000-07:00

WARNING: HARRY POTTER SPOILERS AHEAD

I found myself discussing the final Harry Potter book this morning with my wife on my cell phone, after reading the last chapter on the bus this morning. She had finished the book two days ago and was itching to talk about the ending. I nearly had to pull an all-nighter to get as far as I did before heading off to work today.

I was happy with the book’s ending. It would have been a bold stroke to let Harry die, but I think J.K. Rowling stayed true to her character, and to the series’ own mythology, in the manner in which Harry manages to beat Voldemort and survive--as it turns out, to go on to live a comfortable bourgeoisie life with Ginny and their three wizard children. Yes, the “Nineteen Years Later” epilogue was a bit hokey, but it could have been worse—Harry and Malfoy could have ended up as golfing buddies.

The most moving part of the book came when Harry looked into the memories of the recently killed Snape. It was no surprise to learn that Snape had not betrayed Dumbledore after all—I suspect most readers believed all along that this would be the case. But I didn’t expect Snape to turn out to be the true tragic hero of the “Harry Potter” series, a man redeemed from evil by his unrequited love for Harry’s mother. The description of Snape’s childhood was heart-rending (it also softened our image of Harry’s Aunt Petunia; it was sad and ironic that Snape’s mistreatment of her as a child no doubt contributed to her abuse and neglect of Harry later on), and I was touched as well by his retrained affection for Dumbledore, who became his surrogate father.

As I drew nearer the end of “The Deathly Hallows”, I couldn’t help but think of some of the works of Stephen King, namely “It” and the novella “Low Men in Yellow Coats” from “Hearts in Atlantis.” In both stories, children are thrust into battle with the forces of evil, and gradually learn that the adults in their lives are flawed, often terribly so, and that many of the truths they’ve clung to turn out to be false. This is a recurring theme in much of King’s work, in which true horror lies not in the supernatural but in the hearts of men.

Similarly, Harry Potter must repeatedly confront the fact that his heroes are not the idealized figures he imagines them to be. His father was arrogant and had a streak of cruelty that, in his mistreatment of Snape and Wormtail, contributed to his own destruction. Sirius did not entirely escape the haughtiness that was his family’s hallmark. Even the sainted Dumbledore was once a power-hungry elitist with little time for those less talented than he. The reverse was also true—Harry misjudged the complexities of the human heart in assuming Snape to be evil, and one imagines that he would always regret never having the opportunity to become the brooding wizard’s friend.

These are, of course, important lessons for children to learn, but they are easy to forget as adults. We learn something new about the people in our lives everyday, and often we continue to learn about them even after they are gone. Love is the one constant, and like Harry and the Dark Lord, we too often underestimate its incredible power.

2007-07-25T15:23:00.000-07:00

I'm more than halfway through the final Harry Potter book (no spoilers), and I have to say that J.K. Rowling really goes out of her way not to bog down the narrative with backstory. The downside is that she really trusts you to remember numerous details from the previous books, and I suspect that she assumes her young readers (and probably a few adults as well) have re-read the books numerous times. (I recall, when I was in junior high, reading the Dragonlance Chronicles several times.)

Well, my wife just finished the book, and she's wiping tears away. Hmm...

2007-07-12T18:57:00.000-07:00

Chris Anderson of "The Long Tail" fame has launched BookTour.com.

2007-07-06T16:03:00.000-07:00

With the final installment in the Harry Potter series about to hit bookstores, and in the wake of the controversial "The Sopranos" finale, I've been thinking a lot about what, if anything, the creators of a popular saga owes to their audience.

Last year, Stephen King brought to a close "The Dark Tower" saga--like Harry Potter, a seven-book series--and plenty of his readers felt let down by the ending. (To me, the ending was perfect, but the final two books didn't match up to the others, particularly the first four.) King, however, has always stressed that he goes where the story takes him, and the few books that he plotted out in advance are, to him, his worst. King brought this point home in "The Dark Tower" series by creating a fictional version of himself who, in the final two books, was manipulated and directed by the characters he had created. (A gambit that many readers didn't exactly appreciate.)

Of course, no one wants a writer or artist to pander to the audience. If David Chase had ended "The Sopranos" in a hail of bullets, or with Tony led away in handcuffs, a large contigent of the show's viewers--myself included--might have been disappointed. I liked the idea that Tony was caught in a purgatory of his own design, always having to keep an eye on the door.

Still, when an audience's vision of a story veers dramatically from the artist's, the results can be ugly--as demonstrated by fan reaction to the first two "Star Wars" prequels. It wasn't just the wooden acting and leaden dialogue that doomed those two films. As one critic put it, "The Phantom Menace" was like watching C-Span in outer space. Trade Federation? Taxation policies? That's not what "Star Wars" was about. Of course, if one watches these excised scenes from the original film, you'll realize that George Lucas probably stayed relatively true to his vision for the story. One of the reasons that "Revenge of the Sith" received a warmer reception than the first two prequels was that it portrayed many of the events that were referenced in the first three films, and had much less of the additional mythology that most fans could have cared less about.

Like Lucas, King and "Sopranos" creator David Chase, J.K. Rowling is bound to disappoint some fans, regardless of whether Harry Potter gets to ride his broom off onto the sunset--or whether he goes to that great Quidditch match in the sky.

2007-07-02T17:20:00.000-07:00

Amazon plans to start selling print-on-demand versions of out-of-print books (subscription required).

2007-06-20T18:38:00.000-07:00

The University of Iowa Press is publishing a collection of poetry written by Guantanamo detainees, according to the Wall Street Journal:

Many of the poems are explicitly religious, beseeching Allah to free their authors or relieve the authors' loneliness. "Oh, God," writes Abdulla Thani Faris al Anazi, a double amputee who has been imprisoned since 2002, "Grant serenity to a heart that beats with oppression/And release this prisoner from the tight bonds of confinement." He is accused of being an Islamic militant.

Others are sentimental. The poetry of Osama Abu Kabir, a Jordanian relief worker arrested in Afghanistan and accused of belonging to al Qaeda, expresses his dreams of being reunited with his family.

"To be with my children, each a part of me/to be with my wife and the ones I love/to be with my parents, my world's tenderest hearts," he writes. "I dream to be home, to be free from this cage."

Most of the poems carry political messages denouncing the Bush administration. "America, you ride on backs of orphans/and terrorize them daily," writes Mr. Haj, the al-Jazeera cameraman accused of supporting al Qaeda. "I am a captive, but the crimes are my captors'."

2007-06-15T18:16:00.000-07:00

Slate has a humorous "The Sopranos"-inspired take on how the Harry Potter saga will end. For my take on the final "Sopranos" episode, click here.

2007-06-13T16:58:00.001-07:00

Copeland links to a site where writers discuss their favorite book-to-film adaptations. "Out of Sight" and "1984" are two of my favorites.

My opinions of film adaptations often depend on whether I've first read the book and then seen the film, or vice versa. I'm convinced that first reading "A Civil Action", which was a superb book, spoiled my appreciation for an otherwise good film. On the other hand, I loved the film "Sideways", which I saw before I read the novel upon which it is based. The film captured the spirit of the book and its characters, but it made some significant departures that were probably necessary to adapt the story from one medium to another. However, I might have quibbled with those changes had I read the book first.

Worst adaptation? For my money, "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil."

2007-06-12T16:47:00.001-07:00

Powell's is producing a series of short films about authors. The first is about Ian McEwan.

2007-05-19T04:16:00.000-07:00

The Economist has a reading list on cities. (Thanks to Null Space.)

2007-05-11T11:55:00.000-07:00

Chris Briem has a (unofficial) book club.

2007-05-08T17:48:00.000-07:00

The New York Times laments the decline of the newspaper book review and the rise of the literary blog. As I've said before, much of what is online is an imperfect substitute for thoughtful newspaper book reviews. But thoughtful newspaper book reviews are rarer than what that article would have us believe. And quite frankly I'd think you can write meaningful criticism on the web just as easily as anywhere else.

The Times quotes novelist Richard Ford--who is so open-minded that he's never read a lit blog--who kvetches "that he wanted the judgment and filter that he believed a newspaper book editor could provide. 'Newspapers, by having institutional backing, have a responsible relationship not only to their publisher but to their readership,' Mr. Ford said, 'in a way that some guy sitting in his basement in Terre Haute maybe doesn’t.'”

That reminds me of the pilot episode of "Studio 60", in which a character--no doubt expressing the thoughts of series creater Aaron Sorkin--complains about the influence of bloggers and says that he prefers "credentials." It's elitism, pure and simple. Other words for bloggers in these contexts are "viewers" and "readers". Why would a writer have so much disdain for them?

(Thanks to Pinky's Paperhaus.)

2007-05-05T13:56:00.000-07:00

The Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont is holding its Festival of Mystery this Monday, May 7.

2007-05-03T14:35:00.000-07:00

Best-selling crime novelist Michael Connelly joins the chorus of voices urging newspapers to save their book review sections. Connelly writes that his popular Harry Bosch novels never would have found an audience without favorable newspaper reviews, and that he’s no exception: Newspaper book reviews allow many new authors to gain a foothold with readers. Connelly also argues that book review sections encourage people to read books, and people who read books also read newspapers. Thus, cutting book review sections is self-defeating for newspapers.

Both arguments are compelling. Certainly, I love reading book reviews, and I agree it’s lamentable to see newspapers cut back on their reviews. I’d have fewer objections if I saw newspapers pouring the resources they save by cutting book reviews into beefing up their local news coverage. You need to give people some reason to read the paper—they won’t do it merely out of civic obligation.

As for the impact on new authors, I’ll certainly have to concede that Connelly—whose writing I enjoy—knows a lot more about the publishing industry than I do. However, I’m optimistic that there are still places to find good book reviews, especially online. Yes, I am including the customer-written reviews on Amazon and other online retailers. From a cultural standpoint, they are no substitute for professionally written reviews. But in terms of generating sales, I have to think they have an important role, as do the recommendations from Amazon. I’ve discovered plenty of decent books and music that way.

It’s just hard for me to believe that people who like reading books are going to read less of them—or revert to reading only established authors—because newspapers stop reviewing books.

2007-04-29T06:36:00.000-07:00

Copeland points us to a fantastic resource--155 Classic Short Stories, all online. I have to admit that of the few stories on the list that I've read, most were assigned to me when I was in school. Stephen King, who has written some great short stories and novellas, has lamented the decline of the genre as a form as popular literature. Even until the mid-1990s, Esquire and GQ used to regularly publish short fiction, and a lot of it was damn good. I have to confess that I rarely read the fiction published in the New Yorker, and I think I'm going to resolve to change that.

2007-04-26T04:10:00.000-07:00

Scott McLemee and the National Book Critics Circle want to save newspaper book sections. The critics circle, by the way, has a blog.

2007-04-17T17:01:00.000-07:00

Amazon tells you what books are similar to the ones your purchased. This site tells you which books are the opposite of the ones you like. For example, if you like "The Sound and the Fury" you will not like Nora Roberts' "Memory in Death."

2007-04-13T06:27:00.000-07:00

Copeland has a nice appreciation for Kurt Vonnegut. As for me, if I were to make a list of my favorite novels, "Cat's Cradle" would probably be in the top 10, and maybe even the top five.

2007-04-12T16:12:00.000-07:00

For some time I’ve been meaning to write about Robert Bruegmann’s “Sprawl: A Compact History”, which I read several months ago—meaning the book is not nearly as fresh in my mind as I would like. Nonetheless, it’s a topic that’s near and dear to my heart, so I’m going to take a stab at it anyway.

“Sprawl” is a primer on the history of urban development, as well as a critique of the arguments against sprawl, the amorphous term applied to the tendency of cities to expand outward in ever decreasing densities. Bruegmann’s book is meant as corrective to the overheated rhetoric of militant sprawl critics like James Howard Kunstler. Bruegmann takes on what he regards as the central myth of the anti-sprawl movement, namely that sprawl is a modern phenomenon, largely confined to the United States and driven by Americans’ heavy reliance on the automobile.

Bruegmann argues that cities as dense human settlements are historical accidents, formed because of a concentration of natural resources in specific and limited geographic regions. For thousands of years the growth of cities was checked by the presence of defensive walls, but even during ancient times, rising affluence allowed a select group of people to live beyond the city limits. The poorest people have often been confined to dense city centers, while the wealthy moved as far as the infrastructure of their day would allow. (Though Bruegmann notes that the poor have been able to flee city centers when there was land available that was deemed undesirable by their affluent counterparts.)

Almost from the start, this urban exodus prompted a backlash, which Bruegmann says to this day usually comes from two quarters: Those who previously fled the city and fear that their bucolic paradise will be spoiled by new arrivals, and those who object to sprawl on aesthetic grounds. Bruegmann thus argues, convincingly, that much of the criticism of sprawl is elitist, the result of subjective judgments made by people who scorn the choices freely made by their fellow citizens.

Bruegmann makes a good case that the automobile’s influence in promoting suburban development has been, if not exaggerated, than at least greatly misunderstood. The automobile, Bruegmann writes, was not a substitute for public transportation but rather for the private carriages that once belonged exclusively to the wealthy.

In other words, the automobile did not create a desire for private transportation but merely made it affordable for the masses. Indeed, the recent experience of Los Angeles suggests that building public transit systems does not encourage dense residential development, but that increasing densities leads to a demand for public transportation because it renders automobile use impractical.

Bruegmann also tries to rebut the article of faith among mass transit advocates that building new highways causes congestion to grow worse. Rather, this increased congestion merely reflects the pent-up demand that the new highway has unleashed. Furthermore, Bruegmann writes, if new highways are not built, people would simply move even further away from cities to escape gridlock.

It’s a compelling argument, but that’s all it is—an argument. Bruegmann doesn’t marshal empirical evidence to support his view, and he’s no better at separating cause from effect than the highway opponents he criticizes. He is also too dismissive of the effects that government policies have had in encouraging suburban development. He argues that housing policies, such as the home mortgage deduction, do not favor one type of development over another. What he ignores is that such policies underwrite the cost of sprawl, allowing it to accelerate more quickly than it might otherwise.

If sprawl is neither uniquely modern nor uniquely American, then why have European cities remained denser than their American counterparts? Bruegmann notes first of all that population densities in European cities are decreasing even as the same trend is reversing itself in the United States. But sprawl has occurred more slowly in Europe for two reasons: One, much of Europe lay in physical and economic ruin at the end of World War II, while the U.S. was unscathed and would soon undergo an economic boom. Second, European nations enacted national land-use regulations that we as Americans would regard as severe.

The closest parallel in the United States are Oregon’s urban growth boundaries, which Bruegmann examines at some length. He finds that they tend to protect what he terms “the incumbents’ club”: those who benefit from the status quo that the land-use restrictions aim to preserve. Often these are people who already own developable land within the growth boundaries or enjoy affordable housing at the time the restrictions are put into place.

While urban growth boundaries may succeed in keeping cities dense, they also encourage people to move outside the boundaries, where land is cheaper, according to Bruegmann. In that way, they may retard suburban growth but encourage growth in what we now term the exurbs.

Bruegmann is certainly correct to criticize this kind of planning. The reason Jane Jacobs objected to the urban planners of her day was that they seemed to assume that human beings behaved according to mathematical laws that were universal and predictable. In reality human communities are self-organizing systems. Bruegmann believes that government planners can do nothing to frustrate the free will of people to live wherever they choose and can afford.

That’s true. But he ignores that many people now seem to be choosing, even outside cities, to build higher-density, walkable communities that may not be the same as cities but look less and less like the suburbs many of us grew up in. Older suburbs are trying to create town centers and many now require new developments to include sidewalks.

Bruegmann assures us that American communities, after decades of expansion, are growing denser, but he doesn’t seem interested in stopping to ponder why. It may be elitist to say so, but perhaps people are discovering that some ways of living are better than others, and that perhaps an entire society can on occasion make the wrong choice.

2007-03-29T16:18:00.000-07:00

Last Friday was the Pittsburgh release party for Dave Copeland's book "Blood and Volume", which I plan to start reading tomorrow. Dave is a good friend--he was in my wedding--and a fellow survivor of the newspaper industry. It was great to see him, and both my wife, Maggi, and I are very proud of him.

One strange note: When Dave was still in Pittsburgh, he did some work for the campaign of late Pittsburgh Mayor Bob O'Connor. In attendance at Dave's party was Dennis Regan, the former aide to O'Connor and Mayor Luke Ravenstahl who left city government under a cloud. He was there with his housemate, Marlene Cassidy--secretary to O'Connor and Ravenstahl and also at the center of controversy--and she presented Dave with a proclamation from the mayor designating Friday "Dave Copeland Day."

I follow city politics rather closely, and so it was just a little weird to be at the same function as the two of them. It goes to show just how small this town really is.

2007-03-29T16:04:00.000-07:00

Scott McLemee (who I met a few weeks ago when he visited Carnegie Mellon) writes in Inside Higher Ed about Borders restructuring, and a new documentary that examines the impact that chain bookstores have had on local, indepedent booksellers. Fortunately, according to Scott, the film gives Borders its due:

But the documentary also gives employees of Borders a chance to make their case — and it’s perhaps a stronger case than anyone on the indie side would want to admit.

Protesters complain that Borders is imposing cultural uniformity across the United States by destroying small businesses. (Some anti-corporate activists, as we are told by one person hostile to the chain, will go into a newly opened branch and quite literally vomit.)

The representatives from Borders respond that the stores are competitive for the simple reason that they are attractive and well-stocked. And they have a point. As with most bookstores, Borders makes a great deal of its money by selling whatever the public is demanding at the moment. But even its least well-stocked stores tend to have a decent selection of work that will only appeal to small audiences. Unlike certain other chains one could mention, Borders has (for example) a philosophy section where you can find Judith Butler and W.V. Quine, rather than gallons of “Chicken Soup for the Soul.”

As for me, I like the idea of independent bookstores better than I like the stores themselves. Yes, I'm a hypocrite, because I often preach the virtue of patronizing local merchants instead of the big-box chains, but I buy a lot of books and I like saving a few bucks when I do. Independent stores may carry hard-to-find titles that you might not get at one of the chains (I suspect Scott is taking a shot at Barnes & Noble when he refers to "certain other chains." I probably end up at Barnes & Noble more than Borders simply because there are more of them around here), but they also tend to reflect the tastes of the owner and a much smaller customer base. Borders and other chains might be flush with "The Da Vinci Code" but they have to carry a lot of other titles to appeal to a nationwide audience.

That said, I'd love to live in a neighborhood with its own independent bookstore.

2007-03-22T19:42:00.000-07:00

Copeland talks about how to read if you're a writer.

2007-03-06T18:33:00.000-08:00

According to the Wall Street Journal, book publishers are cutting back on newspaper advertising, leading papers to shrink their book sections. Many, like the Post-Gazette here in Pittsburgh, are wrapping them into other sections.

So where are the best places to read good book reviews? The New Yorker does a great job, although its reviews often tend to be as much about the subject of the books as the books themselves. (Which is fine. Book reviews should be discussions of ideas, not just recommendations.) Esquire does some decent short reviews, and Slate now has an online book club. I have to admit I don't check out the New York Times book section all that often, nor the other major newspapers. I know from some freelance work I've done for Bookmarks Magazine, writing capsule summaries of newspaper reviews, that a lot of mid-size papers offer mediocre reviews.

2007-02-27T16:55:00.000-08:00

There are several book-related items I've been meaning to bring to your attention: Dave Copeland's book is making news in New York, and Jason Togyer is entering the home stretch on his book about the G.C. Murphy Co. I am green with envy, or else I just ate some bad peanut butter.

Meanwhile, according to the New York Times, comedy shows like "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" have become the best places for authors to have serious discussions about their books. (I watch "The Colbert Report" only occassionally, but it seems like every time I do the guest is an author.)

And finally, Random House is introducing a book browser, perhaps in response to Google Book Search.

2007-02-22T16:55:00.000-08:00

Muhammad Ali is moving back to his hometown of Louisville, where apparently many people still harbor ill will toward The Greatest for his refusal to serve in Vietnam. If you're a fan of boxing--or merely a fan of great writing--you might want to check out David Remnick's "King of the World", which is about Ali's early career, ending with his battle over the draft. It's also an interesting portrait of Ali's relationship to the era's other great black heavyweights, the deferential Floyd Patterson and the thuggish Sonny Liston. (Liston fans should check out "The Devil and Sonny Liston" by Nick Tosches.) To Remnick, Ali was the synthesis of those two fighters, representing a type of black man that America had never seen before.

And don't forget "On Boxing" by Joyce Carol Oates.

2007-02-03T19:37:00.000-08:00

The International Herald Tribune has an article about various aborted attempts to make a film out of Ayn Rand's opus "Atlas Shrugged", which is the only Rand novel I've read. It was an entertaining story, but populated by strawmen. Perhaps if I'd read it in 1957, when she wrote it, it might have had more resonance. It seemed to have lost its relevance with the collapse of Soviet communism and the rise of Reagan Republicans. (Whereas Orwell's "1984" is a more universal portrait of tyranny.)

I did see the film adaptation of "The Fountainhead", which I liked. The IHT article, however, indicates that Rand was not happy with the experience.

2007-02-03T19:05:00.001-08:00

Jeffrey Toobin looks into Google Book Search.

2007-01-18T17:07:00.000-08:00

I finished off "The Godfather Returns" which turned out to be very good. (Spoilers ahead.) The book was well-paced, with a strong narrative voice that was tinged with wry humor. Winegardner did a nice job fleshing out the characters with backstories that, for the most part, complimented their portrayals by Mario Puzo in the original novel, and Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola in the three films.

"The Godfather Returns" describes events that take place between the first and second films, and, briefly, between films two and three. (For those of you who have never read the original novel, the first film follows it rather closely, dispensing with a few secondary plot lines. Also, the flashback scenes from the second film come from the Puzo novel.) Winegardner is careful to avoid continuity errors--the one or two minor inconsistencies between his novel and the first film are probably owed to discripencies between the film and the original novel, which I read years ago.

I do have one or two quibbles. In "The Godfather Returns," we learn that Kay did not actually have an abortion, as she told Michael toward the end of "The Godfather, Part II", leading to their divorce. Instead, she reveals that she did have a miscarriage, as Tom Hagen had told Michael, but that she was so angry at Michael because she had to suffer through it alone that she lied to provoke him, to hurt him. This haunts Kay because she learns that her doctor has been killed in what appears to have been a botched burglary. When she confronts Michael, he all but admits that he was responsible, and then she confesses her lie. Thus, Kay's deception led to the death of an innocent man.

I'm still torn about this. The scene in the film in which Kay tells Michael she is leaving him is, I dare say, one of the most powerful ever recorded on film. The audience is as stunned as Michael to learn that Kay has betrayed him so completely. The camera is focused on Michael as Kay explains why she had the abortion, and Al Pacino does nothing but dart his eyes back and forth, opening them wider and wider, until finally, like a coiled snake, he strikes, viciously slapping Diane Keaton as Kay. It's one of the films defining moments, and I just don't know if I like to think of its context changed in any way.

Winegardner also chooses to have the book mirror several historic events. The Corleones are connected to a powerful Irish political family called the Sheas, whose patriarch was a former bootlegger who rose to respectability as the ambassador of Canada. His son, the governor of New Jersey and a war hero, is elected president. The president makes his younger brother the attorney general.

Michael, through an old friend, becomes involved with the CIA in a plot to assassinate the Cuban president (whose is never referred to by name.) There's an equivalent in the book to the famous Apalachin Meeting, which resulted in the police raid that confirmed the existence of the American mafia. And Winegardner makes Johnny Fontane, loosely based in the original novel on Frank Sinatra, even more of a doppelganger for Ol' Blue Eyes: Like Sinatra, who helped JFK's campaign only to be frozen out by the Kennedy family, Fontane is cast aside by the fictional President Shea and his father. Fontane has his own Rat Pack (though Winegardner is careful not to call it that) and references are made to him putting on large arena concerts in his later years, something Sinatra did as well.

This all seemed, well, a bit lazy to me. It's as though Winegardner cribbed from a history book about the 1950s and '60s, merely changing the names. And while the original novel and the films drew upon real events and people--Hyman Roth is Meyer Lansky, Michael's business deals in Cuba are wrecked by the revolution--"The Godfather" was never meant to be an authentic portrayal of the Mafia.

Yet somehow it all worked, in large part because Winegardner never neglected his characters. As distracting as his attention to historic details could be, Winegardner did an admirable job weaving them into the world of the Corleones, and demonstrating how they helped to propel Michael Corleone down his dark and lonely path. Winegardner remains true to the message at the heart of "The Godfather" saga: What does it profit a man tif he gains the whole world, and loses his soul?

2006-12-31T08:37:00.000-08:00

Once again at Christmas, my family supplied with me months' worth of reading, and guaranteed that those one or two books I own which, for one reason or another I've never gotten around to reading, will remain unread for another year. These include "The Great Bridge," which I'm about halfway through, and "Death in the Afternoon", which I've started a couple of times only to put it down in favor of another book. Recently, I heard an interview with humorist Joe Queenan, who claims to read several dozen books at once, and is unafraid to pick up a book he started years before and start reading again where he left off. So perhaps there is hope for me yet.

Among the books I received for Christmas (and of course Christmas also brings books via Barnes and Noble gift cards) was "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond and "The Godfather Returns" by Mark Winegardner. I had never planned to read the latter until I saw that it received a starred review by Publishers Weekly. I started reading it, and while the prose is clunky in spots, Winegardner does a good job developing characters and has picked up the loose threads of the original novel and movies quite nicely.

2006-12-14T17:00:00.000-08:00

I briefly discuss James Howard Kunstler's review of "Sprawl" at my other blog. I hope to offer my own thoughts on the book here soon.

2006-12-11T18:09:00.000-08:00

Jack Shafer at Slate makes a pretty good case that Ian McEwan did indeed commit plagiarism, and is not merely guilty of laziness as I suggested in this post.

2006-12-04T17:10:00.000-08:00

Apparently there's a bit of a broohaha in England over accusations that Ian McEwan lifted a passage from the memoir of a late British romance novelist for his novel "Atonement". The writer in question, Lucilla Andrews, was a nurse in a London hospital during World War II, as was the main character of McEwan's book.

This New York Times article notes the similarities between passages in both works:

Two British newspapers — The Mail on Sunday and The Times of London — have published excerpts that show close similarities between passages in “Atonement” and Ms. Andrews’s memoir. Mr. McEwan, for instance, wrote: “In the way of medical treatments, she had already dabbed gentian violet on ringworm, aquaflavine emulsion on a cut and painted lead lotion on a bruise.” Ms. Andrews’s book has the lines: “Our ‘nursing’ seldom involved more than dabbing gentian violent on ringworm, aquaflavine emulsion on cuts and scratches, lead lotion on bruises and sprains.”

(The New York Times ran another article about the controversy on Sunday.)

McEwan has previously acknowledged using Andrews' memoir as a source, and even mentioned it in the author's note of "Atonement." I don't think I would call what he did plagiarism, given that Andrews' book was nonfiction, and McEwan was using it to lend authenticity to his portrayal of a wartime hospital. A memoir is, however, a literary work, and McEwan probably should have taken more trouble to rework the description in question.

By the way, if you haven't read it, I highly recommend "Atonement," which is a haunting, emotionally wrenching novel. It's the only McEwan I've read, but I definitely plan to read more.

2006-12-02T17:58:00.000-08:00

Chris Briem refers us to a list of used book stores and sales in and around Pittsburgh.

2006-11-30T17:42:00.000-08:00

I did it.

2006-11-23T07:43:00.000-08:00

Chris Briem and I discuss whether Downtown needs a major bookseller at his blog Null Space.

2006-11-07T18:52:00.000-08:00

Angela Gunn tells us about DailyLit, which allows you to read books via email, a little at a time each day. What will the Internets think of next?

2006-11-05T08:50:00.000-08:00

The New York Times Magazine has a kick-ass interview with James Ellroy. He's either a great showman or clinically disturbed. Maybe both. I'm glad he agrees with me on "The Dain Curse."

2006-10-25T17:18:00.000-07:00

Wired invited writers to craft six-word stories in honor of Hemingway's famous "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." How about:

His prayers answered, she died slowly.

or

He wished he'd saved mother instead.

or

Except his penis. That, she kept.

That was tough. (Shout out to Cope, who I'm disappointed to learn is no Hemingway fan.)

2006-10-24T17:13:00.000-07:00

I've decided to participate in National Novel Writing Month. Wish me luck.

2006-10-18T17:04:00.000-07:00

I wonder if this is the first time that Tolkien has been invoked in an American political campaign. I first picked up on the story from Jason, who tells me that Christian conservatives like Tolkien almost as much as C.S. Lewis. This Salon article explains that it was, in fact, Tolkien who salvaged Lewis' sagging faith. Tolkien, as I understand it, resisted efforts to label his work allegorical of either World War I--of which he was a veteran--or World War II--which ended 10 years before the publication of "Lord of the Rings." He did, however, endorse the idea of applicability--so it's possible that he's not spinning in his grave right now.

In any case, whether he's pandering to his base or not, I think it's safe to conclude that the junior senator from Pennsylvania is losing his already tenuous grip on reality.

2006-10-07T05:49:00.000-07:00

A funny take on Harry Potter.

2006-09-30T06:54:00.000-07:00

I'm just starting to make a dent in "American Prometheus", a sweeping biography of Robert Oppenheimer. The physicist who oversaw the development of the atomic bomb was persecuted as a communist and ultimately stripped of his security clearance. It's hard to read the book without thinking of our current political climate and the dark path we've started down.

2006-09-27T17:11:00.000-07:00

Recently I completed John Dos Passo’s “USA” trilogy, which I received as a gift last year in a single volume. Together, the three novels represent a compelling character sketch of the United States during the first three decades of the 20th century, when America was awakening to its growing power and reveling in its seemingly endless prosperity. Dos Passos advances his episodic narrative through several meticulously drawn characters that span the gamut of Jazz Age archetypes: the flapper, the revolutionary, the industrialist, the speculator, etc. Dos Passos uses his characters’ intertwined lives to explore America’s dark side—its racial and economic inequalities; its sexual hypocrisies and double-standards; and its imperialistic ambitions. The books are rounded out with pointed biographical sketches of real-life figures from the era, and Dos Passos uses the “Newsreel” and often confusing “Camera Eye” sections to enhance the books’ historic perspective.

2006-09-15T18:06:00.000-07:00

Tips on becoming well read. (Thanks to Cope.)

2006-09-13T04:10:00.000-07:00

Kevin Maney says that Amazon has an electronic book reader in the works, and he discusses the ups and downs of the concept in general:

File this, also, under fidelity v. convenience. The fidelity of a reader can't beat the total fidelity of a book yet. So an e-reader will have to be far more convenient (which includes being more economical) before consumers make the switch en masse.

Call me old-fashioned, but I can't imagine an electronic device ever replacing the feel of a book in my hand--not to mention how they look on my shelves ("I have many leather-bound books..."). And how many hours can human beings spend reading text on a computer screen each day before their retinas spontaneously combust?

2006-09-06T17:38:00.000-07:00

I keep forgetting to mention that my friend and former co-worker Jason Togyer is writing a history of the G.C. Murphy Company, and you can read about it here. Also, you can pre-order Copeland's book here.

2006-08-26T12:37:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting article about presidential reading lists--and whether presidents actually read the books they say they do:

“I don’t know if most presidents spent their time reading,” said Henry Graff, professor emeritus of history at Columbia. “Grover Cleveland didn’t read even after he became a trustee of Princeton. A curator of the F.D.R. Library told me that Roosevelt collected books, but he didn’t read them.”

Harry Truman was a very prolific reader, according to David McCullough's laudatory biography, a book that went a long way toward elevating Truman's reputation as one of the 20th century's most admired presidents. Truman could not afford to attend college, and reading was a way for him to continue his education.

2006-08-22T16:19:00.000-07:00

Someone has written a book about J.D. Tippit, the Dallas police officer purportedly shot and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald the day of the JFK assassination. (Alert reader Jason brought this to my attention.) The only book I've read about the Kennedy assassination was Gerald Posner's "Case Closed" which argued persuasively that Oswald was the lone gunman. Posner systematically pulls apart the most popular conspiracy theories, but he's no apologist for the Warren Commission, which he takes to task for ignoring evidence that would have bolstered its findings. He also disputes some of the commission's conclusions, such as its timeline and sequence of shots from Oswald.

I should probably confess that I was predisposed in favor of the lone gunman theory, simply because when it comes to conspiracy theories, I tend to rely on Occam's razor--the simplest explanation is probably the best.

2006-08-12T12:00:00.000-07:00

Books for bloggers, here.

2006-08-08T19:18:00.000-07:00

Kevin Maney describes a new online book-trading service, BookMooch.

2006-08-02T16:38:00.000-07:00

Is it just me, or is there a certain doth-protest-too-much quality to all of J.K. Rowling's veiled hints that she's going to whack her bespectacled protagonist in the seventh and final book of the "Harry Potter" series? It smells a bit to me like a way to throw her readers off the trail. Unless she thinks that because it's a children's book series, she needs to cushion the blow.

And yes, in case you are wondering, I am one of those adults who reads "Harry Potter." Rowling is a damn fine storyteller, a quality that many modern critics fail to appreciate. I touched on this idea in this post on my other blog.

2006-07-27T16:49:00.000-07:00

Viking Press is publishing the uncensored version of "On the Road", which, I am loathe to admit, I started reading years ago and never finished. Perhaps I'll pick up the unexpurgated version once it hits bookshelves next year.

2006-07-27T16:40:00.000-07:00

A Christian author in Australia has translated the Bible into "Strine." (That's Australian for...Australian.) Here's a taste:

"Out of the blue God knocked up the whole bang lot.... God said 'let's have some light' and bingo – light appeared. ...

"There was this sheila who came across a snake-in-the-grass with all the cunning of a con man. The snake asked her why she didn't just grab lunch off the tree in her garden.

"God, she said, had told her she'd be dead meat if her fruit salad came from that tree, but the snake told her she wouldn't die. So she took a good squiz [look] and then a bite and passed the fruit on to her bloke.

"Right then and there, they'd realized what they'd done and felt starkers [naked]" – so begins Richards' account of the temptation in the Garden of Eden.

Naturally, some people are upset, which is predictable but also quite silly. The Bible, after all, was not written in English (duh), so any translation is bound to be a corruption, if I may use that term, of the original. It's not as though Jesus walked around talking in iambic pentameter.

At least, not as far as we know.

2006-07-20T17:43:00.000-07:00

Via Kevin Maney I read about LibriVox, which offers audio versions of classic books--recorded by volunteers--for free. All the books are in the public domain and include "A Christmas Carol" and "Frankenstein."

2006-07-15T05:43:00.000-07:00

Recently I finished reading "Underboss", the late Peter Maas' biography of mob turncoat Sammy "The Bull" Gravano. Like Nicolas Pileggi in "Wiseguy", Mass largely told his story in his subject's own words. Neither Maas nor Gravano exactly tried to whitewash Gravano's crimes--after all, he had made a pretty full confession to federal agents and in federal court--but Maas couldn't seem to avoid some sympathy for his, er, protagonist. After Gravano made his decision to testify against John Gotti, Maas devoted space to describing the praise Gravano received from the FBI agents and the federal prosecutor who worked with him, as well as from the federal judge who sentenced him to a mere five years in prison.

Gravano did make himself out to be an old-school gangster, the last of a dying breed who took seriously the blood oath that was administered to him when he was formally inducted into the Gambino crime family. He nonetheless violated two of the mafia's most important rules with little apparent hesitation--he helped to orchestrate the unsanctioned murder of a boss, Paul Castellano, and of course he testified against Gotti and dozens of other mob figures. Maas doesn't condemn Gravano, but then again, he doesn't need to. Gravano's crimes speak for themselves.

2006-07-10T18:52:00.000-07:00

Tony Horwitz has a thoughtful essay in the New York Times today, arguing that Americans who complain about Mexican immigration conveniently forget the major role that Spain played in colonizing the New World, and the subsequent Spanish influence over early American culture.

I mention this because Horwitz is the author of a fantastic book, "Confederates in the Attic", in which he romps through Americans' continued obsession with the Civil War. He camps out with hard-core reenactors who emaciate themselves to mimic the hunger experienced by Civil War soldiers; he discovers that Japanese tourists flock to the South because they love "Gone with the Wind"; and he explores the cultural and racial divides that linger 140 years after the war's end. I highly recommend it.

2006-07-10T18:48:00.000-07:00

Slate revisists "The Jungle." What book did you have to read in high school that you'd like to read again?

2006-07-08T14:21:00.000-07:00

In this week's The New Yorker, George Packer reviews Peter Beinart's new book “The Good Fight: Why Liberals—and Only Liberals—Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again.” Packer, author of "The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq", would seem to have much in commin with Beinart: Both men are liberal hawks of the type whose support for the Iraq war lent it more legitimacy then it might otherwise have had, and both have since offered mea culpas now that things have turned out so badly.

Beinart, you may know, has argued forcefully that serious Democrats must purge antiwar leftists like Michael Moore from their ranks in much the same way that the Cold War liberals cast out communists. He also believes that because Democrats stand, then as now, for social justice, equality and civil rights, they are more credible exporters of American values abroad. They walk the walk, in other words, and try to make sure America does the same.

Beinart apparently fails to convince Packer, who thinks that liberal internationalism may have the same fatal flaws as its neoconservative cousin. Jihadism is not communism, Packer notes, and he is certainly not the first person to point this out, as I discussed a while back on my other blog. Besides, Cold War liberalism also gave us Vietnam, a nationalistic conflict which Packer writes that policy makers misinterpreted because they viewed it through an ideological prism. We would do well, Packer says, to dispense with overarching ideas:

A serious American policy toward Islamism will do well what the Bush Administration has done badly or not at all, and without the triumphalist speeches: modest, informed, persistent support for reformers, without grand promises of regime change; concerted efforts at reconstruction and counter-insurgency that bring to bear the full range of government agencies as well as alliances and international institutions. Since these tasks will fall to the United States one way or another, we should learn to do them better rather than vow never to try again. Large ideas drawn from historical analogies can help as guiding frameworks, but the glamorous certainties they seem to offer are illusions; we still have to think for ourselves.

2006-07-05T13:52:00.000-07:00

The most recent book that I’ve finished reading was “The Dain Curse” by Dashiell Hammett. It was just OK. A good detective story needs a good detective as the lead character, and Hammett’s Continental Op is definitely an interesting fellow. Nonetheless, I found that the plot contained too many contrived twists and turns, and I was able to guess who the villain was far too early for my tastes.

It’s worth noting that I’m not a huge fan of crime fiction, but if I see something interesting at a used bookstore or laying on a bargain book table, I’ll pick it up. I've dabbled in Elmore Leonard and James Ellroy. I read “The Black Echo” after reading a profile of Michael Connelly in a magazine; the same article prompted me to read “The Long Goodbye” because Connelly cited it as a big influence on his own work. Both Harry Bosch and Philip Marlow are strong enough characters to make me want to read more of their exploits.

In the world of true crime, my good friend and former co-worker Dave Copeland is hard at work on a book called "Blood & Volume", and you can read an excerpt here.

2006-07-03T16:33:00.000-07:00

Slate has an interesting essay about novelizations of movies, a very curious genre of literature--and I use that term in the broadest sense of the word. In fairness, I must say that I've only ever read one novelization--"Damien: The Omen II" which I read when I was a kid, and I didn't realize when I purchased it that it was a novelization. (I also read the book version of "The Omen" which I supposed was technically a novelization as well. According to Wikipedia, it came out two weeks before the film--the 1976 version--as a marketing gimmick.)

I did buy the novelization to "The Return of the Jedi." I skimmed through parts, because "Star Wars" novelizations did have some interesting backstory.