Reading Copy

Jonathan Franzen says the New York Times’ lead fiction reviewer is the stupidest person in the Big Apple. Excellent - I love a good fight.

Popularity: 21% [?]

I’m going to create a crazy blog and then wait for the megabucks book deal. Cue article in the NY Times. Stuff White People Like is a very clever blog - as a middle-class white person, I think it is very funny. The amazing thing is that this blog has only been around since January. Someone told me about it three weeks ago and here they are getting the $300,000 advance from a publisher.

Popularity: 36% [?]

Elsewhere….

Books liked by Australians. Pride and Prejudice tops the list.

Another list, this time The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe steps on Eric Carle’s caterpillar.

Don’t write off books just yet.

Popularity: 20% [?]

In The Guardian, Julie Burchill attacks books written by the whining middle classes with little to complain about. Of course, the UK publishing industry is populated by the middle classes so…..expect more of the same.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Marshall McLuhan recommended turning to page 69 of book and reading it as a test to see if you should buy the book. If you like the page, buy the book.

Now there is a blog to help you along - The Page 69 Test.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Surfing through the Web this morning, I came across a blog at The Guardian about ‘concept’ books published for the Christmas market. The top book in the UK at the moment is Do Ants Have Arseholes? And 101 Bloody Ridiculous Questions, Now, I’m in Canada and haven’t seen this book so I can’t really comment on a train thought that it is utterly rubbish.

However, scroll through the article until you get to the comments underneath.

This is the first one….

“I specifically tell people that wish to keep me as a friend to never, never, never buy me books like that or so-called “humour” books for Christmas. It’s all for stupid thickos that probably don’t even read books anyway.”

A good point well made….

About half way down you get this comment….

“I’ve read some of Do Ants… - it’s not actually that terrible. There’s quite a good joke about Martin Amis, which suggests it’s not for the completely illiterate.”

And then someone comes up with a football team consisting entirely of Russian authors - God knows where that came from but I’m sure they’d be a pretty effective outfit. A lot of experience but those huge Russian beards might slow them down?

“This would be my Russian team, using a 4-3-1-2:
G: Bulgakov
CB: Solzhenitsyn, Tolstoy
LB/RB: Pasternak, Gorky
CM: Turgenev, Gogol, Dostoevsky
CF: Pushkin, Nabokov
Subs: Saltykov-Shchedrin, Lermontov, Goncharov, Bely, Sologub.
I think they would take the English no problem.”

God bless the Internet!!!

Popularity: 23% [?]

The voting to select AbeBooks Bookclub pick for November is underway now. This month’s choice’s are:

Peony in Love by Lisa See
Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo
The Chosen by Chaim Potok

The vote will be open unitl Friday Nov. 16th: vote here

If you arn’t a member of the AbeBooks Bookclub but want to join? You can do that here

Popularity: 17% [?]

I’m sure you can imagine what a Borat book signing would be like…. USA Today reports on the insults and mayhem.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Last week, in response to a diminishing presence of Australian authors in literary curriculum in Australia, a roundtable was hosted by The Australia Council of the Arts to further examine this issue.  Following the path set by last year’s History Summit which determined it was the right of young Australians to learn of the country’s past as recorded by historians, it was deemed their right to see that history through the imaginations of authors.

Lack of study of Australian literature in that country is also seen as a contributor to the demise of “cultural memory” and as a detriment to up-and-coming Australian authors.

Read more on the blog at The Australian.

Popularity: 23% [?]

In another ‘if you can’t beat ‘em then join ‘em’ move, the Chicago Tribune has launched a book blog. It doesn’t compare to Dwight Garner’s Paper Cuts but it’s early days yet. By the way, Paper Cuts links to an interview with 88-year-old Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Popularity: 14% [?]

How I missed seeing this blog until now is beyond me, it’s called Seen Reading and is a defiantly different take on book blogging.

The blogger is Julie Wilson and her method is simple.

1. I see you reading.
2. I guesstimate where you are in the book.
3. I trip on over to the bookstore and make a note of the text.
4. I let my imagination rip.
5. Readers become celebrities.
6. People get giddy and buy more books.

Popularity: 11% [?]

A blogger takes a look at the 54,000 joke books for sale on AbeBooks.com.

Then there is the fabulously interesting title “The Jokes of Sigmund Freud: A Study in Humor and Jewish Identity” by Elliot Oring. Not a joke book to take to the pub perhaps but you can feel the laughter well up even so.

Popularity: 16% [?]

The Grumpy Old Bookman remembers when you could pick up a copy of The Highfield Mole for a couple of pounds.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Biblioasis will publish John Metcalf’s latest memoir, Shut Up He Explained, this fall.  The publisher posted design ideas for the books cover and asked for feedback from their readers.  One reader took the this a step further and actually designed an entire new book cover suggesting the house should use it instead.  The asking price? $8 and a one year subscription to Canadian Notes & Queries.

That is what they in the business call “a steal”

Popularity: 25% [?]

NPR talks to Khaled Hosseini about his follow up to The Kite Runner - A Thousand Splendid Suns. There’s also an excerpt.

Popularity: 11% [?]