Reading Copy Book Blog

While other folks were reading McCarthy, Roth, or Rushdie over the weekend, I read a book called Stuff White People Like by Christian Lander. It’s another blog that became a book. As a middle class 40-year-old white person, I found Stuff White People Like very enjoyable. It has 150 mini-chapters (or blog postings if you wish) and I found myself ticking off the ones that applied to me.

Organic food - check
Renovations - check
Hardwood floors - check
Rugby - check
Threatening to move to Canada - check (except I actually did it)
Recycling - check
Making children learn a foreign language - check

I can think of many white people who should read specific chapters from this book. The sections on Apple products, DJs and Asian girls were very funny indeed.

I’m going to interview the author, Christian Lander, on Thursday so we should have something on the site by Friday.

Booklovers in Canada are concerned after the Globe and Mail’s book section was absent without leave from last Saturday’s edition.

The LA Times has just issued a review on the Flat Belly Diet, the book is still only available though select outlets but some of our booksellers have copies well below list price.

Their mantra is mufas (or, more appropriately, MUFAs). These delightful substances are the healthy fats found in almonds, peanut butter, olive oil and avocados among other things, and they’re fairly satiating. The eating plan (based on the good ol’ Mediterranean diet) says you should have some with every meal. That’s one of its three rules.

The other two rules: Stick to 400 calories per meal. And never go more than four hours without eating. Snacks, carefully controlled, are fine — as long as you don’t eat more than 1,600 calories a day.

I read Larry McMurtry’s new book, Books: A Memoir, last week and a review is now on the AbeBooks.com homepage. If you are a bookseller, a book collector or just a bibliophile then I’ll think you will enjoy it. The memoir barely touches on McMurtry’s writing (Lonesome Dove, Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment etc) and simply concerns his life as a used bookseller. He’s been a book scout, a used bookstore employee, and a used bookstore owner. He’s got to know almost everyone in the used book business, crossed the Atlantic looking for books, and is still handling the incoming books at his Archer City bookstore in Texas. It’s an excellent read.

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

Today’s recommendation for Christmas giving is….. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which is a translation of the French memoir Le scaphandre et le papillon by Jean-Dominique Bauby. This book is getting plenty of attention at the moment because an American movie version has been released.

The book describes Bauby’s life after he suffered a stroke that left him with a condition called locked-in syndrome. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was written by Bauby blinking his left eyelid. He used a frequency-ordered alphabet and he had to blink multiple times to select each letter. The book took about 200,000 blinks to complete and each word took approximately two minutes. Bauby died two days after the book was published in France.

This is no ordinary book - if you want to humble and inspire someone, give them this book.

The Guardian reviews The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved by Judith Freeman - the latest biography of the noir fiction crime writer.

A new movie set during the time of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire opened this weekend to damning orations from reviewers.  The Last Legion is based on the novel of the same title by Valerio Massimo Manfredi.  Manfredi has seen huge success with his Alexander trilogy and has written numerous historical novels including one called Spartan.  Perhaps it was thought that The Last Legion would draw on Manfredi’s literary popularity and the success of the movies Alexander and Frank Miller’s, The 300. 

Saying that, Alexander and The 300 also met with mixed reviews but did make decent amounts of money at the box office.  (I personally like The 300 but that might have a lot to do with the shirtless Gerard Butler!) Perhaps The Last Legion will experience the same – I have seen comments of praise blogged by Average Joe Public.  Either way, Manfredi’s books seem well worth a read – his Alexander series garnered him the Man of the Year award from the American Biographical Institute in 1999. 

Read the Reuter’s movie review.Read a review of the book The Last Legion.

This Sunday’s New York Times book review takes a look at On The Road: The Original Scroll - the unedited version of this classic book. It’s an interesting review, discussing how the book was edited and altered before finally appearing in 1957.

Dave Itzkoff reviews Four Novels from the 1960s, a Phillip K Dick anthology, in the New York Times’ monthly excursion into science fiction.

Hello Reading Copy readers,

My name is Hillary Samson and I am the new manager of Interactive Marketing at AbeBooks. The IM team gathers and posts the content for the site and is also responsible for email marketing. I have been with AbeBooks for close to 5 years, (which is a long time for an ecommerce company) working in the Bookseller Community for a year and then Product Management for 3 years. I have recently returned to AbeBooks after a one-year maternity leave (little Annie just had her birthday) and love working with the folks in Marketing.

Right now in Interactive Marketing we are working on our textbook and summer reading campaigns. We have some fun contests, so check back over the next couple of weeks to get involved.

Life is always interesting at AbeBooks. This morning we are all excited about The Highfield Mole books posted on our site (see Richard’s post below).

My own reading interests were piqued by a Globe & Mail article about the production of a film based on the novel Blindness by Noble Prize winning author Jose Saramago. It is a Canadian production starring some of my favourite actors including Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo and Sandra Oh. Although I have been aware of this novel for a few years, I have yet to read it. I won’t go see a movie based on a novel until I read the book, so I’ll be picking up one of the 200+ copies on our site and diving in this week.

Happy reading,
Hillary

Librarything has announced a neat new feature where users can sign up to receive advance copies of books in exchange for writing reviews.

We have an exclusive interview with Gavin Grant the winner from our Nebula Awards contest. If you were not in New York for the event, this is the next best thing.

I have to smile when I hear that supporters of the under-threat newspaper book review sections are blaming book bloggers. It sounds very familiar to the “Internet is killing bookshops.” The New York Times looks at the whole book review section dilemma this morning.

 All I know is that book review sections are published once a week, bloggers publish five days a week and sometimes more frequently. Book review sections too often review deadly dull books from past-their-sell-by-date authors, bloggers are constantly looking for new exciting talent. Book review sections give me virtually zero book-related news, bloggers give me book news all day long. Book review sections are humorless, bloggers thrive on the funny and unusual.

There is an online petition in an attempt to save the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s book review section, which is under threat.