A Thing or Two

National Book Awards for Fiction open to public voting for the first time

To celebrate the 60th year of the National Book Awards, the National Book Foundation will present a book-a-day blog on the Fiction winners from 1950 to 2008.

Each day, from July 7th to September 21st, the blog will discuss one award-winning book, starting with Nelson Algren’s The Man With the Golden Arm and ending with Peter Matthiessen’s Shadow Country. On September 21st, you can select your choice of The Best of the National Book Awards Fiction and win two tickets to the 2009 National Book Awards, the first time in its history the Awards will open to a public vote.

And, if you are interested in the entire list of all winners in all categories from 1950 to 2008, go here. Sometimes it's fun to see how many of these you've read.

Full video: Dick Cavett interviews Cheever and Updike

What a treat! The NY Times is hosting the full video of a 1981 Dick Cavett interview with John Cheever and John Updike. It's 28 and a half minutes long, but not long enough.

Dick Cavett: A Last Look at Updike and Cheever

Never enough Riddley Walker

If you know me, you know I am a long-time fan of Riddley Walker, by Russell Hoban. Over the decades, I must have bought 15 copies and given most of them away. In fact, last Friday at the Friends of the Library book sale, I picked up another hardcover copy for $3. Bargain!

One can never have too many copies of Riddley Walker. To lend, to give as gifts, or to leave on the bus stop bench for that unsuspecting reader to find, steam through, and forever be changed.

This review of Riddley Walker, by Eli Bishop, is worth noting for its deep appreciation of the original novel, its notes about the novel's context within the literary genres of fiction and science fiction, and its description of the advantages of drawbacks of the newest edition of this previously out-of-print classic, republished in 1998 by Indiana University Press.

For a Russell Hoban fan page on Facebook, go here. Or not.

Cody's Books closed forever

As one of thousands of ex-employees, it is with sadness that I note the passing of yet another icon of our generation: Cody's Books in Berkeley.

I worked at Cody's from 1979 to mid-1981, along with a group of unforgettable people, many of whom have remained in my life over the years since. After a stint managing bookstores for Tower Records, I had managed to get my foot in the door at Cody's as the children's books buyer. This was when the children's section was upstairs, in the space that was used on a regular basis for author readings and signing events. The upper wall of the room was lined with huge, framed, black and white photographs of all the authors who came through there--names you know and love. I never tired of looking up and seeing them watch me take inventory and shelve titles.

My time in Berkeley was profoundly influenced by the time I spent at Cody's. Coming from an ultra-conservative upbringing in San Jose, right when it was transforming from cherry orchards and strawberry fields (unfortunately, not forever), Berkeley offered a social scene that was rich with the liberal intellectual stimulation that filled a hole in my life. Getting to know Pat and Fred Cody, who'd already sold the store to Andy, was a gift. They were true heroes to me, and remain so. (Hi, Nora!)

Like that favorite aunt or uncle who gave you the right book at the right time--that one book that influenced the rest of your life--Cody's Books on Telegraph earned an eternal spot in my heart. And you can never put a "CLOSED" sign on that.

Prancing Lavender Bunnies

Okay, you knew I had to post about Paul's new book: Prancing Lavender Bunnies and Other Stuff from the Darkside of Independent Cinema. What good is having a blog if you cannot use it to hawk your loved ones' creative works?

This is the first book Paul has published. I edited the crap out of a bunch of essays from his 2006 email newsletters, and we self-published the book on Lulu.com. It will be a lot easier the second time around.

Megan Beierle (from Edge Design in Corvallis, Oregon) designed the book cover. It's beautiful, eh? I designed the book guts and laid out every page. Let me see you do that kind of page number magic in MSWeird.

So the first reading is Thursday, December 20 at Grass Roots Books & Music in Corvallis. Paul plans to bring free popcorn as an incentive to get people to show up. Hah! I don't think he needs it; there are already loads of people contacting us to get their own, signed copies. We have ordered a second printing and when those arrive (we hope by this coming weekend) we will schedule another reading, this time at The Book Bin, whose owner is our landlord at the Darkside Cinema.

Let me know when you are suffering from insomnia, and I will tell you all about the process of getting the book ready for publication.

No words, all pictures: The Arrival

The Arrival is a book that uses fully realized pencil drawings—and no words—to convey the feelings associated with the migrant experience. There are numerous common problems that all migrants face, regardless of nationality and destination: grappling with language difficulties, home-sickness, poverty, a loss of social status and recognisable qualifications, not to mention loneliness and separation from family.

Author Shaun Tan borrows the ‘language’ of old pictorial archives and family photo albums, which have both a documentary clarity and an enigmatic, sepia-toned silence, to tell a story about a man who leaves his family and home to find a new life in an unseen country, where even the most basic details of ordinary life are strange, confronting or confusing—not to mention beyond the grasp of language.

The author says:

Words are wonderfully convenient conveyors of ideas. In their absence, even describing the simplest of actions, like someone packing a suitcase, buying a ticket, cooking a meal or asking for work threatened to become a very complicated, laborious and potentially slippery exercise in drawing. I had to find a way of carrying this kind of narrative that was practical, clear and visually economical.

Unwittingly, I had found myself working on a graphic novel rather than a picture book. There is not a great difference between the two, but in a graphic novel there is perhaps far more emphasis on continuity between multiple frames, actually closer in many ways to film-making than book illustration.

Check out some of the resulting illustrations here. The digital version of these is so moving that I can't wait to hold the actual book in my hands.

No one belongs here more than you. Stories by Miranda July

No one belongs here more than you. Stories by Miranda July will have to be the next book I read, purely based on the amazingness of this site.

Miranda July, you are my new GUI guru.

Maya already loves the bookstore

Eating a good book

I just got back from OSU, where I attended a reading by Tobias Wolf. After, someone in the audience asked him about Alice Sebold (The Lovely Bones), who had been one of his students years ago at Syracuse. He made reference to her memoir, Lucky, which I haven't read. So when I got home I Googled it to find out more and landed on a 2002 Powell's Books interview with her.

Near the end of the interview, she said this about reading, and BLAMMO! It struck me that I'd never heard anyone besides me express the hunger for reading in terms of food. Here's Alice:

I actually get a physical need to read. I read the way other people overeat. I read way too fast, then it's over and I'm moaning, Ugh, I shouldn't have read the whole thing. But I read obsessively. Even if I'm working on my own stuff I feel a hunger come for reading.

If you’re interested in reading the entire interview, it’s here:
http://www.powells.com/authors/sebold.html.