Last night at New York’s Scandinavia House, Icelandic crime author Arnaldur Inridson read the opening paragraph from his U.S. debut, Jar City. While his accented English is good, he chose to read in his native tongue to give his American audience the flavor and rhythms of the ancient language that give birth to the great Norse sagas. (For a quick audio sample of what Icelandic sounds like, check out the BBC’s Quick Fix Essential Holiday Phrases ) Icelandic is currently spoken by only 300,000 people in the world, and Indridason said that the language was predicted to disappear within 100 years, thanks to globalization and the overwhelming dominance of English. And Icelandic is not the only language under siege. According to a fascinating book by journalist Terry Glavin, first published earlier this year in Canada under the title Waiting for the Macaws and to be released next April in the U.S. by St. Martin’s Thomas Dunne Books as The Sixth Extinction: Journeys Among the Lost and Left Behind, every two weeks a language becomes extinct, with half of the world’s five thousand languages expected to be gone by the middle of this century. “A dark and gathering sameness is upon the world” mourns Glavin. How can we fight back? How about a language class? Icelandic, anyone?—Wilda Williams

Do you know about National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)?  Librarians like to keep track of these ”national” months in planning book displays, readers’ advisories, public programs and the like, but there are so many proclaimed observances now that we can’t note them all, and many are self-serving and tedious. Still, some remain worthy of attention. In September you may have acknowledged National Library Card Sign-up Month and National Hispanic Heritage Month, while eschewing National Self-Improvement Month, figuring that self-help books are popular enough already, thank you very much. 

But here in October, I’m letting you know ahead of time that National Novel Writing Month in November has a lot going for it: its focus is very specific (”Write fiction!”), while its parameters are broad (”Let your imagination fly!”); it promotes a kind of self-discipline, while inspiring participants to feel energized, involved, and excited;and it is managed with good humor and lack of pretense.

Check out its web site.

This “rockin’ literary marathon,” founded in 1999 by Chris Baty, a California freelance writer, now attracts tens of thousands of aspiring novelists from around the world each year. It’s simple: sign up at the web site–it’s free–and then, between November 1 and midnight at the end of November 30th, write a 50,000 word novel (approx. 175 pages). His site simply offers a framework within which to awaken your long-dormant hunger to write that novel, whether the Great American one, chick-lit with a twist, or contemporary noir.

Baty’s book from 2004, No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days is an excellent guide and could promote a community of new novelists in your library. (There is also his The No-Plot? No Problem! Novel Writing Kit, which is an enouraging tool, but not formatted for library circulation.) Baty reminds us that it’s when people are already busy that they get the most done: therefore, busy as we may feel we are, and stressed-out already by obligations, this month-long burst of creativity can happen and will be a boon. Don’t revise! Don’t work on an existing piece! Start afresh and go for the quantity! Save editing and obsessive re-writes for another month!

Of course you can try to do this without joining NaNoWriMo, but being part of Baty’s global community, and being able to use his word-count mechanism, and forums, can keep you going! And when December comes? Have no fear!  It’s National Stress-Free Family Holidays Month and National Read a New Book Month. Next year, we could all be reading your new novel!

I went to my computer yesterday evening to write a cute blog about a cute thing that happened on the subway. Then I saw Nora Rawlinson’s comment on Fall hedges and bets, and I began to worry that Kostova is taking over the world. The cute blog? Well, it was to be a story about how I saw two young professionals commuting home to Brooklyn on the subway, sitting side-by-side, and unknowingly reading The Historian at the same time. They looked to be at about the same page. One had a worn paperback, the other a new-looking hardcover, and when they realized the coincidence right as they were getting off the train, their conversation went something like this: “It’s older” (as if to underscore the strange coincidence). “It’s good, huh?” “Yeah, I’m really enjoying it.” Perhaps I am in a Historian multiverse (which, I hear, usually just traps graphic-novel and fantasy readers), and I may soon be attacked by an undead librarian. Or was there a publicity storm I missed?

It’s Nobel Prize season again (so far Americans are racking up the science prizes) and across the pond British gamblers with a literary bent are placing bets on their favorite author to win this year’s prize for literature. Although I like the image of tweedy professorial types surreptitiously hanging around their local Off Track Betting offices, Britain’s premier online gambling site Ladbrokes.com spares them the embarrassment. (Unfortunately I can’t link to this site as it is verboten by my company, which has also blocked access to MySpace.com!) But according to Susan Slater Reynold’s Los Angeles Times opinion piece, top candidates on the Ladbrokes site include Turkey’s Orhan Pamuk (3-1odds) and  Syrian poet Adonis (4-5) along with the other usual suspects: Joyce Carol Oates (yech!), Philip Roth (double yech!), John Updike (yawn), and poor old Bob Dylan (go,Bobby!) at the bottom of the pile at 500 to 1. Reynolds goes on to note the continuing controversy over the selection of the winners. Are finalists chosen because of their politics or their literary merits? Reynolds concludes that in the long run, “The Nobel Prize in literature, one of the most lucrative prizes a writer can win, goes, more often than not, to the least commercial work in the world. “  While I would love for Canada’s Alice Munro or Margaret Atwood  to be recognized, they don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell. Munro is a short story writer, a definite strike against her, and not overtly political. And after the hoopla over controversial Austrian author  Elfriede Jelinek, those conservative Swedish judges aren’t going to honor another feminist. So I am placing my money on Bob Dylan. Think of the payout if he wins!—Wilda Williams  

As a September 8th Wall Street Journal article pointed out (”Battle of the Big Books” by Robert J. Hughes), this fall an unusually large number of top-tier authors will publish books, including Gore Vidal (Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir, 1964 to 2006), Carl Hiaasen (Nature Girl), and Cormac McCarthy (The Road). Said piece stresses that while this bounty may well please bibliophiles, it can’t be good for publishers. The more competiton, the less the chances of a No. 1 best seller.

I don’t view this as a new challenge, and the fall book blitz angle smells moldier than a 1926 grammar book I bought in North Dakota. Frankly, I’m tired of hearing about both scenarios. The book business isn’t very profitable even with the best-selling authors—fact. But rather than try to build up a younger roster of talent with commerical appeal, publishers only seem to push out the old warhorses this time of year—the Crichtons, Cusslers, le Carrés, and Evanoviches. I say, bring on the new guard, and after querying my savvy colleagues, I’ve come up with a short list of names and titles to watch.

In the fiction realm, pop editor Wilda Williams mentioned Diane Setterfield’s September pub, The Thirteenth Tale, already a best seller; Kelly Braffet’s Last Seen Leaving (see the Oct. 1 issue for a review); and Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects. Of course, you could also consult our annual “Fall First Novelists” feature by Barbara Hoffert with Ann Burns.

In my areas of nonfiction, I must mention the efforts Julia Hansen (see her memoir, A Life in Smoke, also in Oct. 1), Cordelia Fine (A Mind of Its Own, the next Blink?), and Jerry Schilling (Me and a Guy Named Elvis). I hope this list will grow with your nominations, dear readers.