While book review pages are being cut drastically (see “Save This Endangered Species: Book Reviews“), Sundance catalog is doing its part to promote literature—or to weasel its branding onto everything. The Sundance Reader’s Collection offers eight paperback “staff favorites, guaranteed to inspire lofty dreams and earthly passions” for $98.

Apparently, they are banking on their recommendation alone.  Sure, they can peddle a nice western flowing skirt for $150, But who said they had good taste in literature? The only information offered about the books is title and author, that they are paperbacks, and their page counts—they are fiction, history, memoir, YA, essay collections, anything goes.

The collection includes a YA book that School Library Journal recommends, John Knowles’s A Separate Peace; a “classic of outdoor literature,” Beryl Markham’s West with the Night; a 1998 novel that LJ’s review calls a “bland modern-day fairy tale” and “A marginal purchase for large public libraries,” Murray Bail’s Eucalyptus; and a collection of New Yorker pieces by Adam Gopnik, Paris to the Moon; among others.  

If these odd bundled-buys take off (which I can’t help but doubt), perhaps Sundance can do its part to save book reviews and advertise their collections in book review pages. Or, they could invest in external intellectual property and offer reviews from an established source instead of empty recommendations that almost seem to mock the craft.

There is the Oscar, a bald naked man holding a sword. And the Emmy, a winged woman holding an atom. And then there’s the Edgar, a ceramic bust of Edgar Allen Poe and probably the ugliest award on the planet.

I mention this because the statuette’s unattractiveness (not Poe himself) was a major theme at last night’s 61st Annual  Edgar Awards, held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City.  It started at Table 44 where I was honored to be sitting with such noted mystery authors as Julia Spencer-Fleming (All Mortal Flesh), Marshall Karp (The Rabbit Factory), and Jonathon King (Eye of Vengence and the forthcoming Acts of Nature, to be reviewed in our May 15 issue). Noting that each seat at the table had an Edgar Allan Poe Noddler or bobblehead, King and I discussed how these were so much more attractive than the real award.

And then King told me when he won his Edgar Award in 2003 for The Blue Edge of Midnight, his then-ten-year-old daughter offered to repaint the statuette to make it prettier.

It went downhill from there. One presenter advised winners to enjoy their ugly awards, and then when the winner of the Best First Novel by American Author was about to be announced, one of the statuettes broke in half. Was it due to the malevolent presence of Grand Master Stephen King, as one waggish presenter suggested, or did the Edgar, as another presenter noted, finally realize how ugly he was and broke in two? Whatever the cause, the winner Alex Berenson (The Faithful Spy) good-naturedly clutched both pieces of the Edgar in his hands as he thanked his editors and Random House for booking his hotel in Boston where he met his current girlfriend while on his book tour..

Moderated by Today show weatherman Al Roker, the ceremony moved quickly, ending at a surprisingly early 9:45 pm. The night’s biggest surprise was Jason Goodwin winning the Best Novel Award for The Janissary Tree. Goodwin could not be present to accept his award as his publisher had been too cheap to pay for his airplane ticket to fly over from England, an act publisher Sarah Crichton said she “deeply, deeply regrets” as she accepted the award. Crichton was refreshingly honest as she told the audience that she hadn’t expected Goodwin’s tale of a eunuch detective in 1830s Istanbul to win.

Other winners included Naomi Hirahara (Snakeskin Shamisen) for Best Paperback Original, James L. Swanson (Manhunt; The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer) for Best Fact Crime, and E.J. Wagner (The Science of Sherlock HOlmes) for Best Critical/Biographical. Interestingly, the winners for Best Television Feature/Mini-Series Teleplay were the writers for Season 4 of HBO’s series The Wire, and these included some of the finest crime fiction authors working today: Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, and Richard Price.

The highlight of the evening was the recognition of Stephen King as a Mystery Grand Master. After an amusing introduction by Dave Barry and  Ridley Pearson, as well as an inadvertently almost forgotten Donald Westlake,  KIng told the audience that he never called himself a horror writer and that the first three adult books he checked out from the local bookmobile that came through his Maine hometown were crime novels by Richard Stark, Ed McBain, and John D. McDonald. “These books changed my life,” King said, explaining that  they opened up his mind to what he could write about. “The reason why mystery and suspense are the most important genres today,” he said,” is because they mimic life. How we enter and leave life is a mystery.”  King ended his brief defense of genre fiction, stating firmly, “anyone who says this isn’t mainstream fiction is full of bullshit.”

It’s hard to be a book. That is to say, it’s hard to be a book and get noticed because there are so many and, as National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) member Scott McLemee pointed out in his April 25th “Critical Mass” column, book review coverage in newspapers is making like the dodo and dying out.

To stop this insanity, the NBCC is launching an awareness campaign throughout the month of May that is calling for people to sign a petition to stop the nixing of The Atlanta Journal Constitution’s book review section. I’m going to echo McLemee and our own Wilda Williams (see her blog Save This Endangered Species: Book Reviews) and say that librarians can and should play their part in this initiative. Without books, many of you wouldn’t have a pay check, much less a rewarding profession. Without book dialogue, you wouldn’t have patrons to browse your stacks.

This is my ninth year in the book review world, and I can’t imagine fitting in anywhere else (except maybe the chocolate-tasting arena, if that even exists). My point: I want to give back, and the best way I can is to expand LJ’s coverage of our pulp friends. Doing so in print is not feasible owing to paper costs, etc. Doing so online via our weekly Xpress Reviews, however, is easy.

Almost two years into our online book review experiment, things are going better than I ever expected. Not only have we increased the number and quality of books covered (Ann Burns now contributes audio books), we’re finding an increasingly appreciative audience. I can’t supply any hard numbers, but I think it’s safe to say that even the die-hardest of print-demanding librarians are beginning to see the perks of online reviews—they’re free; they’re always there; they’re informed, impartial, and to the point (like LJ’s print sisters); and they’re going to multiply like rabbits if I have anything to say about it.

With this blog, I hereby invite the closeted book reviewers of the world to bust out of their moth-balled existences and join my online-only roster. Whatever your subject area, I need you to make this venture a success. Submit an application today, save book reviews, and maybe even save the world.

Thanks to the efforts of my media-obsessed little sister, last week I had the opportunity to sit in the studio audience of The Colbert Report, Comedy Central’s often gut-busting spoof on the conservative political pundit show. The guest: actor Sean Penn. His affront to the Reagan-looking Colbert: writing (and reading) a poem condemning President Bush for our involvement in Iraq.

What twisted the TV host’s tighty whites most of all was the actor’s metaphor for Bush’s sins: “soiled and blood-soaked underwear.” To settle the score, Colbert challenged Penn to a “Meta-Free-Phor-All” moderated by former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinksy. Watching this all being filmed wasn’t nearly as exciting as its implications. Colbert & Co. looked like wooden actors from my seat, I was dying of thirst (no water allowed), hungry, and needing to use the ladies’ room.

But as I tried to point out to my screaming sibling, they were promoting poetry during National Poetry Month. Colbert actually quoted Pinksy, who even took a silly swipe at Robert Frost. This had to be good for what often seems like a dying genre, though I couldn’t find any evidence of sales spikes for Pinky’s The Inferno of Dante. LJ’s Barbara Hoffert, a great supporter and writer of poetry herself, would have been proud. For her take on the best poetry of 2006, click here—and keep poetry promotion going all year long.

Hullo!

Here are the titles reviewed in this week’s web-only, freely-accessible Library Journal Xpress Reviews section. (Remember, there’s that handy-dandy RSS feed!). Also, we always welcome suggestions, comments, praise, criticisms, kittens, rainbows, and flowers.

Xpress Reviews for Week of Apr. 24, 2007
** - means that it is a starred title

FICTION
Abani, Chris. The Virgin of Flames. Penguin.

Hall, Oakley. Love and War in California. Thomas Dunne Bks: St. Martin’s.

Leonard, Elmore. Up in Honey’s Room. Morrow.

Pradhan, Monica. The Hindi-Bindi Club. Bantam.

NONFICTION
Axelrod, Alan. Blooding at Great Meadows: Young George Washington and the Battle That Shaped the Man. Running Pr.

Ford, Anne with John-Richard Thompson. On Their Own: Creating an Independent Future for Your Adult Child with Learning Disabilities and ADHD. Newmarket.

Sarig, Roni. Third Coast: Outkast, Timbaland, and How Hip-Hop Became a Southern Thing. Da Capo.

GRAPHIC NOVELS
Bagge, Peter. Buddy Does Jersey: The Complete Buddy Bradley Stories from “Hate” Comics. Vol. 3 (1994–98). Fantagraphics.

Bendis, Brian Michael (text) & Steve McNiven & Mike Deodato. The New Avengers. Vol. 4: The Collective. Marvel.

The Duchess of Northumberland (text) & Colin Simpson (illus.). The Poison Diaries. Abrams.

Kisaragi, Hirotaka. Innocent Bird. Vol. 1. BLU: Tokyopop.

Kuwabara, Yuko. Alcohol, Shirt & Kiss. Juné: Digital Manga.

Lapham, David. Silverfish. Vertigo: DC Comics.

Lien-Cooper, Barb & Park Cooper (text) & Jimmy Bott (illus.). Half Dead. Dabel Brothers: Marvel.

Sakuishi, Harold. Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad. Vol. 7. Tokyopop.

**Slott, Dan (text) & Will Conrad & others (illus.). She-Hulk. Vol. 4: Laws of Attraction. Marvel.

**TenNapel, Doug. Gear. Image Comics.

Williams III, J.H. & Dan Curtis Johnson (text) & Seth Fisher (illus.). Batman: Snow. DC Comics.

Yamada, Futaro (text) & Masaki Segawa (text & illus.). Basilisk. Vol. 4. Del Rey: Ballantine.

AUDIO
**Clinch, Jon. Finn. Recorded Bks.

Parker, Robert B. High Profile. Books on Tape.

Steel, Danielle. Sisters. Books on Tape.

I’m only human in New York City, which means I often get sick of looking at human faces. In fact, I’m supposed to avoid looking at them because you never know—a tired glance could be taken as a murderous glare, a smile for an invitation to run all the bases.

But I digress. What I’m trying to say is that I love cartoons. Give me a vulnerable, gorgeous French cartoon girl like the one pictured on the cover of Capucine and Olivier Ka’s Le Philibert de Marilou, and I’m all eyes. That sounds bad, but all I mean is it’s interesting as hell to look at an artist’s rendering of humanity. 

To boot, I’m glad to blog about my first foreign-language sighting because America is a country of multiple tongues, duh. Plenty of libraries order French materials, and given the popularity of graphic novels, they should know about this notable title by Capucine and Ka. Not much information in English exists on either author, or their creation for that matter.

With the help of Google’s not-exactly-dead-on translation mechanism and my college French, however, I’ve deduced that the graphic novel tells the story of a lonely, beautiful, celibate 30-something (Marilou) whose clinical neuroses take the form of a terrific monster (Philibert) that prevents her from being happy—and cultivating a romantic relationship with a man.

The kids and critics alike seem to dig this dark story—several French teens and twentysomethings mention it on their MySpace profiles, and it appears Ka, a Lebanese-born Frenchman known for his children’s books and comics, has a reputation for intense stories. His latest graphic novel, Pourquoi j’ai tué Pierre (Why I Killed Pierre), a winner at this year’s International Comic Book Festival in Angoulême, recounts the sexual abuse Ka suffered at the hands of a priest at a summer camp when he was 12.

LJ, unfortunately, does not get in many French translations of graphic novels, a pity considering the seemingly smokin’ talent. French speakers in America, you’re one lucky piece of the library demographic. 

Thanks to pressure from corporate owners and shareholders eager to turn a quick profit, newspapers in recent years have been cutting back or eliminating their book review coverage. Their main excuse: not enough advertising from publishers to support the reviews. But manufacturers of sporting equipment don’t advertise either, and I see little cutback in the sports pages.

Just last week the Los Angeles Times folded its book review section into an opinion section , although editor David Ulin argued in his editor’s note that these were  changes “to forge a synthesis between print and online content that will allow us not only to maintain our commitment to engaged reviews and criticism but also to expand the very nature of our books coverage.”

Also last week the Atlanta Journal-Constitution eliminated its book reviewer position but did “generously” permit its reviewer, Teresa Weaver, to apply for another position at the newspaper. Fed up with the increasing erosion of book coverage, the National Book Critics Circle has launched a campaign to save book reviews, including a petition to save AJC’s well-regarded book review section, and a new series on the NBCC’s blog Critical Mass that will feature posts by concerned writers, interviews with book editors, and more.

So put down that book you are reading, get off your couch, and turn on that computer. Join the over 1000 authors (including Ian Rankin, Richard Powers, and Michael Connolly), editors, librarians, and booklovers in signing this petition. Save the Book Review!

At a panel discussion on Tuesday evening, E.L. Doctorow, Pete Hamill, and Cynthia Ozick graciously discussed New York in literature at NYU’s Fales Library in celebration of its 50th anniversary and Pete Hamill’s donation of his papers (Doctorow donated his to the library in 2001, and Ozick is a class of 1949 alumna.)

Cynthia Ozick was rather endearing and had plenty of nice library quotes. She read from her 1997 novel, The Puttermesser Papers. In describing an idyllic New York City, she writes, “The libraries are lit all night,” there is an increase in gardening and a decrease in crime, and “the bureau of venereal disease control has closed down.” She spoke of living in Pehlam Bay in the 1930s when it was a semirural community: “We didn’t have a library!” Instead, they had a green truck, and she recalled shouting, “The library is coming! The library is coming!”

Pete Hamill had a few jewels of his own. His newest novel, North River, out in June from Little, Brown, is set in 1930s New York. To explain his choice of time and place, he referred to his last novel, Forever, which he finished writing on September 10, 2001. He, owning up to its length, took another year to add in the events of 9/11 and cut something out—the Depression, an era he saved to tackle in his latest.

E.L. Doctorow early on declined to identify himself as a New York novelist: “New York does not confer literary identity.” For him, “If the time was hot in a certain place, that’s where the book was set.” To close with an interesting fact, he was named Edgar after Edgar Allen Poe, who he called “the greatest bad writer.” He asked his mother why he was named after an “alcoholic…delusional paranoid…with necrophiliac tendencies.” She was not amused.

Britain’s top best-selling female author is surprisingly a New Hampshire-based writer. In a Observer magazine profile, “The Great Unknown”, writer Louise France examines the reasons for the astonishing success of Jodi Picoult’s commercial novels like My Sister’s Keeper and The Pact, and ponders why the literary establishment ignores her.

France acknowledges that Picoult’s narratives may not be literary or elegant and that her prose sometimes can be clumsy and sentimental, yet her books are impossible to put down. Her formula for success, France determines, Is: “choose a subject which is soon to become controversial and tell the story through a rotating cast of characters. Stem cell research, date rape, domestic violence, sexual abuse, teenage suicide - here are some of the knottiest moral issues of our times sandwiched between the soft-focus covers of what is commonly dismissed as an airport novel.”  

And Picoult’s latest, Nineteen Minutes, is bound to be even more controversial in light of the Virginia Tech tragedy in which 33 people were shot to death by a lone gunman.

In the profile, Picoult describes in now chilling detail how she drew on the Columbine tragedy of 1999 to research  her story of a high school shooting. Noting that one high school principal thought the book should be banned, Picoult begs to differ, “‘This is a topic we need to start talking about. We can go on not talking about it, but a lot of kids are going to die. People want to believe that school shootings happen in big cities like New York, but they also happen in small towns like this, where there is a high socio-economic bracket.’

Like many bookies since Kurt Vonnegut’s death last week (see Heather’s blog of April 12th, below), a library fundraiser friend of mine reminisced about the author — and of his own encounter with the man:

“As a child of the Sixties, I regarded Vonnegut with awe for his truth-telling, hallucinogenic imagination, which was combined with a clear perspective – unusual qualities in members of our parents’ generation! As a college sophmore in 1972, I even wrote him a letter. It went unanswered — for a few decades, anyway.

“One May evening, five or so years ago, Vonnegut came to a benefit that I was running here in NYC. My assistant, 25 years my junior but as excited as she knew I’d be, told me that Vonnegut was “outside, smoking.” I went outside. I went over to him, declaring myself a fan and requesting an audience. I was even taller than he was — maybe that’s what did it. Anyway, he consented. I bummed a cigarette, saying I thought smokers were God’s true optimists.

“After only briefly talking about the event we had ducked out of, we spoke of his work and inspiration, and then I turned the conversation to sanity and drugs. We talked about his son Mark’s book Eden Express, which I had found deeply moving. Vonnegut said he thought it was the best description he had ever read of sliding into madness. We talked about LSD, how it could catalyze some into mental illness. I asked him if he had ever tripped and he said that when he was at Iowa in 1965, his friends had tried to get him to, but he never did, fearing it would leave him insane. With his offbeat creative abilities, perhaps one could presume a brain biochemistry that didn’t need hallucinogens.

“Cigarettes extinquished, we went inside. My letter had been answered.”

Yes indeed.