Reviews of books by David Hasselhoff and Alice Cooper will make it into the May 15 issue of LJ, but Criss Angel seems doomed to blog territory (see “Performing arts celebs spring out this season“). It happens sometimes, to our frustration, that a book doesn’t get reviewed because we don’t have the person for it. As far as Angel’s Mindfreak goes, I just don’t have enough tween boy reviewers.

Based on his popular TV show of the same name, his book is half biography and half how-to for magic tricks. I didn’t get through the introduction: a description of hanging from helicopters by hooks through his flesh isn’t my idea of good Monday morning reading. He writes, “While music [two of my favorite Korn songs, “Right Now” and “Alone I Break,”] pumped from my iPod, I felt so insignificant…The body suspension was as close to an out-of-body experience as I have ever had.” 

This made me think of a galley I recently saw—Save Me from Myself: How I Found God, Quit Korn, Kicked Drugs, and Lived To Tell My Story by Brian Welch, out from HarperSanFrancisco in July—a book whose audience I don’t predict is similar to that of Mindfreak and may be less easy to pin down. I must confess I was happy to pass this one on to Graham Christian for consideration in our new Spiritual Living column. In an effort for consistency (see the inaugural “Books of a Feather?“) let’s call the link between these two plausible, to use the ratings system of our friends the MythBusters. After all, Angel likes Korn, young boys like both, and both celebs have forthcoming soul-searching memoirs.

So I forgot to post my Subway Sighting of last week, and to make up for it, I’m going to bombard you with the book titles I’ve spied over the past two weeks. This is my highly unscientific experiment to determine if the good people of Gotham—at least those who ride and L and R trains—have a preference between fiction and nonfiction.

Fiction wins in this match-up, with Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, Kinky Friedman’s The Mile High Club, George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game (Bk. 1), and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness contributing to its victory. This doesn’t surprise me considering how much New Yorkers are assaulted with incarnations of “fact” via newspapers, subway ads, billboards, and street hustlers. Sometimes, a person just wants to go to a different (quieter?) place. 

Yet nonfiction’s no slouch either. Check Edward Luce’s In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India, W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, Will Blythe’s To Hate Like This Is To Be Happy Forever, and Brian W. Jones’s The Emperor Domitian, which give credence to the oft-repeated idea that New Yorkers are an informed, cerebral bunch all too eager to debate sport and politics.

Of course, you could read into these sightings for the length of the A train (the longest at 31 miles), and that’s what’s so fun. Books make me think, even when I’m only glancing at their covers.

It’s been holding the No. 1 slot on the New York Times best seller list in hardcover advice/how-to/miscellaneous. The Divine Miss O. dedicated two episodes to it in February, sparking the biggest book reorder in history (two million!). And, oh, yeah: the old Polish lady who walks a half-dead shitzu on my street in Brooklyn was reading a copy in the park.

Inquiring minds want to know: Why wasn’t Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret (BeyondWords/Atria) reviewed by your favorite library publication?Just who do I think I am not to assign this megaseller? It’s like this, book fiends: Publishers don’t submit every book to LJ; submissions get lost, stolen, or possibly eaten by feral dogs; and we certainly can’t assign everything that does land in the Bookroom. While our Xpress (that is, online-only) reviews allow for more coverage, there still aren’t enough reviewers at the ready—and not all books merit reviews. Some are simply more appropriate for LJ’s audience than others.

To be honest, I don’t remember The Secret. If it was submitted, it would’ve arrived around last September, three months before its November pub date, which means it was part of the fall deluge. I could’ve sent it to our trusty self-help columnist, Deborah Bigelow, who upon reading the press material wasn’t all that impressed by what the book purported to do. What self-respecting empowerment text doesn’t aim to “transform” or “teach”? Byrne’s credentials as a seeker/compiler of deep thoughts don’t make her unique, either.

My point is, it’s impossible to predict a best seller in the MySpaced-out age. Books with million-dollar publicity campaigns flop like dead fish. All that is certain is that Oprah has the Midas touch, and we Book Review editors don’t get fair warning. Ta.

I may be well informed about illness as the health & medicine editor, but that doesn’t make me immune to heinous stomach flus. Last Thursday, I was gripped by one while sitting at my desk. My trusty plastic garbage bin deserves an award for catching the torrent I unleashed into it with my mouth. Not to mention my colleague Anna Katterjohn, who had to hear it.

But I digress…this is a blog about what you do when you’re recovering from violent illness. You sure as hell don’t read books because it’s hard to keep your head up and your eyes open. I certainly didn’t have the physical or mental strength to take in even a trashy US Weekly. The way I see it, one brutal stomach spasm deserves a good belly laugh, so after I weathered the worst of the upchucking, I popped in season one of the cult comedy sketch show The Kids in the Hall, newly minted on DVD.

I came for the excellent parodies of teen angst crossed with rock’n'roll fantasy, not to mention the top-shelf drag and satire of corporate America (which predates The Office by over 15 years!). Little did I know I’d be treated to an impressive dose of book-inspired material.

My favorite example from my weekend viewing marathon: gay martini-sipping raconteur Buddy Cole (as played by Scott Thompson,  pictured below) considers the whole desert island scenario. His choice of book? Why, Peggy Hertz’s All About Rhoda (Scholastic, 1975), a now out-of-print guide to the Valerie Harper vehicle that can be had for between $1 and $8 on AbeBooks.com. His choice of companion? The one and only Oscar Wilde, who in his attempts to be a witty island mate shamelessly steals quips from other famous people, including Buddy (e.g., “Now I may have been born yesterday, but I still went shopping!”).

And how can I forget Dave Foley doing The Dr. Seuss Bible? It’s too long and potentially offensive to paste in here, but it’s damn witty and made the cut of a Dr. Seuss webliography compiled by a professor at Kansas State University. Read it and weep—and always, always wash your hands! 

Yesterday on a bitterly cold evening, I walked from my office on East 25th Street down to the New School in Greenwich Village to hear 24 of the 30 finalists for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Awards read brief excerpts from their nominated works. Since my job limits my precious reading time to the categories I assign (popular and genre fiction; natural history and sciences), I was curious to hear from the authors of the nominated autobiographies, works of criticism, biographies, literary novels, poetry collections, and general nonfiction.

I was not disappointed. I felt like a kid in a Baskin-Robbins store, sampling its 31 ice cream flavors from classic vanilla to yummy pistachio almond. Each author reflected his or her own unique reading and writing style. Comics artist Alison Bechdel displayed panels from her poignant graphic novel memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic as she narrated the story. Flaubert biographer Frederick Brown’s mellifluous voice and perfect French accent conjured up the rainy, muddy funeral of Flaubert’s dear friend, novelist George Sand. Novelist Dave Eggers introduced the real-life hero of his heartbreaking What is the What, Sudanese refugee Valentino Achak Deng, who movingly read the book’s final paragraph. And poet Daisy Fried, with two-month-old Quinn strapped to her chest (how’s that for a captive audience?) revealed her gritty, streetwise view of life in My Brother is Getting Arrested Again.  

For those who missed the reading or don’t live in New York City, all is not lost. BookTV on C-Span 2 plans to air the reading on Sunday March 11 at 7pm and Monday March 12 at 12am. For readers interested in learning more about the nominees, the NBCC blog Critical Mass is running an interesting series, “30 Books in 30 Days”, that profiles the authors and their books. The winners will be announced tonight in a ceremony at the New School.

At the beginning of my minibreak from reviewing (”mini” because it will last only until I find something intriguing in the bookroom or find an editor that needs a last-minute review of something I dig or know a little bit about) I am excited to get back to the three books I’ve left unfinished, along with loads of magazines.  

I was reminded to return to Danielle Trussoni’s memoir, Falling Through the Earth, as I was reading the books section of this week’s New York magazine. The favorable review of The Father of All Things reads, “Remarkably, Bissel comes at the subject [Vietnam] with a fresh perspective”: his father is a Vietnam War vet, and he travels there to find out more about his father’s defining experience.  What of Trussoni’s similar venture?  Her book, just out in paperback, made the Time’s “10 Best Books of 2006″ just 3 months ago. Perhaps along with roundups on arts and China (forthcoming), we’ll soon need one on memoirs by children of Vietnam veterans.

In the rest of my unfinished collection, I have The Little Prince and Volume 2 of the first graphic novel series I’ve read, Fables.  I’d recommend the latter to any adult looking for an entertaining introduction to the genre. (Download issue #1 or a sneak peak from DC’s web site.) However, it doesn’t even begin to represent the subgenres; check out the latest GN reviews coming in the March 15 issue, and read new ones nearly every week as Xpress Reviews.

This coming May marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of author Rachel Carson, whose 1962 book Silent Spring alerted the public to the dangers of pesticides and helped lay the groundwork for the modern U.S. environmental movement.

Carson began her writing and science career in 1936 at the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries (today the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service). In honor of the Service’s most famous employee, the Friends of the National Conservation Training Center is launching the Rachel Carson Online Book Club. Starting March 1 and running through November 2007, participants will study Carson’s life and works. Each month features a guest moderator who will also offer his or her own comments on the text under discussion. Moderators include Carson biographer Linda Lear (Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature), Houghton Mifflin executive editor Deanne Urmy, and Cindy Van Dover, marine biologist and director of the Duke Marine Laboratory.

Besides Silent Spring, other Carson books to be discussed include Under the Sea-Wind, The Sea Around Us, A Sense of Wonder, and Always Rachel: The Letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman, as well as a forthcoming anthology edited by Peter Matthiessen, Courage for the Earth: Writers, Scientists, and Activists Celebrate the Life and Writing of Rachel Carson (Houghton Mifflin, April 2007).

And if you want more Carson-related books to consider for a reading display or a book club, check out Priscilla Coit Murphy’s What a Book Can Do: The Publication and Reception of “Silent Spring“, Jim Lynch’s novel The Highest Tide, and The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement, a new biography by Mark H. Lytle. Both Lynch and Lytle will be moderators on the online book club.

The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) has announced its long list of nominees for the 2007 SIBA Book Award.Twenty-six novels, 24 nonfiction titles, 19 children’s books, 12 cookbooks, and six volumes of poetry made it past the first round of voting; following a selection of the finalists, the winners will be announced in June. 

To be eligible for nomination, a book has to have been published in 2006 and be about the South or written by a Southerner. Hence the fiction list has an interesting mix of the usual Southern suspects (Lee Smith’s On Agate Hill, Howard Bahr’s The Judas Field, Mark Childress’s One Mississippi) and some surprising picks (The Templar Legacy by South Carolina’s Steve Berry and The Collectors—well, David Baldacci is from Virginia, and the book is set in the nation’s capital, which at its core is very much a Southern city). But the novel  that should win just for the title alone is Mark Schweitzer’s comic liturgical mystery The Soprano Wore Falsettos, set in North Carolina.

On the nonfiction front, nominees included three regional reference works, The Encyclopedia of Appalachia, The Encyclopedia of North Carolina and South Carolina Encyclopedia, as well as Erik Reece’s compelling Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness (which was also picked as one of LJ’s Best Books of 2006), and the intriguing (to this oenophile) Thomas Jefferson on Wine by John Hailman. (Who knew the Founding Father was the Robert Parker of his day?)

For a complete listing of nominees, see Authors ‘Round the South (authorsroundthesouth.com), the SIBA-sponsored website to promote author appearances at independent bookstores in the South.