You can debate the list (and there is a growing discussion at nytimes.com doing just that), but three Booknoise books made it, and we’re pleased as holiday punch about that. Want to know what they are? Spook, The Survivor, and Garbage Land.
The books famous people loved in college.
Thoroughly entertaining comments by a variety of writers and journalists and TV writers, some fiction, some non-fiction. My own college literary crush was James Joyce, who was the subject of a survey course I took my freshman year. I ended up working as a teaching assistant for the professor, and read not only all of Joyce that year (except Finnegan’s Wake, of course), but Richard Ellman’s incredible biography and much writing about myth and language by people I found in the library stacks, like James George Frazer, Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Ernst Cassirer. Back then I believed Ulysses to be the greater book, but Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to be the more important (because it was, like, readable by everyone). That’s silly, but in hindsight all that reading gave me the confidence that I could tackle any subject if I put my mind to it.
What Amazon Sales Ranks Mean – Amazon Rank Equals Book Promotion and Marketing
The Amazon.com Sales Rank number listed for each book Amazon sells doesn’t mean much to readers, I don’t think, but for authors it is irresistible. The constantly changing rank is an indication that, if nothing else, there are sales. And a rank of 452,372, while not great, is still better than the rank of more than a million and a half other books! Self publishing authority Morris Rosenthal not only tracked the sales ranks of his self-published books, but seems to have done a lot of the hard work figuring out what they mean.
(Watch Out Weezer) – New York Times
“The thing that impresses me most about our editors is that they understand that it’s not all about the book. It’s about the money you can make from that book.” So says Jennifer Bergstrom, the publisher at Simon Spotlight Entertainment, which doesn’t sound like a book company name, does it?
That’s the point, of course, and this story in the NY Times (for which you have to register or subscribe after a few days) is full of interesting and scary marketing ideas. That the marketing commences at conception is a given for SSE.
Let’s Talk – Sierra Magazine – Sierra Club—
Garbage Land is featured in the December issue of the Sierra Club’s magazine (currently on the Sierra Club website), with discussion questions for reading groups.
If you’re in Nashville on November 8th you may want to stop by the Downtown Public Library, where the Greens will be discussing Elizabeth Royte’s “Garbage Land,” as well as establishing criteria for nominating and endorsing candidates.
The Times Book Review Back Page: How to tell when it’s over.
bootstrap analysis: book review: the tapir’s morning bath—
One of the amazing things about the internet (and how many times a day do I say this?) is the way it skews time. Not because so many inconsiderately neglect to date their posts, but because stuff lingers.
Elizabeth Royte published the Tapir’s Morning Bath in 2001, but a reader who knows the subject (field biologists in the rain forest doing their work, deciding if research or political advocacy is more important) found the book recently and wrote a very understanding review just this week.
If you’re Elizabeth, isn’t that excellent?
“A diligent, cheerful account of efforts to learn whether science can show that there is (or isn’t) life after death.”
“Roach proved her fine sense of humor in 2003’s strangely amusing and
uncreepy Stiff, her affectionate look at human cadavers. Here, she
delves back into death, searching for scientific proof of an afterlife.
She heads to rural India to interview reincarnation subjects, handles a
piece of alleged ectoplasm at Cambridge University’s library, and
enrolls in an English school for mediums. Along the way, she asks all
the familiar questions that plague the death-obsessed: ‘What happens
when we die? Does the light just go out and that’s that…? Or will
some part of my…me-ness persist?… What will I do all day? Is there
a place to plug in my laptop?’ Alas, she doesn’t find the answers. But
Roach is such a smart and breezy companion that it’s enough to watch
her realize that in the end she might not need them.”