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The New Yorker's Online Cartoon Contest
Some of you may have entered The New Yorker’s caption contest located in the back of the weekly magazine. Well, they have gone a step further.
Now they have a cartoon contest where they give you a “cartoon kit” to work with (no drawing required). You create your cartoon and submit it. You can also look at other people’s submissions.
I haven’t submitted one yet, but I played around with it and it’s pretty fun. The “kit” comes with one background, and a bunch of inserts (such as people, dead fish, a letter, etc.) to pick from to create your cartoon.
To enter, you have to register (of course). The due date for this month’s cartoon is May 16, so get on it!
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Why men don't read books, or, yet another reason why being a woman is a disadvantage
My friend Nataliya sent me this article from Salon.com called Why men don’t read books.
The article doesn’t explain why men don’t read books, or even why the author believes men don’t read books. Classic use of a misleading title.
Few men work in book publishing, so there are few supporters in the industry for books that men in particular might like, causing fewer such books to be published or promoted and finally leading men to think that books are not for them.
This is the real thesis of the article. A thesis which is not explained, supported with examples, or proved in any way. Miller does pose theories on why men are so scarce in the publishing industry, but not why they don’t read.
The article concludes with a feminist slant:
Book editing, by contrast, increasingly resembles those “caring professions,” nursing and teaching, where the joy of laboring selflessly on behalf of a noble cause — in this case, literature — is supposed to make up for the lack of profits and respect. And we all know who does that kind of job, don’t we?
This article felt very messy to me, even though it touched on some interesting topics. I would take over her topic myself except I don’t believe that men don’t read. Sure, I’ve had the occasional boyfriend who was more interested in playing video games than ever picking up a book, but I’ve known far more men who do read, and read frequently.
I would love to write a response but I would have to pick which of her topics to respond to. Book publishing is “woman’s work”, men don’t read, men don’t work in publishing, women can’t pick books men like…what?
I’m not an industry professional (yet), but I always assumed big publishers had panels, or some way of gathering information on what people want to read or what is successful in the market.
Either way, I’m wondering if being a man would help me in my quest for a publishing job- being a minority in the industry might just help out.
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One Thing Books Have
I have been reading asofterworld.com since high school, so it’s been a long time. I have always loved the strange (yet funny) sentences paired with photography. This one caught my eye today because of its connection to books/e-readers. Just thought it’d be fun to share. Enjoy.
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What Makes a Bestseller Sell?
Being a thriller.
According to PublishersWeekly.com, this is the 10 hardcover fiction bestseller list for the week of May 3:
1 Deliver Us from Evil, David Baldacci
2 The Help, Kathryn Stockett
3 The Shadow of Your Smile, Mary Higgins Clark
4 The Double Comfort Safari Club, Alexander McCall Smith
5 This Body of Death, Elizabeth George
6 Lucid Intervals, Stuart Woods
7 Burning Lamp, Amanda Quick
8 Every Last One, Anna Quindlen
9 Changes, Jim Butcher
10 Eight Days to Live, Iris Johansen
I have not ever read anything by any of these authors, let alone the books on the list. Looking into the novels I found a theme: majority of them are thrillers that are a part of a series. Deliver Us from Evil is the sequel to The Whole Truth, Lucid Intervals is a part of the Stone Barrington cop series, Changes is a part of the fantasy thriller series Dresden Files, Eight Days to Live is a part of the Eve Duncan forensics thrillers series, The Double Comfort Safari Club is in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, and The Shadow of Your Smile and This Body of Death are also thrillers without a series.
The other three books on the list that aren’t thrillers are Burning Lamp (of the Arcane Society series) that falls under historical fantasy, Every Last One which is a family drama, and The Help, historical fiction based on the civil rights movement.
This tells me that people really love to read thrillers. I myself rarely touch the stuff, though in the past I have enjoyed a few of James Patterson’s novels and many of our book shelves are dedicated to my boyfriend’s collection of Lee Child novels. I understand the popularity of thrillers; they are easy to read, fast-paced, and typically have a twist lurking towards the last few pages.
What does this mean for the writers who strive to write the next great American novel? To be commercially successful would it be best to drop the metaphors and opt for car chases? In a world where the majority prefers to read entertaining trash instead of enlightening and thought-provoking works of art what is an author to do? Sell your soul and write a rerun series where good guy triumphs over bad guy?
And what demographic is purchasing these novels? It’s easy for me to imagine little old ladies in book clubs eating through something called The Double Comfort Safari Club, but I know men older and younger alike who love cop novels. Are they on the bestseller list because they appeal to such a wide demographic? Probably.
Thrillers and crime fiction have seen such an increase in popularity over the last decade that Patrick Anderson wrote a book on it called The Triumph of the Thriller in 2007 and Columbia professor Andrew Gelman wrote an article about it in March (obviously my ideas for posts are not particularly unique, oh well).
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Portland's Powell's Books Cancels Expansion
PORTLAND, Ore. — Over the last four decades, Powell’s Books has swelled into the largest bookstore in North America — a capacious monument to reading that occupies a full square block of this often-drizzly city. But this year, growth has given way to anxiety.
Having spent the last five years in Portland this story caught my attention. I got through college by selling my used books to Powell’s- they always paid pretty well.
It’s difficult to believe the store that already spans a full city block downtown and has an additional store on Hawthorne could possibly expand any further.
But now, Mr. Powell himself has announced they will not be going forward with an originally planned $5 million expansion.
That’s really too bad. I loved Powell’s when I lived in Portland and obviously I am in support of book stores expanding rather than shrinking. However I agree with the choice not to expand. It’s probably the worst time in the history of books to be trying to grow. We have the Kindle, the Nook, now the I-Pad. E-books are growing and hard copies may be shrinking away into the past.
So good on you, Mr. Powell, for not making what would most likely be a $5 million mistake. Maybe once this e-book thing fizzles out (please, please let it just be a fad!) you can go back to that expansion you were planning.
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Review: Fitting Ends, collection by Dan Chaon
I went on a serious Dan Chaon kick and ordered all of his books. That is why after this one I will have written three reviews on his work. I promise this is the last one. I am moving on. His collection Among the Missing was amazing and everything else I have read has been pretty boring.
Fitting Ends is a collection of short fiction, much of which is very reminiscent of his novel You Remind Me of Me, which I reviewed last week. His story “Do You Know What I Mean?” is about a rather nutty young man who tracks down his biological mother. Many of the details he uses in this story (a home for unwed mothers, taking them for ice cream and giving them pretend wedding bands) also show up in his novel with a similar character who is an unwed mother in that same home.
Because of the many similarities in his stories to You Remind Me of Me, it was hard not to feel as though I was reading his notes he compiled before writing the novel.
I wish I could say there were some stand out stories that really caught my attention, but there weren’t. It’s surprising how one author can write such a beautiful collection of stories and then have the rest of his work be so disappointing.
This collection features the story of a frat boy who causes one of his brothers to be mentally disabled after a car accident and how all he thinks about is that no one seems to like him. Another is the story of a boy whose gay brother comes home for a visit and thoroughly bothers him, another is about a man in financial trouble who follows his boss one day and mugs him, and the title story is about a guy whose brother was a delinquent and then gets hit by a train and dies.
All of the stories have similar themes: they are about characters who have come to a point in their lives when they realize they are over the hill. Most of his characters are pretty young- early twenties to early thirties, but they still all have a sense of having made poor decisions in life and are now realizing that they must live with these decisions. Decent enough theme but just not portrayed well enough for me. All of his stories were just too flat for me.
Once again, my suggestion is to read his collection Among the Missing, and skip the rest.
The next review will be of a science fiction novel called The Wind Up Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi.
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Advertising Can Be Works of Art
The Harper Studio posted something about an ad campaign by Penguin. The images from the campaign are pretty cool, I’ve never seen them anywhere else before. Here’s one of them:
Harper Studio found the ads on Ads of the World, so they’ve been making the circuit around the internet. Ads of the World features many really beautiful, interesting, creepy or just strange ads from, you guessed it, around the world.
Here are two other reading-related ads I liked:
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Betraying Salinger by Roger Lathbury
I am one of the few who never really cared for J. D. Salinger’s work. To be fair, I’ve only ever read The Catcher in the Rye, which I thought was overrated and annoying. Just my opinion, I know many disagree with it. Some books just don’t speak to some people.
I happened upon a feature story called Betraying Salinger on the New York Magazine website about a small publisher’s failed attempt at publishing Salinger’s last publicly released piece of writing. Even though I don’t care much about Salinger, I found the feature very well written and interesting.
It tells about Salinger’s strange rules about the release of his piece, Hapworth 16, 1924, and his unique personality and how the publisher messed up the book deal. Anyone who likes (and doesn’t like) Salinger’s work would find this piece interesting.
Another fun thing found was a list of author’s bashing authors, like this one about Salinger:
J.D.Salinger, according to Mary McCarthy (1962):
I don’t like Salinger, not at all. That last thing isn’t a novel anyway, whatever it is. I don’t like it. Not at all. It suffers from this terrible sort of metropolitan sentimentality and it’s so narcissistic. And to me, also, it seemed so false, so calculated. Combining the plain man with an absolutely megalomaniac egotism. I simply can’t stand it.
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Writing Contest List
I found a website from another person’s blog that lists contests of all sorts, but of course I was only interested in the writing sorts.
The site lists all kinds of contests available across the world, including screenwriting, short story writing, poetry, essay writing, and more. Many of the contests offer cash prizes, for those of you who are writing in poverty.
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You Remind Me of Me by Dan Chaon
Dan Chaon won me over with his collection of short fiction, Among the Missing, so I decided to see if he was as good at novels as he was short stories. My journey into his book You Remind Me of Me was rather disappointing. It held the same realistic elements he had in his short stories, but in bulk reads as dragging and overdone. I often found myself wishing the book would just end already.You Remind Me of Me is told through multiple characters’ perspectives. Jonah, a socially awkward young man looking for a brother his mother gave up for adoption before he was born, Troy, the brother who has lost his son due to a drug arrest, Nora, the mother of both, and Judy Keene, the grandmother of Troy’s son who seeks to keep the child away from Troy’s bad influence and redeem herself as a mother figure after her daughter’s decline into drug addiction.
It’s pretty heavy stuff.
Mostly, this is a story about four people who feel they have made too many mistakes in their lives, they all fantasize about what their lives might have been like had they made different choices, been born to different families, had better luck.
The concepts, the search for identity and the constant introspection of his characters is very beautiful and intriguing at first, but grows tedious and dull about halfway through. A lot of it ended up reading like filler, and I longed for some action between the long passages of inner thoughts.
It’s a deeply sad story, with little to no happy moments. By the end a lot of questions have yet to be answered and only Troy seems to have redeemed himself.
I also found it difficult to feel any empathy towards the characters. Troy was a deplorable drug dealer, Jonah was on the overly self-pitying psychotic side, Nora was legitimately insane and grotesquely self-centered, and Judy was harsh and kept Troy’s son from him.
It was amazing, however, the distinct differences between Troy and Jonah’s muddled and self-pitying voices and Nora’s clear, albeit crazy, voice. I often found myself wanting more chapters from Nora’s point of view, as her insights and feelings rang more interesting to me than Troy and Jonah’s.
I am not entirely turned off to Chaon’s novels and will probably try out his newer novel, Await Your Reply at some point in the future, but I would not recommend this book as your first taste of Chaon’s work.
Here is an interview with Chaon about his collections Fitting Ends and Among the Missing and his novel You Remind Me of Me.
I notice whole passages of “You Remind Me of Me” that were strongly affected by some of the stuff I was listening to as I wrote, bands like Sparklehorse, Red House Painters, The Innocence Mission, Julie Doiron, Yo La Tengo, Idaho, The Eels. My kids call it “suicide music,” but I find it very inspiring.
-Dan Chaon from interview in The Believer
Bent Shelf Book Reviews 