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Where, When, How Much, What Flavor.
Tomorrow my book tour begins. This article couldn't have come at a better time (via my friend Bella).
We're going to be shutting the lights out here at Where There's Smoke for the summer while I'm away and moving things over to the offical book site. Bookmark Now.net will be unveiled tomorrow.
The Virtual Book Tour reappears today featuring author, eh, me. In anticipation of the release of Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times next week, I'm doing a Virtual Tour of many of my favorite sites, book-related and otherwise. Look for me over the next 3 days at VBT HQ.
Wherein we discuss my hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, Cost Plus World Market and a mystery song. Can you name it?
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Hey ya'll, been wayyy too busy to blog over here. Book-related business is kicking my ass, but in a good way. I'm going to try to do some audioblogging from the Ann Arbor Book Festival, which I leave for tomorrow. I'll be speaking at 10 AM on Saturday in the Chemistry Building, a panel called "Publishing in an Unreaderly World." If you're around, why not say hello?
On my mind and in the reading queue this week.
*Webzine is back! (via Matt Haughey).
*Berkeley Rep. Theatre has a play running called "The People's Temple", an oral history of Jonestown. It's just been extended through JUne 5.
Steven Johnson recommends Devon Think, a software tool for book-length research projects. I'm thinking of getting it for book #2.
*When in Baltimore, I highly recommend a trip to the American Visionary Art Museum (what is visionary art?).
*The trailer for A Scanner Darkly sure looks cool.
*How NBC went from a first to last place network in one season.
*Reinventing NPR for the 21st century.
*Book comes out in 16 days. It barely seems real.
Backstory: I'll read anything Sarah Vowell does. And buy it in hardcover. So when I saw this one at The Booksmith, I grabbed it immediately and moved it to the front of the queue. I started reading it maybe a week later and soon it was following me on the bus, to the gym and the bathtub. At 250 pages and change, it didn't last long.
Notes: Sarah Vowell got fascinated with presidential assassinations and takes a road trip to visit historical sites even tangentially connected with the killings and deluted little men who pulled the triggers. Her friends, sister and nephew come along. Wisecracking and trivia abound, which is more than ok by me.
Verdict: Vowell, a self-proclaimed Americana nerd, will always be a favorite of mine. I just find her prose and normally her attitude, smart, funny and compulsively readable. Which is why I'll probably still buy her books even when they let me down. Vowell focuses resolutely on the deaths of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley which just be all that interests her but not even mentioning Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald or why they aren't included seemed bratty to me. Yes, we all been conspricacy-theoried to death. So say so and move on. Not mentioning it at all is like devoting a book to American car companies and leaving out Ford.
Also we're definitely reading a successful author at work here. The scrap and cynicism of Take the Cannoli and Partly Cloudy Patriot has been replaced by a vague sense of humoristic entitlement, of too many jokes forced into too many awkward places because the writer thinks every utterance she makes is hilarious. or at least believes we should think so. Most of them are but the presumption, as a reader, left me edgy and a little uncomfortable. Which is why I can't recommend AV as heartily as I can Sarah Vowell's earlier books, much as I would like to.
Wherein I celebrate Saturday morning, desserts and my mom's favorite book.
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The Pawnbroker (1964): "The past will continue to haunt you if you let it."
My friend Christine explains why two plastic gnomes have gone from being drunken letches to world travellers. The photos prove it. I plead "No Contest."
Today is Israeli Independence Day, #57. The official anniversary date is May 14 but because Israel goes by the Jewish calendar instead of the Gregorian one, the date bounces around every year.
A Wikipedia article on Israel.
Wherein we discuss the next three weeks, da book and Faygo the Cat.
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This just in: Richard Linklater has been tapped to direct a fictionalized adaptation of Eric Schlosser's mega-important book "Fast Food Nation". I've been following Linklater's career since his debut film Slacker (1991) and its follow-up Dazed and Confused which was the offical movie of my group of college friends. And since I once day asprie to write a book as good as FFN, this couldn't a happier confluence of events.
While Tom DeLay turns on a spit, back in his home state of Texas, the legislature has introduced a bill banning "overtly sexually suggestive cheerleading." Texas, of course, is the home of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, the National Cheerleaders Association and is such a cash cow for the state economy that it makes proposing this bill a little like Idaho trying to legislate the size of potatoes. But welcome to the right's view of female sexuality. They want it on display and seemingly available, just not to, ya know, everybody.
No wonder Molly Ivins had this to say about her sense of humor: "I'm not a very funny person. It's all in the material."
Thanks to the good people at Rocket Boom, my long search for the footage of Homestar Runner at South by Southwest is over. And now everyone will know what I mean when I say "Greetings Boston!" in a tardo-sort-of voice.
Wherein we discuss my 10 year college reunion my first job firing and when the Polyphonic Spree had a mere 21 members.
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Are you familiar with the Jewish Fashion Conspiracy? Or perhaps you have not experienced the joy of wearing a "Jews for Jeter" baseball jersey or a Channukah-themed thong?
It's all my friend Sarah's idea, who at work one day noticed that "Yosemite" looked a lot like "Yo, Semite!" I think it's brilliant. And I'm not just a customer. I'm also a Member of the Tribe.
Perhaps you're an aspiring writer with a book either in you, in process, or done. Then you've certainly heard the cry of "You need an editor," because ultimately, everybody does.
My friend Tara Weaver is a developmental editor which means she mostly looks at finished manuscripts and edits not just for mechanics but for style, narrative, literary merit and "saleability" to agents and publishers. She breaks it down in this interview.
Althought Tara and I haven't worked together, I can say that I've met scores of her happy clients. I'd recommend her in a heartbeat.
How this for ultra-contemporary? Salon reports that Sirius Satellite Radio will be starting an all-podcast show hosted by Adam Curry and called, rather unimaginatively, Adam Curry's Podcast Show.
The Virtual Book Tour is mentioned in this Boston Globe article today.
What a cool idea. Mundane Journeys is a project by San Francisco artist Kate Pocrass. Several times a week Pocrass leaves a treasure hunt described on her answering machine. You call the Mundane Journeys hotline and the hunt leads you past public art and the "easily overlooked, everyday details" that make life in San Francisco so special (mentioned by my friend Rosie at dinner last night).
On my mind and in the reading queue this week.
*Today is May Day. Take a moment to thank the workers in your life.
*According to the Justice Policy Institute, jail populations are soaring across America. Super (via Jeff Chang).
*Thomas Frank asks "What the hell is the matter with liberals?"
*Clear Channnel dips its toe in "indie radio" in Los Angeles. Rival behemoth Infinity Broadcasting is trying an all-podcast radio station in San Francisco (via Largehearted Boy).
*Why we do or don't go to literary readings.
*My friend George Kelly is interviewed in SFist this week (via Anil Dash).
*The National Recording Preservation Board has released its 2004 additions to the The National Recording Registry, a list of "cultural siginifcant" recordings preserved for eternity by the Library of Congress. Nirvana's "Nevermind" and Public Enemy's "Fear of a Black Planet" make the cut (via Librarian.net).
*My ten year college reunion is next week. Baltimore, here I come!
G Dog and the Homeboys: Father Greg Boyle and the Gangs of East Los Angeles by Celeste Fremon
Backstory: I heard Father Greg Boyle interviewed on "Fresh Air" and ordered the book immediately. I've been interested in gangs since I saw Colors as a diluted white, suburban teenager in 1988.
Notes: I cannot say enough about what a fabulous book this is. And not just because the subject (Jesuit preist devotes his life to ministering to latino gangs in East L.A.) yanks at your heart. It's fabulous because, in quiet defiance to the commandments of New Journalism, Fremon speaks openly about her own investment in her story. A lesser writer would come off as self-indulgent. Fremon comes off as both politically strident and heartbreakingly honest. She argues that gang policy based on crackdown and lock-up not only doesn't work but erodes community trust in law enforcement. Investment in at-risk-youth, while expensive, time consuming and politically inefficient, works. Greg Boyle now runs Homeboy Industries, a jobs and business program staffed entirely by ex-gang members, the largest of its kind in the world.
Verdict: Lovely, lovely, lovely. Read it immediately. Then re-read Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, my favorite book of 2003.
Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times edited by Kevin Smokler
