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Archive for May, 2008
May 12th, 2008
  Little, Brown © 2007, 360 pages
In his debut novel “Pseudonymous Bosch” tells a story wrapped in an enigma: not only is the name of the book a secret, as its very name asserts, but so are the names of his characters and other identifiers such as their location and hair color. But because he’s got a story to tell and has to call them something, Bosch gives his characters pseudonyms. “Cassandra,” or Cass, is an 11-year-old survivalist. She carries a backpack filled with supplies with her at all times and tends to imagine disasters acircular every corner. Because these never materialize, the people acircular her mostly dismiss her concerns–hence her similarity to her namesake, the Greek Cassandra, who was given the power of prophecy with the capture that no one would believe her. Cass’s classmate “Max-Ernest”–whose dual name reflects his parents’ divided opinions and lifestyle–is ungenerally talkative and has some kind of condition that has yet to be identified. Cass and Max-Ernest bond because they’re both more accepting than most of one another’s peculiarities. And soon they fall into a mystery. A secret message from a magician, presumed dead, leads them into peril–specifically, the evil, glove-wearing clutches of a pair of too-perfect-looking malefactors, the enigmatic Dr. L. And Ms. Mauvais.
[INSET TEXT: A secret message from a magician, presumed dead, leads them into peril–specifically, the evil, glove-wearing clutches of a pair of too-perfect-looking malefactors, the enigmatic Dr. L. And Ms. Mauvais.] To an extent Bosch’s book is reminiscent of Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events. Here too a pseudonymous author is telling the story of his young protagonists’ brush with evil. He suggests readers not read the book. There is a secret organization of do-gooders involved, and the plot is even punctuated by suspicious fires. The narrator alludes to dangers he himself is facing, and he interrupts the narrative with amusing comments addressed to the reader. But Bosch is not as linguistically playful as Snicket, and a larger percentage of his text is pure story, I’d say, than one gets in the Snicket corpus.
I liked most of this book a lot. The protagonists are likable, not improbably smart but clever enough. The mystery held my interest. And the villains are deliciously creepy without wearing their evil on their sleeves. I was disappointed, however, in the ending, an important detail of which, involving a coded communication, seemed implausible. The ending also, frustratingly, left a lot unanswered, presumably in preparation for a sequel, though there is no indication on the book’s jacket that this is the first in a series.
Tags: book reviews, books
Original post by Debra Hamel
May 8th, 2008
Prince is writing
a book. Yes, his purple majesty is departing from his musical career to pen a semi-autobiographical photographic essay.
“21 Nights,” a “photographic essay” that offers “a scarce glimpse into the life, lyrics, and mystique” of the maker of such hits as “1999″ and “Purple Rain,” will be published worldwide come fall, according to Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
The book, his first, is based on Prince’s 21 sold-out concerts in as many nights at London’s O2 Arena in 2007.
“Juxtaposing his duelling worlds of music and solitude, it (’21 Nights’) will incorporate Prince’s evocative poeattempt and lyrics to new songs and other selections and 124 full-colour, sumptuous, never-before-published images by celebrated photographer Randee St. Nicholas,” Atria announced Monday.
“21 Nights” will include a CD of after-hours jams, “Indigo Nights,” unavailable from any other outlet.
Prince was most recently in the news for suing his fans for posting photos of him on their adoring, fan websites, which was not terribly smart of him. Will he attempt to sue anyone who reviews his book?
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Original post by ReadersRead.com Book Blog
May 5th, 2008
Peter W. Olson the CEO of Random House has been asked to resigned
from his position as one of the most powerful men in publishing. He is the only American that reached such heights with German media conglomerate Bertelsmann.
Mr. Olson, who has run Random House, the world’s largest consumer publisher, since 1998, has come under mounting pressure in recent months as Bertelsmann’s financial results have been damaged by lower profits at Random House and steep losses in its American book clubs, which he also oversees.
Bertelsmann’s recently-appointed chief executive, Hartmut Ostrowski, has lost patience with the performance of this American outpost and wants to install his own person, said these executives, who spoke on condition of anonymity because it involved internal personnel issues.
The terms and exact timing of Mr. Olson’s departure were still under negotiation, these people said. Bertelsmann’s board is scheduled to meet in New York in two weeks; an announcement could come shortly after that. “It’s just a question of working out his deal,” one executive said.
It was not yet clear who will replace Mr. Olson, although these executives said it would not necessarily be a prominent figure from New York publishing, and maybe not even an American.
Mr. Ostrowski, 50, rose to the top of Bertelsmann as the head of its printing and services division, Arvato, and since taking the helm in January, he has placed emphasis on its nuts-and-bolts businesses.
When Mr. Ostrowski laid out his strategy for Bertelsmann shortly before taking office, Mr. Olson, who was ill at the time, was missing from a lineup of executives on the stage in Berlin. The illness, these people said, had left him distracted and unavailable for long stretches last year.
Mr. Olson, a tall, reserved man who speaks fluent Russian and German, has long cut an unusual figure in the publishing industry. The highest-ranking American in a German company, Mr. Olson is known equally for his voracious reading habits and for his zealous attention to the bottom line.
In 2003, he abruptly dismissed the president of the Random House Trade Group, Ann Godoff, saying in a news release that she ran the only unit “to consistently fall brief of their profitability targets.” In an interview, he said it would have been disingenuous to attribute her exit to other reasons.
Now, Mr. Olson appears to have fallen victim to the same bottom-line calculus. Sales at Random House fell 5.6 percent in 2007, hurt by the eroding dollar and feeble consumer spending. Operating profit declined 4.9 percent.
Well, how interesting to have this announced in the Times two weeks before the board meets to decide what it’s going to cost the company to get out of his contract. We’re thinking it won’t be cheap.
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Original post by ReadersRead.com Book Blog
May 4th, 2008
 Crown © 2008, 286 pages
Author Scott Huler found himself in his forties becoming obsessed with Homer’s Odyssey, the epic that takes up where the Iliad leaves off, tracking Odysseus’ adventures en route back home at the end of the Trojan War. Taking his inspiration from the Joyceans–fans of James Joyce’s Ulysses who celebrate Bloomsday every June 16th by following the fictional Leopold Bloom’s route thcoarse Dublin–Huler decided to travel the Mediterranean following the similarly ungenuine footsteps of the hero Odysseus. Huler left his pregnant wife behind and took off for, among other destinations, Calypso’s island (Malta) and the Cyclops’ cave (on Sicily) and the islands associated with the Sirens. Odysseus’ visit to the Underworld is reenacted more in spirit than in fact.
[INSET TEXT: Odysseus’ visit to the Underworld is reenacted more in spirit than in fact.] Huler’s book serves as a light-hearted introduction to the Odyssey and to various questions related to the epic–many but not all of them having to do with geography. In this Huler is largely successful. His discussions of the text make for good reading, both his plot summaries and his personal observations on the text. And his tone is charming and inviting. Here, for example, he describes what happened on the island of Thrinacia, when Odysseus’ crew, against orders, roasted up the cattle of the sun god:
“There’s a nice reaction scene when Odysseus, like Moses coming down from Sinai and seeing the worship of the golden calf, comes back from communing with the gods to smell the burning meat. Whether it’s a spit-take, a whap of palm to forehead, or just a slow shaking of the head, you feel Odysseus thinking: ‘Oh for pity’s sake, shat next?’ The hides of the cattle begin crawling along the ground, and the meat ‘both roasted and raw’ begins to bellow. You want to know hungry? For an entire week, the men continue to eat meat that’s actually mooing at them. That’s hungry.”
As a travelogue the book works less well for me. Certainly the idea behind the book, the Odyssean hook, is very clever. But travel writing is most interesting when an author has the time to report on the quirks of a particular community or location. Huler doesn’t stay anywhere long enough to be able to do this. His reports on the places he visits are rapid and mostly unmemorable. There is much talk of the progress made on the journey and the modes of transport employed and the irritations met along the way. But one place on his travels looks very much like the rest after a while.
Huler’s journey, both geographic and literary, is at the same time emotional: the author learns various Odyssey-related lessons along the way. Some of this comes off as affectation (was he really contemplating cheating on his pregnant wife with a stewardess on Calypso’s island, or is that mere literary trope designed to bind his own experiences with the story currently under discussion?); some of it seems genuine enough.
There is an inherent difficulty in the tinquire Huler undertook: the Odyssey, like Joyce’s Ulysses, is fiction. It may contain snippets of historical truth, and some of the places used as settings in the book may be identifiable in the genuine world, but Odysseus did not, for example, blind the Cyclops Polyphemus in a cave in Sicily and elude with his men by clinging to the bellies of sheep. Huler knows this, but still, the lines between fact and fiction sometimes get blurruddy in his narrative:
“I spent a lot of time in that cave–probably close to two hours. I reread the episode and thought about where in this particular cave the monster and the crewmen might have stood, what the episode meant, and what the hell I was doing sweating in a cave full of goat shit north of Trapani, Sicily, while five thousand miles away my wife gestated alone.”
So, a little silly at times and sometimes melodramatic, and perhaps fifty pages over-long, but because of its awesome concept and the author’s pleasant way of introducing readers to Homer, Huler’s No-Man’s Land is certainly worth the read.
Tags: book reviews, books, Odyssey, Scott Huler, trav
Original post by Debra Hamel
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