Limboland: Guest Column Reprint by "bluegill"

Alfred Lubrano is a Columbia-trained journalist and author. He's also the son of a bricklayer. His book, Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams chronicles the feelings and experiences of those who move from one social class to another and the ever-present uneasiness of not fully belonging to either that accompanies that journey.

Having grown up with a shovel in one hand and a book in the other, it's a feeling I well understand. Certainly, it's one I've been struggling with more than usual as of late, owing to the fact that the notion of revitalization applies to one's person as much as it does to a city. Self-reinvention can be a tough business, especially if one leads a dualistic life to begin with.

It's likely a product of some logical fallacy whose name I don't have the energy to summon at the moment, but it occurs to me that the reverse is true as well. If my own revitalization process resembles that of a city, then the city's process must resemble that of mine, thousands of mes, all going through some sort of loosely collective, simultaneous experience, passing from one way of being into another.

Lubrano from Limbo:

We didn't know it then, but those days were the start of a branching off-a redefining of what it means to be a workingman in our Italian-American family. Related by blood, we're separated by class, my father and I. Being the white-collar child of a blue-collar parent means being the hinge on the door between two ways of life. With one foot in the working class, the other in the middle class, people like me are Straddlers, at home in neither world, living a limbo life. It's the part of the American Dream you may have never heard about: the costs of social mobility. People pay with their anxiety about their place in life. It's a discomfort many never overcome.

What drove me to leave what I knew? Born blue-collar, I still never felt completely comfortable among the tough guys and anti-intellectual crowd who populated much of my neighborhood in deepest Brooklyn, part of a populous, insular working-class sector of commercial strips, small apartment buildings, and two-family homes. I never did completely fit in among the preppies and suburban royalty of Columbia, either. It's like that for Straddlers, who live with an uneasiness about their dual identity that can be hard to reconcile, no matter how far from the old neighborhood they eventually get. Ultimately, "it is very difficult to escape culturally from the class into which you are born," Paul Fussell's influential book Class: A Guide through the American Status System quotes George Orwell as saying. The grip is that tight. That's something Straddlers like me understand. There are parts of me that are proudly, stubbornly working class, despite my love of high tea, raspberry vinaigrette, and National Public Radio. Born with a street brawler's temperament, I possess an Ivy League circuit breaker to keep things in check. Still, I've been accused of having an edge, a chip I've balanced on my shoulder since my days in the old neighborhood.

Listen to Lubrano's interview with Liane Hansen from NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday, October 26, 2003, and let me know what you think.

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Thanks, bluegill, for permission to reprint your posting from March 20, 2007.

Limboland by Alfred Lubrano
ISBN 9780471714392 John Wiley & Sons Feb. 2005 (Paperback) $16.95 248pp.
Originally released in hardcover in Oct. 2003.

If you'd like to read more by "bluegill" (the nom de plume of New Albanian Jeff Gillenwater) and his colleague at NA Confidential, click that link. The permanent link to Jeff's posting and its associated comments is http://cityofnewalbany.blogspot.com/2007/03/limboland.html.

I'll tell you that NA Confidential is essential reading. Ann and I read it every day. Its editors are literate and provocative, and the blog is always a pleasure to read.

Johnson Agonistes

Every author goes through a unique process in bringing his or her book to fruition. Keeping a novel on track is perhaps the most difficult. Plot points may come easily, but the writing lags. An author may be a tremendous writer, but a horrible juggler of the plot points that constitute a narrative. For most, it is a solitary undertaking and, lacking the resources to fact check, proof, and edit can make writing a novel the hardest of professions.

This weekend we are honored to host the book launch for a debut novel and its author, Robin L. Johnson. His book, James Christens, is set in Louisville, but I hope that it's not set in any kind of Louisville you are familiar with.

I won't give away a lot of the story, but here's a brief description. The metro police are stymied by a baffling series of unsolved killings. After years of investigation, they still have not been able to stop the terror of a serial murderer. It's not for a lack of clues - in fact, each crime scene is overloaded with evidence of a truly twisted mind. And yet, still no arrests.

Famed criminologist Robert Brampton is called in. The supremely confident Brampton approaches each case the same way - with assurance that his analytical techniques will unearth the killer. And the local task force finds itself now being directed by a dispassionate sleuth whose "rules" for solving a crime don't always rub the locals the right way.

I have to tell you, the killings in this novel rival those of Thomas Harris's character, Hannibal Lecter. But unlike in Red Dragon or Silence of the Lambs, this book takes us much more deeply into the backstory of the killer. I'll let you be the judge as to whether Johnson intends you to empathize with the killer, but then I doubt you'll be anything but terrified by everything you read. It's a good read.

We first encountered Robin in 2005. The story of how he reached this point is pretty interesting. Over the course of several months, Robin released chapters of James Christens by blogging it. That's right. Many of our early readers were privileged to read parts of this book more than two years ago.

Johnson used the interactive nature of the Internet to refine his storytelling and engage the reader in a way few authors are able to. One of the engaging methods he used was to run an online contest for readers who could solve plot-driven puzzles as each "chapter" was released. He buried a capsule of prizes somewhere in this very region, a capsule that could only be found by solving the puzzles. Because readers logged in from all 24 time zones, Robin ran a virtual contest for people around the world who couldn't possibly come to Inditucky to search.

The much-missed Bill Kenney, the Georgetown blogger and polymath who passed away last year, was the grand prize winner, but that's the least part of the story. Bill's encouragement and feedback were, as Robin tells it, an important part of Robin's progression from story idea to finished book.

Please consider joining us on Saturday, March 31, at 4 p.m. Robin will sign and discuss his book during a book launch party at Destinations Booksellers.

Did You Know (DYK)?

I don't know about you, but I read to learn. The enjoyment of reading is inextricably tied up with the joy of learning. Even with fiction, I require that the author provide me with new information, or new perspectives on information.

When I recommend a book, then, it is because something in that book has met my "edification quotient." The EQ is a stable and useful, if not quite fully developed measure of the depth of a person. I won't go so far as to say it improves the character or quality of a woman or man, but I will venture that an improvement in one's EQ is a cause for celebration and any efforts to share the tool (the book, article, film, or song, the painting, sculpture, lecture, or photograph) that caused that improvement is an imperative.

Whew! That's the long way around to share with you a very brief tidbit from The Iron Whim. You'll recall we touched on it in yesterday's rather lengthy posting. Darren Wershler-Henry has compiled a very readable history of typewriting. It's not entirely a history of the machine itself, but rather, tries to capture the sociological and economic impact that the whole process of typewriting has had on our society, and in particular, our literature and culture.

You may think all of the above is boring, that it sounds like a lot of work. Nope. It's hardly breezy, but it is completely enjoyable and you'll feel your EQ rising with the turn of every page.

Here's a few of the DYK moments...

William S. Burroughs, he of The Naked Lunch, is an acknowledged master of 20th Century avant-garde literature, much of which was semi-autobiographical. The typewriter was an integral part of his ouvre, so much so that when director David Cronenberg brought The Naked Lunch to film, his Kafkaesque touch brought the typewriter into the ranks of horror icon. But did you know that William S. Burroughs was the scion of a major office machine family? We oldsters remember the Burroughs Company mainly as the makers of adding machines (soon to be seen at New Albany's Museum of Trade and Industry?). But Burroughs made a pretty fine typewriter for several years, and the younger Burroughs came to his fascination honestly.

Henry David Thoreau, the civilly disobedient transcendentalist philosopher and no mean writer himself, spent much of his career working in his family's business, which produced the finest pencils in 1840s America. But get this: "In drafting a list of essential supplies for a twelve-day trip into the woods (remember Walden?), Henry David Thoreau (pronounced like 'thorough') neglects to include the pencil with which he composed the list, and conducted his extensive journal-keeping...even though he had worked with his father at Thoreau & Company."

Now, let's just appropriate the following excerpt:

Consider the sentence "Amaranath sasesusos Oronoco initiation secedes Uruguay Philadelphia." (Not quite "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.") The meaning of this sentence has nothing to do with the normal logic of syntax and everything to do with the logic of how letters appear on a typewritten page. It was usually the first thinng ever typed on each new typewriter, and its sole function was to check the alignment of a typewriter that had just rolled off the production line before it was shipped. Unlike most sentences, it was rarely spoken, (duh!) and no one particularly cared what it might mean in the conventional sense.

How does it work? "Amaranath," the misspelled name of an imaginary flower, checks the alignment of the vowel "a" between a number of common consonants. "Oronoco" checks the "o" key, while "secedes," "initiation," and "Uruguay" check three vowels that are among the most commonly used of all letters, "e," "i," and "u." "Sasesusos" not only compares four of the five vowels in the same word against the baseline of the letter "s," but also "includes several of the most common letter combinations in twentieth-century business English." "Philadelphia" checks the horizontal alignment of "i" and "l," the narrowest letters on the keyboard.
How's your EQ now?

The Iron Whim: The Fragmented History of Typewriting by Darren Wershler-Henry
ISBN 9780801445866 March 2007 Cornell University Press (Hardcover) $29.95 331pp.

Oprah's Made Her Pick

and it is (drumroll, please)...The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. This brilliant storyteller (from Knoxville originally) weaves a disturbing story of a post-apocalyptic West.

I've ordered conservatively, so if you want the book right away, please call the store early to be sure you get it now.

This paperback edition had been scheduled for release in September of 2007, but the lure of a March boost must have proved to be too tempting to Vintage, the publisher.

ISBN 9780307387899 (Quality Trade Paperback) $14.95

So Many Books

Crippled by a balky Internet connection, I’ve been forced to use “work” time to keep the blog going on a daily basis. The other option is to run the risk of not getting anything up until later in the day. Recognizing that most of you will be looking for new content in the a.m., I’ve been posting in the evening when I can to make sure something new is up by the time the store opens. So, sometimes you’ll be able to read “tomorrow’s” posting today.

I continue to invite you to contribute content and commentary, whether by e-mail or by using the handy “comment” button at the end of each post. You might find that you like it.

A new books season is upon us, and the good ones are coming in faster than I can possibly cover them. Today I’m going with quick hits. I may come back to some of these later with a fuller preview. So here goes.

First up is The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of Typewriting, by Darren Wershler-Henry. Populated with characters as diverse and separated in time as Bram Stoker, Jack Kerouac, and David Letterman, the book is an “intelligent, irreverent, and humorous history of writing culture and technology.” ISBN 9780801445866 Cornell University Press $29.95 321pp.

Next is Jan Pienkowski’s The Fairy Tales. This is a lavishly illustrated (color and black-and-white) telling of four classic tales from Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and Hansel and Gretel. It’s of such high quality it’s sure to be a treasure handed down from generation to generation. ISBN 9780141382241 Viking $19.99 186 pp.

A brand-new series of games has just been released by Dr. I.B. Wrongo that makes learning fun. Yeah, that’s a cliché, but wait until you hear about this. That's Right, That's Wrong! This trivia game awards points for correctly identifying the wrong answer. “Where is Des Moines? Iowa or Indiana? If you said Iowa, that would be right. But in this game, we’re looking for the wrong answer. No points for you!” Alan Katz is the author and the game actually makes you smarter by giving you additional facts to help you remember why the answer is wrong. We’re rolling out the first sets for grades 1-4 right now (the above question was for second-graders). ISBN 9781416906728 Little Simon $9.99.

Remember Being Dead is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies’ Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral? It was a huge hit here and everywhere. Part recipe book, part etiquette book, and a gut-bustingly funny book all around, the sequel from Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays is here – Somebody is Going to Die if Lilly Beth Doesn’t Catch That Bouquet: The Official Southern Ladies’ Guide to Hosting the Perfect Wedding. ISBN 9781401302955 Hyperion $19.95 258pp.

Also just released or back in stock:Randy Wayne White’s Hunter’s Moon, a Doc Ford/Sanibel Island thriller. Doc saves the life of an ex-President vacationing on Florida's Gulf Coast, but that's just the start of the mystery. ISBN 9780399153709 Putnam $24.95 377 pp.

Finding the Next Starbucks: How to Identify and Invest in the Hot Stocks of Tomorrow, by Michael Moe. A top research stock analyst shares his tips for identifying those companies who’ll grow from tiny acorns to giant oaks. ISBN 9781591841340 Portfolio (Penguin) $26.95 374 pp.

Infidel, the autobiography of the Islamic woman who became a Dutch parliamentarian, only to become a target for Islamist terrorists. Her honesty is called unpalatable by millions, and lauded by equal numbers. ISBN 9780743289689 Free Press $26 353 pp.

American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever is back in stock. It’s subtitle reads Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work. ISBN 9780743264617 Simon & Schuster $26 223 pp.

Recently featured on WFPL’s State of Affairs was Elizabeth Hickey’s The Wayward Muse. The Louisville-educated author has put forward her second art-themed historical novel after The Painted Kiss. This time, it’s Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris and the story of their love triangle with Jane Burden. ISBN 9780743273145 Atria $24 293 pp.

Previously on the marquee:
The Power of a Positive No by William Ury (say not, but still get to yes)
Blackwater by Jeremy Scahill (world's mercenary army)
Evolution for Everyone by David Sloan Wilson (science and religion)
When the Light Goes by Larry McMurtry (more from Last Picture Show country)
Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride by Michael Wallis
Deep Economy by Bill McKibben (a durable future)

Just the Facts, Ma'am

Isabel "Izzy" Spellman is good at her job. She might be a disaster at love and other pursuits you and I would call "normal," but she genuinely likes her job and shows great talent for it.

But then, why wouldn't she? It runs in the family.

The Spellman Files, by Lisa Lutz, is the first in a hilarious series about Spellman Investigations - mom, dad, brother, sis - they spend more time spying on each other than on their clients' jobs. The chaos wends from case to case, and Lutz has organized the book thusly.

The author, who wrote the screenplay for the 2000 film Plan B (which, by coincidence, features friend Ruthanne Wolfe's niece Traci Ann Wolfe, previously mentioned on this blog), shows great skill at quick character development. In fact, this seems more like a tryout for a weekly TV series along the lines of Monk or House.

Here's an excerpt from The Snow Case:

As Uncle Ray bit his tongue and entered the Wax Museum, I knocked on the door of Joseph and Abigail snow's house on Myrtle Avenue in Marin County. When Mrs. Snow opened the door, I was blasted by an overwhelming fragrance that emanated from the home. I would later learn that the scent was potpourri, but there were too many other effects offending my sensibilities at that moment for me to investigate the odor.

Abigail Snow, now in her early sixties, was wearing an outdated floral dress that looked like it came from the wardrobe of a 1950s sitcom star. Her hair, as well, was trapped in the past and in half a can of hairspray. She was probably about five foot six, but her stocky build, which was more sturdy than plump, made her seem taller and oddly intimidating. While her attire was (in my estimation) unflattering, it was kept in immaculate condition. When I entered the house, I would discover that this was a theme for Mrs. Snow - tasteless, but immaculate.

Back in November when I put my order in for this book, I knew it would appeal to fans of Stephanie Plum, although it's hard to see Izzy having much of a successful romantic life.

Janet Evanovich, look out!

The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz
ISBN 9781416532392 March 2007 Simon & Schuster (Hardcover) $25

One on One With the Author

Did you ever want to spice up your book club in a way you've never been able to do?


How about having a national bestselling author make a visit?

Ballantine Books is holding a contest to bring the author of The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood to you.

A naturalist by trade, Sy Montgomery had always felt more comfortable with animals than with people. So she gladly opened her heart and home to a sickly piglet who had been crowded away from feedings by his stronger siblings. Yet Sy had no inkling that this piglet, later named Christopher Hogwood, would not only survive, but flourish - and through Christopher, she soon found herself united with the people in her small town community in ways she had never dreamed possible.

The Good Good Pig is a story about discovering the meaning of family, the value of community, our ability to love and be loved, and our relationship with all creatures great and small. Not only will this not-so-little piggy steal your heart, he'll have your book club talking for hours.

Choose The Good Good Pig as your next book club selection and enter for a chance to have author Sy Montgomery attend one of your club's meetings in person. The first 200 clubs to respond will receive a free hardcover copy of The Good Good Pig. Visit www.goodgoodpig.com/bookclub for full rules and contest details.

Thanks to Ballantine Books for making the above offer. The book is available in hardcover now and in paperback on April 17. Book clubs purchasing five or more copies can get the hardcover for the same price as the paperback between now and that date.

Sunday Notebook - March 25

You'll have noticed the "browse inside" features we've added recently. It's certainly not the same as holding the book and flipping through it, but it's a nice touch that just became available to the wider universe of Web sites. That the launch of HarperCollins's and Random House's feature coincided with the kickoff for this blog is just that - coincidence.

Sunday's are notebook days, not because I couldn't preview a book for you, but because I want the blog to offer more to you than a "buy this book" posting. Reserving Sunday's for education instead of sales (but look below for Sunday: The History of the First Day From Babylonia to the Super Bowl) is the best way to ensure we stick to our objectives.

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The unique identifier for any book - the one way you can be sure you're getting the precise edition you want (paperback, hardcover, reinforced binding, audio, 3rd revision, etc.) - is the ISBN. It's pretty straightforward. International Standard Book Number. Until January, the ISBN was a 10-digit number. On January 1, 2007 the book world began to transition to a 13-digit numbering system. In these early days, it doesn't really matter if you know the 10 or the 13 - either is a unique identifier of the same book and our software verifies that there will be no confusion. When you call and say "I have the ISBN if that will help..." it ensures that we are pulling the "right" book for you. We don't always need it, but it is useful. That's why I always try to include it on first impression on this blog. Unfortunately, I can't persuade the newspaper to do that, but then, even the publisher Web sites bury that important number.

Did you ever wonder why most ISBN's are more complex than they need to be? You know. Pick up a book and look on the back cover where the bar code is, or look on the copyright page inside. The ISBN is "cluttered" with dashes separating the digits. Old-time booksellers became savants about ISBN's in the pre-computer age. Those dashes were a critical element that told them who the publisher (or imprint) was. Today, you'll learn how to read an ISBN yourself.

ISBN 13: 978-0-312-34729-1 and ISBN 0-312-34729-4 are the same book. You will want to read this when it comes out in July. Trust me!

So how to read this? The 978 simply identifies it as a book delivered in any type of media. Later, 979 will be added. This precursor number was added to normalize the books industry with others. The ubiquitous UPC (uniform product code) has been at 13 digits for some time, and at the retail/consumer level, books have been out of sync. That's why "drugstore" paperbacks wouldn't scan in a bookstore. The major chains required publishers to cater to their systems for the mass market paperbacks. Bookstores would have to scan the inside front cover to accommodate the Krogers, Targets, and Waaaa...I can't type the word.

As a quick aside, there's another reason the inside back cover includes an ISBN bar code. Mass market paperbacks (the $5.99 to $9.99 ones) aren't designed to last. They are designed to be read once and discarded. They are so little regarded that many publishers have no interest in recovering them if they don't sell. Some retailers (not bookstores) simply tear the cover off the paperback and mail that back to the publisher, then throw (recycle) the book away. You'll often read inside a MM paperback a legal notice that says if you've received this book without a cover, the book has been stolen. It was sent out to be sold or "stripped." The ISBN is on the inside cover so that the whole book doesn't have to be sent back.

Back to ISBN's. 978 says it's a book. The next digit, 0 (zero), is the national identifier. In the U.S. and English-speaking world, 0 or 1 indicate that. There are more than 160 official agencies authorized to issue ISBN's, but only one in the U.S. The others are reserved for individual countries or country groups. In this country, only Bowker can issue you an ISBN publisher identifier. If anyone tries to "sell" you an ISBN, you are being defrauded and participating in a fraud, too.

ISBN 13: 978-0-312-34729-1. "978" is for books. "0" is for U.S. The "312" identifies the publisher. A large publisher with multiple imprints or one who has acquired other publishers might have dozens of these. In this case, the "312" represents one of St. Martin's Press's issued identifiers for its Thomas Dunne Books imprint. "34729" is the number of the book, usually assigned by the publisher consecutively. You can see that St. Martin's has been assigned 99,999 unique numbers.

A micropublisher like Flood Crest Press, New Albany's publisher, has been assigned only 99 numbers. Its publisher identifier is "934130," one of 999,999 possible numbers. St. Martin's is, relatively speaking, occupying an elite group of no more than 999 publishers its size and scale.

So, finally, what is that last digit for. If you really want to know, I'll tell you. Post a comment to show you really want to know, and I'll follow up with a full explanation. But in brief, it is a check sum based on a fairly simple, but complicated algorithm that verifies that an ISBN is valid. That prevents mistakes and overlaps and keeps people from simply making up a number 13 digits long. When you see an "X" in the last digit, representing 10, a possible sum of the algorithm, or modulus.

Wasn't that fun. We'll revisit "How to Read a Book Cover" in some future Sunday notebook.

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Here's a recap of this week's Book Sense Best Seller lists.




Trade Paperback Fiction
1. The Memory Keeper's Daughter
Kim Edwards, Penguin, $14, 9780143037149
A tragic snap-decision about a handicapped baby, played out among the affected.
2. The Inheritance of Loss
Kiran Desai, Grove, $14, 9780802142818
A rich Book Sense Notable and winner of the Man Booker Prize. Set in India on the eve of the Nepalese movement for an independent state.
3. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Lisa See, Random House, $13.95, 9780812968064
A #1 Book Sense Pick in hardcover, set in 19th-century rural China.

Trade Paperback Nonfiction
1. Eat, Pray, Love
Elizabeth Gilbert, Penguin, $15, 9780143038412
The author's year long search for spiritual meaning.
2. The Year of Magical Thinking
Joan Didion, Vintage, $13.95, 9781400078431
Paperback edition of the National Book Award winner, Book Sense Notable, and Broadway production.
3. Three Cups of Tea
Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin, Penguin, $15, 9780143038252
An American's effort to open 50 schools across rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. A Book Sense Notable title.

Hardcover Fiction
1. Nineteen Minutes
Jodi Picoult, Atria, $26.95, 9780743496728
A high school shooting rampage is the latest contemporary issue for Picoult.
2. Whitethorn Woods
Maeve Binchy, Knopf, $25.95, 9780307265784
Step into the deep, Irish woods with reader favorite Binchy.
3. What Is the What
Dave Eggers, McSweeney's, $26, 9781932416640
Fictionalized memoir of a survivor of the tragedy in the Sudan.

Hardcover Nonfiction
1. The Secret
Rhonda Byrne (Ed.), Beyond Words, $23.95, 9781582701707
A collection of wisdom and philosophies to improve our daily lives.
2. A Long Way Gone
Ishmael Beah, Sarah Crichton/FSG, $22, 9780374105235
A hypnotic firsthand account of war from a former 12-year-old soldier in Sierra Leone's civil war.
3. I Feel Bad About My Neck
Nora Ephron, Knopf, $19.95, 9780307264558
Funny, funny comic relief, on being a woman of "a certain age," from the honest and smart Ephron. A Book Sense Pick.

For the entire list, go here.

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Read this item with a "grain of salt," but the publisher of the seventh Harry Potter book, Scholastic, is going to great effort to let the world know that Year 7 - HP and the Deathly Hallows will be environmentally responsible. In response to pleas by the Rainforest Alliance, the publisher has pledged that all copies of the standard hardcover edition will be printed on 30 percent post-consumer waste fiber paper - all 784 pages. In addition, more than half the paper will have been approved by the Forest Stewardship Council. And the deluxe edition, which will be in limited supply at $65, will be printed on paper that is derived from 100 percent post-consumer waste fiber. Destinations Booksellers will have five copies, or 0.005% of all the copies in the world. What does that mean? If you want it, you'd better let us know! The book releases on July 21 at midnight.

A Shared Religion

I was planning to post on a different book today, but I was actually startled when I pulled The Lost Spiritual World from my monthly Book Sense White Box.

Bookselling has changed dramatically during our lives. There was a time when every town our size had multiple bookstores. Publishers valued us, both as customers and as a gauge on what the public wanted to read. Traveling book representatives would call on us three or four times a year to show us what was coming up and to write orders for each season.

Those days are long past. Keeping up with the book world now requires booksellers to be active seekers instead of passive listeners. We independents live or die on our own abilities to assess the landscape of upcoming titles.

The White Box is one of our most valuable tools. Publishers can buy an insertion in the "WB," including special promotional items, posters, bookmarks, and other marketing materials. Best of all, we often get ARC's (advance readers copies) or galleys of books the publishers expect to do well in our market area or which otherwise are expected to have big publicity pushes. You know, the books you see in the New York Times or on BookTV.

Friday's box included three books I'll be reading this weekend (yes, I'm an "advance reader") - Frank Deford's The Entitled, John Perkins' The Secret History of the American Empire, and Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy by Doug Stumpf. I'll let you guess which of these are fiction and which are not.

But it is Thursday's box that yielded a peculiar treasure. Ruth Rimm wrote the book for the Global Renaissance Society, with Alejandra Vernon providing the unique illustrations.

This is a sensual masterpiece that is a pleasure just to hold. The shaped turtleback cover (yes, that curvature is stamped into the volume) is limned by foil-on-cloth script defining the true contributors to the book - Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Moses, and Lao Tzu (I can't convince Mark, our valued part-timer, that the "MARK" you see in the upper right corner means his wisdom is also being shared with the world).

The book is otherwise hard to describe. It is Volume 1 of a series that begins with the gospel of Mark in an unabridged translation. But it's not a bible or a book of the bible. It is, rather, a series of midrashes. "The 'classical' Midrash starts off with a seemingly unrelated sentence from the Biblical books of Psalms, Proverbs, or the Prophets. This sentence later turns out to metaphorically reflect the content of the rabbinical interpretation offered." (Thank you, wikipedians.)

Here's an excerpt, part of the introduction to the first midrash on page 43:

The Talmud tells the story of a convert to Judaism who asked the great Rabbi Hillel to "teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one leg." The Rabbi said, "Love your neighbor as yourself. The rest is commentary." Likewise, if many of us were asked to summarize the Christian faith with a single sentence, we might respond, "Change your heart. The rest is commentary."

Most Bible commentaries (and bitter arguments) on the beginning of Mark's Gospel focus on theological concepts, such as baptism, repentance, whether Jesus was literally the son of God, or whether the doctrine of original sin can be derived from this passage. But beautifully and simply, Mark reveals the essense of the Christian faith in verse 4: change your heart.

The rest of Mark's Gospel is simply a bonus, simply commentary. Even if you never read another word of the Bible again, if you just remember these three words, you will be an Angel in God's eyes.

To be sure, this is not a sectarian book. It is confessedly a series that "finds good in all traditions and, while acknowledging important differences, accepts none as superior."

Sounds like a book for many of you whose faith life is tolerant of the intolerant. And for people like me, who try to base our lives on Biblical precepts, it serves as fine guidepost against which to measure, a whetstone to sharpen, and a fire to burnish our spiritual maturity.

[Since this was originally posted, someone working with the publisher has written to direct readers to this video about the book. Enjoy.]

The Lost Spiritual World: Volume 1: Mark by Ruth Rimm, Alejandra Vernon
ISBN 9780974575063 Global Renaissance, Feb. 2007 (Hardcover) $39.95

Sunday Morning Coming Down

A quick hit today as time grows more precious.

If your idea of history is dates and places, then this might not be the book for you. But if history is, for you, the story of how we got to where we are today, then Sunday: A History of the First Day from Babylonia to the Super Bowl is the book for you.

Craig Harline's engaging take on the ways and customs of the celebration of our "day of rest" ranges across the ages and cultures of Western civilization. He admits in his preface that a global study would be immense, so he captures brief vignettes of societies and the ways the honored (or dishonored) the first day of the week.

He pretty much settles the debate over whether Sunday (as Northern Europeans call it) is a vestige of the Roman Sun Day, capturing the sometimes anti-Judaism justifications of churchmen through the ages. The myths and mysteries of Sundays through the centuries are described through individuals who lived in each of the times. I think his technique is distinctly original.

Sunday: A History of the First Day From Babylonia to the Super Bowl by Craig Harline

ISBN 9780385510394 Doubleday, March 2007 (Hardcover) $26

Previously on the marquee:
After the Harvest (Studio Indiana photo essays)
Fantasy Baseball & Mathematics
Ten Things Your Minister Wants to Tell You
Virgin: The Untouched History (social history)
Buried in the Bitter Waters (racial cleansing in Washington County)

Authors Online

A recent Publishers Weekly article surveyed authors to see how they felt about the idea of blogging and thereby interacting with their fans. The results were mixed.

Some authors find them to be invaluable, while others, particularly fiction writers, are afraid that too much interaction will induce them to give away story ideas. But as a marketing tool, they are hard to beat.

Melanie Lynne Hauser, author of Super Mom Saves the World, has practically created a fan base with her blog. She shares with readers her personal and professional life, including book signings and other appearances. Here's what she had to say when she visited New Albany last year:

Last night I got back home from my Super Mom Road Trip 2006 — over 1100 miles driven since Tuesday (to Grand Rapids, MI, Ft. Wayne, IN — where Monica, the manager of Mitchell Books, took me out for a nice dinner — and New Albany, IN, where I had a very nice signing at Destinations Booksellers, sold a lot of books, and challenged the most unusual 6-year-old boy in a game of John Wayne trivia. That kid has seen as many John Wayne movies as I have, and knew an insane amount of movie trivia, and I found myself driven to topping him because I OWN movie trivia, especially where John Wayne is concerned, until at one point I had to tell myself that he was a CHILD, and to back off. I can get a little competitive, to tell the truth. But I stopped short of making him cry.) I also managed to spend a day with the Super Parents & visit with the Super Brother in Indianapolis, between signings.

That's a visit Ian M. will never forget, and it certainly helps bond Melanie to her fans. If you'd like to sample her Web site, go to www.melanielynnehauser.com and to see her blog, click the link there or add "/wordpress" to the above URL.

One of our earliest postings on NA Books Daily was about The Small-Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competion. Michael Shuman, an attorney and economist, is Vice President for Enterprise Development for the Training & Development Corporation, based in Bucksport, Maine.

Somehow, Mike discovered our post and wrote to thank us for the kind words. In addition, he provided us new information about his activities, including a partnership with UK to develop a workbook for The Small-Mart revolution. His Web site is a quick read, and includes a link to a fascinating article he wrote in defense of the "buy local first" choice and how it is not a feel-good proposition, but a matter of rational thought. The site is www.smallmart.org.

Authors with local connections offer Web sites or blogs you may find useful.

Chuck Lewis and Susan Wilhite, whose It Comes in the Night is starting to catch fire with middle-schoolers around the area, have launched a blog to keep fans up to date on their events. I expect it will be an exciting time for them as the book grows in popularity. Check them out at

http://itcomesinthenight.blogspot.com.

Local success story Kimberly Logan maintains a Web site that can keep you in touch with her and her thriving career. Logan has published three novels with Avon in the past three years, each more successful than the last. Visit http://www.kimberlylogan.net/ for more, including previews of her latest book, her events schedule, and Kimberly's Korner, her version of a blog. Kim will be visiting the store on April 28 at 4 p.m., by the way, with her new book, The Devil's Temptation. I'd appreciate it if you didn't click on the link to amazon.com!

Heather M. Cannon maintains an entire universe online for her Crimson World series. Book one is Crimson Born, a modern-day tale of vampires and romance. You can read more about Heather and the series at www.thecrimsonworld.net.

And finally, former New Albanian Josh Johnson has a beautiful site at http://www.spindletons.com/, where you can find not only his books, but original artwork for sale.

I encourage you to visit these sites. And thanks to all the authors who link back to us, reminding readers to value your local independent bookseller.

Around the World

Novelty books are those you'd really like to have for yourself, but will only buy when gifting to a less-than-intimate acquaintance. Today we're going to travel through a little book that we're ordering in pairs, because you simply won't be able to resist buying one for yourself, too.

It's called Signspotting: Absurd and Amusing Signs From Around the World, and it's compiled by Doug Lansky for those fine folks at Lonely Planet. Now, we have a number of books on fractured English, but this one is causing raucous laughter throughout the store. When Bad Cat first came out, we knew exactly what was going on when we heard loud chuckling from a certain quarter of the store and this book is doing the same thing. We sold more than a hundred copies of Bad Cat and about that many for Bad Dog, Bad Baby, and Bad President. I think this one might do just as well.

The pictures give you context and I can't share the inside of this book as I would like to. But I can "describe" a few. Even if you don't come down to check this one out, I'm sure you'll enjoy these howlers.

From Nepal: Super Perfct Type Writing Institute

Brunswick, Ga.: Dead Peoples Things For Sale

Conifer, Colo. subdivision entrance: Airhead Estates (for blondes?)

Directional highway sign in Essex, England: Secret Nuclear Bunker

It's not the sign, it's the context: Sign: 24 Hour Fitness above outdoor escalators from a California parking lot

California again, at a toll booth electronic sign: Electronic message? Signs Out of Order

At a park in Maui: Bottomless Pit, 65 Feet Deep

From L.A.: Antique Tables Made Daily

At a traffic signal (red light): This Light Never Turns Green

and finally: Cruise Ships Take Airport Exit!

Signspotting by Doug Lansky

ISBN 9781741044898 Lonely Planet, Oct. 2005 (Paperback) $7.99

Snap Judgments Can Be Deadly

About once a year, a seemingly complex subject is made simple by an author and the book becomes an unexpected phenomenon. Today's book may just be this year's version of Blink or Freakonomics.

As with many books, I became intrigued with How Doctors Think while listening to NPR's Morning Edition. Jerome Groopman is an M.D. and the holder of a chair at Harvard Medical School. He tells us that somewhere between 15 and 25 percent of all patient encounters with a doctor result in a misdiagnosis. Why? His belief is that doctors are prone to making rapid decisions based on prior inputs, as if diagnosing a malady were some type of timed contest. Giving the patient an answer quickly certainly creates a feeling of confidence in the patient, but it is the thought processes of doctors that we must try to understand.

"Most doctors, within the first 18 seconds of seeing a patient, will interrupt him telling his story and also generate an idea in his mind [of] what's wrong. And too often, we make what's called an anchoring mistake — we fix on that snap judgment."

Listen to the Morning Edition interview with Jerome Groopman here.

How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman, M.D.

ISBN 9780618610030 Houghton-Mifflin, March 2007 (Hardcover) $26

EDITORIAL NOTE: I've been lax in posting the audio for our podcast of NA Books Daily, but I will get those caught up. Please let us know how you use the podcast (link in the left bar) and give us your suggestions for how to make it more useful to you.

Remember This Name...

Remember this name…

Ethan Gage is the Great American Hero, the creation of author William Dietrich.

Paris, 1798. The Revolution and the terror of its aftermath have passed. Not yet dictator, Napoleon sets out to conquer Egypt, accompanied by scores of savants, the scientific elite of France, intending not only to thwart the British Empire’s designs on India, but to explore the mysteries of the Nile.

Browse Inside this book Get this for your site

Enter Gage. Former aide to Ambassador Benjamin Franklin. Crack shot with a long rifle. Gambler and ladies’ man. A good night at the card tables ends with our American hero the new owner of a mysterious medallion coveted by nefarious forces. Before daylight, he is accused of the murder of a prostitute and, without alternatives, he turns to his Masonic brothers for refuge. Instead, they offer him the chance to explore the pyramids of the pharaohs as part of the French invasion force.

I hesitate to even compare this to The DaVinci Code, but that’s going to be the natural comparison. Dan Brown’s phenomenon doesn’t even come close to this one. Dietrich has created a character for which you will want to root. The mysteries unravel in a way that is completely surprising. Robert Langdon’s riddles were so predictable it wasn’t funny. As for love interests, Ethan’s mysterious slavegirl/priestess is far more capable, more alluring, and, eventually, more devoted.

The historical pastiche, especially the psychological profile of Bonaparte and the battle strategy, makes Napoleon’s Pyramids a far superior book. And though one mystery is solved, the ending promises further Middle Eastern adventures for young Ethan Gage.

Napoleon’s Pyramids by William Dietrich
ISBN 9780060848323, Feb. 2007 HarperCollins (Hardcover) $24.95

Other books by William Dietrich:
Hadrian’s Wall: A Novel of Roman England (I loved it!) ISBN 9780060563721 (2004)
The Scourge of God: A Novel of the Roman Empire ISBN 9780060735081 (2005)

Sunday Notebook

It’s not the world’s biggest surprise, but we’ve had exactly zero responses to last Sunday’s request for suggestions for the top five American novels. You may recall we’ve been asked to participate in an American Booksellers Association survey for an upcoming PBS documentary on the subject. We’d love to have your thoughts. Go here for the questions. Sorry, though, we have no responses to share with you this week as we had promised.

Sundays we try to talk about something other than specific books. BookExpo America is coming up May 30 through June 4. If any of you would be interested in representing us at this annual convention of the publishing and bookselling world, please contact us right away. We can credential you and give you some rudimentary prep, but we can’t pay your way. By the way, historian/author and two-time National Book Award-winner David McCullough will be the keynote speaker on Wednesday, May 30 in advance of a series of walking tours by Brooklyn authors.

The U.S. publisher of the Harry Potter books will be doing a promotion with independent booksellers across the country called “Independent Muggles for Harry Potter.” Beginning on April 17, Scholastic will release the first of seven questions for debate. The final question comes July 7, with the book releasing two weeks later at midnight on July 21. There’s still time to reserve your first-day copy. Call us. Our price is $19.01 ($34.99 list), and we have a limited number of the deluxe ($65) editions on a first-come, first-served basis. Still no word on the audio release. First printing of the book? Just 12 million copies.

Are you a blogger yourself? If you aren’t, you could be. We’re planning a workshop on blogging for this spring. Registration is limited to ten for this first workshop. We’re working with at least two bloggers to turn their online ouvre into a perfect-bound book, in association with Flood Crest Press. It’s a great way to write fiction or nonfiction. Call or e-mail the store if you’d be interested in the workshop.

A.H. – As we work on your “guru” book, I think we should blog chapters before we go to press. Then we’ll submit the book as an entry in the Blooker Prize competition. (A “blook” is a book that results from a successful blog.)

Hey, you’re online already. Take a minute to discover my friend Ruthanne Wolfe’s niece as she goes on casting calls in Hollywood this season. Go to www.imdb.com and type in “Traci Ann Wolfe” into the search window. Learn more about this stunning actress and follow her career. Ruthanne and husband John Gonder are great friends of the store and I thank her for alerting us to her relative’s success.

Retail sales at bookstores were down in January for the seventh straight month. Compared to January of 2006, this year’s sales were down about 1 percent.

Colleague Arlene Lynes of Woodstock, Ill., reports that her bookshop was cited as one of the notable features that enabled that city to be named one of the Dozen Distinctive Destinations of 2007 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Lynes told Bookselling This Week that she regards the town council’s recent decision to allocate $64,000 to promote tourism in the downtown business area as a reason to feel tremendous optimism for the future of Woodstock’s local businesses. Woodstock is 45 miles from Chicago. Arlene’s store, Read Between the Lynes, has been in business for 20 months, slightly fewer than our own.

Book Sense is a joint marketing program for the independent bookstores in the American Booksellers Association. In addition to the Book Sense Bestseller List, which now appears in The Tribune and The Evening News, we publish a series of specific genre bestseller lists. You can take a look at these here. We are a reporting store, of course, and typically we carry almost all of those books.

Previously on the marquee!
Pistol: The Life of Pete Maravich by Mark Kriegel ISBN 9780743284974
Divided America: The Ferocious Power Struggle In American Politics by Earl Black and Merle Black ISBN 9780743262064
Dog Years: A Memoir by Mark Doty ISBN 9780061171000
The Sacred Bones by Michael Byrnes ISBN 9780061146077
God & Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now by John Dominic Crossan ISBN 9780060843236
The Gas We Pass: The Story of Farts by Shinta Cho ISBN 9780916291525

Just For Kids

A reader pointed out that while kids may not read the blog, gift-giving adults and parents do. We'll try to spotlight important children's books each weekend. And because it's St. Paddy's Day, we're adding a bonus book with a touch o' green.

Wag a Tail by Lois Ehlert (Chicka Chicka 1-2-3) just screams "pick me up." In vibrant color, this large-format picture book from Harcourt Children's Books is a work of art. In much the same way that the creators of South Park do their animation, Ehlert has crafted beautiful doggies out of scrap fabric and felt, sewing buttons on to serve as the eyes of a kennel full of mischievous dogs.

The photo-illustrations pop right off the page, and if you don't find yourself reaching out to touch just to see if they're real, I'll buy you a taco mexicano at La Rosita Grill. (ISBN 9780152058432)

For slightly older children, Sleeping Bear Press has enlisted the services of Eve Bunting to create S is for Shamrock. I don't know if you're familiar with this series of alphabetaries, but they are beautiful and useful.

Many of you have purchased H is for Hoosier, and Indiana alphabet. Did you know the publisher offers the same for 50 states and Washington D.C.? And they have a line of the same for the numerous sports, holidays, and other science and social studies themes.

The book is filled with facts about the Emerald Isle, and each letter of the alphabet is accompanied by colored pen-and-ink drawings by Matt Faulkner. Read the sample below. (ISBN 9781585362905)

T is for Titanic

The greatest liner ever made.

"Unsinkable" was what they said.

But she sank slowly out of sight,

one tragic, starfilled, moonfilled night.

Belfast, Ireland, was one of the most important shipbuilding cities in Europe in the twentieth century. Many of the world's largest ocean liners were built there.

It took two years to build the biggest liner of them all - the RMS Titanic. She was 11 stories high and the length of 4 city blocks. Fifteen thousand men worked to complete her. Her watertight compartments made her seem "unsinkable." The pride of Belfast, she was the crown jewel of the Harland and Wolff shipyard.

There were great celebrations at her launching on April 10, 1912. Four days later the Titanic collided with an iceberg on her maiden voyage across the Atlantci to New York. She sank on April 14th off the coast of Newfoundland with the loss of more than 1500 lives.

Mr. Thomas Andrews, the Titanic's designer and a managing director of Harland and Wolff's, went down with his ship.

How Do You Spell That?

Best wishes to Morganne Drake, 14, who will carry the Floyd County banner into this year's regional spelling bee on Saturday at Churchill Downs. And a tip 'o the hat to friend of the store Shelby Lewis, who serves as an "inspiration" to Morganne. Read all about it in Friday's edition of The Tribune.

Ann and I have committed to help in stirring interest in the National Spelling Bee competition and to sustaining an eventual national champion from these parts. If you have an interest in teaching or coaching spellers, starting next fall, drop us a line at the store.

A Genre is Reborn

Lovers of books are, generally speaking, lovers of words, and wordplay has a long history. While some reject all rules, avid readers understand that punctuation, grammar, and word choice are important.

A good storyteller fails to prosper if she is not also a good writer, attentive to at least some agreed-upon set of rules and more concerned with edifying the reader than glorifying her own writing. Granted, having a good story is important, but a good writer can thrive with a select group on the writing alone.

About the time we opened Destinations Booksellers, Lynne Truss took the book world by storm with her Brit-centric Eats, Shoots, and Leaves. Any number of other writers have joined the newly glamorous genre (and many have issued far better books than ES&L).

Today's spotlight book is from Ben Yagoda, who maintains in When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It: The Parts of Speech, for Better and/or Worse that effective writing doesn't require slavish devotion to arcane and archaic rules, but rather an appreciation for the "beauty, the joy, the artistry, and the fun of language."

Cribbed from Mark Twain, the title is a clue to the irreverence of this compact hardcover from Broadway Books (an imprint of Random House). And for a generation with short attention spans, Yagoda keeps you awake with a stream of pop culture references that make language parts relevant to our times.

Here's an excerpt from the introduction:

The nineteenth-century philosopher John Stuart Mill holds out a temptingly lofty rationale for a consideration of the parts of speech, claiming that they represent fundamental categories of human thought. This is an attractive notion for any parts-of-speech fan, and certainly for someone (i.e., me) who has just devoted 2.7 percent of his life to the subject, but ultimately it doesn't hold water. For one thing, you find strikingly different systems in other languages, such as Latin and Korean, neither of which contains adjectives as a distinct class. (In Latin, you express the quality of a thing with nouns, and in Korean with verbs.) For another, even within a particular tradition, the lineup of categories keeps shifting. Writing in 100 B.C.E., the Greek grammarian Thrax, who invented the whole idea of parts of speech, counted eight of them: adverbs, articles, conjunctions, nouns, participles, prepositions, pronouns, and verbs. The Romans had to drop articles (that is, a and the), since such words didn't exist in Latin, and added - hot damn! - interjections. The early English gramarrians started out by adopting the Latin scheme, and it wasn't until Joseph Priestley's The Rudiments of English Grammar, published in 1761, that someone came up with the familiar baseball-team-sized list that included adjectives and booted out participles for goos. This is the list that most of us remember from grammar school, that people who were kids in the 1970s remember from the ABC series Schoolhouse Rock! (and who could forget the classic song "Conjunction Junction [what's your function?]"), and that I adopt here.

I think this one is going to catch fire like ES&L did. For better and/or worse.

When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It: The Parts of Speech, for Better and/or Worse by Ben Yagoda
ISBN 9780767920773 Broadway Books, Feb. 2007 (Hardcover) $21.95

Good Books You Should Know

AT&T has decided to get pissy and refuses to repair my DSL connection at home. So I'm just going to spotlight one nonfiction title today and add on more during the day. Hope you'll forgive me.

Today's book is a must-read: Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America. Elliott Jaspin researched the secret history of "all-white" communities that have successfully fooled themselves into believing that they are that way because blacks chose to vacate, if they were ever there.

Ethnic cleansing is something that happens far away among the unenlightened. Right. This Basic Books title came to my attention this weekend during Scott Simons' Weekend Edition on NPR. The piece was an extended retelling of racial cleansing in Corbin, Ky.

The fabricated history of Corbin, as told on the radio, was fascinating. Here's where it hooked me (I'm paraphrasing):

Corbin lies astride I-75 in southeast Kentucky. I grew up with Corbin as much a part of my consciousness in the same way locals would know about Columbus, Ind. A woman, roughly my age, tells the story of a trip she took with her Mom to Lexington, Ky. Along the way, their car broke down.

"This nice man stopped to help and offered to drive us to a garage. He was a black man. After some small talk, he said 'Where are you all from?' First looking meaningfully at me, my mother replied, 'We're from Williamsburg.'"

"That was the first time I knew there might be a reason to be ashamed of where I came from."

In 1919, after veterans of World War I returned, racial tensions rose, ostensibly because of petty criminal acts by black railroad workers. Within days, several black men were lynched, and more than a dozen blacks were killed. Fed up, a mob determined to get rid of every black in town. At gunpoint, the black population was forced from their residences, marched to the railroad station, and ordered to leave town forever. They did.

It became a national scandal that blighted the name of Corbin...everywhere but in Corbin itself. The town became a place that blacks throughout the nation knew to avoid. But for current residents, a fable arose to cover the shame. The blacks were moved away by the railroad. There was nothing racial about it, is the meme that lasts to this day.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Jaspin researched examples above and below the Mason-Dixon Line of racial cleansing between reconstruction and 1920. These effectively lily-white communities, including one in Washington County, uniformly maintain a fable that the blacks left voluntarily, without violence, and simply abandoned their homes and lives.

I'm no babe, but I couldn't help but be shocked by what I've read so far. One patron today passed on the recommendation. Fatigued by health factors and by an even greater fatigue with injustice, she begged off, requesting something escapist. I'll be reviewing that book later this week.

If you can stand the stark reality, don't miss this book. I'll try to add more later.

Buried in the Bitter Waters by Elliott Jaspin
ISBN 9780465036363, Basic Books, March 2007 (Hardcover) $26.95

Hear Kentucky novelist Silas House tell the fable of Corbin here. Listen to the original Weekend Edition piece and read an excerpt here.

Star Power on the Page

Remember to share with us (and PBS) your thoughts on the greatest American novels, as discussed this past weekend in PBS Scheduling Documentary on American Novel.

I am Spartacus!

Aren't you glad he's still around to write his final memoir?

In Let's Face It: 90 Years of Living, Loving, and Learning, the inestimable Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch, Ellis-Islanded to Izzy Demsky) dispenses with all vanity and Hollywood P.R. to tell the "real" story of his life.

For the first time, Douglas confronts the pain of the death of his son Eric, who overdosed on drugs. We learn how the star came back from a debilitating stroke while the world watched, and how he recovered well enough to rejoin his fellow actors on the set.

In the intro, this film icon talks about his name change and how his name was his trademark.

For fun, let's try this matching game. Who was who?

These actors were born as: 1. Muzyad Yakhoob; 2. Spanger Arlington Brugh; 3. Marion Morrison; 4. Mladen Sekulovich; 5. Frederick Austerlitz; 6. Antonio Dominic Benedetto; 7. Bernard Schwartz; 8. Mike Dowd; 9. Michael Douglas; and 10. Michael Douglas.


And took the stage names of: a. Fred Astaire; b. Tony Curtis; c. Mike Douglas; d. Michael Douglas; e. Danny Thomas; f. Karl Malden; g. Tony Bennett; h. Michael Keaton; i. Robert Taylor; and j. John Wayne.


Answers: 1-e; 2-i; 3-j; 4-f; 5-a; 6-g; 7-b; 8-d and c*; 9-h; and 10-d.
When Kirk's son Michael went for his SAG card, the singer/talkshow host Mike Douglas (born Mike Dowd)was registered as Michael Douglas. When young Michael John Douglas tried to register under the name "Michael Douglas," Kirk's son was established under that name, so he took the name Michael Keaton, in admiration of Diane Keaton.

Let's Face It: 90 Years of Living, Loving, and Learning by Kirk Douglas
ISBN 9780470084694 (John Wiley & Sons) March 2007 (Hardcover) $22.95

ArtsWalk: These Fine Arts Events are Free

I've done this previously through e-mail. As a founding member of Historic New Albany's ArtsWalk, we're always happy to promote arts and cultural events in our region. Here are three great opportunities we're happy to offer to readers of this blog. All three events are free!

Floyd County Youth Symphony

March 19, 2007 • 7:30 p.m.

The FCYS is headed to Walt Disney World later this month. But you don't have to travel to Orlando to see this great bunch of talented musicians perform. A free concert is set for New Albany High School next on Monday at 7:30 p.m. It's free and open to the public.

FCYS was organized in 1974 to give outstanding young musicians the opportunity to experience a challenging music environment. If you would like more information about FCYS please contact kjohnson@nafcs.k12.in.us (Kathy Johnson) or millers4@hughes.net (Susan Miller), or phone (812) 949-4272 ext. 2597, or visit on the web at http://fcysmusic.com.

And...

Visit one of the area's cultural gems. The Ogle Center and Indiana University Southeast are offering to our readers two complimentary tickets to see the following performances.

Peng Peng - Piano
March 16, 2007 • 7 p.m.

Born in China, this 15-year-old pianist has won numerous competitions including the Julliard School’s 2003/2004 Pre-College Mozart Piano Competition. Peng Peng began lessons at age five; at the age of eight he gave his first public recital. An avid composer, Peng Peng studies composition at Julliard with Andrew Thomas. Thus far, he has written two works for solo piano, a cello/piano duo, a string quintet, and a symphony. Peng Peng will perform in the Richard K. Stem Concert Hall at the Ogle Center as part of the New Discovery Series.

Caitlin Tully - Violin
April 20, 2007 • 7 p.m.

At 18 years of age, violinist Caitlin Tully has emerged as one of the most compelling artists of her generation. She made her debut with Vancouver Symphony at the age of ten, displaying a musical maturity and inspiration far beyond her years. Ms. Tully is a student of Itzhak Perlman with whom she began studying in the summer of 2002. She started her violin studies at the age of four after declaring to her parents that all she wanted for Christmas was a violin. Caitlin Tully will perform in the Richard K. Stem Concert Hall at the Ogle Center as part of the New Discovery Series.

To take advantage of this opportunity, visit the Ogle Center Box Office and mention the “special offer.” Box Office hours are Tuesday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to Noon and 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. For more information, call (812) 941-2525. Tickets subject to availability.

A Full Week of Events

It’s going to be a busy week for us, starting with tonight’s public hearing on restoring normal traffic patterns in Downtown New Albany. I’ll be speaking in favor of bringing back the two-way traffic most of you grew up with. It should help in the rejuvenation of our downtown business district AND create a calmer traffic flow (slow down, speeders!) conducive to walkable neighborhoods. If you have ideas or just want to see what might happen, the city will take your comments at the Calumet Club at 7 p.m. That’s just west of Vincennes St. on Spring St.

Then on Wednesday, the Carnegie Center for Art and History will be one of several galleries, including the brand-new Gallery on Pearl, that will be hosting about 1.500 ceramic arts educators throughout the day. I’ll be pulling a shift to help the Carnegie staff meet and greet these visitors, in the region for their national convention.

Thursday night is even bigger, as the second show of the Carnegie year kicks off with Ohio Valley Clay: Form and Function. These opening night previews are wonderful opportunities to see first-rate art in a festive atmosphere. The eats ain’t bad, either. The premiere starts at 6 p.m. at the Carnegie, Spring and Bank streets.

Friday kicks off our history-book doubleheader. First up is David Longest with his new photo-filled history of the Railroad Depots of Northern Indiana, the follow-up to his very successful 2006 book on the southern half of the state. Dave will discuss his research and autograph copies of his book at 5:30 on Friday.

Then on Saturday at 4 p.m., we’re pleased to host Leslie Townsend and her new history of Indiana’s Ohio River Scenic Byway. Most of us have enjoyed day-trips along this path, and Leslie will share with us the history of this important riverside treasure.

As promised, we’re making the marquee books content for the second week of March available inside our posts whenever we replace them. Herewith:
Fangland (A Harker relative investigates a 21st-Century Dracula)
Jesus: A Meditation on His Stories and His Relationships With Women (Andrew Greeley)
Roma: The Novel of Ancient Rome (starred review in Publishers Weekly)
The God of Animals (families, horses, love, death, and class)
My French Whore: A Love Story by actor Gene Wilder
Mississippi Sissy (for the outsider in all of us)

Do You Know McSweeney's?

About ten years ago, Dave Eggers published A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. It kind of reviews itself, doesn't it. It was his breakout book, a memoir with fictional elements about how he struggled to raise his younger brother after their parents died suddenly. For that work, he was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in literature.

Eggers is the founder of an eclectic and literate online Web magazine, McSweeney's, which is a showcase for some of the best and funniest writers around. It's an absurdist collection of daily postings on the arcane, and while it's funny, it's not The Onion kind of funny.

More importantly, Dave founded McSweeney's as an independent publishing house. They've put out books such as What is the What, The Future Dictionary of America, The Polysyllabic Spree, and How We Are Hungry.

Writing with his brother, Christopher, Dave also has produced three hilarious books under the rubric of "The Haggis-on-Whey World of Unbelievable Brilliance" as Dr. Doris Haggis-on-Whey. Here's the author bio from the McSweeney's site:

Dr. Doris Haggis-On-Whey has seventeen degrees from eighteen institutions of higher learning. She is a world-renowed and much-feared expert on just about everything. With her husband Benny, she has traveled the world over, and has learned about all aspects of life, including outer space and food, first-hand. She has written or will soon write over 147 books.

Those books are:

Giraffes? Giraffes! - in which we learn that those supposedly African beasts have, in fact, been living in Terre Haute (their site selection committee insisted they could only live somewhere where the ZIP Code began with 4780) after abandoning Hotlanta. They also like iced oatmeal cookies!

Your Disgusting Head: The Darkest, Most Offensive - and Moist - Secrets of Your Ears, Mouth, and Nose - "Humorous misinformation about the human head, including unappetizing untruths about which teeth do not bite, the color of the tongue, and the state of the human mind."

and Animals of the Ocean, in Particular the Giant Squid - "advances many heretofore unexplored discoveries and opinions, including squid dating dos and don'ts, why squid are not at all able to watch television in black and white, the ways in which people who don't know any better might think fish are not animals, the long-term effects of salt water on musical theater, and also the adventure of Gunther."

So why do I mention this?

Because you'll bust a gut over this next set.

Like most of us, you probably are overscheduled and stressed out, unable to accomplish in a day all that needs to be done. Lisa Brown offers the solution: Babies! That's right. They're not doing anything, anyway.

Packaged as delightful board books that will enrapture children, the concept for these humor titles is, obviously, self-explanatory. Baby, Fix My Car; Baby, Mix Me a Drink; Baby, Make Me Breakfast; and Baby, Do My Banking.

Here's what the publisher's notes say about the first one:

Are you a parent? Are you tired of driving around in an old wreck of an automobile? Never fear–help is on the way. This book will teach your little ones the ins and outs of basic repair. It's quick, easy, and best of all, much cheaper than your local garage. Thanks, Baby!

Tots will be entranced by the shapes and colors, all the while learning how to do basic car repair. An essential purchase for expectant parents, harried mothers, hungry fathers, and overly involved grandparents.

Don't you know someone who would just crack up to receive one of these as a gift?

Books listed in this posting:

Animals of the Ocean, In Particular the Giant Squid (ISBN 9781932416398) $18 hardcover

Giraffes? Giraffes! (ISBN ) $16.95 (scarce and out of print...this price will climb) hardcover

Your Disgusting Head (ISBN ) $16.95 (scarce and out of print...this price will climb) hardcover

Baby, Make My Breakfast (ISBN 9781932416466) $9 board book

Baby, Fix My Car (ISBN 9781932416565) $6.95 board book

Baby, Mix Me a Drink (ISBN 9781932416459) $6.95 board book

Baby, Do My Banking (ISBN 9781932416558) $9 board book

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (ISBN 9780375725784) $14.95 paperback

The Polysyllabic Spree (ISBN 9781932416244) $14

The Future Dictionary of America (ISBN 9781932416428) $20 hardcover w/CD

How We Are Hungry (ISBN 9781400095568) $13.95 paperback

What is the What (ISBN 9781932416640) $26 hardcover

PBS Scheduling Documentary on American Novel

I've been invited, through the American Booksellers Association, to contribute my thoughts toward an upcoming PBS documentary on the American novel. For now, my participation is only as a survey participant, but it could become more.

I may decline the opportunity, but it does present us with a wonderful opportunity to work collegially to answer the following questions:

What do you think are the five (5) best American novels?
Who do you think are the five (5) best heroes or heroines in American novels?
Who do you think are the five (5) best villains or villainesses in American novels?
What do you think are the best lines in American novels?

Don't feel obligated to answer every question, and don't feel obligated to come up with five in each category. Remember, you can comment below with or without identifying yourself. Next Sunday, I'll report on your comments and e-mails in response.

And remember that we're now on daylight saving time!

Going Green

As a retailer, I'm the last one to be discouraging consumption. Consume, consume! But heedless and needless consumption is something Ann and I are growing increasingly sensitive to. I'm fortunate to live within two miles of the store, so I put away the car and I walk to work (the bicycling thing proved to be a logistical nightmare) each morning. It's healthy for me and it's healthier for the environment.

As a ground-pounder, unfortunately, I see far too much detritus along my chosen path and I'm growing increasingly impatient with a community that clearly won't commit resources to keeping its streets, sidewalks, and gutters clean. Broken glass, fast-food containers, and car-lot frillies are the biggest eyesores, but you can join me some morning and make your own evaluation.

To the extent we can, we're trying to do more to lessen our consumption, especially of fossil fuels. We're just completing a total refit of our lighting to low-consumption fluorescents. It involved compromises in the store's ambiance, but we think it's worth it. Our electrical consumption for lighting should be about 70% less than it was the day we opened in 2004.

Right now, as we do our own audit of environmental responsibility, the one glaring flaw is our patron packaging. The ubiquitous plastic bags we use are pure petroleum, and we want to correct this. How? Paper bags? Wrapping with paper and string? Cloth bags? Each has its drawbacks.

In case you missed it, here's a Newsweek story about how one retailer is "solving" its consumption problem: Attention, Shoppers.

Beginning March 15, all of [Ikea's] U.S. stores will start charging five cents for each plastic bag that customers take their purchases home in. The idea is to encourage the masses to bring their own bags with an eye toward reducing litter—an explicit reminder that what was once free to the customer did not necessarily come without a greater cost...
“We applaud this,” says Allen Hershkowitz, a solid-waste-management expert at the National Resources Defense Council in Washington, who points out that plastic bags are made from either petroleum, coal or natural gas. “Does it make sense for us to use an increasingly valuable raw material for throwaway plastic bags? I was recently by the shore and a plastic bag in the water looked just like a jellyfish. You could see a turtle come up and snatch it and that would be it for the turtle. But the upstream impacts are so much more substantial than downstream: the production of plastic generates lethal gases, phosphine and greenhouse-gas emissions.”

My idea is to use some type of canvas bag, but the only practical way to do that is to sell the bag. What I want to do is sell the bag for $1, much like the old bottle deposits we remember. Several states still charge deposit fees on cans and bottles, but none around here. If you forget yours on your next visit, you would pay another dollar for another bag, but we would buy those "extra" bags back anytime. The problem is, the bags would cost at least $6, making our investment in the mid-four figures.

If you have suggestions on how we can be "green" with our bags, please drop us a line. Better yet, join the blogosphere and post your comment below.

Here Speaking English

The post's title is an inside joke, revolving around a language book we know of called Here Speeching American. That's a book that "takes a hilarious look at the challenges confronting English-speaking travelers around the world, from less-than-coherent road signs, to odd sounding food and drink, to impossible-to-follow directions, to other lighthearted examples of fractured English."

If you want to get serious, then you'll be interested in Andrew Roberts' new tome, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900. It's the kind of book I love, and based on our history here in New Albany (English-speaking and otherwise), I think it will appeal to many of you.

Here's an excerpt:

John F. Kennedy was puzzled that Americans rated Theodore Roosevelt so highly, considering that he never led the nation through any war (an estimation that might more profitably be extended to JFK himself). Roosevelt filled the White House like no other peacetime president; Mark Twain accorded the fact that he was 'the most popular human being that ever existed in the United States' to his 'joyous ebullitions of excited sincerity'. Yet there were solid achievements too: he won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the Treaty of Portsmouth that ended the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 and began constructing the isthmian canal that linked his country's western ocean to its eastern, thus saving US warships from having to make the ninety-day journey around Cape Horn.

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900 by Andrew Roberts

ISBN 9780060875985, Feb. 2007 (HarperCollins) $35 (Hardcover)

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