What My Father Taught Me About Reading

My mother has always been the one who really reads. The fact that she influenced me most as a reader is indisputable. She taught me to read by age three, and some of my earliest memories are of trips to the library with her, stopping at the cemetery on the walk home to rest and read on one of the concrete benches there. I always checked out the limit (ten books), but I would get into trouble if I checked out titles and didn’t finish them. My mother seemed to think it it was greedy -- that I was depriving others of the chance to have the book while I wasted it. 

So, I finished them.

That's me in the middle, no doubt thinking about acrylic plastic.

My father, on the other hand, isn’t so much of a book person. He’s smart, all right, and he does read, but while I was growing up, my main memories of my father reading are of him reading the newspaper. (When I got a little older, I’d catch him reading my copies of MAD magazine, too.) He was a huge fan of Pogo, a cartoon whose politics went over my head as a child, but I still tried to read it, because I knew he liked it. I loved the inventive use of language -- like a code that I had to solve.

Early on, though, my father was a big supporter of my reading and my writing. He always bragged about my reading to anyone who would listen, and recognized me as a force to be reckoned with. In response to one of my blog posts recently, Dad posted this on my Facebook wall:

“When Kelly was almost 5, she walked into my bedroom and asked me ‘What is acrylic plastic?’ She was holding the Knoxville News Sentinel. I knew at that moment that we were already reading equals.”

Pogo: Fun fer everybody what's a frog.

Dad was in the aluminum siding business when I made a hand-drawn comic book featuring a superhero made out of aluminum. Alu-Man #1 was one of my greatest triumphs, and Dad was its biggest fan, taking it to work to share with his friends and co-workers. My mother was livid, and made him stop. She was worried that one of my characters -- a large woman with a bouffant hairdo -- would upset the secretary at my Dad’s office. (She was a large woman with a bouffant hairdo.)

My favorite memory of my father and reading is far more serious than Pogo or Alu-Man, though.

He was sitting on my bed talking to me, his 6’ 6” frame dwarfing my little room with its yellow chintz bedspread. I had massive amounts of books for a third grader, and he glanced through them, then picked one up and held it out to me. It was Tom Sawyer.

“Promise me you’ll read this some day,” he said.

“Okay,” I shrugged. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I remember asking my father to promise to read my favorite book at the time: The Wednesday Witch.

I doubt he read The Wednesday Witch (That’s okay. It’s not exactly in my top ten anymore.) But I did read Tom Sawyer. And The Count of Monte Cristo. And David Copperfield. And on and on. To this day, while I read mysteries and humor and comics and shampoo bottles and whatever is around, I still come back to the classics.

See, in a room filled with Richie Rich and Hot Stuff comics, Trixie Belden mysteries, and every Scholastic monster book printed in the early ‘70s, my father spotted the one diamond in the pulp. His message is clear now, even if it was lost on me then:

“Make sure you read the good stuff.”

Thanks, Dad. I do.

When Comic Books and Children’s Books Collide

The folks at the Comics Should Be Good site have a pretty simple philosophy: they believe, as their name says, that comics should be good. While the site does a deft job of covering the comics scene, the most magical things happen at their Twitter feed. (Check it out.)

In a weekly feature called The Line It Is Drawn, a topic is thrown out to Twitter followers who come up with their own suggestions. CSBG’s very talented sketch artists draw their favorites. The results are always good at the very least, awesome at their best.

Case in point: a recent challenge to create “Rejected children’s books starring comic book characters.” My favorites are below. Visit Comics Should Be Good to see the full selection. 

Are You There God? It's Me, Rogue. Artwork by Robert Rath.

Are You My Modok? Artwork by Brendan Tobin.

 

The Very Hungry Galactus. Artwork by Josh Gowdy.

 
What children’s book/comic book combos would you like to see? While it’s too late to submit to this round, be sure and check out the CSBG Twitter feed, and you might see your idea come to life in a future challenge.

In Which I Go to Ireland for Other Reasons and Accidentally Find Bookish Things

A few weeks ago, I was sent to Ireland in my capacity as a food writer. It’s too bad the focus of Book Dirt prevents me from giving you much detail about how well I was wined and dined by the folks at Good Food Ireland, so I will simply state that Ireland’s poor food reputation is vastly undeserved (The seafood! The cheese!) and leave it at that. 

I took so many notes, it's a wonder I didn't get a hand cramp. (Photo by fellow foodie Eric Cathcart.)

I didn’t expect the trip to have much to do with books other than what I read on the plane (J. S. Le Fanu’s Carmilla, a short by noir queen Christa Faust, and some long-form true crime magazine articles I sent to my Kindle for offline perusing). It turns out that, even on a food-focused trip, interesting book-related things kept happening -- or maybe I’m just particularly attuned to spotting them.

The first bookish finds were, oddly enough, at the Guinness Storehouse at St. James’ Gate Brewery in Dublin. We met Eibhlin Roche, who may have one of the coolest jobs in the world: she’s an archivist for Guinness. It’s not something I’d ever considered before, but a beer that dates back to 1759 has a lot of stuff to archive -- almost five miles of stuff, from advertising and ephemera to employee records. Eibhlin put together a selection of food-related items for our group, which is how I came to see these nifty Guinness cookbooks and vintage ads.

Guinness cookbook, 1889.

One of many pieces of Guinness ephemera at the archives.

Guinness and oysters is a thing in Ireland, and the tradition goes way back.

The famous 9,000 year lease, signed by Arthur Guinness.

Later, in the Connoisseur’s Lounge, which looked a lot like a place Arthur Guinness and his peers would have enjoyed hanging out, I noticed old books on brewing lining the walls. 

Old brewing books at the Connoisseur's Lounge.

Don’t worry. We also drank lots of Guinness. Lots and lots of Guinness.

The dim lounge cast fascinating shadows in my beer.

That same evening, before dinner at the Merrion Hotel, I took a quick walk around Merrion Square to try and work up an appetite. (I was still full from lunch and lots of Guinness.) Apparently, everyone who ever wrote in Dublin lived on Merrion Square, or it seemed that way. I ran into Yeats …

Yeats was here.

... and Le Fanu, whose novel I was re-reading on the plane. 

*Knock knock knock* Is Mr. Le Fanu home?

If I’d walked any further, I would have run into John Synge and Oscar Wilde. A lot of people forget that Wilde was from Ireland, associated so much as he is with London, but he lived at No. 1, Merrion Square from 1855 to 1876. I had to miss them, though. Hurrying back for dinner, I cut through Merrion Square Park, rather than going all the way around the block, and who should I run into but Oscar, hanging out in the park.

Oscar Wilde, just chillin' in Merrion Square Park.

The next few days were a blur, punctuated with various gluts of food and wine. When we arrived at the Cliff House Hotel in Ardmore, County Waterford, the room made me swoon, and not just because it was pretty. It was stocked with books. These weren’t the  trashy paperbacks and bestsellers you sometimes find in a hotel, either, and it was a really nice change from the ubiquitous Gideon Bible. I was stunned at how many Southern U.S. writers I counted.

 

This small bookshelf held mostly cookbooks, but also the poems of Wislawa Szymborska.

I wish I could have stayed here longer just to read.

Alice Walker? Olive Ann Burns? Am I still at home?

One of my biggest book surprises, though, came as I was leaving Ballymaloe House in County Cork. Our little gang of food writers were loading up their luggage when I spotted this van in the parking lot. I strolled over to find out more, and met Bryan, who is a driver/seller for a mobile books service. The concept is fascinating: he drops off books to sell at small shops and businesses, then pops back in later to pick up unsold books and collect his cut. He also sells books directly. He told me that in the early days of the business, the owner’s best customer was a funeral home, as the six ladies who were employed there were avid readers. I envied Bryan for getting to drive around the Irish countryside selling books.

The company relies on self-employed distributors like Bryan to deliver books.

Bryan shows off his inventory.

I mentioned earlier that I probably zeroed in on all the book-related things because I’m in and of the book world. (We had a professional harpist with us, and she kept spotting harps, so there’s definitely some truth to that.) It reminds me of being in college and going to parties where I would inevitably spot something interesting in a bookcase and end up reading in a corner, engrossed in the text and oblivious to the carousing around me.

If you’re a book person, you don’t even have to really look, I guess. The books will come to you.


Have you encountered books, authors, or stories about them in places where you least expected them?

Bill Gates Has a Book Blog (Just Like Everyone Else)

I don’t have a lot in common with Bill Gates. I’m not the second-wealthiest person in the world. (I’m barely the second-wealthiest person in my house.) I didn’t found Microsoft, and I don’t have an underwater music system. While I do have a large-ish personal library, it is not housed under an oculus, it doesn’t change temperature based on the personal preferences of whoever enters the room, and I don’t have an original Da Vinci codex for my cats to nap on.

Screenshot of Bill Gates' book blog at Gatesnotes.com.

But, if I ever happen to meet Bill Gates at a cocktail party, I’ve got something we can chat about: we’re both book bloggers.

That’s right. Bill Gates has a book blog.

It first came to my attention last month when Gates dropped by Reddit to answer questions for the popular AMA (Ask me Anything) forum. His thread garnered over 28,000 remarks and questions from Reddit users, with Gates weighing in on the expected topics like charity, money, and what he does with his free time. Gates stayed classy (a tricky task on anything-goes Reddit), while still betraying a not-often-seen sense of humor. (Asked if there was anything left on his bucket list, Gates quipped, “Don’t die.”)

It was when someone asked Bill Gates about his favorite book that I really perked up. “My favorite of the last decade is Pinker's Better Angels of our Nature,” Gates wrote. “It is a long but profound look at the reduction in violence and discrimination over time.” Then he added:  “I review a lot of the books I read at gatesnotes.com (Is that too self-promotional?)”

The book blog section of Gates’ website has a fantastic layout, with thumbnails of every book he’s read making it easy to scan. A lot of the titles are what you would expect -- or hope, really -- that a skrillionaire would care about: things like Tropical Infectious Diseases and How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place.

Clicking a thumbnail leads to Gates’ review of the book, although some only include publishing information and the fact that it was read. Others, like the Pinker book mentioned above, have fully-realized reviews.

It’s always interesting to see who the rich and famous find compelling, and Gates has several biographies under his belt, including those of Kofi Annan, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, former UNICEF executive director JIm Grant, and Nobel peace prize winner Norman Borlaug. Those familiar with Bill Gates’ favorite hobby won’t be surprised to see Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi on the list, too.

It seems as if Gates read the manual that says at least 99% of all the bajillion book bloggers must read The Hunger Games. It’s one of only a handful of novels on his “read” list, and he doesn’t elaborate on it. My guess is that he was heavily influenced by his sixteen year-old daughter. (“It’s the best book EVER, Dad. How can you say it isn’t if you haven’t even read it?”)

If you happen to meet Bill Gates at a cocktail party before I do, tell him that you read his book blog ... and tell him Book Dirt sent you.

Book Review: Three Graves Full by Jamie Mason

Three Graves Full/Gallery Books/February 2013

A purported dark comedy proves that marketing is a very powerful thing.


Three Graves Full, the debut mystery novel by Jamie Mason, has some darned compelling jacket copy. Dig this:

For fans of the Coen brothers’ films or for those who just love their thrillers with a dash of sharp humor—an engaging and offbeat story about a man driven to murder, who then buries the body in his backyard only to discover that there are two other shallow graves on his property.

The Coen brothers? Sharp comedy and multiple graves? Add in some fawning praise from authors like Tana French and Peter Straub (“Special” says the former; “Astonishing” says the latter), and promo material peppered with adjectives like quirky and Hitchcockian, and I really couldn’t resist.

What I discovered after reading Three Graves Full is that all of those descriptions seem to be for the first chapter only. After that, well, things fall apart. The beginning is a doozy: a mild-mannered man has a body buried in his backyard -- the body of a man he murdered. When landscapers discover a different body buried in his yard, then another, things get complicated.

The Hitchcock comparison is deserved in the early parts of the book. Think The Trouble with Harry rather than Psycho. We find out at the beginning of the book that the nebbish-y Jason has killed a man. What we don’t know is why, and as Mason unspools the back story, Jason’s feelings of guilt build to what, in the earlier parts of the book, feels almost as claustrophobic as something by Patricia Highsmith.

Unfortunately, that back story ends up being told too fast. Once the details behind the killing come out, followed by the details of the murders of the other bodies, there’s not a lot to care about. Mason tries to keep the story moving by switching up character perspectives from chapter to chapter -- something that almost works, for a time.

Mason has a good sense of character details, and has fun with them. I was charmed by a  sheriff’s wife who won’t talk on the phone without putting clothes on, and a deputy whose diet has him so desperate for junk food that he eats sour cream with onion salt on it. The author is at her best when the plot isn’t moving, but when it moves again, it seems to be out of her control, especially when there's a lot of action.

As the story progresses, the multiple character points of view converge, and instead of choosing one character’s perspective for intense scenes, Mason head hops, a cardinal sin of writing, and for good reason. The character perspective changes from sentence to sentence, making it hard to understand who is doing what, and even more: why we should care. If there’s no perspective, there’s no way to empathize with anyone. Mason even tells us the thoughts of a dog, which some readers will no doubt find cute, but cuteness seems at odds with something calling itself a dark comedy.

I blame the editors.

In a rush to market a book with a unique angle, it seems as if the book was published with a second half that could have benefited from an extensive rewrite. To top it off, the marketing hype far exceeds what the book actually delivers. Sure, that will sell some books, but will readers come back for more? I’m left wondering if all the positive blurbs and reviews are from readers who read the marketing materials and were swept away on the wave of hype.

I do think we’ll see more of Jamie Mason. She’s extremely talented, and has turned out a decent, though quite flawed, first novel. I hope that she gets the chance to work with some editors who will ensure a less muddled final draft, and market her more directly to the cozy mystery audience. While the book does have a darkish streak, it’s more gray than black -- sort of a cozy for people with just a little bit of an edge.

The bottom line: Three Graves Full, though billed as a dark comedy, is neither very dark, nor very comic.

Have you read anything that didn’t seem to match up with the jacket copy? How closely do you read the publisher’s information versus reviews from actual readers?

Quotable: Poetic Subjects, Dirty Children’s Books, and Other Reader/Writerly Things

Well-loved books. Better? (Andrea_R/Creative Commons license)

Another roundup of nifty things I’ve encountered around the web in my never-ending attempt to procrastinate as much as possible. Take some time to read the articles from whence these came, then get back to writing, for the love of Pete!

Poet Christian Bok believes in taking poetry to new frontiers, which is why he injected poetry-encoded DNA into bacterium, essentially making the microorganisms create their own poetry. He wonders about the limited subject matter of other poets:

“I am amazed that poets will continue to write about their divorces, even though there is currently a robot taking pictures of orange ethane lakes on Titan.”

Jane Litte at Dear Author has some book-related predictions for 2013, and though most are pretty serious, this one is a little more whimsical. I’m not sure if she’s right:

“Romance covers will become less focused on the man titty."

Dark Markets is a darned useful site for anyone whose writing tends toward the creepy. It’s not just a list of potential markets, though, but often has useful writing tips, such as this list of brutally honest advice from Lorna Keach. Read it all, especially if you agree with this snippet:

“If you are the kind of writer who does not read, your writing sucks.”

A lovely piece in the Granta blog by Yuka Igarashi talks about the minutiae of proofreading The Best of Young Brazilian Novelists, and how the task infected both her brain and her leisure time:

“Can a city be dust-covered and windy at the same time? Have we been consistent in the way we punctuate maté, Sugarloaf Mountain, the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, the Candidates Tournament for chess and every one of the numerous international airports mentioned in the stories? Is it possible for a headless chicken to stare at you? Does ‘shithole’ have a hyphen in it?”

E-readers make reading a lot less dirty, but Wired writer Daniel Donahoo prefers the dirt, arguing that children's books are better when you can see where they’ve been:

“Our books should reflect the lives we lead — messy and uncertain, but well lived and loved.”

Should poetry and science be blended? Or are they already the same thing? What’s your take on the deeper symbolism of the prevalence of the man titty? Discuss.

People Are Freaking Out About the New Cover of The Bell Jar

Here’s why they should calm down. 

Faber's new cover for The Bell Jar.

Faber has published a new edition of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar for the book’s 50th anniversary, and the internet is totally losing its shit. If that sounds like an exaggeration, consider some of these diatribes:

• “If Sylvia Plath hadn't already killed herself, she probably would've if she saw the new cover of her only novel The Bell Jar.” -Jezebel   

• “What is this monstrosity?” -The Jane Dough

• “I think, after that Bell Jar cover, my next pitch for a kids book will be The Big Pink Book of Low Expectations For Girls.” -Louie Stowell

The general consensus seems to be that the cover denigrates the content, that it’s insulting to women and to women writers in general, and it doesn’t befit a classic. The cover to the original 1966 Faber edition, designed by Shirley Tucker, is being touted as iconic all over the blogosphere. It’s a good cover design, that’s true. 

Shirley Tucker's design.

But it wasn’t the first one. Plath originally released the book under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. That edition was published by William Heinemann Limited, and featured a rather feminine cover, with a loopy font and a woman-on-the-verge:

The true first Bell Jar cover.

What people really seem to be forgetting is that both Tucker’s 1966 cover and the original Victoria Lucas cover are for the UK editions of The Bell Jar. Unless you picked up a copy in England, they're not the ones most Americans are familiar with, so the fawning nostalgia for the Tucker cover is partly contrived, Brits excepted. The novel wasn’t published in the US until 1971, where it was given this cover:

First US edition of The Bell Jar.

And this is paperback version many, including myself, first encountered in the ‘70s:

While the two US versions above may seem somber by today’s standards, they were very similar to the mass market covers marketed to women at the time. In fact, they bear a strong resemblance to the types of books my workplace used to label as “true insanity,” before the category was renamed something more politically correct.

The ‘70s American versions of The Bell Jar were designed to appeal to those who were enjoying sensationalistic novels and memoirs of women and madness, such as I Never Promised You a Rose Garden and Sybil. Even the stylized Gothic font on Plath’s book was a trendy cover convention in its day.

And guess what? We picked it up anyway, we read it, and we loved it.

If young women pick up the new edition because of the chick-lit cover, they’ll find plenty to like, from the moment on page one that they learn Esther’s patent leather shoes came from Bloomingdale’s. They’ll like that she interns at a fashion magazine -- a thinly-disguised version of Plath’s time at Mademoiselle. There’s plenty about her to appeal to young women today.

But they’ll quickly find that it goes much, much deeper and gets much, much darker.

Hannah Griffiths, a publisher at Faber says it’s working: “We love it and the sales since publication suggest that new readers are finding it in the way that we hoped.”

I call that a success. It matters less that the cover appeals to me, than that it appeals to the sixteen year-olds of today.

What do you think of the new cover design? Are your panties in a wad? Or does it matter as long as it sells?