Welcome
Kelly Link
Book Business News
Driving and reading
Recommendations
Best web fiction is fiction...
Welcome to the early summer edition of the Annotated Browser. It's a beautiful time of the year. If there's any reason for the Commonwealth Mall to exist it's to take a book there and pretend to read while watching the world go by. Fortunately we’re just a block from it. Come by, get a book, go ‘read!’
In the world of books everyone who can in the New York publishing world has taken a house (not necessarily together) in the Hamptons, or on the shore, or somewhere, anywhere! out of the hot and humid city. So in new books, there is not a lot going on. However, in old books and vintage magazines, cards and cats, we're still putting more and more online. Check the New Arrivals above for the 50 most recent books we’ve put online. We can't quite persuade John Usher to post us another section of his novel we were enjoying so much last year, but we are still hopeful as we've heard that he is back to writing.
Kelly Link
One of our former booksellers, Kelly Link, has just had her first collection of short fiction published by Small Beer Press. Stranger Things Happen has eleven stories, at least a couple of which have not been published before. You can see the beautiful cover painted by Shelley Jackson on our front page. It's $16 and we expect to keep it in stock as long as it's in print. Kelly won both the James Tiptree Jr. Award (1997, "Travels with the Snow Queen," Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet) and the World Fantasy Award (1999, "The Specialist's Hat," Event Horizon) while working at Avenue Victor Hugo. Stranger Things Happen has received some good reviews with Kirkus Reviews saying "Link is a writer to watch." She will be in the Boston area for Readercon over the weekend of July 13-15 doing readings and signings. In the meantime check back soon and we'll post one of Kelly's stories on our site.
Small Beer Press are publishing their first two books this summer, Stranger Things Happen being the first and Meet Me in the Moon Room, a collection of stories by Oregon writer Ray Vukcevich being the second. Vukcevich writes short stories the way some other people write novels. He packs 33 stories into 256 pages, yet each of the stories stands out, and some of them cry out for more attention. This is modern American fiction at its best. He crosses genres, breaks hearts, all the time leaving just the littlest bit of hope that there may yet be a happy ending in there somewhere. If not for the characters, at least for the reader.
Lastly, Small Beer Press continues to produce Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. Issue 8 just came in and it has fiction from Carol Emshwiller, Eliot Fintushel, and many more.
Book Business News
Amazon is making tons of cash from Bibliofind now that they’ve (sadly) subsumed it. It is now not so easy to use and hopefully people will move to other venues such as this shop(!), Tom Folio, ABE, and, of course, Bookfinder. Remember, keep all records of the books you buy. I had to return a a book to Never Too Many Books in Miami Beach, Florida, after they sent me an ex-library book instead of the one in Good condition they’d quoted me. I’m sure this was an honest mistake, but be careful! (And why did Bibliofind get subsumed? Because their security was compromised, ie hacked!)
Other news: Ingram (the distributor large enough to pretty much dictate terms to everyone, bookshops and publishers alike) is no longer taking on all the tiny presses that give it such a great breadth and depth. Instead they will need to go through distributors who take a chunk, making it harder for you to find the small presses in your local bookshop. Search out the small presses, enlarge your field of vision. Look for Coffee House Press, Milkweed, Small Beer, Bison Books (University of Nevada), Soho, Columbia! Magazine, Graywolf, and all those others that provide a real flavor -- rather than the flavor of the month -- to their lists. Driving and Reading
Gavin J. Grant
It's not against the law, but it's difficult to get away with all the same. I can't say I've tried it, beyond the odd map or directions, but I've seen other people do it and it's always amazed me. Do they know how fast they’re driving? I wonder. Then i wonder if they even know where they’re going...
Since moving to Brooklyn I’ve had the odd experience of living in the center of the city and working out to the north. While the trains and subway do run there, it takes more time than I was willing to spend. So I started driving to work. I got used to the drivers -- hey, I used to live in Boston, I can cope with anything -- and the roads with the many, many names, and pretty soon I needed a break from NPR. So I became an audiobooks “reader.” At the end of some of the tapes some guy will come on to do the credits and end with, “Thanks for being an audio books reader.” But I’m not! I’m not going to go off onto a definition of reading (I’ll leave that to Uncle Bill or Tom Owen), but I’m pretty sure the act of listening is quite different from reading.
Q. What’s the most frightening thing about audiobooks?
A. Hearing people say, “I don’t remember the drive home at all.”
One of the first books I listened to was Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver. She’s a perennial bestseller at the store and I’ve always meant to read her. As I listened, I started to map the potholes on the drive to work. I didn’t use paper and pen, I just started noting where they were. If you drove a basic car the way I do, you’d do it too. I guess the difference between it and the more expensive cars that look pretty much the same, is that the more expensive ones actually have shocks. Listening to Kingsolver’s light Southern accent -- she reads the book herself -- while trying to remember which axle-shattering pothole is coming up was a surreal experience. Especially as Prodigal Summer is so at odds to the New York experience. It is set in and around a small southern town and has three main threads which occasionally intermingle, but mostly stay separate to tell their own part of the story. It’s one of those books where the only good guy is a dead one, literally. I don’t think it’s meant as more than that being the way it is for some people, but it made me a |
bit uncomfortable. This is the politer end of the 70s radical spectrum. I can understand that view, and I’ve certainly known enough men that make me see it, but it’s not one I wish to propagate. It’s only one book, but it’s a bestseller. I enjoyed it otherwise. It was unabridged -- I’m only going to work and back, why listen to anything abridged? -- and as the story built up I enjoyed listening to the tale of the returning coyotes, the possibilities of love, the life and death cycles that we’re all a part of.
I’d pretty much mapped the potholes when I got my next surprise. You could knock me over with a feather, but the roads department were actually filling potholes. I think I was at least a tape into M.E. Kerr’s young adult book, Gentlehands, when I came round the inside edge of a corner on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway to avoid a particularly nasty pothole, and I noticed it was gone. Gentlehands was upsetting enough, who was taking the skill out of my commute? I mean, anyone can drive, but you have to drive well to avoid all those chasms and pits. But it seems someone out there is actually trying to keep the roads together. It’s a bit disconcerting after living in Boston where the Big Dig just goes on and on. They say they’ll finish in my lifetime, but I don’t really believe it. Neither do I believe any of the space above will actually be a park, but who does? Young adult novels cut to the chase, they don’t mess about with two hundred pages of prologue before the action begins, and Gentlehands is no different. It’s a great summer love story and even as you get hurt and surprise along with the characters, you’re hoping for some kind of happy ending. Like Chris Crutcher’s recent Whale Talk (which I read rather than listened to), nothing is held back. Even twenty (thirty?) years after it was written, Gentlehands is emotionally involving and will leave you gasping for air at the end.
Q. What’s the second most frightening thing about audiobooks?
A. Price. Thank god for used bookshops. And the library.
It’s fun seeing what books the local bookshops and libraries carry. there are a lot of classics that, since I went to school in the UK, I never had to read in high school. Recently I listened to Ethan Frome -- an odd book to hear read aloud, but I enjoyed all those descriptions of snow.... It was just after finishing it that I noticed my back bumper had been given a good scratch, one of those that leaves the paint scraping off around it. It felt appropriate, even though no one was hurt -- I suppose ... since I think it happened when someone tried to park behind my car some night.
It has put me in fear of what might happen if I listen to any mysteries or spy thrillers. But since most of those are abridged, I won’t bother with them, and hopefully I won’t be bothered by spies and secret agents in turn. Instead, I’ll keep on with the classics and the young adult books. And mapping the potholes, an never-ending job.
Summer Reading
Everyone has their summer reading favorites: big fat Tom Clancy novels, slim volumes of Billy Collins’ poetry, books they don’t mind getting wet at the beach, or leaving behind in a cafe or bed and breakfast. I like reading classics. Sometimes I’ll get quite a bit read before the hum of the bees sends me to sleep. You can’t beat a four dollar copy of War and Peace for making sure you get peace while at the park -- or for starting conversations at the Someday Cafe!
A few more recommended summer reads:
The Patrick O’Brien series, which readers continue to find and get lost in. Be careful who you give this to. If they show the slightest hint that thy run away to sea, take the books away!
Wild Life by Molly Gloss. Yes, we keep recommending this, but later this year the paperback will come out and you’ll be telling all your friends about it, and buying it for them. It’s that much fun. It’s an Edgar Rice Burroughs meets the modern world told in a narrative voice that will draw you away to the cool heights of the Pacific Northwest mountains.
Sister Noon by Karen Joy Fowler. One of those excellent novels that takes you in and doesn't let go. Fowler takes a look at 19th-century San Francisco and sees things slightly differently from those others novels you might have read. As alway, two thumbs up.
Passage by Connie Willis. Can’t over-emphasize how rich and deep this novel is.
American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Inventing a new mythology is hard work, but Gaiman puts himself forward as one man who has a chance at doing it successfully. We’ve always sold a lot of his books and expect that this one will fly off the shelves. Gaiman’s comix and script writing experience shows here in the cinematic quality (and I say that as a good thing) of the writing. We get immersed in Shadow’s life, in the gods, large and small, who pass through the book.
Folly by Laurie King. A stand-alone novel from a talented mystery writer who is keeping two series going at one time. This one comes recommended by a couple of people I know, so it’s high up on the reading list.
No Hurry to Get Home by Emily Hahn. Hahn wrote for The New Yorker for years. She put together this collection of essays instead of writing an autobiography. You can see why she got away with it, they’re great essays, but you still wish for more. Not because the essays are weak, but because they’re strong and you want more.
Chester Himes, A Life by James Sallis. Sallis has become the default expert on Himes. If NPR or whoever need to know something or need a quote on him, they call Sallis. No wonder. This is a large, solid piece of work and deserves the attention it’s getting. Himes’ life distills recent American history: his success and his exile define the years he lived in.
Best web fiction is fiction...
Where’s the best fiction on the web? There’s Scifi.com and Strange Horizons but the best might be the ongoing story that is part of the build up (and beyond...) for the Stanley Kubrick/Steven Spielberg film ”AI.” For about twenty years Kubrick wanted to make a film based on a 1969 short story by Brian Aldiss -- “Supertoys Last All Summer Long.” He didn’t think the technology was up to his vision, so worked on other things. Over the years he often discussed (by fax!) the idea with Steven Spielberg. After Kubrick’s death, Speilberg took on the project and the film is due for release on June 29th. All well and good. Now look at the credits for the film, who is ‘”Sentient Machine Therapist Jeanine Salla”? Try her name in a search engine or just go here to get lost in a great adventure.
More next time, AVH & Blue, the cat. |
