Fiction, Reviews

‘Raylan,’ by Elmore Leonard

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I read a couple Elmore Leonard novels decades back and concluded that, although he was a good writer, I just didn’t like him. He knew his business, but he wasn’t a somebody whose company I enjoyed.

After I started watching the FX TV series “Justified,” based on his character Raylan Givens, US marshal, I decided to give him another try. I think the series is pretty good. I especially like the way “rednecks” are treated as actual human beings, with a range of IQs and wisdom levels. So I tried Leonard’s novel Raylan.

Consumer report: Nope. I still have the same reaction to Leonard that I had when I was younger. I can’t say precisely why he rubs me the wrong way, but he does. The same characters I enjoy on TV get on my nerves in this book.

Which is not saying it’s bad. It just doesn’t please my palate.

It’s about lawmen and drug dealers in Kentucky coal country. Some plot lines are discernible from the TV series, but in a much modified form. Cautions for adult themes and lots and lots of rough language.

Bookselling

How the French Buy Books

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Shakespeare & Company

“We don’t force French people to go to bookstores,” explains Vincent Montagne, head of the French Publishers Association. “They go to bookstores because they read.”

And the French government doesn’t allow them to discount their books more than 5%, so Amazon.com isn’t undermining local stores through deep discounts. France has around 2,500 bookshops now.

“We couldn’t have opened our bookstore without the subsidies we received,” Ms. Pérou said. “And we couldn’t survive now without fixed prices.” She and her husband own L’Usage du Monde in Paris.

Pamela Druckerman suggests this plethora of bookshops affords the French the choices we all want, but what do the booksellers offer that publishers don’t produce? Is choice in reading a selling, not a publishing, option? (via The Literary Saloon)

Fiction, Reviews

‘Diamonds and Cole,’ by Michael Maxwell

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My plan was to handle the stack of book reviews I’ve been planning in chronological order, so I could tell you about the oldest books before I forget them completely.

But Diamonds and Cole by Michael Maxwell, which I finished yesterday, changed my plan. I’m so excited about this book that I want to tell you about it right away. Also, you can get it for Kindle (it’s only available in electronic format) free, at least as of the date of this review.

Cole Sage is a Chicago newspaper man. There was a time when he was a Big Deal. War correspondent, investigative reporter. But the fire went out of him, and for the last couple years he’s been reduced to writing filler stories thrown to him, like bones, by his editor.

Then one day he’s sent to cover the rescue of a cat from a tree. Only, by the time he gets there, it’s become a hostage situation. Cole is shocked back into his old consciousness, and writes a great story.

But when he gets back to the office, he finds a phone message on his desk. Ellie has called – Ellie, the love of his youth, the one who got away, the woman he thinks about every day. All the message says is that she needs help. He gets on a plane back to California, his home, without delay. Continue reading ‘Diamonds and Cole,’ by Michael Maxwell →

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And how have you been?

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Hello. I’m back, at least now and then, for the next month or so.

I just finished my summer course in graduate school. The class was Music Cataloging, and it was kind of like studying law, but in an unfamiliar culture. My work was pretty lackluster, but I still came out with an A-minus grade, which is clear evidence of grade inflation. Or else I finally sighted that mythical “A for effort” I’ve been hearing about all my life.

Tonight after work I picked up a new (used) car – a 2002 Chrysler PT Cruiser. White, with woody panels (!). Yes, I finally parted company with Mrs. Hermanson, my ancient Chevy Tracker. I can’t deny an emotional tie, but she’s aged past my ability to maintain her in the manner to which she has become accustomed. I passed her on to an owner better qualified than I to minister to her aches and pains.

I’ve named the Cruiser Miss Ingebretsen, after my kindergarten teacher.

Coming up, a bunch of book reviews I’ve been piling up, plus deathless insights, madcap frolicking, and prophecies of doom. Fun for the whole family!

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Changing: The English of the Future

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Most English speakers today learned it as a second language, so how will their habits, struggles, and primary languages change the English language? Prospero says it has already gotten simpler. It may continue down that path.

“For example, European Union bureaucrats are likely to use the English ‘control’ to mean ‘monitor’ or ‘verify’, because contrôler and kontrollieren have this meaning in French and German….

“What, then, can we predict English will lose if the process goes on? An easy choice seems to be ‘whom’. English was once heavily inflected; all nouns carried a suffix showing whether they were subjects, direct objects, indirect objects or played some other role in a sentence. Today, only the pronouns are inflected. And while any competent speaker can use I, me, my and mine correctly, even the most fluent can find whom (the object form of who) slippery. So whom might disappear completely, or perhaps only survive as a stylistic option in formal writing.”

Authors, Fiction, Non-fiction

Derrickson Talks Horror, Reality with New Movie

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Scott Derrickson is the writer and director of the new movie, Deliver Us From Evil. He was also the man behind for Sinister , The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and The Day the Earth Stood Still. He believes fear strips away the lies we usually tell ourselves and forces us to face reality. He sat down with Steven Greydanus to talk about his style and the new movie.

More here.

Authors, Publishing, Writing

A Debut Novelist: ‘Subject Matter Matters’

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Ted Thompson, author of The Land of Steady Habits, talks about his business in ways that make him uncomfortable. “I feel like I’m bordering on saying something sacrilegious here, but here it goes: There’s a common strain of thinking among writers, particularly literary writers and the institutions that foster them (conference/colonies/workshops), that insists a book is only as good as its writing.”

Although he still believes in the preeminence of good writing, he know believes subject is very, very, and also very important. “Once a manuscript leaves your desk, subject matter is the primary (and often only) way it is discussed. So if you haven’t figured out a quick way to answer that cringe-inducing question ‘What’s your book about?’ in a way that interests other people, somebody else will. And that will be how the book is sold…”

He goes on to say how surprised he was that people in publishing actually want to love your book and that the slowness of the whole process is understandable.

Authors, Reading

Alone with Classics

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Author Sarah Perry was “raised by Strict Baptists” in Essex and not allowed to watch movies or read contemporary books. The result? “I turned my back on modernity and lost myself to Hardy and Dickens, Brontë and Austen, Shakespeare, Eliot and Bunyan. I memorised Tennyson, and read Homer in prose and Dante in verse; I shed half my childhood tears at The Mill on the Floss. I slept with Sherlock Holmes beside my pillow, and lay behind the sofa reading Roget. It was as though publication a century before made a book suitable – never was I told I ought not to read this or that until I was older. To my teacher’s horror my father gave me Tess of the D’Urbervilles when I was still at primary school, and I was simply left to wander from Thornfield to Agincourt to the tent of sulking Achilles, making my own way.”

And she soaked in the King James Bible. Her debut novel, After Me Comes the Flood, is reviewed here. (via Prufrock)

Publishing

Rediscovering the Excitement of Reading the Bible

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“I remember, as a teenager, reading through the books of Samuel and, upon finishing, thinking to myself, ‘This story is as invigorating as any story I’ve ever read, seen, or heard.’ What is strange to me now is how surprising a revelation that was. Having grown up with the literature, why didn’t I already think of it as engaging?”

Mark Bertrand interviews Adam Lewis Greene on his plan for an alternative reading experience for the Bible. Bibliotheca will be a four volume edition of the Bible made for readers with beautiful book design.

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Gaiman’s ‘American Gods’ Coming to TV

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The Starz network is developing Neil Gaiman’s American Gods for the small screen, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The series was passed over earlier by HBO.

Gaiman is excited about it. He says, “The team at Starz has been quite certain that they wanted to give Shadow, Wednesday and Laura a home since they first heard that the book was out there. I can’t wait to see what they do to bring the story to the widest possible audience able to cope with it.”

I gather he anticipates haters.