Review: Manual of Painting and Calligraphy

Read 4/21/12 - 5/5/12
3 Stars - Recommended to hard-core Saramago fans / Not recommended as an intro to this author
Pgs: 242
Publisher: Mariner / Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Letter to an Author I Thought I Knew Better:

Jose. You horn dog, you! I didn't know you had it in you, man. And here I thought, after having read you for so many years, that you were this compassionate, emotional, political, yet purposefully sexless author. Well, your Manual of Painting and Calligraphy certainly showed me differently, didn't it?!

I mean, ok, I'm not completely blind to the fact that you liked sex, and had sex, but seeing it written out on a white page in all of its stark and egotistical glory was a bit jarring. Almost like walking in on your parents doing the horizontal mambo. You KNEW they did it, you just never wanted to PICTURE them doing it, and now here you are, standing in the doorway SEEING them do it, in total shock and feeling slightly sick to your stomach.

To be honest, I think I prefer the older, wiser, 'sex-as-a-form-of-power' version of you over the first time novelist, 'I'm-a-sexual-being' version of you. As you matured as a writer, your take on sexuality matured as well. I feel as though sex is at its most powerful when it's hiding beneath the surface of your stories and not displayed as an intimate part of the story.

I wonder what your influences were here. I mean, sure, painting and writing and the pains of trying to define your character as one or the other were the catalyst behind the story, since it appears your character - who refuses to allow himself to be named - is unable to carry the burden of being both a painter and a writer. I am also certain that the sexuality of your character is bred from the school of thought that painters are hyper sexual creatures. Perhaps that has something to do with the texture and slippy-ness of the paints, the slathering of oils against canvas, the passion the artist exudes over the object of his attention, the fact that painting aligns itself more in the physical world vs. writing which is incredibly more cerebral?

I see this internal struggle in your character - the definition of himself in relation to his choice of medium. As a writer he focuses more internally; he can express his demons smartly, exorcise them more precisely through the words that drip from the tip of his pen. As a painter he emits an arrogance, a pettiness, and displays this pent up aggression at his inability to paint perfectly - hence the two paintings of the same sitting at the start of the novel - in a more physically degrading way. It seems the painter in him is more about 'marking his territory' and 'sexual conquests' than the writer in him, which is about emotional connectivity. And so there is this almost imperceptible shift that begins to take place within him as he moves from painter to writer to painter again...

Dueling personalities. MoPaC certainly delivers those.

Your writing style managed to shock me as well. The Saramago I've loved all this time, the man who creates those uniquely beautiful run-on sentences that deliberately distracts his readers with parallel trains of thought, that Saramago isn't here yet. This Saramago, the Saramago of MoPaC, hasn't found his flow yet. He's still feeling it out, experimenting with it. I can see him in there, like the caterpillar that's about to emerge from its cocoon as a butterfly, flexing his wings and stretching against the paper-thin boundaries that currently constrain him. I can appreciate what I'm reading, but it's missing that something special that finds its way into your writing later on. You're still developing your "you-ness".

I'm writing to tell you to keep pushing, Jose. Move out of the sexual predator phase quickly, it's not becoming of you. It's not who you really are. I'll be waiting over here... don't rush on my account. Perfection takes time, and you'll get there. I promise.

Love, your biggest fan.

Audioreview: The Failure

Listened 4/2/12 - 4/12/12
3 Stars - Recommended to fans of funny bank-heists-gone-wrong / Not as an intro to audiobooks
Audio download (approx 3.5 hrs)
Publisher: Iambik Audio / Akashic Books


First, I feel I should apologize for allowing nearly a month to pass without posting my review of James Greer's The Failure. I've been trying to decide if it was the book or the narrator that left me feeling sort of 'meh' about the whole thing, and didn't want to review it until I was sure which way I was leaning.

You see, the narrator of the audio file, Tadhg Hydes, has one of the oddest reading voices I've ever heard. His thick accent and rushed, breathy way of speaking made it very difficult for me to follow the story. Nearly every sentence began with a big push of air and ended on a soft whisper.

If you can't imagine what I am describing, you need to listen to the sample of the audio. Go on, I'll wait. It's only 4 minutes long, so you'll be back in no time....


See what I mean?


I also struggled with his strange phrasing - his Irish blood has him dropping the h's from words (so 'thanks' becomes 'tanks' and 'thoughts' becomes 'toughts') and the breathy-ness I mentioned makes his r's sound like wannabe w's (so 'rolling around' sounds an awful lot like 'wolling awvound'). The r's aren't affected all of the time. Just some of the time. And I would often catch myself listening more for those lazy r's than to the words he was actually speaking. It was a mess. Trust me.

One thing I did like about Tadgh was the fact that he didn't change his voice to differentiate between male and female characters, like other narrators I've listened to. He read everyone pretty straight, which was refreshing, even if I didn't care much for his natural voice. And his less-than-animated reading made some of the humor more humorous, if you can believe that. It was almost as though his rushed, deadpan delivery kicked my funny bone into high gear.

Now on to the story. The Failure is about two best friends - Guy Forget (what a name!) and Billy - and their absolutely insane idea to rob a check cashing building in order for Guy to get the backing money he needs for a breakthrough internet advertising website called Pandemonium that some stranger named Sven is trying to sell him. He and Billy know next to nothing about robbing a building, but they have a guy on the inside and feel pretty confident they can pull it off. And of course, it wouldn't be worth reading if everything goes as planned.

The book begins with Guy in a coma, so you know right from the start that this robbery thing was a bust, but that won't deter you from reading on. As a matter of the fact, the book is told completely out of order, and spans a five month period of time, so the entire novel you're sitting there trying to decipher and reorder the events  to determine what exactly went down and who the hell foiled who.

James Greer seemed to have a good time playing around with the writing. It definitely shows through, even if I didn't appreciate Tadhg's interpretation of the text.  A good chunk of the book is just out and out conversation taking place between characters. It's witty and wacky and a little all over the place. Greer understands human awkwardness - awkwardness between strangers, awkwardness between friends -  and infuses Guy and Billy with the best and worst of it. If I had read this, rather than listened to it, I think I would have had a lot more fun with this one!

I mean, who the heck hasn't sat around and imagined robbing a bank or a jewelry store? Who hasn't wanted to make a cool 100k in the blink of an eye, by slipping on a ski mask and running into a store screaming "this is a stick-up, everyone down! Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt!" Ok, ok, so I admit, I've never fantasied about robbing a bank. But I have been driving behind an armored truck before and wished really hard that it would crash and explode, shooting hundreds of thousands of dollars into the sky so I could snatch them out of the air and run!!!

Listen, if you like books that mess with the sequence of events and share the end at the beginning, then you should check this one out. And if you like books that you know don't stand a chance of turning out well, and get a kick out of watching it all go wrong, check this one out. But I'm going to recommend sticking with the print version on this one, guys, and ask that you just trust me on this....

Where Writers Write: Andrez Bergen

Welcome to TNBBC's brand new blog feature!

Where Writers Write is a weekly series that will feature a different author every Wednesday as they showcase their writing spaces using short form essay, photos, and/or video. As a lover of books and all of the hard work that goes into creating them, I thought it would be fun to see where some of TNBBC's favorite authors roll up their sleeves and make the magic happen. 

To kick it all off, here's Andrez Bergen!! Andrez made his TNBBC debut back in January for our Indie Spotlight series, where he shared how his book Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat came to be. He is Senior Writer and Editor at Impact Magazine (UK) and Writer and Editor at Forces of Geek. His new novel, 100 Years of Vicissitude is coming soon.

Where Andrez Bergen Writes

It's so clean and crisp

You're looking at the sum total of my current working space, a square metre or so of territory that I grudgingly share with my wife Yoko and, occasionally, with my six-year-old daughter Cocoa. I've been using it since about 2006, and the limited space does have its benefits - sometimes I feel like I'm a cramped X-Wing pilot, dodging the wide world and distractions around me. The kitchenette is just behind (to my left) and the TV and stereo are just to my right. The three of us share an apartment that is thirty-three square metres in size, so the place does get rowdy and it's a little... er... little.

Just a little space of his own

Around the working space (or cubby hole, more like it), I have pictures of Cocoa as a baby, and another photo of Yoko and my best friend in Australia, Briony. There's a Tony Tony Chopper mascot (from 'One Piece'), a small book case (with CDs, DVDs, paperwork, dusty old manuscripts, and manga in it), and a poster from one of the hilarious old '70s Japanese Bōsōzoku biker romps - along with Christmas lights that we haven't removed since December.

Sneak peek at the new book cover

You'll usually find me here after 4:00 a.m. most mornings now, pottering on stuff, writing and the music I do as Little Nobody - with a couple of mugs of very strong black coffee to nurse me through the wee hours! Clothes-wise, I'll wear whatever's comfy. When you're sitting for hours on a hard Fritz Hansen Series 7 chair (my wife's choice), you need good padding. Sadly, no rituals are performed here. There's no space to swing a black cat.

Check back next week to see where Patrick Wensink works HIS magic!!

NYC through the eyes of a book-shopper

This past Thursday, Tara (of Booksexyreview) and I found ourselves in NYC for the PEN Festival. With plenty of time to kill before the first panel, Tara took me on a tour of New York City's most popular bookshops. (Yes, yes, I know... I've been to the city more times than I can count, but I've never popped into a New York City bookshop before. Go on and gasp, I know you want to!)

McNally Jackson

The first threshold we crossed was McNally Jackson's. Can I just tell you how lovely the window displays were? There was one designed for PEN, with books suspended from the ceiling, dangling precariously every which way...

Once inside, I was drawn immediately to the tables at the front of the store. *oooh lookit all the pretty new books* They shone like lovely little jewels. I wanted to grab every single one of them and shove them into my pockets. Instead, I whipped out my Droid and added a ton of them to my Goodreads to-buy list.

With some effort, I pulled myself away from the front of the store and headed toward the back. Now, McNally's looks deceivingly like every other bookshop in my neck of the woods with one major exception - their quirky way of shelving their novels. I was in the mood for a little Saramago or Duncan and struggled to find them initially, only to discover that they shelve their books by the location of the story. So Saramago, since most of his novels take place in Portugal, can be found on the Italy, Spain, Portugal shelf.

Though extremely tricky, it's actually a pretty clever way of shelving books, dontcha think? It certainly forces the hardcore author-fan to use their brain, doesn't it? *what country was that darn novel set in again? c'mon brain, think! think!*  While fun for browsing, I suppose the store must hire some of the most patient and helpful associates in all of Manhattan; I can only imagine how many times a day confused customers must approach the desk questioning the whereabouts of a specific novel!

**** 4 stars for creative shelving and cool titles on their main tables!!

St. Mark's

Second on the must-hit list was St. Mark's. The second I walked in the door, I was struck by two things. The silence. And the floor layout. You could hear a pin drop, it was so quiet. It felt so strange. But I quickly got over the lack of noise when I started to browse their side-facing front shelves. 

Of all the bookstores I've ever been to (in NYC or otherwise), St. Mark's appears to carry more of "my kind" of books. On their hardcover fiction shelf, I oooh'd and aaah'd over almost ever novel I saw. No fluffy stuff showing their spines on those shelves, no sirree. 

In search of the paperback fiction, I followed the back wall and stumbled across the shelf you see pictured here. It's a rack containing self published novels and chapbooks, held under consignment. *hello sweetheart.* The moment I saw that rack, this bookshop won my heart. Sadly, as I browsed the rack, I found that most of what was there was not to my taste and, those that were, were waaaay overpriced. But that doesn't lessen the coolness factor one bit! 

Also, compared to the other book stores we visited, it felt a heck of a lot more modern and indie. Perhaps the uneasy silence I noticed when I first walked in was more of an revered awe? This is a bookshop I plan on visiting again.. and again.. and again.

***** 5 stars for awesome indie vibes and that incredible self-publishing rack!

Housing Works 

Onto the Housing Works we go... non-profit bookshop and cafe that offers supportive care to the homeless and those suffering from HIV/AIDS. 

This bookshop definitely has that warehouse feel to it - from its super high ceilings right down to the exposed structural columns and that wonderfully unmistakable old book smell.  Everything you see here has been donated, so the collections are quite eclectic. Like any other used book store, they have great sales (there was one for 30% off everything this weekend) and you never know what gems you might find. 

I hung out on the lower level, where all the fiction was, while Tara browsed the non-fiction upstairs. As I wandered around, I found a small bookshelf off near a door to the back room where they stock the arcs and galleys. Though I didn't find anything I would read, I thought it was cool that they had a special spot for those. 

The overall atmosphere was a welcoming one. There's plenty of room to wander and browsing is highly encouraged. This is the type of bookstore you want to take your time in, since you never know what you'll stumble upon, and you can feel good making a purchase, knowing that your money will be put towards a good cause. 

*** 3 Stars for the welcoming, book sale / warehouse feel and wonderful old book smell.

The Strand

Our last bookstore, and for good reason, was The Strand. 18 miles of books, and they ain't kidding! Probably my least favorite when it comes to design and layout, this beast of a bookstore has some amazing deals on some pretty cool fiction. 

I saw an old Two Dollar Radio title that I'm currently experiencing some guilt over - I restrained myself and didn't buy it when every ounce of my being was screaming that I should. Downstairs, in their audiobook displays, I tossed and turned over copies of Lamb and Threats (and ended up getting neither, but I did purchase a print copy of Threats, so....). Man it sucks when you try to be careful with your cash! 

Floor upon floor and row upon row and shelves upon shelves, The Strand felt extremely maze-like and claustrophobic. Tara warned me about the sensory overload, but I didn't really know what to expect until we got there. It's like the anti-Housing Works - where the Housing Works makes you feel ok about browsing and lingering, The Strand makes you feel anxious and rushed. So many people and so little space, but so many floors and such incredibly tall bookshelves. *i'm feeling a little panicky just thinking about it.* I totally get why, I mean, it's the best known bookshop in the city! 

*** 3 Stars for the great selections and prices that counteract the anxious crowded feeling.

By the time Tara and I left The Strand, we were bookshopped out. We each had our little bag of books because no matter how good we want to be, we just don't know how to say no to ALL of the books. 

God, there is nothing better than walking the city streets with an ex-resident when she's as much into books as you are! Some people like to bar-hop... We love to get our bookshop-hop on! So what about you? Have you been to one, or more, of these bookshops? Which are your favorites? Did I miss one that you absolutely adore? 

Book Giveaway: Boleto

Since July 2010, TNBBC has been bringing authors and readers together every month to get behind the book! This unique experience wouldn't be possible without the generous donations of the authors and publishers involved. 

TNBBC and Graywolf Press are at it again!

We are partnering up to bring you next month's Author/Reader Discussion.

In June, we will be featuring Alyson Hagy and her upcoming release

Boleto

In order to stimulate discussion, 

Graywolf Press is offering 10 copies, domestically

(sorry, international folks!)

Here's the Goodreads description:

An unforgettable story of men and horses, the American West, and the dream of a ticket out.

Will Testerman is a young Wyoming horse trainer determined to make something of himself. Money is tight at the family ranch, where he's living again after a disastrous end to his job on the Texas show-horse circuit. He sees his chance with a beautiful quarter horse, a filly that might earn him a reputation, and spends his savings to buy her. Armed with stories and the confidence of youth, he devotes himself to her training -- first, in the familiar barns and corrals of home, then on a guest ranch in the rugged Absaroka mountains, and, in the final trial, on the glittering, treacherous polo fields of southern California.

With Boleto, Alyson Hagy delivers a masterfully told, exquisitely observed novel about our intimate relationships with animals and money, against the backdrop of a new West that is changing forever.

This giveaway HAS BEEN EXTENDED and will run through May 12th.

Winners will be notified here and via email on May 13th.

Here's how to enter:

1 - Leave a comment stating why you would like to win a copy.

2 - State that you agree to participate in the group read book discussion that will run from June 15th through the end of the month. Alyson Hagy has agreed to participate in the discussion and will be available to answer any questions you may have for her. 

 *If you are chosen as a winner, by accepting the copy you are agreeing to read the book and join the group discussion at TNBBC on Goodreads (the thread for the discussion will be emailed to you before the discussion begins). 

 3 - You must leave me a way to contact you (email is preferred). AND you must be a resident of the US!!!!

Good luck!

Is Finding New Content the Issue...

...or is it finding the time?

I was sitting here this morning, scrolling through the last few weeks of posts on my blog, and I noticed that... short of writing reviews... I've been slacking off on actual content.

Which is quite funny, really, because Tara from booksexyreview and I have been discussing this exact topic quite a bit over the last month or so.

What stimulated all the talk? Well, to be honest, it was the birth of The Reading Ape's Book Blog UnCon (which is taking place on the same Monday as BEA's Book Blogger Con) and its call to bloggers for prospective sessions that got the conversation started. Our slightly obsessive love and passion for building content and developing blog-worthy ideas has kept the discussion-ball a'rollin'.

See, for me, content ideas always come fast and furious. I find I'm never short of cool new series to kick off. But the series I envision typically rely almost entirely on content from publishers and authors. Why? Well, partly because I'm incredibly fascinated with what goes on behind-the-books. So I develop ways in which I can gather information from people in those fields and showcase it here on the blog. But I also do it because I really don't have the time to sit and write out my own content. I'm sure my hard core followers have noticed this habit of mine by now, yes?

Over the years, I hope you'll agree that I've had some really fun series kicking around the blog: "What I Want to Know" where bloggers, authors, and publishers were questioned on a different topic each week; the Indie Spotlights where publishers and bloggers are thrown under the stage lights and given carte blanche to share whatever they wish with TNBBCer's; Indie Book Buzz's like this one, where publishers dish on the upcoming books they are most excited to publish... among many others.

The Insatiable Booksluts is a great example of a blog that develops timely, intriguing, and engaging self-content. They use what they see and hear in the news, on Twitter, and in similar social media sites to snag content and then go on lovely rage-rants that make my heart swoon and my brain hurt! These are the types of blog posts I wish I had the time and energy to write, but lo! I do not.

Some bloggers seem to rely heavily on meme's to generate new weekly content. For my own personal reasons, I steer clear of meme's. However, I can see their appeal - without a doubt, meme's are excellent community builders.

Others do nothing more than review books.

The great thing about all of this? Content is content. It doesn't really matter what it is -reviews, interviews, vlogs, meme's, series - what matters more is where you're getting it from and why you choose it.

So, Tara and I are proposing an Uncon group session focusing on open discussion about just that:

- Blogger/Publisher relationship: who decides what is buzz-worthy?
- Deciding what to review
- Beyond the "Review": finding and developing new content.

Hopefully you find this subject matter as intriguing as we do!!

Indie Spotlight: Gary Slaughter

When an aspiring author sits down for the first time to write their novel, they dream of publishing companies fighting each other for the rights to the manuscript. They envision the yacht and beach house they will purchase with their first royalty check. They imagine the book flying up the NYT Best Seller List in a matter of weeks, nay, days after it hits the bookstore shelves.

But the cold reality is... the chances of that happening is very slim. Most authors share the same backstory - years of hard work, severe revisions, hundreds of pitch queries sent out and hundreds of rejection letters sent back. Especially for a debut author, am I right?

Indie author Gary Slaughter (of the Cottonwood series) has been through it all, and he's decided to help aspiring and debut authors by sharing his own experiences in the form of an informational letter:

Advice for Prospective Authors

Like other published authors, I am constantly asked by prospective authors how they should go about getting their book published. I have developed the pro forma letter below to answer them.

Dear Prospective Author:

You have asked my advice on how to publish your book. To answer your question, I have outlined the steps to follow and mentioned some pitfalls to avoid. Here is what you must to do:

1.      Make sure your manuscript is perfect. For an unpublished fiction author, it should be no more than 80,000 words.

2.      Show your manuscript to someone who reads the kind of novel you have written and who knows how to write. This person should be objective and willing to give you honest feedback. 

3.      Incorporate that person’s feedback into your manuscript.

4.      Purchase the annual Guide to Literary Agents(GLA). You can find it at most bookstores.

5.      Read the preliminary information, including essays and articles, in the GLA. Then identify a number of candidate agents, i.e., those who deal with your kind of book.

6.      Visit the websites of the agents you have selected to learn of these agents’ latest submission requirements. They often differ from what is printed in the GLA.

7.      Start to think about developing a query letter, synopses of differing lengths, and a writer’s resume.

8.      If you don’t know what these things are, search the Internet to learn. There are volumes written on these subjects.

9.      There are also good books on preparing your query package and your manuscript to meet publishing industry standards. Incorporate these standards into your query package.

10.  Following the agent’s submission standards, submit your query packages to as many agents as you can. Avoid agents who want to charge for their services. Preferably the prospective agents you select are members of the AAR, The Association of Authors’ Representatives. AAR has a very stringent code of ethics. AAR agents do not charge for their services.  

11.  Secure an agent and take his or her advice from there. Be very careful here. There many charlatans out there who take advantage of unsuspecting people with manuscripts to place. As a rule, legitimate publishers do not accept manuscripts from new writers without agents.

This is the process for finding a publisher. There are no shortcuts.

I hope you have the stamina to succeed. Most people do not. It took my wife and me a year-and-a-half and 170 tailored query packages to agents to secure my agent. It took another year of rewrites to make my agent happy with my first book. After that, it took another six months to find a publisher.

Given the number of hours that we have devoted to the five novels in the Cottonwood series, despite having sold a respectable number of books, we have made mere pennies an hour. The point is, most writers of books published today cannot live on their royalties. So don’t quit your day job.

Keep in mind that the competition is stiff. 81% of Americans think they have a book in them. From those people, there are currently six million unpublished manuscripts making the rounds of agents and publishers today.

If my advice seems unduly pessimistic, it’s because I want to protect you from unrealistic expectations

Good luck,

Gary Slaughter

Published Author

Fruits of Our Labor

We have worked long and hard to find a publisher for the Cottonwood Series and to produce five, 400-page novels. So far, my wife Joanne and I have each invested about 15,000 hours to date.

Has it been worthwhile? We invite you to judge for yourself:

     Bio:

GarySlaughter is the multi-award-winning author of the Cottonwood books. His critically acclaimed series includes five novels based on home-front America during World War II.

 Cottonwood Summer(2004), the first in his series and winner of the PIAS Award of Excellence. He followed with Cottonwood Fall(2006), a Benjamin Franklin Award finalist in the Popular Fiction category; Cottonwood Winter: A Christmas Story (2008), a ForeWord Book of the Year Award finalist for Adult Fiction and aNext Generation Indie Book Award finalist in both General Fiction and Young Adult Fiction; Cottonwood Spring(2009), a Benjamin Franklin Award finalist in Popular Fiction and aNext Generation Indie Book Award finalist in Young Adult Fiction; and finally his latest, to be released in the summer of 2012, called Cottonwood Summer ’45.

 When not writing, he presents his “Behind the Book” talk to audiences of all ages. And because of his extensive knowledge of POWs in America during World War II, he frequently speaks on that subject as well.

Review: A Hollow Cube is a Lonely Space

Read 4/17/12 - 4/18/12
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended to Bizarro Fiction newbies
Pgs: 91
Publisher: Eraserhead Press

What the world needs now.. is more strange fiction! Thank goodness for Rose O'Keefe and her "New Bizarro Author Series", which sort of equates to the shallow end of a really long, really deep, really freaky pool... It's the perfect, low risk way for a publisher - and curious reader - to dip their toes in the murky waters of debut bizarro fiction without having to take the full-out plunge.

For the uninitiated, Bizarro fiction has its roots traced back to Eraserhead Press. True visionaries of the sick and twisted, their fiction is a combination of the absurd and the grotesque, with a little satire thrown in for good measure. The interesting thing with Bizarro fiction is how flexible it is. Turn up the dial on the absurd and you'll probably get something like The Pickled Apocalypse of Pancake Island. Stir in a good helping of the grotesque and you might end up with something along the lines of The Baby Jesus Butt Plug. (You totally just clicked on those links, didn't you? You were dying to see what those books were about! For the record, I have not read either of these.)

And yeah, I realize that I am probably not doing S.D Foster and his collection of flash fiction/short stories any justice at all by linking to weird literature like that. But I do have a reason for it. And it is this. Not all Bizarro fiction is made up of the things you find in hallucinatory nightmares, or worry yourself sick over when you're stranded on the side of the road in the middle of a moonless night. Some of it is actually pretty cool.

Case in point: A Hollow Cube is a Lonely Space. This collection is one helluva interesting little book. Contained within these 23 stories, you will find some of the most approachable bizarro fiction this genre has to offer. S.D. Foster's fictional shorts offer up twisted perspectives and completely implausible yet highly intriguing and emotionally stirring situations.

Though the stories are short, they pack a lasting punch and chew at you for long moments after... I mean, how often do you hear the life story of a Clementine? Or get to know the extremely vain antics of a man who rips his head from his very shoulders when it begins to age on him?

Some of my favorite stories were told from the most unique and emotionally poignant points of view. There's The Trial of Ted - which follows the unfortunate life of a stuffed teddy bear after his young owner unknowingly drops him in the woods. Unbreakable - the story of a doll who is purchased to comfort a sick little girl during her last few months. Subsidence details the trials and tribulations of marrying a tree. An aging, mutated monster comes to terms with the fact that he must make way for an up-and-coming youth by banishing himself to an abandoned town in Slothra. And Mr. Rat demonstrates how you can take the rat out of the sewer but can't take the sewer out of the rat.

Each story is a parable or fable of sorts, with subtle warnings hiding between the lines. Don't place beauty before personality. Loneliness is sometimes preferable to poor company. Sometimes, being overprotective can cause more damage to someone than if you hadn't protected them at all. Be happy with what you have because you'll never be happy with what you get. Death comes for all of us, eventually.

Though his stories appear small on the surface, and typically feature non-human characters, there's something extremely human about each one of them. Or maybe I am just a sad ole sap for the emotionally tormented and tortured?

This book belongs in the hands of readers who are tired of reading the same ole, same ole. Forget that this is a debut author, because his writing doesn't read like one. Forget that it's associated with one of the most misunderstood genres in the industry. Forget that you might not be a fan of short stories. Just remember that TNBBC told you to go out and grab this sucker and get lost within its pages asap. Have I steered you wrong yet?!

BookAnd: A "How To" Series (Part II)

Welcome back to TNBBC's first ever bookish video mini-series.

Last week, we introduced you to BookAnd - a brand new, still in beta, 3D build-your-own-bookstore website. My son demonstrated how to view your bookstore and shelves using a touch screen tablet.

This week, he shows us how to decorate your bookstore using your one time stash of 3,000 coins and BookAnd's easy to navigate shopping center. (Don't worry about being frugal. Remember, there are many different ways to gain more coins - tweet a snapshot of your store or link it through Facebook; add a store to your favorites list; log in for two consecutive days; borrow a book from someone else's store and add it to yours.)

In this video, he'll also show you how to give each book a star rating and add your own personal review...

What do you think? Do you like what you've seen so far?

If you are a tablet owner (Kindle Fire / iPad) I strongly recommend that you check out the site - you can register here by clicking on the Request an Invite link. Once you're in, and you've built your bookstore, come visit ours - TNBBC's Bookshop and Books 'n Stuff - and say hello. There are lots of upgrades on their way, the site keeps getting better and better. I'm looking forward to being able to export my books and reviews from Goodreads, and there's a 3D Cover Lab app in the works that will allow you to upload 3D images of the books...

Stay tuned for more review/video info on BookAnd soon.

(If you're up to it, leave a comment letting my son know what you thought of his  "How To" video. He's super excited (and nervous) about being featured on my blog!)

Review: The Sovereignties of Invention

Read 4/12/12 - 4/17/12
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended to readers who dig the odd and uncanny
Pgs: 109 (pdf)
Publisher: Red Lemonade (Releases May 2012)

Matthew Battles may be a new author to me, but he is not new to authordom. Back in 2003 he channeled his love of rare books and libraries and published Library: an Unquiet History (which has seen mixed reviews on Goodreads),  a book that tours libraries from all over the world throughout all of time.

His latest, The Sovereignties of Invention, is a collection of short stories that seem to be suspended just beyond the reach of time and place. Steeped in the uncanny and impossible, Battles stretches our imagination with stories like Time Capsule in which two men attempt to best each other in a never ending game of chess aided by pills that, when swallowed, move you back through time in one minute increments. Or the title story, The Sovereignties of Invention, which tells the tale of the man who purchased a machine that, once inserted into your auditory canals, can record your every subconscious thought.

It's like Battles is stirring up a war between man, animal, and machine...gathering all of the elements, giving them a good wind-up, and releasing them into the arena to duke it out. Who will come out on top? How will it all end? Does man overcome the machine? Does animal outlast man? Does it even matter..?

Within this collection of eleven stories, The Dogs in the Trees, Camera Lucida, and The Unicorn were particular favorites of mine, evoking much stronger emotional connections than any of the others. For reasons unknown to the townspeople, dogs take to the trees until their eventual deaths. A family vacationing in a hand-me-down summer home discover an old Polaroid camera that shoots photos of people they've never met and places they've never been. A man stumbles across an ugly, deformed, and incredibly sad unicorn in his local cemetery and the two quickly become inseparable. These are the sort of stories that I wish I could experience from the inside... by burrowing within their pages.

Other stories, like The Gnomon and The World and the Tree, contain incredibly strong, dreamlike qualities. Sometimes so strong that you want to shake its characters awake, certain that the things they are describing cannot possibly be happening.

If you're looking for a collection of stories that will challenge your mind while changing the way you view the world, I'm pretty sure you've just found it!

And you'd be in luck, too, because TNBBC is proud to host Matthew Battles in a discussion of this very collection towards the end of next month. Why not grab a copy (or read it here) and prepare to join us?! The discussion will go live on May 15th here.

Review: The No Hellos Diet

Read 3/29/12 - 4/3/12
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended to readers who enjoy the humdrum of the everyday
88 pages (eBook/PDF)
Publisher: Lazy Fascist Press

We've all been there, unless we were born with a silver spoon in our mouths. Whether it was your first job or an in-between pocket-filler as you attempted to sort your shitty life out... I'm talking about those grueling, humiliating, horrendously mind numbing minimum wage positions we suddenly found ourselves in.

Mine was a part time position in a Carvel ice cream shop while I was still in high school. It was shit pay, and I had a shitty ass boss who thought it would be funny to make me carry the freshly made ice cream cakes to the outdoor freezer in the pouring rain... cause, ya' know, it's wet out, and my feet might stick to the freezer floor. That, or he could get a laugh by shutting the door while I was in there and hold me hostage for awhile. He and the cake maker used to get their kicks by blowing up condoms like a balloon and bouncing them back and forth as they talked about sex behind my back while I was washing dishes. I lasted two days, and that took amazing effort, let me tell you!

Then, when I was in college, I needed a job that could flex to my crazy schedule, and thought I had found it at a local ski resort as a Time Share Telemarketer. Let's just forget the fact that I absolutely despise telemarketers for a second. Cause I was willing to wipe that clear from my mind for a little commission. But my first night there, the auto-dialer rang up three non-English speaking families in a row and to top it off, the office manager threw a birthday party for one of the supervisors... with a male STRIPPER! What the hell? Weren't there Sexual Harassment laws back in the 90's? I left that night, after finishing out my shift, and never went back.

So when I pick up a book that's primarily about a going-nowhere twenty-something year old dude who stocks shelves at a department store for a living, I knew we were going to become fast friends. Sam Pink, author of The No Hellos Diet, has been there, done that, and lived to tell a pretty fucking good tale about it!

I think Pink's got to have a bit of genius in him to take something as mind-numbing as a job stocking shelves and turn it into a side street billboard showcasing the internal struggle of the awkward and antisocial. Using the slightly uncomfortable second person perspective, "you" are sucked straight into the mind of, well, yourself. You work at an Ultra-High-Risk department store too close to Blood Alley for anyone's comfort. You're made to watch an orientation video of interviews of past employees who are missing body parts and have suffered brain damage due to workplace accidents. You chill with co-workers with names like Sour Cream and humor his fetishist questions. You get a quick thrill out of crushing boxes in the compactor. Your brain thinks up the weirdest shit while you're working. It just won't shut off. It never stops...

"You load broken-down boxes into a compactor then crush them by pressing a button. Crushing the boxes, you always say, “Die. Die. Die.” Sometimes audibly, sometimes not. It feels the same either way. The box compactor squeals, compacting. Die. Die. Die. “Die. Die. Die,” you say, and watch the crushing. Feels good to watch the boxes die. Die. Die. Die. Sometimes when the store closes you empty the box compactor and press the button when there’s nothing in it. And the crushing mechanism stops a little bit above the empty bottom then comes back up. Lately, it is enough to consider that maybe when the compactor crushes without anything there to crush, a new universe opens horizontally with the crushed air. And that maybe all the crushed atoms of air open horizontally into a new material plane of possibility. And that maybe you’ve been absorbed by one, the same look on your face as always. It is enough to consider that happening."

Sam sees beyond the surface of the typical every day things. He scratches through its skin, slipping an inquisitive finger around the muscles beneath, and tugs, gently, just to see what it does. His words, very much like those fingers, wrap around you as you read them, tugging at your brain, tickling around your ribs... testing out your softer spots. It's humorous and gross, it's honest and it's way out there, all at the same time. It's almost like it's so strange it could have actually happened. All of it. In a "dear diary, you're not going to fucking believe this" kind of way...

I bet there's more truth here than you first realize.

Hey Small Press on "Being Indie"

On "Being Indie" is a monthly feature hosted here on TNBBC. We will meet a wide variety of independent authors, publishers, and booksellers as they discuss what being indie means to them. 

Meet Don Antenen. He is one of two founding editors of Hey Small Press!, a non-profit project promoting independent publishers to public libraries all over the United States, which exists to encourage libraries to acquire small and independent press books. He lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His fiction has appeared in the Used Furniture Review, and he cheers for his beloved Cincinnati Bengals every Sunday.  Sometimes he writes very short reviews on Goodreads. 

Hey Small Press! reviews some amazing indie fiction and if I were you, I'd add their website to your blog roll asap... Here's Don with his thoughts on what being indie means....

What is Indie?

I am the editor of a website that promotes indie press books to public libraries (heysmallpress.org), but I have never formulated a strict definition of what "indie" means.  The definitions of artistic labels are inevitably vague or nebulous, and "indie" is no exception.  But so it is not totally meaningless: being indie is a confluence of aesthetic inventiveness, financial independence, and artistic control.


Comparing the catalogues of indie publishers like NYRB Classics or Coffee House Press to corporate publishers like Random House or Penguin, there is a clear aesthetic divide.  This divide is clear even with the "good guys" of corporate publishing like FSG or Harper Perennial, who publish great, difficult books by inventive writers (see: 2666, There is No Year, Parallel Stories, etc etc), but only after these writers have succeeded in the indie press world, won a big award, or there is potential for a movie adaptation.  For example, Roberto Bolaño was first published in English by indie press New Directions.  Curiously, this works in reverse as well.  When big publishers do publish great writers, they don't stick with them.
Vintage published the first and third book of Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertész's trilogy, but the second book, FIASCO, wasn't published in English until indie press Melville House published it last year.
(FIASCO was undoubtedly the best book published in 2011).


Financial independence is a thornier question.  In some cases, it is clear when a publisher ceases to be indie: Schocken press was purchased by Random House in 1987.  Schocken still publishes interesting books now and then, but it is no longer the indie press that brought Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, and Hannah Arendt (not to mention more obscure writers like Bernard Lazare!) to the Anglophone world.  But what of indie presses like Dalkey Archive Press, which receives funding from government cultural agencies to publish translated fiction?  Or Starcherone and Black Lawrence Press becoming imprints of Dzanc Books?  And if the books are amazing, does it matter where the money comes from?


The last bit is artistic control.  Imprints of multimedia corporations publish lots of books the editors and promoters do not actually like (in unguarded moments they'll admit this).  For indie presses this is not the case, as they publish fewer books and do not have a company above them making decisions.  The end result is that I can comfortably walk into a bookstore and buy any book from NYRB Classics, Archipelago Press, or Fiction Collective 2 (to name just three) without knowing anything about it other than the publisher.  This is not the case for any big publisher, nor could it be.


I started Hey Small Press! because my experience working in public libraries showed me how underrepresented indie press literature is on library shelves and how little (some) librarians know about the incredible books being published by the indies.  Jessica Smith wrote a great short article for the Library Journal website attacking the "Blockbuster model" used by many libraries.


Her article sums up well my ideas about developing library collections with small press books, but I would add that it's important for readers of small press literature to speak up at their library and request books a lot.  At Hey Small Press! we send out a monthly newsletter to librarians and readers, so anyone can print it out and take it to their library and do just that.  The overload of best-sellers on library shelves, at the expense of developing diverse catalogues, leaves a lot of indie press enthusiasts alienated, but I think there is room for change if people who up to their library branch and start a conversation... then check the books out!

BookAnd: A "How To" Series (Part I)

Welcome to TNBBC's very first bookish video mini-series!

What is BookAnd?

A few weeks ago, I was introduced to a new website called BookAnd. Still in its infancy stages, operating in  beta / invite only mode, BookAnd allows tablet users to create their dream bookstore. 

Placing an emphasis on 3D technology, BookAnd woos with you a call to build your own bookstore from the ground up - choosing from four different storefront locations and using coins to purchase an array of products with which to decorate your space - showcasing your literary personality. 

With BookAnd, you design your store, fill its bookshelves with your favorite books, write reviews for them, visit other Bookander's bookstores and add their books to your bookshelves  - all at the tap of the screen.

And who am I to turn down an opportunity to try out a new book-related social media site? This one in particular intrigued me... curiosity gnawed at me over how it will compare to bookish giants like Goodreads, Shelfari, and LibraryThing which already allow you to add, review, and share books and have the added community of bookish groups, forums, and live video chats with authors - things that BookAnd doesn't offer. 

Displaying MY Literary Personality

I had a lot of fun designing my bookstore - which is temporarily named TNBBC's Bookshop (until the name field is expanded to allow for more characters). I went for a simple, modern look. I'm using two bookstands to display the current and future Author/Reader Discussion Books - this month's The Baker's Daughter, and next month's The Sovereignties of Invention - and I already have three bookshelves filled with books of various categories: TNBBC's Past Group Reads, Recommended Indie Lit Reading, and books that are currently on my To Be Read / Reviewed shelf. I plan on using one of the other bookshelves for Audiobooks, and I haven't decided what I want to place on that last one just yet.

My littlest guy, when watching over my shoulder as I designed my store, fell in love with the site and begged me to add some of his favorite books to my bookstore shelves. Being the extremely picky booknerd that I am, I refused! But I did the next best thing and got him registered on BookAnd with his own account, and he's been working hard at designing and building his bookstore ever since!

He loves the site so much that he begged me to record him using it - to demonstrate to the world just how fun and easy (and addictive) it is to use BookAnd. Thus, TNBBC's very first bookish video mini-series was born. 

The How-To Series is Born

I am no professional camera-girl. I want to make that clear from the start. So no laughing at my camera or lack-of-editing skills. But I did think my kiddo was onto something. The videos we will be sharing with you will give you a much better idea of how the site works and what you can expect from it  - better than that boring ole screen shot of my shop up there can. 

We plan on releasing these in short 2-3 minute videos that focus on one aspect of the site at a time - from designing a store to adding and reviewing books, visiting other bookstores, and how to gain more coins with which to decorate your store...

So... without further ado, my cutie-pie book loving son demonstrates how to view his recently designed bookstore and bookshelves:

What do you think? Do you like what you've seen so far? It's pretty cool, actually. And, as a previously reluctant eBook reader, I kinda dig the whole virtual shelving aspect, cause now I feel like I can actually show off the eBooks I've been reading...

If you are a tablet owner (Kindle Fire / iPad) I strongly recommend that you check out the site - you can register here by clicking on the Request an Invite link. Once you're in, and you've built your bookstore, come visit ours - TNBBC's Bookshop and Books 'n Stuff - and say hello. There are lots of upgrades on their way, the site keeps getting better and better. I'm looking forward to being able to export my books and reviews from Goodreads, and there's a 3D Cover Lab app in the works that will allow you to upload 3D images of the books...

Stay tuned for more review/video info on BookAnd soon.

(If you're up to it, leave a comment letting my son know what you thought of his first  "How To" video. He's super excited about being featured on my blog!)

Review: Radio Iris

Read 4/4/12 - 4/8/12
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended to fans of whimsical writing with slightly unnerving, twisting tension
Pgs: 209
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio
Release Date: May 2012 (Read an excerpt of the book here)

I was first made aware of Anne-Marie Kinney's debut novel Radio Iris when Two Dollar Radio submitted it back in December as their Indie Book Buzz feature. It sounded absolutely amazing and I was desperate to get my hands on it.

I mean, a book about a socially awkward receptionist working for a company where her co-workers begin to disappear and her boss grows increasingly odd and secretive... yes please!

To most of us, it's a job like any other. Sitting behind the desk, answering the phone, typing up your boss's emails on the company letterhead, making the coffee-runs, smiling till your cheeks hurt as people you barely know putz around the office making copies and sending faxes. It certainly seems all status quo. Until you hear how Iris landed the job. Until you start to realize that she has no clue what Larmax, Inc. actually is, or does. Until you begin to notice how the once bustling office is slowly becoming devoid of employees. Until you look around and wonder, what the hell kind of place is this?

Iris, our 20-something year old receptionist, is plagued with a lack of inquisitiveness. She seems happy to show up to work, do what she's always done, and collect her paycheck even when things are changing around her. As the offices go empty and her nameless colleagues seem to fall off the face of the earth, she doesn't bat an eye. When her boss demands that she immediately run strange errands and then, upon her return, has disappeared for days without word, she shrugs her shoulders and etches cryptic messages in black sharpie on walls, furniture, and anything else she happens across. Left to her own devices, she begins arriving at work earlier and earlier and starts spying on the hermit-like man who appears to be living in the adjoining suite. Iris wears her awkward, clumsy personality around herself like a coat, burrowing in deep, comfortable in her uncomfortable nature. She has this unnerving, uncanny way of making the strange seem simply mundane. And that's the trick to the story. That's what makes Radio Iris work.

In my opinion, Anne-Marie Kinney is like a magician. She sets up the stage, positioning her key players and all of her props just so. We the readers, her captive audience, have one job - to sit back and enjoy the show. We see only what Kinney deigns to show Iris. We know only what she allows Iris to know. And as we passively sit there, knowing there is more to it than what meets the eye, knowing that Iris must know it too, we are powerless to act as Kinney slowly, magically shifts and twists our perspectives. Our attention completely on Iris, we follow her as she moves across the stage, from prop to prop, distracted by her while Kinney rearranges portions of the stage unobserved by us, realigning each prop after Iris moves on, setting the stage for her next big reveal.

Sometimes the changes in the story line are subtle and they unnerve us because we can't quite put our finger on it. Other times, we appear to catch on to it before Iris does, and we have to stop ourselves from jumping into the pages and pointing it out to her, to stop from asking her "why aren't you reacting to this!" If you are patient, though, you will come to a point in which none of that will seem to matter much anymore.

I wish I could say that everything gets cleared up by the end of the book, that the feeling of unease we experienced as we were pulled through the story is finally put to rest. But I can't. And again, that's part of what makes Radio Iris work. Can you trust in Kinney long enough to see if it works for you?