Booking It--Magic Words

“What words/phrases in a blurb make a book irresistible? What words/phrases will make you put the book back down immediately?

Other than a favorite author's name, I don't know that there are any particular words or phrases that make me buy or not buy a book. If the plot or themes pique my interest, I might buy the book. If they don't, I won't.

I'm much more likely to buy a book because someone I trust recommended it than because of what the blurb says.

Wal-Mart's At It Again

From the Associated Press:

"NEW YORK — A price war has broken out in the book world.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced Thursday that its online site, walmart.com, would charge just $10, with free shipping, for such upcoming hardcover releases as Sarah Palin's Going Rogue and John Grisham's Ford County, a cut of 60 percent or more from the regular cost.

Amazon.com, the leading online book seller, has responded, also slashing its price to $10 for Going Rogue, Ford County, Michael Crichton's Pirate Latitudes and other leading pre-orders."

[ . . . ]

"In a new program called 'America's Reading List,' Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart also will offer 50 percent off or more on 200 current best-sellers, including Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol and Kathryn Stockett's The Help.

Thursday's price cuts come at a time when Seattle-based Amazon and other sellers have been charging just $9.99 for ebooks, a price that publishers worry is unrealistically low. The reductions also make it increasingly hard for independent sellers, who can't afford such large discounts, to compete for the most popular books."

Presidential Reading

President Obama's headed to Martha's Vineyard, but he stopped at a bookstore first. Here's what he bought (according to the Los Angeles Times):

George Pelacanos' The Way Home

Kent Haruf's Plainsong

Richard Price's Lush Life

David McCullough's John Adams

Thomas L. Friedman's Hot, Flat and Crowded

Nice choices. Wish I had time to lie on the beach and read. Life at HU's rough.

Shabbat

The religious tradition in which I was raised does not practice any type of liturgical prayer, so I was not exposed to the beauty of it while growing up. But in my readings over the last few years, I've run across references to and quotes from different liturgical prayers or written prayers that are simply beautiful. So, as I usually do, I've been following the book trails. When I read a quote from a prayer that moves me, I track down the work it came from and do my best to acquire it.

When I was reading Barbara Brown Taylor's An Altar in the World, she quoted a line from a prayer that came from a book called Gates of Prayer: for Shabbat and Weekdays, a Jewish prayer book. I've been reading it lately, and came across this beautiful prayer (the italicized portion is the responsive part of the reading):

There are days

when we seek material things,

and measure failure by what we do not own.

On Shabbat we wish not to acquire but to share.

There are days

when we exploit nature with reckless greed.

On Shabbat we stand in wonder before the mystery of creation.

There are days

when we think only of ourselves.

On Shabbat

we open our hearts to the needs of others.

Therefore we welcome Shabbat--

day of rest, day of joy, day of peace.

Amazon Recommends

I've bought a lot of books from Amazon.com over the last few years, and one of their marketing tools is "Amazon recommends" e-mails. They suggest books that are related to the books you've been buying. So, when they send me recommendations for 18th century novels, or novels by women, or books related to language or women's issues or Christianity, I understand. It makes sense. But here's today's recommendation: Mallarme, Manet, and Redon: Visual and Aural Signs and the Generation of Meaning (Cambridge Studies in French).

As Ricky Ricardo would say, 'Splain that.

Oh. Maybe it's because France is near England.

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

OK. So what were the other two books I bought?

After nine years serving on the staff of a big urban church in Atlanta, Barbara Brown Taylor arrives in rural Clarkesville, Georgia (population 1,500), following her dream to become the pastor of her own small congregation. The adjustment from city life to country dweller is something of a shock -- Taylor is one of the only professional women in the community -- but small-town life offers many of its own unique joys. Taylor has five successful years that see significant growth in the church she serves, but ultimately she finds herself experiencing "compassion fatigue" and wonders what exactly God has called her to do. She realizes that in order to keep her faith she may have to leave.

Taylor describes a rich spiritual journey in which God has given her more questions than answers. As she becomes part of the flock instead of the shepherd, she describes her poignant and sincere struggle to regain her footing in the world without her defining collar. Taylor's realization that this may in fact be God's surprising path for her leads her to a refreshing search to find Him in new places.Leaving Church will remind even the most skeptical among us that life is about both disappointment and hope -- and ultimately, renewal.

From Booklist
Collins is a jester and a double agent. A poet readers flock to, he gets the laughs and the applause, he paces and bows, concealing his weapons and serious mien. His self-portraiture is mordant, his drollery preemptive, his insouciance camouflage, his intelligence of the stealth kind, and his intricately constructed poems detonate as they blossom in the reader’s mind. Collins is fanciful and mindful, cocky and prayerful, blissful over ordinary things and intimate with dread and loneliness. Here he is morose in Paris, staring down a fish staring back on a plate in Pittsburgh, rain-harried in Dublin, awake and repentant at the fringe of night in a bright bathroom, loitering with intent in the kitchen. Collins’ seductive poems are decoys drawing us into deep waters where memories waft like tangled weeds and death lurks in the cold spots. Wryly philosophical, caustically whimsical, disarmingly beautiful, Collins’ covertly powerful lyrics deftly snare all that is fine and ludicrous about us, from the old habit of poetry itself to the spell of love and the long, rolling song of the self. --Donna Seaman

Booking It--Gluttony

Book Gluttony! Are your eyes bigger than your book belly? Do you have a habit of buying up books far quicker than you could possibly read them? Have you had to curb your book buying habits until you can catch up with yourself? Or are you a controlled buyer, only purchasing books when you have run out of things to read?

Well, of course I’m a book glutton. I’ve got so many unread books on my nightstand that I could go on a book-buying fast for quite a while and still survive. (Just so you get the picture, my nightstand is actually one of those ladder bookshelves, so besides a lamp and an alarm clock, it can hold a lot of books.) But just because I could refrain from buying books, doesn’t mean I will. You see, I never really know what I’ll want to read next, when it comes to my pleasure reading. My mood can change rather quickly. And I do eventually get around to reading all the books I buy; they just don’t always get read in the order I purchased them. There’s something really comforting about being able to just walk into my bedroom, go through the stacks, and pick up just the book I am ready to read. There are enough areas of my life in which I have to be self-controlled. I refuse to regulate my pleasure reading.

Can't Buy Me Love?

Newspapers are cutting Book sections and laying off employees. Neighborhood bookstores are closing right and left. Tanking book sales mirror a tanking economy. All’s gloom and doom, right?

Not if you’re the publisher of Harlequin Romances. Sales in the 4th quarter of 2008 jumped 19%. That’s right—19%.

I can hear those publishing moguls now: “Let the bodice ripping continue!”

Booking It--Collectibles

Hardcover? Or paperback? Hardcover, if I have a choice.

Illustrations? Or just text? The text is what I’m interested in. But I do love the illustrations in children’s books.

First editions? Or you don’t care? Don’t care. But if you gave me one, I’d take it.

Signed by the author? Or not? I love signed editions!

Book Lovers Dilemma

Christmas sales were down in book stores this year. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is not seeking new manuscripts (!!??!!), bookstores all over the country, of both new and used books, are struggling, asking workers to take unpaid leave, going bankrupt, closing their doors.

The economy is bad, of course, but according to an article by David Streitfeld in last Sunday’s edition of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, this is one we can’t blame on the current economic crisis. It’s all our fault. Yes, us.

We’ve changed the way we buy books, he explains. Although we love to go into book stores and browse, and we certainly want them to remain open, who wants to pay $29.95 for a book you can get for a buck-fifty used online?

Streitfeld includes himself in the group of transgressors. In theory, he admits, we really want to support these businesses, yet when it comes down to it, we decide cheaper is better. And not just cheaper—easier, too. Almost any book you want can be found online in just seconds. One former bookstore owner says that buying books online “was not morally dubious, but it is tragic. It has a lot of unintended consequences for communities.”

I found it really interesting that this article appeared just across the page from an article about Oxford, Mississippi’s Square Books, a nationally-known bookstore that receives real support from its community. When I was in Oxford doing my residency, hardly a week passed that I didn’t go to Square Books at least once. Sometimes I bought, sometimes I browsed, but I always enjoyed being there. I often attended readings and signings by visiting authors in their annex, Off Square Books. Even now, every trip to Oxford includes a visit to Square Books, and it was to their balcony overlooking the Square that I retreated with a cup of their pumpkin spice coffee last October to calm my nerves and prepare myself mentally for my oral comps later that afternoon. I’d hate for the world to be without places like Square Books.

But, not being able to buy used books online means that I’ll own fewer of the books I need and love. It’s truly a dilemma for book lovers.

Booking It--Conditioning

Are you a spine breaker? Or a dog-earer? Do you expect to keep your books in pristine condition even after you have read them? Does watching other readers bend the cover all the way round make you flinch or squeal in pain?

No. No. Yes. Yes.

Oh, maybe I should elucidate.

I am very picky about the condition of my books. I don’t break spines and I don’t dog-ear, but I do write in them. For the uninformed, these actions are not in the same category AT ALL. Spine breaking and dog-earing show disrespect to books (and dramatically shorten their life span). On the other hand, underlining and writing in margins show a love and deep respect for books and the ideas they contain.

Of course, I’d rather buy all new books in hardback, but that can get expensive. So, I do buy a lot of used books, but even there I’m picky about the condition. An excellent-condition used hardback trumps a new paperback any day. Sometimes, a book I need has been out of print for a really long time, and I pretty much have to settle for the best of what’s available. But if I can, I’ll be choosy. Of course, like-new condition is best, but I’ll take a hardback with a missing dust jacket and worn edges over one that’s already been underlined or (horrors!) highlighted.

Once, though, I did get a book that had been highlighted and written in that I really enjoyed. The previous author had carefully highlighted only the words he or she didn’t know, then had looked them up and written the definitions in the margin with a very neat hand. The writer had also cross referenced passages in the text—“See page 153,” and on page 153, “Look back at page 19,” and made comments on writing style and organization--things like "Awkardly structured sentence," or “This should have been discussed back in chapter 2,” or “More examples would be helpful here . . .” I was really surprised that someone who put that much effort into a book would get rid of it, but it was a bonus for me. I felt as if I were reading the book and having a conversation about it at the same time.

McCarthy-ism

I read. A lot. Reading is my job; it’s my homework; and it’s my hobby. And I read widely—fiction and nonfiction, classic literature and best sellers, crime fiction and books of poetry, memoirs and essay collections. That much reading translates into a pretty long list of books read. So how can this happen?

Every year Kane Webb, a columnist for the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, writes an article I eagerly anticipate—a “Best Books of 20??” column. He chooses people he knows who are “reading addicts with interesting taste” and asks them this question:

“What was the best book you read [this year]? And why? It doesn’t have to be new, just new to you. Re-readings don’t count—unless you can make a great case.”

The column was long. It took up good-sized chunks of two pages and the whole back page of the Perspective section. And you know how many of the selected books I’d read? Two. Only two.

That’s depressing.

Of course, the brighter side is that I now have several books to add to my “must read” list. And one of those in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Two people selected it as their Best Novel and it popped up on quite a few of the “Also Recommended” lists. One reader, who’s also an English Professor, declared that this “relentless” novel caused him to “have to re-write his lectures on plot structure,” and the other said that, as soon as he finished the novel, he wanted to reread it. In fact, he says he often picks the book up just to reread the first sentence. That sounds like a book worth reading to me.

Booking It--Wish List

This week’s book questions are especially appropriate for the holiday shopping season. Post your answers, and maybe someone will take the subtle hint.

1. What’s on your book/reading wish list?
2. What books are you giving this year?

#1—I’d seem greedy if I listed all the books I actually wanted, so here are a few:
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (You’ll hear why tomorrow)
Billy Collins’ Ballistics
Stephen King’s Just After Sunset
Maya Angelou’s Letter to My Daughter
Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food

#2—I’m not telling! Everybody I’d buy a book for reads this blog.

Something to Keep in Mind While Christmas Shopping

Booking It--Why Buy?

Here’s the next (in my opinion, somewhat wordy) question from Booking Through Thursday:

I’ve asked, in the past, about whether you more often buy your books, or get them from libraries. What I want to know today, is, WHY BUY?

Even if you are a die-hard fan of the public library system, I’m betting you have at least ONE permanent resident of your bookshelves in your house. I’m betting that no real book-lover can go through life without owning at least one book. So … why that one? What made you buy the books that you actually own, even though your usual preference is to borrow and return them?

If you usually buy your books, tell me why. Why buy instead of borrow? Why shell out your hard-earned dollars for something you could get for free?

I love libraries, but I usually buy my books. I think the reason is an addictive need for access. The alcoholic likes to keep a bottle stashed, the smoker keeps an extra pack in the drawer, and I like to know that the books I love are right there on MY shelf, within easy access. It’s calming to know that whenever I have the urge to reread a section, or find a certain line, or even reread the whole book, it’s right there at my fingertips.

Another reason is that, when I buy books, I have a collection of the history of what I've read. I like the idea of that.

Of course, there’s a final reason, but I’ve already written about it in an earlier post.