(No, not that kind of overalls.)

The overall winners for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize were announced last Sunday at the Calabash International Literary Festival in Kingston, Jamaica. I would have been there, but I had pressing business in Miami, Oklahoma.

Overall Best Book

Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones (Penguin)

Overall Best First Book

Vandal Love, by D.Y. Béchard (Doubleday)

Messrs. Jones and Béchard are from New Zealand and Canada, respectively. How Commonwealth is that?

Back to work after a long weekend in Oklahoma, visiting my wife’s father’s family. I missed this fun Slate piece (”My Favorite Font“) when it came out on Friday. I was a bit surprised to learn that most writers (in this small sample, anyway) prefer to compose in Courier — I write in Times New Roman — but their reasoning compels me to reconsider my position:

Jonathan Lethem: “I dislike the temptation of making a raw draft look like it’s already typeset.”

Nicholson Baker: “The main thing, though, is to use some nonproportional typewriter-style font - you need the sentences to look their worst until the dress rehearsal of the galleys, when all the serifs come out dancing.”

Andrew Vachss: “I write everything in Courier 12, because I write for publication, not pleasure. Since I cannot control the font the (eventual) publisher selects, what do I care how it looks on my screen?”

OK, Vachss sounds a bit cranky. But, having written by hand, on a manual typewriter, on an IBM Selectric, on an Apple 2c, on a generic DOS PC with a daisy-wheel printer, and then finally on an early Mac with pretty fonts and a laser printer (though I’m once again PC these days) — I definitely apprenticed with some pretty plain fonts. The first time I saw my work with serifs (on the Mac) it was exciting because it did look like the work had been published already.

Having read the above quotes, however — especially Lethem’s — I can see that I may have fallen into a trap. Better to make the words read pretty before allowing them to look pretty, perhaps.

(And yes, I’m aware that the preceding sentence reads pretty poorly. I composed it in Times New Roman.)

Cormac McCarthy’s appearance on Oprah has been scheduled for Tuesday, June 5, according to Publishers Weekly (”McCarthy Meets Oprah,” by Charlotte Abbott):

On Tuesday, June 5, literary recluse Cormac McCarthy will make his TV debut in a conversation with Oprah Winfrey, who will also announce her summer club pick that day. In the taped interview, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Road, which was Oprah’s surprise pick for her club, will discuss his writing process, the genesis of his tale of a father and son wondering a postapocalyptic wasteland and his thoughts on “notoriety, women and life’s necessities.”

Galleycat’s Ron Hogan gets some face time with Laura Albert, the writer formerly known as JT Leroy. She’s not repentant about the hoax, which at least makes for more interesting reading than if she was contrite.

“People always talked about the authenticity of the work,” Laura Albert tells me as a makeup artist fixes her eyes during a photo shoot to create promotional materials for a European TV dcoumentary. “They saw that there was obviously great pain behind it. I was doing it the only way I could. My childhood was hell. I went through a minefield, and I put on camoflauge in order to tell the truth. Billy Corgan got it like that,” she says, snapping her fingers. “He understood it immediately. He didn’t feel duped.”

But this is my favorite quote:

“Who pretends to be transgendered just to get attention?” she asks.

Exactly.

From Reuters (“‘Kazakh’ reporter Borat pens book of travel advice”):

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Fictional Kazakh television reporter Borat Sagdiyev, who made movie audiences around the world laugh and cringe as he toured the United States, is going into print with a book of travel advice.

Borat, the creation of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, has signed a book deal with Flying Dolphin Press, an imprint of Random House Inc.’s Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group.

Suzanne Herz, publisher of Flying Dolphin Press, said it will be two books in one — one half a guide to the United States for Kazakhs and the other half a guide to Kazakhstan for Westerners.

The book, to be released in hardcover, will have a dual title: “Borat: Touristic Guidings To Minor Nation of U.S. and A.” and “Borat: Touristic Guidings To Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.”

The movie was hilarious, but will Cohen’s comedy — which depends so much on the reactions of unwitting dupes, captured on-camera – translate to the page? I am to curious making.

My favorite trend in titling continues:

Blogistan, by A. Srebeny and G. Khiabany (Holtzbrinck)

Richistan, by Robert Frank (Crown)

Londonstani, by Gautam Malkani (Penguin)

Prisoner of Trebekistan, by Bob Harris (Crown)

Dispatches from Blogistan, by Suzanne Stefanac (New Riders)

Londonistan, by Melanie Phillips (Encounter)

Absurdistan, by Gary Shteyngart (Random)

Absurdistan, by R. Lee Wright (Cocolalla)

Have I missed any?

The winners of the 2007 James Beard Foundation/KitchenAid Book Awards have been announced. When? Oh, a little while ago. I started this post shortly after the fact but I must have gotten distracted by something. But, like most enthusiastic amateur cooks, I love cookbooks–and buy far more than I need. I might love food reference books even more. My wife is still wondering why our tiny kitchen requires its own copy of Larousse Gastronomique, especially when I have yet to cook pig’s trotters in aspic even once.

Asian Cooking

Cradle of Flavor, by James Oseland (Norton)

Baking and Dessert

Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan (Houghton Mifflin)

Cookbook Hall of Fame

Moosewood Cookbook, by Mollie Katzen (Ten Speed Press)

Cookbook of the Year

The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook, by Matt Lee and Ted Lee (Norton)

Cooking from a Professional Point of View

Grand Livre de Cuisine: Alain Ducasse’s Desserts and Pastries, by Alain Ducasse and Frédéric Robert (Les Éditions d’Alain Ducasse)

Entertaining

The Big Book of Outdoor Cooking and Entertaining, by Cheryl Alters Jamison and Bill Jamison (HarperCollins)

Food of the Americas

The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook, by Matt Lee and Ted Lee (Norton)

General

Tasty: Get Great Food on the Table Every Day, by Roy Finamore (Houghton Mifflin)

Healthy Focus

Whole Grains Every Day, Every Way, by Lorna Sass (Clarkson Potter)

International

The Soul of a New Cuisine, by Marcus Samuelsson (Wiley)

Photography

Michael Mina, photographed by Karl Petzke (Bulfinch Press/Little, Brown)

Reference

What to Eat, by Marion Nestle (North Point/FSG)

Single Subject

The Essence of Chocolate, by John Scharffenberger and Robert Steinberg (Hyperion)

Wine and Spirits

Romancing the Vine, by Alan Tardi (St. Martin’s)

Writing on Food

The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan (Penguin Press)

The Lee Brothers.

Christian publisher Thomas Nelson has implemented an interesting strategy: eliminating all 21 of their imprints (From Where I Sit, “Changing the Publishing Model,” by Michael S. Hyatt):

I guess I really can’t comment on what is best for other publishers; maybe there are some unique situations where imprints make sense. (I can acknowledge it as a theoretical possibility!) But, by and large, I think most publishers would do well to question their existence and ask whether or not they still make sense.

Imprints, for those not in the “biz,” are smaller divisions of a larger publishing company, although sometimes the names aren’t that separate (St. Martin’s Minotaur, ferinstance). Often imprints exist because the imprint was once its own independent publishing house but was then bought by MegaConglomCorp; allowing the now-subsidiary to keep its name helps keep the staff and their customers happy. Other times, big publishers will create imprint names in order to help brand a particular line of books. Some imprints seem to function fairly autonomously and some seem to share staff and office space with a half-dozen other imprints.

If other publishers were to adopt Nelson’s experiment — which, if I were a businessperson, would seem to have some logic to it — I don’t know how I’d feel about it. On the one hand, I find it oppressive to see the same brand names stamped on everything (and don’t think Target and WalMart don’t know that — that’s why they create their own house brands). On the other hand, eliminating the imprints seems to give a more honest accounting of where the books are actually coming from.

I guess it depends on the publisher and on the imprint. Some imprints do a good job of giving the publisher some personality and give them a more effective means to cater to the tastes of specific readers. Some imprints feel like little more than a category.

I wonder, too, how much the general reader even notices publisher and imprint names. Is this a distinction mainly for booksellers? And if so, does it matter if the book is published under the Megacorp/Mysterioso imprint or simply by Megacorp with the category ”Mystery”?

I’m reminded of the Thursday Next books and the world-gobbling Goliath Corporation. One of these days, when one company successfully out-gobbles them all, it will eliminate all the cute names and stamp MEGACORP on everything. Then it will start issuing our jumpsuits. 

I didn’t see that Lloyd Alexander had died until yesterday. From the Washington Post (”Lloyd Alexander; Fantasy and Adventure Writer,” by Adam Bernstein):

Lloyd Alexander, 83, a critically acclaimed fantasy and adventure writer whose coming-of-age novels use vivid action and elements of mythology to depict contemporary struggles between good and evil, died May 17 at his home in Drexel Hill, Pa. He had cancer.

Mr. Alexander wrote more than 40 books and is regarded as one of the best-known writers of juvenile fiction of the past several decades. He won over adult reviewers with cliff-hanging plots, stylish prose and believable characters that make his fanciful, long-ago settings seem plausible and relevant.

As a kid, I first read fantasy, then SF, then in high school used the SF angle to work my way into J. G. Ballard and William Burroughs — from there I explored all sorts of alternative stuff, some of which I even understood. But Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain started it all for me. There are scenes that still stick in my head 30 years later, which tells you something about his skill as a writer. I can’t wait until my sons are old enough to read him.

Soon everything will be modeled on either a game show or the stock market. From The New York Times (”Publisher to Let the Public Have a Vote on Book Projects,” by Motoko Rich):

When predicting which candidate is likely to win an election, what a movie will make at the box office or how much the price of oil will fluctuate, the guesses of a crowd can be remarkably accurate.

But can crowds predict whether a book will succeed?

That is the hope of the founders of Media Predict (www.MediaPredict.com), a virtual market beginning today, and Simon & Schuster, a publisher that plans to select a book proposal based on bets placed by traders in the new market.

Quote of the day:

Justin Wolfers, an assistant professor of business and public policy at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania who studies prediction markets, said that if Simon & Schuster relies on the traders’ judgments to select a book, it could skew the bets themselves.

"If they say we find it really persuasive that everyone bet on book A, they’re just looking at a book that everyone bet that everyone else bet that everyone else thinks is the best book," Mr. Wolfers said. "So you don’t end up with the wisdom of crowds, but the infinite reflection of crowds looking at crowds."