On Outposts (”Book Lust“), Timothy Egan offers a well-worded rebuttal to Steve Jobs’ book dis. (It had better be well-worded, given how much time he had to write it–Simon Dumenco got there much faster.)

For most of my lifetime, I’ve heard that reading is dead. In that time, disco has died, drive-in movies have nearly died, and something called The Clapper has come and gone through bedrooms across the nation.

But reading? This year, about 400 million books will be sold in the United States. Overall, business is up 1 percent - not bad, in a rough economy, for a $15 billion industry still populated by people whose idea of how to sell books dates to Bartleby the Scrivener.

… 

True, reading is down, somewhat, from 1992, especially reading of literature. So what? People are eating fewer vegetables than they used to - or should - but that doesn’t mean carrots have no future.

The Quills are no more, at least for now. Why? Nobody’s sayin’ nothin’. From Publishers Weekly (”Quill Awards Program Suspended“):

“The Quill Awards have truly helped us advance the cause of literacy for the hardest to reach children in our country, helping to give them the skills and resources they need for a hopeful and successful future,” said Kyle Zimmer, First Book President. “First Book is tremendously grateful to the Quills Literacy Foundation; their legacy will live on through their generous contribution as we continue to provide beautiful, new books to the children who need them the most.”

Oh, wait, somebody’s sayin’ somethin’ (”Co-founder suspends support of Quills book awards,” Canadian Press):

The Quills were marked by black-tie ceremonies in Manhattan, with Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Donald Trump among the featured hosts and presenters. Nominated authors, in categories from romance fiction to poetry, included Stephen King, Al Gore and J.K. Rowling.

But few readers voted and sales did not noticeably increase for winning books. The ceremonies, televised on NBC stations, were widely criticized as too long and poorly planned.

“I’m not surprised but it’s too bad that this happened” said Jane Friedman, chief executive officer of HarperCollins and a Quills executive council member.

I’m sure going to miss all that populist glitz and Hollywood-style sensibility.

(Click here to purchase tickets to the 2007 Quill Awards on October 22…wait, someone update the website!)

The artist Nina Katchadourian’s Sorted Books project: sort of cool. (Actually, incredibly cool!)

Last Friday, Galleycat had a post (”Edgars vs. Nibbies“) about ugly literary awards…I don’t have anything to add other than that I was glad to see I wasn’t alone in disliking the Edgar statuette. (Which obviously doesn’t disparage the award itself–who wouldn’t love to win one?)

And I agree completely: the Hugo is boss.

I was trying to find out what the Bad Sex in Fiction Prize might look like and found only this image…no idea if it’s authentic or not. But it sure is appropriate.

Poor James Patterson. His last book for young adults, Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports, only sold 192,000 copies. He doesn’t feel badly for himself, mind you–he feels badly for all the unfortunate youngsters who somehow didn’t get the opportunity to read his book. From the New York Times (”An Author Looks beyond Age Limits,” by Motoko Rich):

Mr. Patterson said that if he simply wanted to make more money, he would have developed another adult series. "I just am convinced that there aren’t enough books like this - books that kids can pick up and go ‘Wow, that was terrific, I wouldn’t mind reading another book,’ " he said of his "Maximum Ride" series. "The most important thing to me is that more kids read these."

Fortunately, his publisher has a plan:

As a result, Little, Brown has asked booksellers to commit to keeping the new "Maximum Ride" book - along with "The Dangerous Days of Daniel X," the first title in a new young-adult series, due out in July - at the front of their stores as long as Mr. Patterson’s adult titles usually stay there, in the hope of luring more adult buyers.

Here’s what makes me nervous–Little, Brown and Patterson have a point:

According to market research conducted by Codex Group on behalf of Little, Brown, more than 60 percent of the readers of the "Maximum Ride" series are older than 35.

I’m reading Thomas Kohnstamm’s Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventures, Questionable Ethics & Professional Hedonism (Three Rivers). Kohnstamm, bitten early by the travel bug, has an early-life crisis (at the time the book takes place, he’s still in his twenties), walks away from his job, and flies to Brazil to write for the Lonely Planet guidebook.

The book’s emphasis on Kohnstamm’s wild ‘n’ crazy adventures made me think of Glasgow Phillips’ Royal Nonesuch: or, What Will I Do When I Grow Up? And also Dan Dunn’s Nobody Likes a Quitter (and Other Reasons to Avoid Rehab): The Loaded Life of an Outlaw Booze Writer…and also Tom Sykes’ What Did I Do Last Night?

Besides their seeming prediliction for titles in the form of questions, what do these books have in common? Well, they’re all writing in the shadow of Hunter S. Thompson, of course. The jacket copy on Kohnstamm’s book invokes the name of the gonzo great, and Dunn, apparently, was even a protege of Thompson. But making such comparisons is dangerous. In part because, if you measure your worth by feats of consumption, there’s actual danger in trying to be the “best.” But more because Thompson’s gift wasn’t his herculean intake of mind-altering substances, it was his mind itself. And, before he himself became a parody of himself [Ed: that reads like Nigel Tufnel channeling Austin Powers, dunnit?], the gonzo style allowed him a way to capture the weirdness at the heart of some of his stories–and it was new, a refreshing antidote to the style of journalism practiced by his contemporaries.

Also, he was insanely funny.

Writers who go gonzo without Thompson’s humor and savagely penetrating intellect run the risk of coming off like boring drunks. Or at least like self-absorbed, self-indulgent navel-gazers who think it’s funny to do journalism–or any job–poorly.

Having gotten all that off my chest, I think Kohnstamm’s book is actually the best of the lot. Roughly speaking, there are three elements in it: his early-life crisis and the pull of wanderlust; his drinking, drugging, and fornicating; and his expose of the business of writing travel guides. He plays the HST card on his first hand, during a booze-and-coke-fueled pub crawl with a character referred only to as “the Doctor,” but his sharp, funny writing and self-deprecation save the day. To wit:

There is nothing tough about writing–the act of writing is about as burly as operating a cash register…. 

But it’s his thoughts on travel writing that keep me turning pages: the Lonely Planet’s journey from backpacker tip sheet to middle-class faux-hobo itinerary; the loneliness that can ensue when it’s your job to write seriously about what everyone else does for fun; the impossible assignment of writing about travel that you can’t yourself afford. (In one brilliant scene, he gets thrown out of a hotel that he’s researching because he looks like he can’t afford to stay there.)

I’ve never done any travel writing, but I have had a few experiences that resonate. I’ve written reviews of restaurants where the assigning publication wouldn’t cover the cost of a decent meal. And I contributed to a Chicago guidebook once–a great learning experience, but the pay probably didn’t cover the cost of my shoe leather.

So if booze is fuel for the journey, then so be it. But writers need to be careful not to get stuck at the bottom of the glass.

Because it’s Friday, I feel I should leave you with something exciting to look at this weekend: “Red-Hot and Filthy Library Smut” (the nonist). Apparently the post was originally called “Sex Libris.” I have the distinct pleasure of telling you that I have visited the premises below in person.

(Thanks, Carlos!)

Occasioned by the recent announcement of Lucette Lagnado’s The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit as the winner of the 2008 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, Robert Cohen asks, “Do Jewish novelists write Jewish novels?” (theblogbooks, Guardian Online):

Upon reading of the lavish new Sami Rohr prize, given to the year’s best work of Jewish fiction or non-fiction, this quote was the second thing that came to mind. The first thing was the $100,000 that went with it, and the need to start writing a new Jewish novel of my own, post-haste.

But in what sense would it be Jewish? This is a perennial but weirdly slippery question among hyphenated writers, so answer-averse it’s almost rhetorical, almost boring. What makes a novel Jewish? The short answer, of course, is that the maker does. Say you are the real, chosen thing, historically and genetically certifiable. Say you have the nose, the one-generation-old name, the ironic, self-deprecating temperament, the face in which can plainly be seen the entire map of Poland. (A Jew, says Sartre, is someone others take as a Jew.) According to this argument, whatever this person - let’s call him, oh, RC - does, is going to be essentially Jewish, in the same way that Mandelstam’s house is going to always have that “little bit of musk.”

Loved this paragraph:

The Jewish writers who came after were raised inside. Most of us weren’t shamed by our immigrant parents or chased in fear of our lives down the mean streets. We were suburban kids, bred with a tenacious but sentimental and also highly confused tribalism, a sense of the Chosen as a kind of embattled, under-funded, small-market baseball team, one whose fortunes, for all the media attention we generated, were forever suspended precipitously over an abyss. Only the financial and spiritual loyalty of the community would keep the franchise afloat.

…have been announced:

AFRICA

Best Book
Barbara Adair (South Africa) End Jacana Media
Ifeoma Chinwuba (Nigeria) Waiting for Maria Spectrum Books
Finuala Dowling(South Africa) Flyleaf Penguin Books SA
Karen King-Aribisala (Nigeria) The Hangman’s Game Peepal Tree Press
Susan Mann (South Africa ) Quarter Tones Harvill Secker
Zakes Mda (South Africa) Cion Penguin Books SA

Best First Book
Sade Adeniran (Nigeria ) Imagine This SW Books
Ceridwen Dovey (South Africa) Blood Kin Penguin Books SA
Dayo Forster (Gambia) Reading the Ceiling Simon and Schuster
Ken Kamoche (Kenya) A Fragile Hope Salt Publishing
Sumayya Lee (South Africa) The Story of Maha South Africa Kwela Books
Carel van der Merwe (South Africa) No Man’s Land Umuzi

CANADA AND THE CARIBBEAN

Best Book
Gil Adamson (Canada) The Outlander House of Anansi Press
Erna Brodber (Jamaica) The Rainmaker’s Mistake New Beacon Books
Lawrence Hill (Canada) The Book of Negroes HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Robert Hough (Canada) The Culprits Canada Random House Canada
Frances Itani (Canada) Remembering the Bones HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Michael Ondaatje (Canada) Divisadero Bloomsbury Publishing

Best First Book
David Chariandy (Canada) Soucouyant Arsenal Pulp Press
Tish Cohen (Canada) Town House HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Arley McNeney (Canada) Post Thistledown Press
Ameen Merchant (Canada) The Silent Raga Douglas & McIntyre
C.S. Richardson (Canada) The End of the Alphabet Doubleday Canada
Neil Smith (Canada) Bang Crunch Knopf Canada

EUROPE AND SOUTH ASIA

Best Book
David Davidar (India )The Solitude of Emperors Weidenfeld & Nicholson
Mohsin Hamid (Pakistan)The Reluctant Fundamentalist Viking, Penguin
Usha K.R. (India) Girl and a River Penguin Books India
Hari Kunzru (UK) My Revolutions Hamish Hamilton
Nicholas Shakespeare (UK) Secrets of the Sea Harvill Secker
Indra Sinha (India ) Animal’s People Simon and Schuster

Best First Book
Tahmima Anam (Bangladesh) A Golden Age John Murray
Priya Basil (UK) Ishq and Mushq Transworld Publishers
Shandana Minhas (UK) Tunnel Vision Roli Books
Catherine O’Flynn (UK) What was Lost Tindal Street Press
Jeremy Page (UK) Salt Viking, Penguin
JM Shaw (UK) The Illumination of Merton Browne Sceptre

SOUTH EAST ASIA AND SOUTH PACIFIC

Best Book Award
Steven Carroll (Australia) The Time We Have Taken HarperCollins
Sonya Hartnett (Australia) The Ghosts Child Penguin Australia
Sarah Hopkins (Australia) The Crimes of Billy Fish ABC Books
Mireille Juchau (Australia) Burning In Giramondo
Michelle De Kretser (Australia) The Lost Dog Allen & Unwin
Alex Miller (Australia) Landscape of Farewell Allen & Unwin

Best First Book Award
Steven Conte (Australia) The Zookeepers War Australia Harper Collins
Karen Foxlee (Australia) The Anatomy of Wings Australia UQP
Sara Knox (Australia) The Orphan Gunner Giramondo
Carol Lefevre (Australia) Nights in the Asylum Picador
Marcella Polain (Australia) The Edge of the World Fremantle Press
Stephen Scourfield (Australia) Other Country  Allen & Unwin
Steven Carroll (Australia) The Time We Have Taken HarperCollins
Sonya Hartnett (Australia) The Ghosts Child Penguin Australia
Sarah Hopkins (Australia) The Crimes of Billy Fish ABC Books
Mireille Juchau (Australia) Burning In Giramondo
Michelle De Kretser (Australia) The Lost Dog Allen & Unwin
Alex Miller (Australia) Landscape of Farewell Allen & Unwin

Best First Book Award
Steven Conte (Australia) The Zookeepers War Australia Harper Collins
Karen Foxlee (Australia) The Anatomy of Wings Australia UQP
Sara Knox (Australia) The Orphan Gunner Giramondo
Carol Lefevre (Australia) Nights in the Asylum Picador
Marcella Polain (Australia) The Edge of the World Fremantle Press
Stephen Scourfield (Australia) Other Country  Allen & Unwin

OK, I see a pattern here.

And even: