Very Short List has a knack for digging up quirky but interesting subjects in pop culture. Friday’s entry is no exception. Holy Headshot!: A Celebration of America’s Undiscovered Talent by Patrick Borelli and Douglas Gorenstein explores the desperate lengths some people go to to be “discovered” by Hollywood (or whomever), featuring (we guess) actual photos and resumes (like Kitten, pictured here, who has a thing for all things pink).
Apparently this whole thing got started when co-author Borelli placed a wanted ad for a variety show he produced, “Entertaining the Young.” And in a subsequent shoot with a photographer acquaintance, the photog, Gorenstein, said he had long wanted to publish a picture book of quirky Hollywood-type headshots. The result is now available for a mere $12.89.
Like many genres, horror fiction can get a bit formulaic. But Random House Inc. is touting a new anthology of previously published stories, edited by Peter Straub. Called Poe’s Children, the collection features a group of what Random calls “new wave” writers, evoking the inventive spookiness of the great master, Edgar Allan Poe. Stephen King is among the writers featured in Poe’s Children.
To further entice readers, Random House is offering free shipping for that and other Random books.
Publishers Weekly writes:
“Anyone concerned about the future of horror will find plenty of reassurance in this outstanding reprint anthology showcasing short fiction by today’s best writers in the genre. Straub (The Throat) skillfully varies tempo and style, mixing stories of psychological terror with more traditional ghostly tales. Thomas Tessier puts a fresh spin on the empty old house theme in the memorable In Praise of Folly, in which the lonely protagonist pursues his fascination with bizarre structures to the Adirondacks. Tessier subtly raises chills even as the tale proceeds to its inevitable and dark conclusion.”
Toni Morrison travels back in time, more than 300 years, to explore the devastating inhumanity of slavery. Her new book, A Mercy, is not so much about race as it is the human condition. In an interview with NPR, Morrison points out that black people were not the only slaves in early America or elsewhere in the world.
“Every civilization in the world relied on [slavery],” says Morrison. “The notion was that there was a difference between black slaves and white slaves, but there wasn’t.”
White slaves, called indentured servants, were people who traded their freedom for their passage to America.
“The suggestion has always been that they could work off their passage in seven years generally, and then they would be free,” says Morrison. “But in fact, you could be indentured for life and frequently were. The only difference between African slaves and European or British slaves was that the latter could run away and melt into the population. But if you were black, you were noticeable.”
NPR continues:
“The stories in A Mercy are as layered and contested as the barely mapped topology traversed by its characters. Set in the 1680s, when this country’s reliance on slavery as an economic engine was just beginning, A Mercy explores the repercussions of an enslaved mother’s desperate act: She offers her small daughter to a stranger in payment for her master’s debt.”
It’s hard to verify whether America’s most wanted fugitive is still alive, let alone if he’s an author in the making, but there are reports out of Pakistan that Osama bin Laden is writing a book in Arabic about his al-qaida cause and the motivation behind his terrorist campaign.
We wish to take this opportunity to editorialize and wish only death, suffering and misery upon bin Laden, not necessarily in that order, but definitely all three in extra-large doses. He is a disgusting piece of filth worthy only of our scorn and many, many, many bullets. Ahem. Sorry, kind of lost our cool there. Now back to the news.
Following is a report from Press Trust of India:
Islamabad, Oct 25 (PTI) World’s most wanted fugitive, Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden is reportedly writing a book on the struggle of his terrorist network that dispenses money, logistical support and training to radical groups in over 50 countries.
The book, being written in Arabic, will later be translated into English. Bin Laden decided to write the book to counter “propaganda” against Al Qaeda, Geo News channel reported.
Bin Laden is writing the book with the assistance of a “young man with a Middle Eastern background who will later translate the text into English”, the channel reported. The book will reportedly highlight atrocities allegedly being committed on Muslims by the Western world.
Bin Laden will also discuss how the medieval Crusades greatly impacted the growth of Western influence in world affairs and ultimately helped the US to control the oil reserves of the Muslim states.
The book will shed light on the evolution of Al Qaeda and 9/11 terror attacks on the US.
Bin Laden, who was born in Riyadh on March 10, 1957, is a member of the prominent bin Laden family of Saudi Arabia.
The Al Qaeda leader has been indicted in a US federal court for his alleged involvement in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and is on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s list of 10 most wanted fugitives.
Though bin Laden has not been indicted for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, he has reportedly claimed responsibility for the strikes. Reports suggest he earned a degree in civil engineering in 1979, or a degree in public administration in 1981.
Bin Laden also operated from Pakistan for a brief while in the 1980s as part of the mujahideen movement against the Soviet forces that had occupied Afghanistan.
We’ll soon see if Oprah Winfrey’s influence on book sales has the same effect on some of the book world’s newest technology.
Amazon got some free publicity thanks to Oprah Winfrey’s ringing endorsement of the Kindle e-book reader. She’s even offering a $50 discount off the pricy readers at her Web site.
Her Web site acknowledges the initial price is pretty steep for many of her viewers. “Although the Amazon Kindle costs $359, Oprah looks at it as an environmentally friendly investment. ‘I know it’s expensive in these times, but it’s not frivolous because it will pay for itself,’ she says. ‘The books are much cheaper, and you’re saving paper.’ New York Times Bestsellers and New Releases are $9.99 or less, unless otherwise marked.”
Rumors about secret societies of devil-worshipping debauchery swirled around England (and its colony in North America). Turns out, it was at least partly true. Which brings us to The Hell Fire Clubs: Sex, Satanism and Secret Societies by Evelyn Lord.
On the Very Short List: “With catchy names like the Demoniacs and Beggar’s Benison, these underground societies boasted notables such as the Prince of Wales and the Chancellor of the Exchequer as members. (They also spread their debauchery across the pond, beating the Rolling Stones by two centuries.)
Despite powerful connections — and the fact that these servants of Satan often did little more than sit around trading dirty jokes — the clubs prompted a backlash from the era’s equivalent of red-staters, who founded decency groups to rein in the upstart gentry. Part G. M. Trevelyan and part M. Python, The Hellfire Clubs will remind you that before Prada, the Devil wore breeches.
Maya Angelou might be best known as a poet, but her newest work, Letter to My Daughter, combines styles and voices. Part autobiography, part how-to, Letter to My Daughter is dedicated to the many daughters in her world.
I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native Americans and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you.”
An excerpt:
“I am convinced that most people do not grow up. We find parking spaces and honor our credit cards. We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are still innocent and shy as magnolias.
“We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do.”
Twenty-eight years after John Lennon’s death and nearly 40 years since the Beatles broke up, writer Philip Norman has published what USATODAY calls the definitive biography of the iconic singer/songwriter, “John Lennon: The Life.”
The book reveals conflicting stories of cruelty and deep kindness, along with his well-known artistry as a Beatle and solo artist.
Appearing in USATODAY, James Endrst writes:
“(Philip) Norman, an Englishman who established himself as an authority on the seminal British band with 1981’s Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation, has written what amounts to chapter and verse on Lennon.”
As the shouting of the political season gets louder and shriller, gloomy news of the global economy (not to mention our household economies!) and other downers loom heavy, the late great Groucho Marx has a message for us all: Lighten up.
The Groucho Letters, featured as a “You Must Read This” book on NPR, is published by Simon & Schuster
Says writer Shalom Auslander on NPR radio:
“A letter from Warner Brothers threatening legal action for the Marx Brothers’ use of the name “Casablanca” in the title of their movie was met not with bluster, counterthreats or even a request for discussion, but rather with a letter from Groucho discussing the history of the name “Warner” and the word “brothers.”
“Professionally,” he writes, “we were brothers long before you… what about the Smith Brothers? The Brothers Karamazov? Dan Brothers, an outfielder with Detroit?”
Subsequent letters from the WB lawyers were met with even more flippancy, and eventually they simply stopped writing and gave up the matter. ”
Apparently comedic wit is mightier than the cease and desist demand.
Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed & Forgery in the Holy Land, by Nina Burleigh, exposes the dirty secrets of archaeology in the Holy Land.
Says publisher HarperCollins: “In 2002, an ancient limestone box called the James Ossuary was trumpeted on the world’s front pages as the first material evidence of the existence of Jesus Christ. Today it is exhibit number one in a forgery trial involving millions of dollars worth of high-end, Biblical era relics, some of which literally re-wrote Near Eastern history and which could lead to the incarceration of some very wealthy men and embarrass major international institutions, including the British Museum and Sotheby’s.”
Burleigh is no stranger to the Mideast. In 2007 she published Mirage: Napoleon’s Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt, about the West’s first scientific encounter with the East.
Luis Soriano doesn’t exactly run a bookmobile. But it is mobile. And it has books, more than 4,800 of them. He calls it his “Biblioburro,” and as the name suggests, it is powered by two donkeys. He and his donkeys ply the countryside around La Gloria, Colombia, handing out books to people who otherwise would not have access to books.
The primary school teacher started out with 70 books, he told the New York Times. “Now,” he said, “it is an institution.” And Soriano is the best-known person in La Gloria.
“The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie: Intimacy and Design” by Malu Halasa and Rana Salam goes, um, deep undercover to dig up the intimate lives of one of the most tightly kept secrets in the modern world: Arab women’s sex lives. Actually, in the Middle East it’s not such a big secret. Maybe it just illustrates that the culture gulf is far more vast than the Persian Gulf.
Touts publisher Chronicle Books: “The most outrageous and exuberant lingerie in the world comes from a place you’d probably never expect: Syria. Adorned with everything from faux fur, artificial flowers, and feathered birds to plastic toy cell phones, these intimates flash lights, play music, even vibrate. Well known across the Middle East—in Syria the lingerie forms an important part of the folk tradition around trousseaus and weddings—it is openly displayed in the markets and souks. Authors Malu Halasa and Rana Salam have brought together a diverse and dramatic collection of photography and writing, including the voices of Syrian women, celebrating this little-known niche of fashion design in all its playful glory.”
Published in August, this book caught the eye of The Very Short List. CLICK HERE.
America at war was the dominant theme for nonfiction nominees of this year’s National Book Awards, announced Wednesday.
The nominees are The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, by Jane Mayer, a writer for The New Yorker; This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, by Drew Gilpin Faust; Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, by Annette Gordon-Reed, about Thomas Jefferson’s slave family; Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives, by Jim Sheeler; and The Suicide Index: Putting My Father’s Death in Order, by Joan Wickersham.
Other recent war-flavored books that have been critically well-regarded were not nominated, including The Forever War by New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins.
The winners are to be announced Nov. 19.
To read more about the nominations, CLICK HERE (subscription may be required).
See the NYT slide show fro “Final Salute: CLICK HERE.
A consortium of college libraries has joined forces to create a vast digital repository of books.
Twelve universities in the Committee on Institutional Cooperation have joined the University of California’s library system to create HathiTrust, led by the University of Michigan librarian John Wilkin, the group’s executive director.
HathiTrust offers a nonprofit counterpart to the materials in Google Book Search.
A HathiTrust press release states, “As of today, HathiTrust contains more than 2 million volumes and approximately ¾ of a billion pages, about 16 percent of which are in the public domain. Public domain materials will be available for reading online. Materials protected by copyright, although not available for reading online, are given the full range of digital archiving services, thereby offering member libraries a reliable means to preserve their collections. Organizers also expect to use those materials in the research and development of the Trust.”
HathiTrust offers the database to other libraries as well, calling it “a no-worry, pain-free solution to archiving vast amounts of digital content. Your institution can rely on the expertise of other librarians and information technologists who understand your needs and who will address the issues of servers, storage, migration, long-term preservation. Furthermore, you won’t have to invest in the hardware, management, maintenance or updates to the repository, or create your own service software (such as the page-turner). If you represent a library whose content is being scanned by Google, HathiTrust provides the infrastructure to get your own files online.”
Best-selling author Susan Orlean returned to her old stomping grounds of Cleveland to promote her new book, Lazy Little Loafers — a tongue-in-cheek harangue about do-nothing babies, those pint-sized slackers we all feel compelled to coddle.
The children’s book was inspired by a New Yorker piece Orlean wrote a few years back from an adult perspective — bitter that these “shiftless little loafers” (the magazine title) did nothing but sit in strollers, eat, sleep, etc.
An editor suggested she adapt the story to an 8-year-old’s perspective, that of a kid who has chores and drudgery and envies the carefree existence of babies.
(Yesterday) Dee Perry welcomed to WCPN 90.3 FM Cleveland native and best-selling author of The Orchid Thief — Susan Orlean — who talks about her foray into children’s books with Lazy Little Loafers.
Digital book publishing has reached an awkward stage in its development: that space between wariness and general acceptance, for publishers and consumers alike. Meanwhile, publishers are pushing forward.
Simon & Schuster is making more than 500 titles available for sale on mobile devices on MPS’ Mobile Global Reader. “The full Simon & Schuster eBook catalog will be made available in the coming months.”
The soon-to-begin Frankfurt Book Fair has released the results of a survey of more than 1,000 publishing industry people, which found that some 70 percent “feel ready for the digital challenge,” while 60 percent do not use e-readers or read e-books. “Top concerns” were: copyright (28 percent); digital rights management (22 percent); standard format, such as .epub, 21 percent; and retail price maintenance, 16 percent.
It also found:
• China’s digital influence in international publishing predicted to increase threefold in next five years
• consumers, Amazon, Google believed to drive the digitisation process
• e-content will overtake traditional books in sales by 2018
• online bookselling named as most important development of the past 60 years
Newsweek’s staff has prepared biographies of the four presidential and vice presidential campaigns (titled Mr. Cool, Mr. Hot, The Insider, and The Outsider) and will sell them on Kindle, available on Oct. 15.
Karen Armstrong, author of more than 20 books about the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam), was recently named a trustee of the British Museum for a four-year period.
Armstrong is recognized as a foremost expert on the three major religions, and she has her share of detractors as well. A former Catholic nun, she now refers to herself as a “freelance monotheist.”
Earlier this year, she won the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Award for her work. In addition to a nice pile of cash — $100,000 — each TED recipient gets to ask TED to grant a wish.
She is the author of The Great Transformation, The Spiral Staircase and Through the Narrow Gate.
The Forever War by Dexter Filkins, a New York Times correspondent, details his eyewitness accounts of events in Afghanistan in the late 1990s to the U.S. invasion of Iraq starting in 2003.
Critics say Filkins brings a clear-eyed view that cuts through the fog of war, and few conflicts have been murkier than the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Review by Stacey Rae Brownlie in BookBrowse:
If there is any writer who can bring this convolution of conflicts, both in Afghanistan and Iraq, back to our attention, it is Dexter Filkins. Filkins is an award-winning reporter, a veteran foreign correspondent who is nearly fearless in his pursuit of human stories. He was one of a small group of journalists and aid workers who were in Afghanistan in the late 1990s. He returned to Afghanistan after the 2001 attacks, staying through much of 2002 and then moved to Iraq as the American invasion began in 2003. He stayed in Iraq for over three years, recording (in 561 notebooks), writing – and surviving. The Forever War gives us the opportunity to look over the shoulder of someone who has been there, who has spoken to nearly every segment of Afghani and Iraqi society and has witnessed the death, destruction, hope and absurdity of war ….
Filkins replies to a question: Why did you write The Forever War, and why did you choose that title?
Whenever I went home to the U.S., people would ask me: what’s it like over there? What does it feel like? What’s it like to be shot at? What’s it like to be woken up by a car bomb? What’s it like to sleep in a village with no electricity? How do you talk to a warlord? Hence my book: I want to show people what it feels like to be in Iraq and Afghanistan: the ambiguity, the heartbreak, the fear and the joy. It’s a visceral book, not really an intellectual one.
As for the title, I should say: the book makes no argument. It is very explicitly not a political book. The title, “The Forever War,” is more metaphor than literal truth. (At least I hope it is). The first chapter of the book takes place in 1998, at the Kabul Sports Stadium, at a public execution carried about by the Taliban on a Friday afternoon. It’s 2008 now, and we are still at war. I’ve expended much of my life’s energies in those wars. Many of us have. It already feels like forever, and it isn’t even over yet.
On Afghanistan:
It was a very strange time. The Taliban were so weird; it was like they were from another century, another galaxy. In those days I was just mystified by Afghanistan – what it was, where it was going. Any Westerner who was there – reporters or aid workers; we were about the only ones – felt exactly the same way. What the hell is this? Where is it going? We could tell things there were going bad, that they were headed toward some terrible end. We just knew; we could feel it. Once, I think it was in the summer of 2000 – I actually told my editors back home: “Something really bad is going to happen here.” But of course I didn’t know what. When the planes hit the towers on September 11, it all came together.
Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio of France has won the 2008 Nobel Prize in literature, continuing a trend of the Nobel Academy awarding its top literary prize to European writers. (The New York Times reports: The last U.S. writer to win the prize was Toni Morrison in 1993.”)
The academy called Le Clezio an ”author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.” His 1980 breakthrough, Desert, is considered a masterpiece.
Vanguard Group Inc. founder and former CEO John Bogle is coming out with a book in November, written long before the current financial doomsday erupted, that warned about the dangers of overleveraged banking and the obscene (his words) compensation awarded to CEOs of failed — failed! — companies.
His book, Enough: True Measures of Money, Business and Life, harshly (and rightly) criticizes the rampant greed that has triggered the global market chaos, which began more than a year ago as the subprime mortgage nightmare-in-the-making came home to roost. As banks began writing down their losses, the derivatives (here’s where it gets fuzzy) that were supposed to back or be backed by mortgages (did I mention fuzzy?) and the insurers and bankers that were supposed to vouch for one another suddenly found themselves in deep doo-doo.
Suddenly governments are bailing out the banks that were supposed to be invulnerable and the world’s largest insurers of insurers of banks of insurers of banks of governments. Or something like that. Seven hundred billion dollars here, $700 billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.
And suddenly, Iceland is bankrupt!
Bogle laments the greedy profit motive that has no anchorage in value. Bogle should know value. One of Vanguard’s most successful funds, the Windsor Fund, is known as a “value” fund (disclosure: I have a fair sum invested in Windsor). A simple summary: Value fund managers seek companies that they believe are undervalued on the market and expect to rise in value over time. It might be an unglamorous company in an out-of-fashion sector (one thing I know: Investors are not rational) that is otherwise a solid company.
To view the news feed, and follow it to the Philadelphia Inquirer column, CLICK HERE.
Our Daily Red is written by Delmio Editorial Director Dave Wilson, who is not looking forward to his next 401(k) statement.
Very Short List has a knack for digging up quirky but interesting subjects in pop culture. Friday’s entry is no exception. Holy Headshot!: A Celebration of America’s Undiscovered Talent by Patrick Borelli and Douglas Gorenstein explores the desperate lengths some people go to to be “discovered” by Hollywood (or whomever), featuring (we guess) actual photos and resumes (like Kitten, pictured here, who has a thing for all things pink).
