Omnivoracious

Steampunk and Jake von Slatt: Retro Tech for the Now Generation

   
The cover of Steampunk and one of Jake von Slatt's steampunk creations...

Steampunk fiction features a heady blend of influences like Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and inventor-hero fiction from the American pulps of the 1800s. It typically includes some mix or mash-up of airships, mad (or, at least, heavily-invested) scientists, eccentric inventors, Victorian-era adventure, and clockwork technology of the sort that we've largely abandoned. Its godfather may well be Michael Moorcock, with his novel The Warlord of the Air, and it gained huge popularity in its first wave because of novels like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine in the 1980s and early 1990s. Other classics include Paul Di Filippo's The Steampunk Trilogy, K.W. Jeter's Infernal Devices, and Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates.

Now, it's returned in full force through what's being called the "steampunk subculture"--a subculture my wife Ann and I have encountered and enjoyed while editing our most recent anthology, Steampunk. The book collects iconic short stories of the subgenre by the likes of Joe Lansdale, Michael Chabon, James Blaylock, Neal Stephenson, Mary Gentle, Rachel E. Pollock, and many more. Quite purely by accident, Steampunk's release has coincided with major features on steampunk in the national press, like a recent article in the New York Times. Not only has our anthology already gone back to reprint, but we've been inundated with requests for interviews (including from the Weather Channel website!), with the anthology featured recently on the LA Times blog and on Australian national radio. (For an amusing moment or two, listen to the radio interview and wait for my major brain freeze when asked about steampunk fashion, whereupon I babble about "mechanical corsets," which prompts the interviewer to ask, "What are you wearing?")

   

But the great thing about having edited this anthology is the cross-pollination. Some in the steampunk subculture--brought there by other media like comics or movies, or simply through their friends and social groups--are encountering these classic stories for the first time. Meanwhile, we're getting a crash-course in the steampunk aesthetic, which especially appeals to our tastes in art. Baroque laptops and other retro-fitted gadgetry show that functional does not have to be seamless and slick to be pleasing to the eye. Websites like Brass Goggles, Voyages Extraordinaires, The Steampunk Librarian, and Dark Roasted Blend, among others, frequently hold forth on steampunk-related subjects. There's even a Steampunk Magazine, and bands that create steampunk music, like Abney Park.

One of the best-known "steampunks" is Jake von Slatt, the driving force behind the Steampunk Workshop. He's been featured on Boing Boing and in the previously mentioned NYT article, among many others. I interviewed him recently to satisfy my own curiousity about steampunk and the surrounding subculture...

Book Tour Things (Guest Blogger: Stefan Sagmeister)

I just completed my only two Canadian dates on the book tour and am heading home towards New York City, with a short stop and talk in Chicago. There are already 20 American dates behind me all along the West coast, the Midwest, the South and the East coast. Having previously talked to a couple of authors that traveled from afar only to wind up stuck in a Borders with 8 people attending and 4 more browsing nearby--unsure if they actually should sit down--I paired our publisher with the American Institute for Graphic Arts, whose local chapters organized the events. Thus we wound up with mostly sold-out auditoriums, holding between 200 and 1,000 people, which made the entire endeavor infinitely more pleasurable.

My book Things I have learned in my life so far has been out for about two months. During that time, it has been the bestselling art and design book on the Amazons of the world (.com, .de, .co.uk), and I am still not very happy.

This unhappiness stems in large part from the feature Customers who bought this item also bought, which in my case shows that they all bought other design books, hence all my buyers are other designers.

As a designer, I spend a lot of time around other designers, and I get rather self-conscious about becoming somebody who designs for his peers. I have always felt that art for other artists and music for other musicians can become quite self-referential and incestuous. While some of it is necessary to bring the profession forward, the larger part often presents a rather narrow, insular worldview, and the results are often boring.

So if you yourself are NOT a designer, please do look at my book's Amazon page (and right afterwards, check out The Complete Guide to Home Plumbing). It would make me feel so good.

I run a design studio in New York, and among many other things (we used to concentrate on the design of album covers for bands like the Talking Heads and the Stones), we design books.

This turns out to be mostly picture books, mostly because we get to design the entire thing--the cover, the spine, all the pages inside, the flaps.

Fiction and nonfiction books are often designed by different designers: one does the cover, and other the interior pages.

Within the world of graphic design, these tend to be satisfying jobs because we deal with engaging content, get to meet interesting people, design something that is not immediately thrown away, and after a lot of hard work wind up with a neat, compact object that remains as an artifact of that process.

Here is an example:

We were asked to design Worldchanging, which reports about new, positive developments in science, engineering, architecture, business and politics affecting and changing this world. Through the die-cut holes of the slipcase, the (recycled, of course) paper on the cover yellows significantly over time, allowing the sun to imprint (and change) the book cover itself.

We designed this book to appeal not just to a core, green audience, but to a wide spectrum of the general public. It went well.

The following criteria were important to us during the design process:

We wanted this to be positive. We also wanted something innovative, that does not just talk about change but proofs it in the concept (the book cover changes with the power of the sun, the sun designs our cover). We wanted something that allows the reader to browse intuitively, quickly finding the subject he/she is looking for, without having to learn a new finding system. We wanted something that looks and feels authoritative, yet is pretty enough to be left out on a coffee table, without winding up with a coffee table book. The usability needed to be versatile, so that it can be browsed on a desk, leafed through in bed, or checked out on an airplane.

And I admit that I came up with some of these criteria after we designed it all.

Guest Blogging: Stefan Sagmeister

Graphic design superstar Stefan Sagmeister joins the May guest blogging fray. If you dismiss design as frivolous, hold up--Sagmeister’s doing his darndest to change your mind. Throughout his professional life (which has included projects for HBO the Guggenheim,  musicians like the Rolling Stones and Lou Reed, and others far to numerous to mention), he’s explored how design can promote "good things.”

At his most extreme, he will freak you out. Often, he’ll make you laugh while making a point. Sometimes he goes a little bananas. But with each project, Sagmeister dips into his vast and varied bag of tricks, pulling out all the stops to communicate in a powerfully visual way that crosses cultural and social bounds.

Motivated by a sense of responsibility beyond just branding and selling, Sagmeister has taken more than one commercial hiatus to think and create. The result of his latest "break" is a marvelous new book, Things I have learned in my life so far (one of our March picks for the Best of the Month. This video will give you a sense of its magic.

When he visited us in early spring, Sagmeister was just starting his tour. He asked us for ideas on how to start a dialogue with folks beyond design circles, so we invited him to spend some time on Omni. We hope you find him and his work as charming and provocative as we do. --Mari

P.S. To see more of Sagmeister’s recent work and see his advice for design students, visit his official website.

The Passing of a True Texas Trailblazer: Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008)

The New York Times has reported that Robert Rauschenberg, one of the true heros of contemporary art and culture, died yesterday at the age of 82. We're indebted to Rauschenberg for many forms of expression that we now take for granted.  Consider him a kind of grandaddy of mixed and multi-media installations, performance art, and even eco-art.  From his humble beginnings in Port Arthur, Texas (as the son of his German immigrant father and Cherokee nation mother), this preternaturally brilliant and productive artist shook up the very notion of art-making.  He used the physical stuff of daily life and experimented (like a possessed scientist) with new techniques and technologies that mixed the fine arts like painting, sculpture and printmaking with photography, music, and dance. Out with Abstract Expressionism and in with complex, multi-media installations that dealt with everything from space technology and pop culture to ecological destruction. In conjunction with other postwar greats like Jasper Johns, Merce Cunningham and Cy Twombly (to name just a few), Rauschenberg literally reshaped the cultural horizon of the twentieth century.

While this Texan trailblazer will be missed, his art will provoke us to think hard and marvel for a long time to come.  Rauschenberg's life story is just as astonishing as his work. I'm taking some time this weekend to savor Mary Lynn Kotz's classic and gorgeously illustrated biography,  Rauschenberg: Art and Life and insider Calvin Tomkin's  Off the Wall: A Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg .

Old Media Monday: Reviewing the Reviewers

New York Times:

• Sunday Book Review cover (as detailed at length earlier today on Omni): George Will on Nixonland by Rick Perlstein: "In Perlstein’s mental universe, Nixon is a bit like God — not, Lord knows, because of Nixon’s perfect goodness and infinite mercy, but because Nixon is the explanation for everything.... 'How did Nixonland end?' Perlstein asks in the book’s last line. 'It has not ended yet.' But almost every page of Perlstein’s book illustrates the sharp contrast rather than a continuity with America today. It almost seems as though Perlstein, who was born in 1969, is reluctant to let go of the excitement he has experienced secondhand through the archives he has ransacked to such riveting effect."
• Maslin on Bright Shiny Morning by one of our other guests this week, James Frey: "The million little pieces guy was called James Frey. He got a second act. He got another chance. Look what he did with it. He stepped up to the plate and hit one out of the park. No more lying, no more melodrama, still run-on sentences still funny punctuation but so what. He became a furiously good storyteller this time."
• Kakutani on The Boat by Nam Le: "The other tales in this book ... circumnavigate the globe, demonstrating Mr. Le’s astonishing ability to channel the experiences of a multitude of characters, from a young child living in Hiroshima during World War II to a 14-year-old hit man in the barrios of Medellín to a high school jock in an Australian beach town. Mr. Le not only writes with an authority and poise rare even among longtime authors, but he also demonstrates an intuitive, gut-level ability to convey the psychological conflicts people experience when they find their own hopes and ambitions slamming up against familial expectations or the brute facts of history."
• Jennifer Senior on Blood Matters by Masha Gessen: "'Blood Matters' is valuable reading to almost anyone facing a huge health decision, not only for the literary commiseration it offers, but also for the inspired example of medical sleuthing on one’s own behalf that it provides. Gessen keeps an inflammatory topic at room temperature, writing elegantly and without self-pity. The book is very funny in places. (My favorite sentence, for reasons I can’t quite describe: 'DNA-testing equipment tends to fall into two categories: things that look like printers and things that look like toasters.') It’s also very lucid, even when the science gets complex. It’s a liberating book. Strange as it sounds, it would make a great Mother’s Day present."

Washington Post:

• Carolyn See on The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer: "Considering that Andrew Sean Greer is the author of the wildly imaginative 'Confessions of Max Tivoli' ... it will come as no surprise that the new novel is built on several narrative surprises that cannot (or should not) be revealed. So this will be a hard review to write.... This is a plot that deepens as surprises explode unexpectedly and terrifyingly. 'The Story of a Marriage' is more than worth the reader's attention. It's thoughtful, complex and exquisitely written."

Los Angeles Times:

• David L. Ulin on Frey's Bright Shiny Morning: "'Bright Shiny Morning' is a terrible book. One of the worst I've ever read. But you have to give James Frey credit for one thing: He's got chutzpah.... Whatever else his failings as a writer, Frey was once able to move his readers; how else do we explain the success of 'A Million Little Pieces'? It's just one of the ironies of this new book that his fictionalized memoir is a better novel than 'Bright Shiny Morning' could ever hope to be."
• Minna Proctor on Exiles by Ron Hansen: "In 'Exiles,' the dramatic inevitable belongs to the five drowned German nuns to whose memory the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins dedicated perhaps his most important work, 'The Wreck of the Deutschland,' a poem that was neither understood during his lifetime nor terribly well-liked.... From the magnificent words of Hopkins to the terrifying drama aboard the Deutschland, the promises of "Exiles" are superlative. The execution is tentative. If only Ron Hansen had plunged more deeply into those dark waters. If only a novel about fate, faith and poetry could give us more."

Life Sucks--or Does It?

Okay, so it's still Monday, which isn't good, but it's also another day in First Second's self-declared "Vampire Month," in honor of Little Vampire and, drum roll please, Life Sucks by Jessica Abel, Gabe Soria, and Warren Pleece. Life Suck reads as if Joss Whedon and Dazed and Confused movie director Richard Linklater collaborated on a graphic novel about a 24-hour convenience store run by vampires. Just imagine if you're the night manager for that convenience store and you're "facing an eternity of restocking beef jerky and blood brew for Radu, your crappy boss and Vampire Master." Throw in romantic complications and you've got the undead recipe for something pretty unique as far as vampire stories go. Stylish and modern, Life Sucks made my Monday worthwhile.

For another unique vampire story, you could do worse than check out Sergei Lukyanenko's Night Watch. This heady blend of adventure, intrigue, surreal imagery, and savage supernatural conflict set in modern-day Moscow totally re-energized the vampire subgenre. (The movie's not bad, either.)

(Also remember--the extraordinarily cool First Second blog has brought readers a downloadable vampire kit, and links to features at Comics Worth Reading, Colleen Mondor's blog, and Interactive Reader. And in reply to your question, no, I'm not on First Second's payroll--I just think they're one of the coolest graphic novel publishers out there.)

Nixonland, or an Empty Parenthesis?: Author One-on-One: John Dean

I like the sampling of bookshelves this site has collected. For a fleeting moment I thought about taking a picture of my bookshelf (actually three shelves in our den which my wife lets me use for my current reading crop for she too is a voracious reader and she correctly points out that I have more than monopolized the walls of our house and my office). But when I looked at my shelves and spotted several works by authors whose sagacity (nay, sanity) I truly doubt but whose books I read to understand their warped and weird political thinking, I feared the picture might suggest to others to consider these works. So no shelf picture and on with more important business.

The New York Times Book Review published George Will's cover review of Rick Perlstein's Nixonland, which I'll address shortly. But first I am wondering if others spotted the note in the "Up Front" section of the Times review, where "The Editors" discussed their exchange with George Will?  It seems they asked him how "Nixon fit into the larger story of modern conservatism?" Will answered: "He doesn't. His tenure was an empty parenthesis." 

If Nixon has no part in modern conservatism, why have conservatives embraced so many Nixonian governing techniques? Starting with the Reagan and Bush I administrations, and accelerating their efforts with the Bush II/Cheney administration, conservatives have revived and expanded everything from Nixon's imperial presidency (in the name of national security just like Nixon) to blatant abuses of constitutional limitations--not to mention countless statutes--that make Nixon look now like a piker. Nixon famously believed, of course, that if a president did it, that made it legal. Bush and Cheney, and their conservative cohorts, have proved Nixon's point yet gone way beyond it, for in his darkest moment I do not believe Nixon would ever have tortured enemies. 

Actually, when I read Will's review, I understood why he likes to think of Nixon's contribution to conservatism as an empty parenthesis. Nixon has about him a Pandora of evils that I suspect Will (and many conservatives) would rather that astute young historians like Perlstein keep boxed. This may explain why Will thinks that Perlstein has not lived up to his prior work in Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus. But I must differ with Will. For me, Nixonland is even better. Both Will and I, no doubt, are too close to Nixonland's years--albeit viewing them from very different vantage points--to fully appreciate how the fresh eyes of a young historian might see it. But suffice it to say I found the portrait Perlstein has painted both fascinating and revealing, and to my knowledge very accurate.

I was disappointed in Will's review not because he does not much like what emerged from Perlstein's efforts, rather because he seeks to discredit the author's works by selecting examples of purported errors.  For example, Will takes issue with Perlstein quoting a Military Policeman who thought B-52 co-pilots were carrying side arms to deal with a co-pilot "too chicken to follow orders and drop the big one." Will found the language adolescent, and said that "an Air Force historian laughed" at the notion. (In fact the language makes the point, and this historian's laugh is a non-denial denial, not to mention the fact that B-52 pilots were often armed.) Perlstein, however, did not quote the MP for his facts, rather his state of mind.

Will next says Perlstein was wrong to state that "before the Kent State violence, 'citizens were thrilled to see tanks and jeeps rumbling through town'" because there were no tanks. Yet a simple and quick Google search shows no less than four eyewitnesses reported tanks at the scene. Similarly, Will says Perlstein is wrong in writing (and citing) the story that "Hells Angels beat hippies to death with pool cues" at the 1969 Rolling Stones concert at Altamont, California, yet countless stories produced by a Google search corroborate Perlstein. This snarky nit picking goes on until Will reaches his claim that the "cumulative effect of carelessness, solecism and rhetorical fireworks is to make Perlstein seem eager to portray the years and people about whom he is writing as even wilder and nastier than they were." [Emphasis added.]

In fact, Perlstein has not made them wilder or nastier than they were. (Based on his review, I am not sure George Will believes this either.) To the contrary. Perlstein has painted a careful, realistic, and vivid picture of the times and characters.

His assertion that Perlstein's work is "careless" is simply not true, as any careful reader (or inquiring mind) will discover, for there are almost 100 pages of documentation supporting the material in great detail. In fact, when I agreed to do this blog--after earlier reading the book in bound galleys and being impressed by the care and detail (and analysis) in undertaking what had to be a massive research job--I sent word I would like to talk about the author's research techniques in getting his head around, and into, this massive body of information. (A subject I will address with a subsequent blog for I am interested as both an author and reader.)

As for Will's charge of "solecism," I can find none in Perlstein's work although I cannot say the same for George Will's review in making false charges about Perlstein's facts. He should try Google occasionally.

Finally, as for Will's trouble with the "rhetorical fireworks," early in his review he found the work "rollicking," noting that "Perlstein's high-energy--sometimes too energetic--romp of a book also serves, inadvertently, a serious need: it corrects the cultural hypochondria to which many Americans, including Perlstein, are prone"--whatever "cultural hypochondria" involves. And Will closed his review by calling Perlstein's chronicle of the Nixon years "compulsively readable"--and on this I agree. Rick's occasional "rhetorical fireworks" are merely part of the show. --John Dean

Are We Still in Nixonland?: Author One-on-One: Rick Perlstein and John Dean

We live in interesting times, for better or worse, but I must confess I find the times from the early 60s to the early 70s at least as interesting as ours. Everything seemed at stake, and everything was in flux. Mass movements changed things from the ground up, and flawed but fascinating figures at the top made courageous and tragic decisions (often in the same moment) whose effects we're still living with. But you don't need me to tell you about those years--we've been hearing about them (and hearing about them) ever since.

Which might make a new history of the era seem superfluous, even to a mild obsessive like me. But when the fat advance copy of Rick Perlstein's Nixonland hit my desk, I could tell it would be something special. For one thing, Perlstein had an excellent reputation from his first book, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, which was acclaimed on both sides of the aisle for showing how the Goldwater presidential run in 1964, commonly considered an unmitigated disaster, actually laid the groundwork for the conservative movement that has dominated American politics for most of the past three decades. (By the way, Before the Storm is unaccountably out of print right now--a new edition is due out next spring, but for now you'll have to spend over $100 for a used copy on our site.) I was looking forward to seeing that perspective turned on the more familiar terrain of the Nixon years. And then there's the style of Nixonland: from a few random glances you could tell that it's written with a verve and glee that you don't expect from political history. And the book itself lived up to those early signs: dense with research that puts familiar events on the same plane with forgotten ones and full of a spirit that reminds you of one of his theses, that politics is always an emotional and visceral game, never more so than in times of massive and disorienting change. I made it my Best of the Month pick and even steamrolled my less-obsessed colleagues into making it our May Spotlight selection.

I wanted to bring Perlstein into dialogue on Omni, and I thought a perfect match for him would be former Nixon aide John Dean: in part because he lived at the center of many of the books' events (although the book ends with the '72 election, before Dean was on television sets across the country as the star of the Watergate hearings), but even more so because he's been a student of conservatism as well, and has held to his own identity as a "Goldwater conservative" even as, by his own reckoning, the shifting of the political spectrum has put someone like him much farther to the left than he'd ever have imagined. His newest book, following recent bestsellers like Worse than Watergate and Conservatives Without Conscience (not to mention his original bestseller and one of my all-time favorite political books, the memoir Blind Ambition), is Pure Goldwater, a collection, edited with Barry Goldwater Jr., of the late senator's journal entries and correspondence, which I hope will help lead the discussion toward Perlstein's first book and the Goldwater brand of conservatism as well.

Dean and Perlstein will be taking turns blogging here over the next couple of weeks. Dean begins things with a post this afternoon, which is a direct response to George Will's cover piece on Nixonland yesterday in the New York Times Book Review. May the rest of the discussion continue to be so lively! --Tom

The Most Bookery Booker: Down to Six

The Booker Prize potentates (in the persons in this go-round of judges Victoria Glendenning, Mariella Frostrup, and John Mullan) have chosen six finalists for the Best of the Booker prize (out of the 41 Booker winners eligible):

• Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee (1999 winner)
• The Ghost Road by Pat Barker (1995)
• Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey (1988)
• Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (1981)
• The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer (1974)
• The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell (1973)

Notable snubs? Life of Pi? The English Patient? Possession? (Those are at least among the most popular winners in the US.) At this point, the selection of the winner is up to "you": that is, you can vote for the winner on the Man Booker website, although at this hour I can't see how to do it. Not that I could really do so myself in good conscience: it reveals me as either poorly read or Anglophobic* (or both!) that I've read exactly none of the well-known nominees. But nevertheless I'll root (and even vote) for The Siege of Krishnapur for the sole reason that it's published in the States by New York Review Books, whose exquisite taste has never ever steered me wrong.

And meanwhile, the required gripes. Yes, I enjoy book awards with some shamelessness, and I don't even mind the idea of a Best of the Booker. But what's embarrassing about this one is the prizegivers' lack of patience. Because they did this once before, for the Booker's 25th anniversary (the winner: Midnight's Children). So is it their 50th anniversary now? No, it's just the 40th. They just couldn't wait, could they? Ten years is a long time when you're itchy for PR in the downtime between fall prize seasons. But at this rate of accelerated impatience they'll want to do this again for the 45th anniversary, and before long they'll be running an updated contest every year: "Will Rushdie hold the title for one more year?" Even I might stop posting on the subject at that point. --Tom

*--I notice in retrospect that only two of the six are actually English by birth and upbringing--and some people even consider Farrell Irish--so maybe I should rephrase this to Commonwealthphobic.

Amazon Exclusive: A Review of Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s El Juego del Ángel (Angel's Game)

      
   (The cover of the Spanish edition and the author.)

This week marks the official release of Carlos Ruiz Zafón's El Juego del Ángel in the United States. It's a follow-up to his international bestseller The Shadow of the Wind. As Amazon reported back in March, the novel had the highest initial printing for any novel published in Spain.

The catch? For now, it's only available in the author's native tongue, Spanish. With an English-language version just barely on the horizon, we turned to Larry Nolen to write a review based on his reading of an advance copy of the Spanish edition. Nolen divides his time between being an English and History teacher, engaging in amateur translations of Latin American authors, and operating a blog devoted to literature--a blog that was one of the first to provide any information about El Juego del Ángel in either language in the months leading up to its publication. Nolen, with both the review and the translation of two paragraphs from the novel, give us limited creatures who don't read Spanish a tantalizing glimpse of the rich treasures to come. Visit Nolen's blog for English translations of two recent interviews with the author.

Vampires? In May? Why, First Second, You Are a Cheeky Publisher, Aren't You?

One of my favorite graphic novel publishers, First Second, has declared May "Vampire Month" in one of those audacious out-of-season moves that means October/Halloween is now officially "Island Vacation Month". So far, the extraordinarily cool First Second blog has brought readers a downloadable vampire kit, and links to features at Comics Worth Reading, Colleen Mondor's blog, and Interactive Reader.

In heavily related news, First Second is promoting Little Vampires by Joann Sfar this month. The book collects a previously published story about a vampire going to school with two new adventures. The artwork is stunning, with crisp, deep colors and genius-level compositions. These are sly, funny, often slapstick narratives that adults and children alike will find delightful--all in one neat, new trade paper edition put together with First Second's usual attention to detail.

In spirit if not style, Little Vampires reminds me of one of my favorite kid's books: Bunnicula, the tale of a carrot-draining vampiric rabbit. Both are mischievous and hilarious, for one thing. Narrated by the family dog, Harold, and enriched by the clever cat Chester, Bunnicula recounts Harold and Chester's investigations into the new rabbit in the house. When tomatoes wind up being sucked dry, suspicions arise that the the bunny might not be as innocent as it seems. Although it seems unlikely anyone hasn't heard of Bunnicula by now, definitely check it out. It's a classic.

As is Little Vampires, frankly. Sfar is just a brilliant artist and storyteller.

Time Magazine

Time Magazine just posted a review of my new book, Bright Shiny Morning. Check it out if you can, here's the link:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1738502,00.html

In the print version they call me "The Most Notorious Author in America", which I actually think is pretty funny and pretty cool.

Have a great weekend -

James Frey

Friday Night Videos: Bright Shiny Morning versus Vodka Chelsea

Welcome once again to Friday Night Videos, where we aim to give you the kind of match-ups you deserve for hanging out here on the weekend. Tonight, in honor of his guest posting right here at Omnivoracious, it's James Frey talking about his new book Bright Shiny Morning (May 13) versus Chelsea Handler talking about Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea, which just hit the NYT bestseller list. Frey you already know about from his posts. Handler, who has a show on E! every weeknight at 11:30, is a little newer to the spotlight, but very talented. She's got incredible comic timing and has a great blend of irreverent, self-deprecating humor and biting satire. The Q&A from a bookstore gig displays her sharp wit and her quick-thinking approach to comedy. (More videos here.)

Graphic Novel Friday Spotlight: Shadows, Empire, Heavenshields, Bibles, and More

Every Friday, Omnivoracious will turn the spotlight on one or more graphic novels, with future installments also including news, relevant links, and interviews. You can let me know who or what you'd like to see featured by commenting on this post.

Three Shadows by Cyril Pedrosa (First Second) - A rich allegory in which a man and his son embark on a journey to save their family, while haunted by three shadows. Their trip takes them to many strange places, and although the underlying symbolism is at times obscure, the emotional pay-off is definitely worth the experience.

The Manga Bible: From Genesis to Revelation by Siku (Doubleday) - To me, there's something crazy about trying to render the Bible in graphic form to begin with, given that the rich texture of the language provides much of its power. A manga Bible seems perhaps even crazier, given the stylizations of the form. The results, though, seem much weirder than even that, which I mean as a compliment. Either the Bible was always odd or Siku has chosen to dramatize the stranger bits. I'm not sure the standard manga approach really adds anything new to the experience, but it's a worthy experiment that manga fans in general should consider checking out.

Obsidian Murder Mysteries Crash the Party

Niche mysteries are very popular these days, and the New American Library Obsidian series has just released a bevy of them out into the wild this month. From haunted bookshop mysteries like The Ghost and the Femme Fatale by Alice Kimberly (aka Cleo Coyle) to garden mysteries complete with gardening tips like Perfect Poison by Joyce and Jim Lavene (authors of Poisoned Petals), no matter what your interests in life, you can find a novel you'll enjoy.

Dance enthusiasts may want to pick up Natalie M. Roberts' Pointe and Shoot, a Jenny Patridge dance mystery, while clay crafters and crochet hobbyists may flock to The Cracked Pot by Melissa Glazer (okay, now, c'mon, Obsidian--surely that's a pseudonym?!) and Hooked on Murder by Betty Hechtman respectively. Both books include interesting tips and projects in addition to the fiction.

Finally, if you like mysteries about mysteries, Selma Eichler's Murder Can Crash Your Party, featuring Desiree Shapiro, might be just your thing. When Shapiro is invited as a speaker at a mystery writers' convention, she receives a truly bizarre proposition from a special fan: read my unpublished novel and if you can solve the mystery between the covers, I'll give you $25,000. What follows is more sinister than Shapiro could possibly expect.

All of this is light, harmless fare for readers looking for some entertainment, especially on vacation--on the plane, at the beach, while getting a pedicure. Mystery purists and lovers of brutal noir fiction need not apply. But never fear--a Ken Bruen or Tom Piccirilli novel can't be far around the corner. In the meantime, have a little fun--read a niche mystery in your particular area of interest. You might be surprised at what you find.

The Genius is With Me

I posted the other day about a piano player named Eric Lewis I saw perform last Saturday. I tracked him and his manager down and now he's doing my reading in New York with me. He'll play before and after I read, and will accompany me while I read. It should be very cool. Definitely different. You won't have ever seen a reading like it.

It's at the Blender Theater, on 23rd and Lexington, in New York City, next Tuesday May 13th, at 7:00. Josh Kilmer-Purcell, who is about to release his new book, Candy Everybody Wants, will also be reading. Buy it on Amazon right now!

James Frey

James Owen's Search for the Red Dragon

Some multi-talented creators can write books and produce cover art for them. That's the case with James Owen and his Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographic series for young adults. The second book, The Search for the Red Dragon, was released this year. It's a gorgeous book in addition to a thrilling adventure, in no small part due to Owen's marvelous illustrations and cover art. The sketches above showing the creation of that cover art come from a page on his website where he details the whole process. I've posted the finished cover below so you can see the full realization of his vision.

The Search for the Red Dragon has been getting great reviews, and I recommend you pick it up. Here's a little bit more about the book:

It has been nine years since John, Jack, and Charles had their great adventure in the Archipelago of Dreams and became the Caretakers of the Imaginarium Geographica. Now they have been brought together again to solve a mystery: Someone is kidnapping the children of the Archipelago. And their only clue is a mysterious message delivered by a strange girl with artificial wings: "The Crusade has begun." Worse, they discover that all of the legendary Dragonships have disappeared as well. The only chance they have to save the world from a centuries-old plot is to seek out the last of the Dragonships -- the Red Dragon -- in a spectacular journey that takes them from Sir James Barrie's Kensington Gardens to the Underneath of the Greek Titans of myth.

 

Guest Blogger: James Frey

Met a writer at Columbia a few weeks ago named Liza Monroy. I was up there having lunch with a group of writing students. At the end of the lunch, she told me she had a novel being published by Spiegel and Grau at Random House. I asked her why she was in school if she was publishing a novel, she shrugged and laughed.

Anyway, I read the novel, called Mexican High. It comes out this month. It's really entertaining, incredibly well done, almost too good to have been written by someone her age. Check it out if you have a chance. You won't be disappointed.

James Frey

Stephenie Meyer's The Host Invades Your Mind Today

In an interesting case of a YA author turning to the adult market, Stephenie Meyer's The Host appears from Little, Brown today in hardcover--this after selling over three million copies of her Twilight saga in the U.S.

As the press release tells us The Host "may possibly be the first love triangle involving only two bodies." Earth has been invaded by aliens who take over the minds of their human hosts, so now poor Melanie has to walk around with two minds. The "Wanderer" is surprised to find Melanie so tenacious--it had expected to subsume her immediately. So Melanie infuses the Wanderer with memories of the man she loves, leading them to both (naturally) go off on a quest to find this man. Thus, a love triangle involving only two bodies.

Sounds pretty claustrophobic to me! Check out the official book site and the author's site, too, both of which have some interesting extras.

Old Media Monday: Reviewing the Reviewers

New York Times:

• Sunday Book Review cover (Chinese fiction issue): Jonathan Spence on Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out by Mo Yan: "Although one can say that the political dramas narrated by Mo Yan are historically faithful to the currently known record, 'Life and Death' remains a wildly visionary and creative novel, constantly mocking and rearranging itself and jolting the reader wit