Omnivoracious

Charles Duhigg's "The Power of Habit" Makes the 2012 Best Books of the Year So Far

 

The Amazon editors have announced the 2012 Best Books of the Year So Far (more on that next week). Here's an interview with Charles Duhigg, #20 on the list of the best books we've read from 2012 (so far).

Duhigg's book has a simple premise that can change your life in profound ways. He's also a smart and affable guy, who was a pleasure to spend time with. We hope he makes a habit (ahem) of visiting the Amazon offices.

The Best Books of the Year So Far program is composed of a top 20 list, along with top 10 selections in 13 categories. We like to think there's something for everyone in there. Have a look for yourself.

 

On the "Inexpressible Freedom" of Skateboarding

Books for skateboarders - or their parents, who wonder, "What is skateboarding?"

Before embarking on a recent cross-country road trip - visiting skateboard parks across the US with my sons and three of their skater friends - I pulled together a few books about skateboarding, with ambitious visions of immersing myself in the history of my teen sons' adopted sport.

I didn't read a single word on the road, but now that our wacky adventure has ended (read more at our Sk8theSt8s.com blog), I'm back into my late-summer project: to attempt to understand the sport that's  become such a big part of my family's lifestyle and has transformed my parental role into 'skate dad.'

Surprisingly little has been written about the history and culture of this fast-growing and heavily-sponsored sport, it turns out The stellar documentary 'Dogtown and Z-boys' (and a companion book of articles and photos, DogTown: The Legend of the Z-Boys) seems to have kept others from exploring similar turf. Still, there are a few worthy efforts, the best of which I found to be journalist/skater Jocko Weyland's lively The Answer Is Never: A Skateboarder's History of the World. Weyland retells the story of skateboarding's 1960s Southern California origins and it's 1980s rebirth. He also describes the "inexpressible freedom in the act of skating," the lack of coaches and rules, and how skating "lies at a unique junction of sport and art."

Other books about the renegade culture of skating include The Impossible: Rodney Mullen, Ryan Sheckler, and the Fantastic History of Skateboarding, by Cole Louison, The Mutt: How to Skateboard and Not Kill Yourself, by Rodney Mullen, and Stalefish: skateboard culture from the rejects who made it, by Sean Mortimer. My research also took me through pages about skateboard artwork (The Disposable Skateboard Bible and Disposable: A History of Skateboard Art); skate shoes (Made for Skate: The Illustrated History of Skateboard Footwear); and skate photography (Full Bleed: New York City Skateboard Photography). I also skimmed two books by the most famous skateboarder of all, Tony Hawk's How Did I Get Here: The Ascent of an Unlikely CEO and Hawk: Occupation: Skateboarder.

Then there's Said Sayrafiezadeh's When Skateboards Will Be Free: A Memoir of a Political Childhood, which was an Amazon Best of the Month pick in 2009. Though I knew the story had nothing to do with skateboarding, this book had been on my to-read list for awhile, and I was curious to learn the source of its title. Sayrafiezadeh, whose nutty socialist parents believed there was "virtue in misery, nobility in hardship," describes the day he asked his mother to buy him a green skateboard for $10.99.  Her reply: "When the revolution comes, everyone will have a skateboard, because all skateboards will be free." That promise prompted Sayrafiezadeh's dreams of an endless summer of constant skateboarding - the same "inexpressible freedom" Weyland describes - but the revolution never came.

2010 World Fantasy Award Finalists Announced

 
  
 
As reported by Locus Online, the 2010 World Fantasy Award finalists have been announced, including the five finalists for best novel, first published in 2009. The winners will be announced at the World Fantasy Convention in Columbus OH, in late October.

Blood of Ambrose, James Enge (Pyr)
The Red Tree, Caitlín R. Kiernan (Roc)
The City & The City, China Miéville (Macmillan UK/ Del Rey)
Finch, Jeff VanderMeer (Underland/Atlantic-Corvus)
In Great Waters, Kit Whitfield (Jonathan Cape UK/Del Rey)

Of these novels, The Red Tree has been award nominated before and made Amazon's SF/F 2009 top 10, The City and the City made Amazon's 2009 Top 100 and has won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, among others, and my own Finch has been a finalist for the Nebula and Locus Awards, while also picking up year's best nods from the Washington Post and others. The Enge has not received as much attention despite making the Locus Magazine recommended list, while In Great Waters has received critical acclaim and much support in some quarters. Of the novels that could have made it but didn't, I would point out Catherynne M. Valente's Palimpsest and Michal Ajvaz's The Other City, in particular.

What's Next for The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind?

With the paperback edition of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (one of our top 10 books of 2009) hitting shelves today, we checked in with author/inventor/dynamo William Kamkwamba to see where his inspiring journey has taken him over the last eight months.

Not surprisingly, he provided a staggering list of accomplishments.

Dear friends at Amazon,

So many great things have happened since the last time we spoke. Our book tour took us all across the United States, into so many wonderful places and back out again that I remember it almost like a dream. Along this great journey, I got to meet Jon Stewart, speak with Diane Sawyer, and tell my story at such great institutions as Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry and the Seattle Public Library. But what stands out the most were the crowds of young people who came to each event saying how my book inspired them to learn science and encouraged them to think big. To me, that was as great an achievement as building my very first windmill.

Another thing: over the spring and summer, I also achieved one of my biggest dreams and rebuilt my village primary school. I couldn’t have done it without the help of my friends at buildOn, a group who organizes community service projects for young people in American cities, while even recruiting them for their other mission: building schools in poor countries. So far, they’ve built 364 schools in five countries, including Malawi. In Wimbe, we added classrooms to accommodate 1,540 students, supplied them proper desks and chairs, and installed over a dozen computers donated by my friends at One Laptop Per Child. And of course, I built a hybrid system to produce the school’s electricity: two giant solar panels and a windmill powered by a 1500-watt generator that I built myself from big magnets and lots of wire.

Amidst all of this, another dream of mine was fulfilled: I finally graduated high school and was accepted into a university. After two fantastic years at African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, South Africa, I’ll be studying engineering in the fall at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. While on our book tour, Bryan Mealer (my co-author) and I visited several colleges who were kind enough to invite me to see their engineering programs. I visited Harvey Mudd in California, Virginia Tech, and Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and was amazed at the beautiful campuses and equipment available to students. But after seeing Dartmouth and meeting its president Dr. Jim Kim – who I admired for his previous work treating people with AIDS and tuberculosis in Africa and Haiti – I knew it was the place for me. In addition to having a cool project-based curriculum (meaning I can get my hands dirty the first week there), the Thayer School of Engineering even has a lending library for power tools! Seeing this, I couldn’t stop smiling.

So if you’re ever in Hanover and see me walking around with my stack of books and looking stressed and sleepy, say hello. But I assure you, I won’t be there long. After I graduate college, I’ll be going back to Africa. As I’ve always said, my heart belongs to Malawi, and so does my work.

--William (and Bryan Mealer)

To keep up with the always-moving William, visit his blog at www.williamkamkwamba.com.

2010 Hugo Award Finalists Announced: Exclusive Interview with Nominee Catherynne M. Valente

The finalists for the prestigious Hugo Award for best SF/fantasy have just been announced at Eastercon in the UK, and the novel ballot reads as follows:

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest (Tor)
The City & The City by China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)
Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)
Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente (Bantam Spectra)
Wake by Robert J. Sawyer (Ace; Penguin; Gollancz, Analog)
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)

For a full ballot (my wife Ann is up again for Weird Tales), click here, here, or, possibly, here. Congratulations to all of the nominees!

Given that Catherynne M. Valente's Palimpsest also made Amazon's top 10 list for SF/Fantasy last year, I thought I'd take the opportunity to interview her about the novel and about the experience of being a Hugo finalist.

  

2010 Arthur C. Clarke Award Shortlist: Jones, Mieville, Roberts, Robinson, Theroux, and Woodring

 
 

Gwyneth Jones, China Mieville, Adam Roberts, Kim Stanley Robinson, Marcel Theroux and Chris Wooding are the six authors shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2009. The annual award is presented for the best science fiction novel of the year, and selected from a list of novels whose UK first edition was published in the previous calendar year. A prize of £2010 will be awarded to the winner along with a commemorative engraved bookend.

The judging panel for the 2010 Arthur C. Clarke Award are Chris Hill and Jon Courtenay Grimwood for the British Science Fiction Association, Francis Spufford and Rhiannon Lassiter for the Science Fiction Foundation and Paul Skevington for the science fiction news website SF Crowsnest.com. Paul Billinger represents the Arthur C. Clarke Award as the Chair of Judges.

The six shortlisted books are:

Spirit - Gwyneth Jones
The City & The City - China Miéville
Yellow Blue Tibia - Adam Roberts
Galileo's Dream - Kim Stanley Robinson
Far North - Marcel Theroux
Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding

China Mieville has been nominated three times, and won the Award twice with Perdido Street Station in 2001 and Iron Council in 2005. If he wins in 2010 he will become the first author to win the prize three times in its twenty-four year history.

Omnivoracious managed to catch up with three of the nominees, including Mieville, in time for this feature.

Asked about the general response to The City & the City, also a Nebula finalist, Mieville said, "I've been incredibly happy about the response to the book for a bunch of reasons. It's very different from my other stuff and one of the things, like loads of writers, that I'd like to do, is try writing in different styles and voices, traditions and forms, so to get good responses to something quite different, that there's no reason my existing readers should have liked, feels like a real vote of trust in me, which I find moving. It makes me fired up to try all kinds of different things. I am increasingly excited by trying to write all kinds of different stuff in different voices, and hope readers have the patience to stick with me. Also because the book was a present to my mother, which makes it personally important to me, it's affecting to have it received well." 

Nominee Kim Stanley Robinson, who has been up for the award before, said via email that his novel came about because of his interest in Galileo ever since doing the research for his prior book The Years of Rice and Salt. "Then an image came to me of him flying through his telescope to Jupiter, and in thinking about that the novel came to me."  

Yellow Blue Tibia author Adam Roberts, who describes his next book, New Model Army, as "If Nabokov had written Bravo Two Zero...", had a couple of ideas he wanted to explore fictionally: "An idea about alternate realities, an explanation for why UFOs are so culturally ubiquitous, believed-in by so many and yet patently untrue, stuff about the links between SF and Marxism.  So I formulated the idea for a novel set in the former Soviet Union, involving ET-conspiracies, robot Stalins and the like.  But the real spark was when I decided to write a spy or action thriller novel that deliberately up-ended all the formal conventions.  So: the average such thriller takes a handsome young virile protagonist, and a heroine notionally attractive according to the very limited logics of 'supermodels', and puts them through the paces of a reassuringly familiar plot: set-up, small fight, increasing peril, climactic big conflagration.  So I decided to write a spy thriller, with as much fidelity to the mode as I could muster, except that my hero would be clapped out and old, my heroine a morbidly obese Scientologist and so on.  I decided to have the hero blown up in an exploding nuclear reactor in the middle of the novel rather than the end, to muck-about with the hero-in-peril elements as far as possible, replace mcguffin pseudo-science with genuine science-fiction and so on."

As for the award's namesake, Arthur C. Clarke, Robinson remembers "a couple of lovely phone calls from Clarke in the 1990s, in which we discussed Mars.  He was amused because I had written a mountain-climbing story about Olympus Mons, and recent results had shown that the escarpment of Olympus Mons was not as steep as thought before; 'you could ride a bicycle up it,' Clarke said to me.  Later in another call he admitted that the 'Southeast Buttress' was steep enough to climb (and ten kilometers tall) so I was all right. I enjoy the memory of those talks and as he funded the award named after him, it would mean something to me [to win] because of that."

   
  
Of the remaining nominees, Theroux and Wooding have never been nominated for the Clarke. However, Gwyneth Jones has been nominated five times, and won the Award once for her novel Bold As Love in 2002. 

This year’s six shortlisted titles were selected from a long list of forty-one eligible submissions put forward by seventeen different publishing houses and imprints.

Tom Hunter, administrator for the award, said: “Shortlist time has to be one of the most exciting moments in the Clarke Award calendar, and I’m very excited to be able to present such a strong and challenging shortlist this year.  

“The greater purpose of the award is to promote UK science fiction literature and the sense of wonder, speculation and imagination for which the genre is most renowned. The selection of a final winner is always a difficult choice, but  I’m greatly looking forward to the conversation to come.” 

Meanwhile, nominee Roberts is in a bit of a bind since he usually reviews "the whole Clarke list, but don't think I can if I'm actually on the shortlist.  On the other hand, I know Anthony Burgess occasionally reviewed his own novels, in the review column he wrote for the Yorkshire Post under the 'pseudonym' of his real name, John Wilson.  So perhaps I could give it a go.  'It is the considered opinion of I, A.R.R.Roberts, that by far the best novel on this list is ...'"

The winner will be announced on Wednesday 28th April at an award ceremony held on the opening night of the SCI-FI-LONDON Film Festival. Torque Control has a nice round-up of links to reviews of all of the nominated novels.

Lifting a Pint with Colum McCann

I'm marking the occasion of St. Patrick's Day by sharing with you a video that Tom shot in the ostensibly Irish pub at the bottom of our office tower. With apologies for the lively crowd noise, I think it's a pretty wonderful glimpse into the heart of the Dublin-born Colum McCann, whose mid-'70s New York story, Let the Great World Spin, draws illuminating parallels to our American era.

When we put it on our Top 10 Best Books of the Year... So Far list last July, McCann was just embarking on his tour, and he sent us a rare missive: he wanted to "break the threshold of cyberspace just to give this simple thanks" for welcoming his book and alleviating some of the "authorial vertigo that creeps up in the early days." He concluded with the wish that we'd "get the chance some time to meet in person so I can extend that handshake, and maybe even have a jar or two."

Needless to say, several of us jumped at the chance as he swung through Seattle a few weeks later. We had one of the most enjoyable author meetings I've ever had, some of which we taped to share with you. Then we all trooped up the street to the Seattle Public Library to hear him read (he's especially good, incidentally, at giving voice to regretful mothers, from Park Avenue to prostitute).

I should state for the record that this enjoyable raising of jars in no way influenced our decision to put Let the Great World Spin at the top of our Best Books of 2009 list. It's a brilliant book. But I will say that when I heard he'd won the 2009 National Book Award for Fiction, my happiness was both for the extended life of the book and for McCann, who seems to be as genuinely lovely a person as you'll ever meet.

Colum, we send you the best of Irish wishes: Le gach dea-ghui.

2010 Newbery, Caldecott and Other ALA Award Winners Announced

The biggest children's book award prizes, which include the Newbery, Caldecott and Printz Medal awards, were announced earlier this morning at the American Association of Librarian's (ALA) Midwinter meeting held in Boston, MA. This year's Newbery Medal went to author Rebecca Stead for When You Reach Me.  Stead's unexpected and moving story of girl living in Manhattan in the 1970's was an in-house favorite last summer, and was selected as the Amazon Best Book of July Spotlight pick.  It later took the top spot on our Amazon Best Book of 2009 for Middle Grade Readers list.   Check out our Amazon Exclusive Q&A with Rebecca Stead.

The Caldecott Medal for best children's illustration was awarded to the great Jerry Pinkney for The Lion & the Mouse, his marvelous, wordless picture book.  Pinkney's book was selected by Amazon editors as a Best Picture Book of 2009. Here is a shortlist of winners and honor books for several of the ALA awards.  For a quick roundup of the 2010 ALA winners check out today's PW and our children's book awards page.  Congratulations to all the winners and honorees!

--Lauren

2010 ALA Award Winners (partial list)

Newbery Medal Winner

• When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

Newbery Honor Books:

• Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose
• The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly
• Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin
• The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg by Rodman Philbrick

Caldecott Medal

• The Lion & the Mouse illustrated and written by Jerry Pinkney

Caldecott Honor Books

• All the World, illustrated by Marla Frazee, written by Elizabeth Garton Scanlon
• Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors, illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski, written by Joyce Sidman

Printz Medal

• Going Bovine by Libba Bray

Printz Honor Books

• Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman
• The Monstrumologist by Richard Yancey
• Punkzilla by Adam Rapp
• Tales from the Madman Underground: An Historical Romance, 1973 by John Barnes

Coretta Scott King Author Award

• Bad News for Outlaws by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie

Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award

• My People, by Langston Hughes, illustrated by Charles R. Smith, Jr.

Omni Crush of the Decade: Cookbooks and Food Lit

With today's look back at the Books of the Decade I naturally gravitated to the subject I'm most passionate about: food. Last night I scanned the shelves at home and then did some research on Amazon this morning to make sure I didn't miss any favorites. Of all of the books listed below there is one that I turn to regularly--at least weekly--and that's Matt Lee and Ted Lee's The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook. I became friends with Matt and Ted after their book came out in 2006 but I promise this selection doesn't stem from any personal bias. And I'm not the only one who just loves this book--it won top honors at both the James Beard and IACP awards.

I was cooking from the early galley edition prior to publication and in the years since it remains my most reached-for cookbook in my collection. I've made grits every which way, along with fried chicken, pork butts, pickled peaches, pies (sour orange, sorghum pecan, buttermilk-sweet potato), biscuits, plenty of cocktails, corn cob wine, crab dip, hoppin' John, collard greens, butter bean pâté, pimento cheese, and many more spectacular dishes. The book also turned me on to so many new ingredients, like sorghum, Carolina gold rice, spicy Blenheim ginger ale (which I now order by the case), country ham, scuppernong grapes, and, of course, boiled peanuts (per the bumper sticker, I "brake for" them at any occasion).

When compiling these lists, I came back to the books I cook from the most in addition to a few that I simply enjoy reading, cover to cover, like a novel, for their narrative approach, to a couple that I'm too intimidated, still, to even think about cooking from, but remain a resource of inspired ideas.

My Favorite Cookbooks (and a Couple of Cocktail Collections) of the Decade: 2000-2009 (alphabetical by author)

• Alinea (2008) by Grant Achatz
• The Complete Meat Cookbook (2001) and Bruce Aidell's Complete Book of Pork (2004) by Bruce Aidells
• Hot Sour Salty Sweet (2000) by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid
• A16 Food + Wine (2008) by Nate Appleman and Shelley Lindgren
• The Babbo Cookbook (2002) and Molto Italiano (2007) by Mario Batali
• Mexico One Plate at a Time (2000) by Rick Bayless
• Big Fat Duck Cookbook (2008) by Heston Blumenthal
• Urban Italian (2008) by Andrew Carmellini and Gwen Hyman
• Momofuku (2006) by David Chang and Peter Meehan
• The Craft of the Cocktail (2002) and The Essential Cocktail (2008) by Dale DeGroff
• Dolce Italiano (2007) by Gina DePalma
• Tom Douglas' Seattle Kitchen (2000) and Tom's Big Dinners (2003) by Tom Douglas
• The River Cottage Meat Book (2007) by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
• Tasty (2006) by Roy Finamore
• Tyler Florence's Real Kitchen (2003) and Eat This Book (2005) by Tyler Florence
• Screen Doors and Sweet Tea (2008) by Martha Hall Foose
• Barefoot Contessa Parties! (2001), Barefoot Contessa Family Style (2002), Barefoot Contessa at Home (2006), Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics (2008) by Ina Garten
• Sunday Suppers at Lucques (2005) by Suzanne Goin
• Baking (2006) by Dorie Greenspan
• The Whole Beast (2004) and Beyond Nose to Tail (2007) by Fergus Henderson
• The Cook and the Gardener (2000) by Amanda Hesser
• Perfect Scoop (2007) by David Lebovitz
• The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook (2006) by Matt Lee and Ted Lee
• The Gift of Southern Cooking (2003) by Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock
• Baked (2008) by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito
• Bones (2005) and Fat (2008) by Jennifer McLagan
• The Naked Chef (2000), The Naked Chef Takes Off (2001), Jamie at Home (2008) by Jamie Oliver
• Recipes from Home (2001) by David Page and Barbara Shinn
• The Flavor Bible (2008) by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg
• The Young Man and the Sea (2007) by David Pasternack
• How to Grill (2001) by Steven Raichlen
• The Joy of Mixology (2003) by Gary Regan
• The Zuni Cafe Cookbook (2002) by Judy Rodgers
• Charcuterie (2005) by Michael Ruhlman
• Appetite (2002) by Nigel Slater
• All About Braising (2004) by Molly Stevens
• A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes (2008) by David Tanis

My Favorite Food Lit of the Decade: 2000-2009 (alphabetical by author)

• Kitchen Confidential (2000) by Anthony Bourdain
• Heat (2006) by Bill Buford
• Born Round (2009) by Frank Bruni
• Fried Chicken (2004), Donuts (2006), Southern Belly (2007) by John T. Edge
• Cooking for Mr. Latte (2003) by Amanda Hesser
• On Food and Cooking (2004) by Harold McGee
• Setting the Table (2006) by Danny Meyer
• The Omnivore's Dilemma (2006) by Michael Pollan
• Ratio (2009) by Michael Ruhlman
• Eat Me (2008) by Kenny Shopsin
• It Must've Been Something I Ate (2002) by Jeffrey Steingarten
• Imbibe! (2007) by David Wondrich

--BTP

Omni Crush of the Decade: Ann Patchett's "Bel Canto"

Winnowing a year’s worth of memorable reads to a list of our top 100 picks has always felt--to our pack of rabid Amazonian booklovers--agonizing at times, but we now have new appreciation for the luxury of having slots enough for (almost all of) our true favorites. Compiling a short list of 10 books representing the best of the past decade was a much more unforgiving exercise, and I suspect some tears were shed (if only silently, in the shower) over the sidelining of the wondrous Oscar Wao.

The only personal pick I truly miss having on our decade list is Ann Patchett’s Pen/Faulkner Award-winning Bel Canto, which will surely be among the very first books I revisit someday (in that mythical time when I have time to reread). Other books may have had more objective literary merit (whatever that means), but for me, a tiny handful were as memorable.

Set in an unidentified South American country, Bel Canto takes place almost entirely within the walls of a palatial home, where a crowd of diplomats enjoying a famous opera singer's performance at a birthday party become the hostages of young insurgents--and remain their prisoners for weeks that stretch into months.

The story draws much of its dramatic tension from its moments of violence (and the knowledge that this situation cannot end well for captors and captives, all of whom we come to know and care for), but Patchett's characters transform most profoundly when hit by the power of love. They fall under the thrall of the soprano's extraordinary voice, of music itself, of a language they have just begun to understand, of the garden that surrounds the house with increasingly untamed exuberance. Some find themselves utterly transformed by their longing for each other, and they dwell in a sort of blissful paradox, imprisoned, yet unmoored from the structure of their outside lives, so that their mutual captivity becomes a new kind of freedom.

Bel Canto feels subtly, deeply romantic from its opening scene, which I share with you in the hope that you won't let another decade go by without willingly making yourself its hostage (if only for a few hours). --Mari

When the lights went off the accompanist kissed her. Maybe he had been turning towards her just before it was completely dark, maybe he was lifting his hands. There must have been some movement, a gesture, because every person in the living room would later remember a kiss.

They did not see a kiss, that would have been impossible. The darkness that came on them was startling and complete. Not only was everyone there certain of a kiss, they claimed they could identify the type of kiss: it was strong and passionate, and it took her by surprise.

They were all looking right at her when the lights went out. They were still applauding, each on his or her feet, still in the fullest throes of hands slapping together, elbows up. Not one person had come anywhere close to tiring. The Italians and the French were yelling, "Brava! Brava!" and the Japanese turned away from them.

Would he have kissed her like that had the room been lit? Was his mind so full of her that in the very instant of darkness he reached for her, did he think so quickly? Or was it that they wanted her too, all of the men and women in the room, and so they imagined it collectively. They were so taken by the beauty of her voice that they wanted to cover her mouth with their mouth, drink in. Maybe music could be transferred, devoured, owned. What would it mean to kiss the lips that had held such a sound? --Ann Patchett