Omnivoracious

An Evening with Dan Brown

How do you welcome an author who has sold 200 million books worldwide to New York’s Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center? Show the 2,000 fans in the audience where he lives, of course. At this launch event for Dan Brown's latest Robert Langdon thriller Inferno, Today Show host Matt Lauer introduced the author with a clip from an interview he conducted at Brown's home in Exeter, New Hampshire. This rare glimpse into Brown's life reveals that his house closely resembles his novels--full of beautiful old-world furnishings and secret passages hidden behind paintings and rotating bookshelves. (Imagine Tolkien creating a life-size replica of the Shire in his backyard.)

This turned out to be the perfect kick off to the evening, during which Brown opened up about his personal life and the road to his international success. Taking the podium, Brown talked about how his upbringing influenced the major theme of his novels: the conflict between religion and science. As it turns out, this tension manifested itself at a very young age. Brown's mother was the church organist and choir leader and his father was a math teacher. To illustrate their different beliefs, Brown held up the vanity license plates his parents had when he was a child: one read KYRIE (the Latin word for Lord) and the other said METRIC.

He thanked his parents for their lifelong support, noting that if you encourage your kids to pursue creative fields, you will either end up with a happy kid whose rent you'll be paying forever, or they will be popular enough to speak at Avery Fisher Hall and make fun of you.

Drinks with Edward Lee, Author of "Smoke and Pickles"

An interview series in which Amazon Editors meet authors at their favorite bars.

Edward Lee's new cookbook, Smoke and Pickles: Recipes and Stories from a New Southern Kitchen (one of our Best of the Month picks for May), celebrates the chef's Brooklyn upbringing and his move to Louisville, Kentucky, where he opened his restaurant 610 Magnolia. Lee is also a multiple James Beard Award nominee and has been a competitor on both Iron Chef and Top Chef.

The bar he picked was KGB Bar, a barely lit dive bar with a certain Soviet charm. But I learned that KGB Bar is also a venerable writers' haunt, known for hosting literary events almost every night of the week. In fact, when I met up with Lee, there was a poetry reading going on, so the bartender gave us plastic cups for our drinks and headed for the stoop outside, where we talked about the book, bourbon, and his new baby.

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So why'd you pick this bar?

For me, it was a number of reasons. It was the bar I used to frequent when I was in New York. It has a lot of nice memories for me, probably spent a couple of nights here sleeping on the banquette in the corner. For me, it represents an old school New York, back when people drank really hard and smoked really hard. It was an awesome place. Right out of college, I started working at a literary agency, so there were some writers that introduced me to it. I don't know if they still do now--it was fifteen years ago. But a lot of writers used to hang out here. So, it was just a great place to get drunk but also to trade ideas, and there were a lot of interesting people who were hanging out here--a fermentation tank of interesting people. What little memories I do have of here are fond memories.

What are you drinking?

I'm drinking bourbon on the rocks, Knob Creek.

Is that your go-to?

It's not, but they don't have anything else here.

One thing I like about this bar is that there are no mixologists. You don't come here for the drinks, you come here for the booze. There's a difference: they don't make cocktails, they serve drinks.

Where would you go for a nice cocktail in New York?

There are tons of places: Pegu Club, Pouring Ribbons, Please Don't Tell, for nice mixology drinks. But sometimes you just need a stiff drink.

BookExpo America Bloggers Conference

Bloggers ahoy! On Wednesday, May 29, the BookExpo America Bloggers Conference will connect fellow book bloggers, authors, and publishing industry professionals for a fun day of discussions and panels about the book-blogging world (including complimentary breakfast and lunch).

Session topics include:

• Adult & YA Editor Insight panels
• Insider Secrets from Book Blogging Pros
• Taking Your Online Presence Offline
• Blogging Platforms
• Extending the Reach of Your Blog Online
• Book Blogging & The “Big” Niches

Will Schwalbe, who has worked in publishing (most recently as senior vice president and editor in chief of Hyperion Books) and is the author of The End of Your Life Book Club (an Amazon Best of the Month pick, might I add), will give the opening keynote. The closing keynote will be given by Randi Zuckerberg, the CEO and Founder of Zuckerberg Media, a new digital and traditional media and production company, and Editor-in-Chief of Dot Complicated, a modern lifestyle newsletter and blog.

Learn more about the Bloggers Conference, including how to register, at the BookExpo America website.

Drinks with Teddy Wayne, Author of "The Love Song of Jonny Valentine"

A new interview series in which Amazon Editors meet authors at their favorite bars

The bar Angel's Share is hard to find. But hidden behind an unmarked door on the second floor of an unassuming sushi restaurant in the East Village is an elegant bar with a few cozy, dark-wood booths and a long menu of delicious specialty cocktails.

This was the bar that Teddy Wayne picked. He's the author of the novels Kapitoil and, most recently, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, which is a fictionalized take on the life of a pop star who closely resembles teen heartthrob Justin Bieber.

Over cocktails, I spoke with Wayne about the bar, Jonny Valentine, and the future of Justin Bieber.

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Why did you pick this bar?

I've come here a lot over the years, sporadically. It has a really beautiful interior, the environment is carefully controlled and cultivated, and as I get older, I like loud places less and less and appreciate quiet atmospheres where you can actually talk. And there's no obnoxious noises or behavior around you. It appeals to me as I age, which is a good or bad sign.

Also the drinks are incredible--creative confections that are mixtures of strange and unique ingredients that are always delicious.

So what are you drinking?

It's called the Old Folks. It's a whiskey with a dusting of some kind of dry molasses, something on the rim, and some other stuff that's very tasty.

What inspired The Love Song of Jonny Valentine?

There's a direct inspiration: I used to tutor kids after school once a week, and in the fall of 2010, I saw a girl I was tutoring reading Miley Cyrus's book, Miles To Go, which is sold by Amazon. It's mostly pictures with a couple sentences per page. A friend a week later asked me, "Do you have an idea for a humor book we could collaborate on together?" And I suggested parodying Miles To Go or a similar a pop-star biography. Soon after I said that, I realized that this might make an interesting novel.

So, I started writing it as a novel. [My friend and I] abandoned the parody idea, but I kept on writing. And six months later, I was finishing the first draft.

So, why did you decide to do Justin Bieber instead of Miley Cyrus or Taylor Swift or Lady Gaga. Is Justin Bieber special?

Announcing the Winners of the National Book Critics Circle Awards 2013

Last May, in his Best of the Month review for Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, our own Neal Thompson said author Ben Fountain was "a writer worth every accolade about to come his way," and appears that that prediction has come true. In addition to being a finalist in the National Book Awards, last night Fountain took home the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Awards for Fiction.

Among the other big winners were Andrew Solomon, who won the Nonfiction category for Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity, Robert A. Caro in the Biography category for The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, and D.A. Powell for his poetry collection Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys.

Check out all the winners, as well as all the finalists.

Tidy Beautiful Things: A Look At "The Art of Clean Up"

There's something deeply satisfying about being organized—to arrange things on shelves, to properly file papers away, to see everything in its right place. If the popularity of sites like the single-serving Tumblr Things Organized Neatly indicate anything, it's that organization can also be pleasing to the eye.

But what if you took that one step further?

In The Art of Clean Up: Life Made Neat and Tidy, Swiss typographer and comedian Ursus Wehrli takes the concept of organization and deconstructs it. The result is a book of charming, funny, and surprisingly beautiful before-and-after photographs: alphabet soup is sorted alphabetically; a bouquet of flowers is stripped down to its petals and stems; a map of Vienna's transit system is reduced to its lines and copy.

But perhaps what works best about The Art of Clean Up is the way it pokes fun of our obsessive-compulsive tendencies by organizing things that don't need organizing, while also justifying these cravings by making them so pleasing to look at. A messy sandbox full of toys is rearranged and ordered by shape and color, the boy previously playing in the sandbox now sidelined, arms folded. These photos show the beauty in both clutter and "clean up," and the humor that lives in between.

See more photos from The Art of Clean Up after the jump.

Sam Sheridan Gives Survival Tips for Characters in Disaster Movies

How do you prepare for the end of the world? In his terrific new book The Disaster Diaries: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Apocalypse, Sam Sheridan seeks to answer that question by acquiring survival skills from experts all over the world, from Olympic weight lifters to car thieves.

Today, Sheridan looks at several famous scenes from disaster films and tells us what the characters could have done to up their chances of survival in the face of catastrophe.

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War of the Worlds

In Zombieland, the protagonist talks about “cardio” being a rule, but he’s not really talking about a long slow jog, he’s talking about sprinting. War of the Worlds has a great example of the need to be in shape to sprint. Here, Tom Cruise is sprinting for his life. So definitely, you need to be in shape to run sprints.

As the tripod rises up, the crowd is “milling,” standing around watching. Amanda Ripley writes wonderfully about this phenomenon in her book The Unthinkable. Who you “mill” with can have a huge effect on your survival.

As the tripod appears, it’s a good time to start thinking about cover. You could watch the tripod rise up from the corner of a building. Take a look around, and think If this goes bad, where do I go? Where am I sprinting to? But hey, I get it, you’re shocked. It’s an alien, this is a shocking event. I learned to do this when I was a firefighter working around helicopters. Helicopters are very dangerous and things can go wrong, so you would always want a plan—if the wind pushes the chopper this way, I’m diving behind those boulders.

Now the tripod starts shooting: OKAY time to go! Instead of just running straight down the street, Tom Cruise should definitely be looking to get off, get to the side, use cover. Cover doesn’t have to mean that it can block the lasers—it can just block the ability of the thing to see you. Eventually, Tom Cruise does just that. He finds cover, darting through a store. He hides behind a building and watches the tripod stroll past.

John Green, Live at Carnegie Hall

Hank and John Green at Carnegie Hall. GIFs courtesy of supcake.

You'd think we were seeing the Beatles, from the fanatical screaming coming from the ground floor of Carnegie Hall. On stage weren't rock stars per se, but two bookish brothers from the Midwest: John Green, the critically adored young adult novelist, and Hank Green, best known for singing songs about Harry Potter on YouTube. (Perhaps they complement each other like John and Paul, too—John being better with words, Hank with the ear for melody.)

I've attended a number of literary events since I moved to New York in September--all enjoyable evenings, with free white wine and polite conversation. But the Greens' sold-out event, hyperbolically called “An Evening of Awesome,” was the first book thing that truly felt like a celebration.

And the Green brothers have a lot to celebrate: the first anniversary of John Green's The Fault in Our Stars (in the top 3 of our Best of the Year list, among many other year-end lists); the success of their online community, driven by the Greens' hyper-popular VlogBrothers YouTube channel; but most importantly, it was an appreciation of their fans, affectionately dubbed the Nerdfighters, who in turn returned that affection by screaming and hooting and clapping with the sort of youthful enthusiasm that was as endearing as it was loud.

The Reader's Guide to Love

You read This Is How You Lose Her, the new Junot Diaz. It's a novel in stories, which is a concept you like because you majored in English. It grabs you immediately. Each story shows the bold voice and street-smart wit Diaz is known for, but there's a deeper tenderness here that haunts every page of the book. You tell everyone you know to read it. You talk about how this is the way you want the future of literature to look. You tell them that this might be better than The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the novel for which Diaz won a Pulitzer. (Later, at a lunch with an editor, you will give this rant, and it will turn out that he edited Oscar Wao.)

The book confronts every form of love, and really picks up in the second half. But it's not until the last story, "The Cheater's Guide to Love," a tremendous, earnest tale of heartbreak written in the second person, that you realize that this is a book you cherish. And the timing couldn't be better, or worse, depending on how you look at it: you just got dumped.

You have nothing in common with Diaz's protagonist Yunior--you are not a macho Dominican-American with a penchant for sleeping with lots of sucias--other than a shared sadness. You go through the same motions as Yunior. You start going to the climbing gym again. You get in the best shape you've been in since high school. You bury yourself in your work, every late hour in the office a welcome distraction.

A few months later, you move across the country to New York. You left for family reasons, but when you arrive at JFK, you immediately wonder if you're there because of her. It takes you a while to get used to the subway. At first it's annoying going for long stretches without cellphone reception, but you soon realize it's good reading time. You have a lot of books to get through for work, but you instead read "The Cheater's Guide to Love" again. It's just as good the second time, maybe better.

You used to think writing from the second-person was a lazy gimmick, that it let a writer frame otherwise dull, declarative statements in a semi-interesting voice. But you realize this is not the case with Diaz in "The Cheater's Guide to Love." He knows the power of "you." The second person is a recognition that every heartbreak is unique, but the pain is universal.

Weeks later, she'll tweet a photo of her and the person who is apparently her boyfriend. You knew he existed; you just never knew what he looked like. You expect to be angry, upset, anything. They look cute, and you're actually a little happy for them. Maybe you're actually happier for yourself because you realize that you feel very little. You're over it.

On the subway, you read "The Cheater's Guide to Love" again. It devastates you the same way it did the first two times you read. You may be over her, but you are not over this story. You accept that you never will be.

-- Kevin Nguyen

Rosecrans Baldwin on "Paris, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down"

A couple weeks ago, I sat down with Rosecrans Baldwin, author of the terrific travel memoir Paris, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down. Rosecrans talked about life in contemporary France, what it's like when your coworkers read about themselves in your book, and getting tricked by a member of LCD Soundsystem.

Author Interviews @ Amazon: Craig Thompson

Last month, I had the pleasure of speaking with cartoonist Craig Thompson, best known for Blankets and Good-bye, Chunky Rice. We discussed his latest graphic novel, the Best of the Year-certified Habibi, how to put together a comic book, and his future projects.

Best of the Month: July 2011

1. Sex on the Moon by Ben Mezrich

In this true story of love and adventure, nothing can stop Thad Roberts from keeping a promise to his girlfriend Rebecca--not even NASA security. When he's in the lab, Roberts is a brilliant NASA co-op intern, but the other interns know him better for devising thrill-seeking activities, like cliff diving and sneaking into the shuttle simulator. When he realizes that scientists consider moon rocks worthless once they’ve been in experiments, Roberts starts to wonder… if they’re worthless, how could stealing them be wrong? Ben Mezrich, author of The Accidental Billionaires (which inspired the movie The Social Network), starts each section with excerpts of Roberts’s love letters to Rebecca from prison, providing a love-drunk context for Roberts’ journey as the moon rock heist balloons from idle fantasy to stark reality. Behind-the-scenes looks at NASA’s Johnson Space Center and thriller-like action that ranges from the U.S. to Belgium make for an enthralling read for anyone who ever dreamed about being an astronaut--or promised to give someone else the moon. --Malissa Kent

Guest Essay: Jeff Abbott on Building a Hero

Jeff Abbott is the international-bestselling, award-winning author of ten mystery and suspense novels, including Adrenaline, available tomorrow (July 1).

Writing a new crime or suspense series is a bit like getting married. You tie yourself and your future to your new creation. You’re going to be spending a lot of time with your new series hero. Not to mention all the supporting cast (think of them as in-laws or your spouse’s close friends). You have to create with care when you start a new series, or you’ll quickly find yourself stuck in dead ends.

The key is in how you build the hero of your story. He or she must carry the world of your fiction. And in creating the hero for my new series, I probably invested more thought than I ever had before on fleshing him out before I started writing.

I had written four thrillers in a row when I got the idea for a new series. I’d thought of doing a series because readers often asked if the main characters from my thrillers would be returning for more adventures. I said, I’ll do a series if the right idea comes. And one day at my desk—I was doodling a picture of a globe, and for some odd reason drew a martini glass beneath it—Sam Capra came in a flash: an ex-CIA agent who ends up owning bars around the world.

Ex-CIA. Bars. All over the world.

The idea stopped me cold, and then I felt warm, because the idea felt so right. The very idea suggested intrigue, foreign locales, colorful characters. A man with the skills of a spy, but without the bureaucracy or the rules; and bars around the world, meaning I could let him find adventure (and a new supporting cast, if I liked) in locales both plain and exotic. The bars would be an entrée for him into danger, a reason to pull him into cases, a legitimate excuse to travel the world; the settings would be widely varied. At the same time I realized there would be a consistent backdrop: a dark underworld of crime and intrigue, one tied to the rise of global crime syndicates, some of whom wield more economic power than major corporations. (Did you know twenty percent of the world’s economy is illicit now? It means about 14 trillion dollars worth of illegal activity.) The cities would change, but that fact of underlying criminality would be a constant for Sam.

So We Watched the Finale of "Game of Thrones"

We've been talking a lot about George R.R. Martin around the office. With the upcoming fifth installment of Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice series, A Dance with Dragons, dropping in three weeks, as well as the debut of HBO's television adaptation of the series' first book, Game of Thrones, I can safely say that we're off to a very nerdy summer.

The television series finished its ten episode season last Sunday. We had some thoughts:

Malissa (who has read all the books):

Whoever decided to end the Game of Thrones mini-series just a few weeks before the release of A Dance with Dragons was a genius. I read the books four years ago and loved them, but while waiting for Dragons to be finished my excitement waned. I started the mini-series out of professional curiosity more than anything else; I wanted to see how well an epic Fantasy translated to a mini-series. But it quickly won me over (the opening sequence and the music, anyone?). It’s been too long for me to compare the mini-series’ plot to the novel’s plot, but I was pleasantly surprised at all the details I remembered when complex alliances and politics were alluded to. I loved watching the characters set themselves up for what’s to come, and started thinking about everything I still yearned to know about them. The new installment of the mini-series may be a year away, but a return to Westeros is possible on July 12 with A Dance with Dragons. I, for one, am excited.

Eric Carle Answers Your Questions

Eric Carle, one of the most celebrated children's book authors of all time, will be dropping by the offices of our friends at Penguin Books next month. During his visit,the author and illustrator of classics like The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? has offered to answer questions from Omni readers in an exclusive video for Amazon.com. Submit your questions by emailing us at omnivoracious@amazon.com with the subject line "Eric Carle Questions" or leave a comment on this post. Get your questions in by Friday afternoon!

Mr. Carle's brand new book, The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse, will be available this October, his first in four years.

Summer Reading Picks 2011

The warm weather is a sign to stock up on beach reading, and we could not be more excited about the books coming out this summer. We've listed the ten new books we're most excited about for adults and kids!

Top 10 Summer Reading Picks for Adults

• A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin
  In the fifth installment in his blockbuster fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire, the Martin strengthens his status as Tolkien’s American heir in a riveting epic that transcends the genre.

• Sister by Rosamund Lupton
  A knockout story of suspense, Lupton’s debut is a testament to the power of sisterly love with an explosive final twist.

• Dreams of Joy by Lisa See
  Continuing the story of sisters Pearl and May from Shanghai Girls, See offers her most powerful work yet in the story of Pearl’s daughter Joy, who flees to Shanghai in search of her father and discovers the dark side of Mao’s Great Leap Forward.

• Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales
  Miller and Shales pull back the curtain on the sports media empire’s wild rise in a meaty book that delivers (in its nearly 800 pages) the insider dish fans expect.

• The Last Letter from Your Lover by Jojo Moyes
  Parallel love stories spanning 40 years make one engrossing novel, deserving of its glowing comparisons to One Day and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

Best of the Month: June 2011

1. Before I Go To Sleep by S. J. Watson

Every day Christine wakes up not knowing where she is. Her memories disappear every time she falls asleep. Her husband, Ben, is a stranger to her, and he's obligated to explain their life together on a daily basis--all the result of a mysterious accident that made Christine an amnesiac. With the encouragement of her doctor, Christine starts a journal to help jog her memory every day. One morning, she opens it and sees that she's written three unexpected and terrifying words: "Don't trust Ben." Suddenly everything her husband has told her falls under suspicion. What kind of accident caused her condition? Who can she trust? Why is Ben lying to her? And, for the reader: Can Christine’s story be trusted? At the heart of S. J. Watson's Before I Go To Sleep is the petrifying question: How can anyone function when they can't even trust themselves? Suspenseful from start to finish, the strength of Watson's writing allows Before I Go to Sleep to transcend the basic premise and present profound questions about memory and identity. One of the best debut literary thrillers in recent years, Before I Go to Sleep deserves to be one of the major blockbusters of the summer. --Miriam Landis

From the Comments: Short Story Collection Recommendations

Last week, we celebrated National Short Story Month by recommending new and classic short story collections. Readers also responded great suggestions in the comments. Here are a few of them:

• Christie recommended Maile Meloy (Half in Love) and Mary Gaitskill (Bad Behavior and Don't Cry)
• According to Scott, Isaac Bashevis Singer is "mandatory in this list" (The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer)
• Christine suggested Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Georges had a couple recommendations: Miranda July's No One Belongs Here More Than You and Robert Boswell's The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards
• For Rob, William Trevor's collected stores "is an absolute must... [he's a] master of the form."
• Diane recommended Ernie's Ark by Monica Wood--"Try it... you will be happy that you did."
• Dean had high praises for David Mitchell's Ghostwritten, "a fantastic series of interconnected short stories by the best writer around."

Photo courtesy of Steve Rhodes

What are the Most Well-Read Cities in the US?

Just in time for the summer reading season, Amazon.com announced its list of the Top 20 Most Well-Read Cities in America. After compiling sales data of all book, magazine and newspaper sales in both print and Kindle format since Jan. 1, 2011, on a per capita basis in cities with more than 100,000 residents, the Top 20 Most Well-Read Cities are:

1. Cambridge, Mass.
2. Alexandria, Va.
3. Berkeley, Calif.
4. Ann Arbor, Mich.
5. Boulder, Colo.
6. Miami
7. Salt Lake City
8. Gainesville, Fla.
9. Seattle
10. Arlington, Va.
11. Knoxville, Tenn.
12. Orlando, Fla.
13. Pittsburgh
14. Washington, D.C.
15. Bellevue, Wash.
16. Columbia, S.C.
17. St. Louis, Mo.
18. Cincinnati
19. Portland, Ore.
20. Atlanta

Here's the full press release.

Photo of Cambridge, MA courtesy of Josh Michtom

Some Affection for Short Story Collections

Did you know May is National Short Story Month? I didn't either, which is why I'm blogging about it with just a week left in the month. But I stock up on short story collections at this time of year because I think they're a great way to get ready for the warm-weather. Short stories are bite-sized and non-committal--the perfect compliment to a summer that's strange, surprising, and spontaneous. (I also like owning short story collections more than I do novels, since I'm more likely to revisit them.) So I've listed a few new collections (some of which I'm looking forward to), a handful of tried-and-true classics, and a few from the past ten years that I believe are new classics.

If you have more short story recommendations, let us know in the comments!

New and Upcoming

• Orientation: And Other Stories by Daniel Orozco
• Pulse: Stories by Julian Barnes
• Saints and Sinners: Stories by Edna O'Brien
• You Think That's Bad: Stories by Jim Shepard
• Volt: Stories by Alan Heathcock
• Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories by Edith Pearlman
• Ladies and Gentlemen by Adam Ross
• Crimes in Southern Indiana: Stories by Frank Bill
• Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans