Omnivoracious

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

Fourth Man Booker International Prize Awarded to Philip Roth

American author Philip Roth was announced as the winner of the fourth bi-annual Man Booker International Prize at the Sydney Opera House. The award comes with prestige, as well as a handsome £60,000 cash prize (which, according to Google, is nearly $97,000). He joins the ranks of previous winners Ismail Kadaré (2005), Chinua Achebe (2007), and Alice Munro (2009).

Roth is no stranger to awards. Two of his books have won National Book Critics Circle awards. He's also won the PEN/Faulkner Award for three of his novels: Operation Shylock, The Human Stain, and Everyman. And let's not forget the Pulitzer Prize awarded in 1997 for American Pastoral. And yet Roth remains so humble! In response to the award, Roth said:

“One of the particular pleasures I’ve had as a writer is to have my work read internationally despite all the heartaches of translation that that entails. I hope the prize will bring me to the attention of readers around the world who are not familiar with my work. This is a great honour and I’m delighted to receive it.”

Where in the World is Tom Nissley?

Regular Omni readers will remember our former editor Tom Nissley, books knowitall and the third-winningest Jeopardy! contestant of all time. What's Tom been up to since he bid us adieu in March? A lot! You can read about a day in the life of Tom Nissley over at The Paris Review, where he's detailed his media consumption in the form of a culture diary. Be sure to check back tomorrow for the second installment.

Additionally, you can keep up with Tom at his new blog, Ephemeral Firmament, which belongs at the top of your bookmarks folder, in case you haven't already set it as your browser's homepage.

Lucky for us, Tom still resides in the Seattle area, so we see him from time to time. He drops by the Amazon Books office on occasion (those occasions usually involving free drinks).

Judging a Book By Its Other Cover

The New York Times ran a great feature last weekend called "Book Covers That Got Away," which rounded up a handful of beautiful book covers that were ultimately shelved for other designs. For comparison's sake, we've paired the alternate covers with the ones that actually made it to the printer. Are these alternates better than what publishers actually went with?

Alternates on left; actual cover on right

The Reading Promise: An Exclusive Essay from Alice Ozma

In this exclusive essay, Alice Ozma, author of the brand new memoir The Reading Promise, tells us how her father is not allowed to read her new book.

My dad thinks you should buy my book.

And that's not because he's read it. He hasn't, and he never will. I told him it was too mushy. At first, he protested.

"Lovie!" he shrieked, "Not even on my death bed?"

I agreed to let him give it a quick skim if he was terminal, and we dropped the subject. Now he's decided he didn't want to read it anyway. He thinks he'd remember everything differently than I do, which is probably true. But he still thinks you should buy my book.

"There are no car chases, no murders, no romance, people are going to go right off to sleep. Nobody cares about that," he thought when we first discussed the idea of a book, as he explained to a local newspaper. "I didn't know that the subject would interest people, but I have 100 percent faith that (she) can sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo. If she's writing it, I figured somebody's going to want to read it."

He has the utmost confidence in me, and he likes to share it with anyone he meets. When I spoke to a reporter about setting up an interview recently, she'd already spoken to my father. She answered her phone with a cheery, "Alice! Hi! It's so nice to hear from you. Your father told me all about your PSAT scores! Congratulations!"

Ask the Editors: Prize-Winning Literary Fiction

You're really cutting it close with your Mother's Day shopping huh? Luckily, the Amazon Books team is here to help you find the perfect book to gift your mom this Sunday. Leave your reader profiles in the comments, or on our Facebook page for a personalized recommendation.

Today, we're helping Josie pick a book for her mom.

Josie says: My mother loves literary fiction--Jhumpa Lahiri, Jeffrey Euginides, Kazuo Ishiguro--mostly big prize winners. But she's always afraid of reading books that might be "too depressing" (The Road) or "too happy" (The Secret Life of Bees), and she can't stand novels with dislikable characters (although, for some reason, she did like Freedom). Can you recommend some bittersweet fiction for my mom?

• As far as award winners go, it's hard to go wrong with The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Empire Falls, and The Hours, all of which have won the Pulitzer. But those are probably books your mom has likely read or heard about already.

• Another safe bet is Enduring Love by Ian McEwan. It's a lot like Atonement, in that McEwan is playing with the idea of an unreliable narrator, but I guarantee that the ending isn't nearly as sad.

• And I'm surprised that so far, through our whole Mother's Day edition of Ask the Editors, no one has recommended a book by David Mitchell. He penned Cloud Atlas, which some argue is the best book of the last decade, and last year's well-received The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which even President Obama found time to read last year. But the underrated (and much shorter) title by Mitchell that I'd recommend is Black Swan Green, about the cruelty of young boys growing up in a rural English village.

• Miriam said: If Josie’s mom likes Jhumpa Lahiri, she’ll like Monica Ali’s Brick Lane--on the short-list for the 2003 Man Booker Prize--about a Bangladeshi girl who moves to London for an arranged marriage. The story of a woman coming into her own is subtle and satisfying and Ali’s characters are richly drawn.

The Lake: An Interview with Banana Yoshimoto

Over at Kindle Post, Erin Kodicek interviewed Banana Yoshimoto, one of Japan's most celebrated authors, including the brand new novel The Lake.

Amazon.com: Facing difficulties with courage is one of the themes of your latest novel, The Lake. In it the character, Nakajima, is struggling to overcome sometimes paralyzing emotional trauma that stems from a very unusual ordeal. What compelled you to tell this story?

Banana Yoshimoto: In this novel, I indirectly took up the abductions of Japanese citizens by North Korea, which was the biggest news at the time I was writing. Having heard the words of sorrow from the parents whose children had been abducted and who still had no promise of getting their children back, I created a fable of my own, with my own ideas, in my own way.  I also looked into the lives of the children who had been in the cult called Aum Shinrikyo (Aleph) and I thought about their immeasurable trauma as well.

Amazon.com: The Lake is, among other things, an unconventional love story, and it makes you question the definition(s) of “romantic love.” How do you define it?

Banana Yoshimoto: The relationship between the main characters of this novel falls far short of romantic love. They are only supporting and leaning on each other, because they would crumble otherwise.

On the other hand, you could say that they are definitely the one and only couple for each other in a way, because wounded people can best be understood by others with the same wounds. Perhaps, they believe that they have the deepest possible bond and mutually feel each is the only person the other can trust. This is one of the most passionate emotions, I guess. By visiting the holy people in the precincts of the Lake, they are entering the world of the subconscious.

New and Notable Book Trailers

From Quirk Classics, the folks who brought you Pride and Prejudice with zombies (the appropriately titled Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) and a number of other monster + classics mash ups strikes again with The Meowmorphosis (Kafka + kittens) and its very excellent trailer:

Best of the Month: May 2011

1. Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff

Near the end of World War II, a plane carrying 24 members of the United States military, including nine Women’s Army Corps (WAC) members, crashed into the New Guinea jungle during a sightseeing excursion. 21 men and women were killed. The three survivors--a beautiful WAC, a young lieutenant who lost his twin brother in the crash, and a severely injured sergeant--were stranded deep in a jungle valley notorious for its cannibalistic tribes. They had no food, little water, and no way to contact their military base. The story of their survival and the stunning efforts undertaken to save them are the crux of Lost in Shangri-La, Mitchell Zuckoff's remarkable and inspiring narrative. Faced with the potential brutality of the Dani tribe, known throughout the valley for its violence, the trio’s lives were dependent on an unprecedented rescue mission--a dedicated group of paratroopers jumped into the jungle to provide aid and medical care, consequently leaving the survivors and paratroopers alike trapped on the jungle floor. A perilous rescue by plane became their only possible route to freedom. A riveting story of deliverance under the most unlikely circumstances, Lost in Shangri-La deserves its place among the great survival stories of World War II. --Lynette Mong