Omnivoracious

New York Times Reporter and Author Anthony Shadid: 1968-2012

Shadid was a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and a highly regarded foreign correspondent and Beirut bureau chief for the New York Times. He died Thursday, apparently after suffering an asthma attack, while on assignment in Syria. He was 43.

In his obituary, and in an email to staff, Times executive editor Jill Abramson said Shadid "died as he lived--determined to bear witness to the transformation sweeping the Middle East and to testify to the suffering of people caught between government oppression and opposition forces."

Shadid is the author of three books, the latest of which--House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East--was originally scheduled to be published in late March but will be released by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on February 28.

 

How I Wrote It: Katherine Boo on "Behind The Beautiful Forevers"

Throughout her career, primarily at The Washington Post and now at The New Yorker, journalist Katherine Boo has aggressively pursued stories about poverty and disparity, largely out of a deep concern that those issues are typically "over-theorized and under-reported." Her efforts to understand poverty and portray people's efforts to escape it have earned her a Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur "genius" grant. In Behind the Beautiful Forevers, her stunning depiction of life in a Mumbai slum, she takes on a seemingly insurmountable task: giving Western readers a reason to care about people half a world away, many of them subsisting on a meager income from recycled garbage.

Boo spent three years visiting the Annawadi slum, in the shadows of Mumbai's international airport. In the beginning, she found it difficult to do the kind of reporting she prefers, which is to get to know people where they live and work, and not interview them at a table with a tape recorder. A breakthrough came when she was sitting in a shed watching a boy named Abdul sort garbage (to support his family of eleven). A rival group of kids came by, fascinated by the petite white woman in their midst, and the Abdul scoffed: You fools, she's just a reporter.

"It was exciting to them at first and then I was just this boring woman doing her work," said Boo, whose reporting tools included a laptop, camera, tape recorder, and video camera. (See the video, below).

In this interview, Boo admits that she harbored deep concerns about finding an audience.  "Who's going to buy a book about a slum in February? It's not the ideal Valentines gift," she said. So it's been gratifying to earn praise from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and to be named the Spotlight pick among Amazon's Best Books of the Month.

Book Trailers of the Month

For readers who prefer a little teaser before committing to a book, here are trailers for a few of our Best Books of the Month for Februrary, including our editors' Spotlight pick, Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers.

~~~~ 

The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, by Jan-Philipp Sendker

(Here's an extended version.)

February's Best Books of the Month: Love, Life, and Money

At first glance, you might think Amazon’s got the winter blahs, that there’s a cold melancholy among this month’s best books: families struggling in a Mumbai slum; a high schooler accused of murder; a father seeking a cure for his heartsick son. But look closer and there’s something beautiful in each of these books, in both the lyrical writing and in the stories of hope, love, and a belief in a better world.

∙ Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity, by Katherine Boo

    Katherine Boo spent three years among the residents of the Annawadi  slum, a sprawling, cockeyed settlement of more than 300 tin-roof huts and shacks in the shadow of Mumbai’s International Airport. From within this “sumpy plug of slum” Boo unearths stories both tragic and poignant--about residents’ efforts to raise families, earn a living, or simply survive. These unforgettable characters all nurture far-fetched dreams of a better life. As one boy tells his brother: “Everything around us is roses. And we’re like the s**t in between.” A New Yorker writer and recipient of a Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur “Genius” grant, Boo’s writing is superb and the depth and courage of her reporting from this hidden world is astonishing. At times, it’s hard to believe this is nonfiction.

∙ Delicacy: A Novel (P.S.), by David Foenkinos

    Sly and funny, Delicacy traces the relationship between an ambitious young beauty and a kind, bumbling introvert. She, recently widowed, seems untouchable; against all odds, he manages to touch her anyway. We get the pleasure of watching their affair unfold.

∙ The End of Money: Counterfeiters, Preachers, Techies, Dreamers--and the Coming Cashless Society, by David Wolman

     David Wolman, author of the Kindle Single The Instigators, embarks on a quest to explore the coming obsolescence of cash while living for a year without using it. The result is a fascinating look at our doomed love affair with coins and paper.

∙ The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, by Jan-Philipp Sendker

    An uncynical tale for cynical times, follows a daughter's quest to solve the mystery of her father's disappearance. What she finds will suspend your disbelief and renew your faith in true love.

∙ Defending Jacob: A Novel, by William Landay

    The story of a district attorney’s efforts to prove the innocence of his son, who is accused of killing a classmate. A fast, compelling, and compulsively readable courtroom drama that captures the taut nuances of a packed trial room, where a small rustle or murmur can signify a lot.

Nobel Prize Winner Wislawa Szymborska: 1923-2012

Polish poet, essayist, and translator Wislawa Szymborska--winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature--has died of lung cancer at age 88. She had been living in Krakow.

Though she was little-known outside of Poland at the time, the Nobel awards committee in 1996 called her the "Mozart of poetry." Her poems are often playful and thoughtful, but she has also deeply political, boldly exploring themes of war and terrorism. Her most recent book of poems translated into English was Here, published in 2010.

President Bronislaw Komorowski last year honored Szymborska with Poland's highest distinction, The Order of the White Eagle, in recognition of her contribution to her country's culture. In reaction to her death, Komorowski wrote that "for decades she infused Poles with optimism and with trust in the power of beauty and the might of the word." Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said on Twitter that her death was an "irreparable loss to Poland's culture."

See all of Wislawa Szymborska's books.

Photo Gallery: Recent Author Visits to Amazon

Not to gloat, but Seattle is fortunate to have a steady procession of top authors coming through town to read from their books at local book stores, at the Seattle Public Library, or at other venues. We're always grateful when they squeeze in a visit to our Amazon headquarters, as these authors did over the past few days (each of them a January Best Books of the Month selection).

• John Green, author of The Fault In Our Stars
• Daniel Handler and Maira Kalman, author and illustrator of Why We Broke Up
• Ben Marcus, author of The Flame Alphabet

The John Green National Bus Tour van and entourage.

The Green brothers: Hank and John, before their event.

During a pre-event interview with Amazon's Neal Thompson.

How I Wrote It: Alec Wilkinson, "The Ice Balloon"

“Before the twentieth century, more than a thousand people tried to reach the (north) pole,” Alec Wilkinson writes in his wiry new book, The Ice Balloon, selected as one of Amazon's Best Books of the Month for January. The odds of actually reaching the pole were terrible. About three-fourths of those explorers died. But a one-in-four chance of success didn’t deter Swedish explorer S.A. Andree, who in 1897 attempted the most unlikely means of reaching the North Pole: by hydrogen balloon.

What makes this more than another adventure story is Wilkinson’s exploration of mankind’s compulsion to reach the extreme points of the Earth, despite all the absurd and obvious risks. Wilkinson, a writer for The New Yorker, chronicles other horrifically failed efforts to reach the North Pole--some of which devolved into cannibalism.

We asked Wilkinson what drew him to Andree, a dreamy and enthusiastic explorer, who, when his balloon began to lose gas and bounce past polar bears along the Arctic ice, wrote in his diary that he and his two companions remained “dominated by a feeling of pride.”

“We think we can face death well having done what we have done.”

You’ve previously written about a man who crossed the Atlantic in a raft made of trash and, over the years, have profiled other eccentric and/or quixotic characters. Are you drawn to subjects who seem compelled to risk their lives for seemingly idiosyncratic goals, or at least pursue an uncommon lifestyle?

The most interesting people for me are the outcasts and the visionaries and the ones who have the resources of mind and character to challenge failure.  I don’t want to emulate them necessarily---I’m not sure I have the nerve---but I admire their vitality and their lives are often thrilling and instructing, even if, sometimes, in a cautionary way.  

"Go The F**k To Sleep" Author Adam Mansbach

A year ago, Adam Mansbach was a respected author, poet, and musician known for his thoughtful novels, lectures, and raps. Fast forward a bit, and he's the guy who got the F word into a children's book title. That book grew from Mansbach's satiric Facebook post one morning after his two-year-old daughter refused to go to bed. Mansbach told Facebookers to look for his forthcoming book, "Go the ___ to Sleep." It was a joke that became a book that became a #2 Amazon best seller six months before it was even published. (It's still ranked in the top 100.)

In this exclusive Amazon interview, Mansbach discusses the unexpected success of his best-selling pseudo-children's nighttime book, Go the F**k To Sleep.

Edgar Award Nominees Have Been Announced

Each year, in honor of Edgar Allen Poe's birthday, Mystery Writers of America presents its prestigious Edgar Awards to the best mystery fiction books, nonfiction books, and television productions. The winners will be announced April 26. Among this year's nominees are: 

Best Novel

• The Ranger by Ace Atkins
• Gone by Mo Hayder
• The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino
• 1222 by Anne Holt
• Field Gray by Philip Kerr

Best First Novel

• Red on Red by Edward Conlon
• Last to Fold by David Duffy
• All Cry Chaos by Leonard Rosen
• Bent Road by Lori Roy
• Purgatory Chasm by Steve Ulfelder

Best Fact Crime

• The Murder of the Century by Paul Collins
• The Savage City by T.J. English
• Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard
• Girl, Wanted by Steve Miller
• The Man in the Rockefeller Suit by Mark Seal

Young Adult

• Shelter by Harlan Coben
• The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson 
• The Silence of Murder by Dandi Daley Mackall 
• The Girl is Murder by Kathryn Miller Haines 
• Kill You Last by Todd Strasser

To see all the nominees in all fifteen categories, visit TheEdgars.com.
Winners will be announced on April 26 at a banquet in New York.

Exclusive Interview With "Wicked" Series Author Gregory Maguire

We're happy to share this chat with the charming author of the Wicked Years series, which includes Wicked, Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men, and, most recently Out of Oz. Though best known for Wicked (which was the basis for the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical of the same name), Maguire talks with Amazon Books editor Chris Schluep about his many years of writing children's and fantasy books prior to the break-out success of Wicked. It's interesting to hear how that series evolved - not by design, but at the urging of readers who wanted to know: what happens next?

Learn more about all of Maguire's books at his Amazon.com author page.

Enter our Amazon.com Books $1,000 Gift Card Sweepstakes

Wrap up the season of giving with a gift to yourself: visit our Facebook page and enter by Jan. 23, 2012, for a chance to win a FREE $1,000 Amazon.com Gift Card. Use the gift card to buy the books you really wanted to get for the holidays, or choose from millions of other items at Amazon.com. We’ll randomly select the name of one lucky winner on or about 1/24. Good luck! 

What books will you get if you win our Amazon.com Books $1,000 Gift Card Sweepstakes? Feel free to post your response on our Facebook page.

[The fine print: NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Ends 1/23/12. See Official Rules.]

Books In Motion

Brought to our attention by our friends at the Reading Copy Book Blog of Abe Books:

George R. R. Martin Interviews Bernard Cornwell

We're happy to share this interview between George R. R. Martin and Bernard Cornwell, whose new book, Death of Kings, goes on sale today. 

GRRM: It has long been my contention that the historical novel and the epic fantasy are sisters under the skin, that the two genres have much in common. My series owes a lot to the work of J.R.R. Tolkien and the other great fantasists who came before me, but I've also read and enjoyed the work of historical novelists. Who were your own influences? Was historical fiction always your great passion? Did you ever read fantasy?

BC: You're right - fantasy and historical novels are twins - and I've never been fond of the label 'fantasy' which is too broad a brush and has a fey quality. It seems to me you write historical novels in an invented world which is grounded in historical reality (if the books are set in the future then 'fantasy' magically becomes sci-fi). So I've been influenced by all three: fantasy, sci-fi and historical novels, though the largest influence has to be C.S. Forester's Hornblower books.
   
GRRM: A familiar theme in a lot of epic fantasy is the conflict between good and evil. The villains are often Dark Lords of various ilks, with demonic henchmen and hordes of twisted, malformed underlings clad in black. The heroes are noble, brave, chaste, and very fair to look upon. Yes, Tolkien made something grand and glorious from that, but in the hands of lesser writers, well ... let's just say that sort of fantasy has lost its interest for me. It is the grey characters who interest me the most. Those are the sort I prefer to write about... and read about. It seems to me that you share that affinity.   What is it about flawed characters that makes them more interesting than conventional heroes?

BC: Maybe all our heroes are reflections of ourselves? I'm not claiming to be Richard Sharpe (God forbid), but I'm sure parts of my personality leaked into him (he's very grumpy in the morning). And perhaps flawed characters are more interesting because they are forced to make a choice . . . a conventionally good character will always do the moral, right thing. Boring. Sharpe often does the right thing, but usually for the wrong reasons, and that's much more interesting!

GRRM: When Tolkien began writing The Lord of the Rings, it was intended as a sequel to The Hobbit.  "The tale grew in the telling," he said later, when LOTR had grown into the trilogy we know today. That's a line I have often had occasion to quote over the years, as my own Song of Ice and Fire swelled from the three books I had originally sold to the seven books (five published, two more to write) I'm now producing. Much of your own work has taken the form of multi-part series. Are your tales too 'growing in the telling,' or do you know how long your journeys will take before you set out? Did you know how many books Uhtred's story would require, when you first sat down to write about him? 

BC: No idea! I don't even know what will happen in the next chapter, let alone the next book, and have no idea how many books there might be in a series. E.L. Doctorow said something I like which is that writing a novel is a bit like driving down an unfamiliar country road at night and you can only see as far ahead as your somewhat feeble headlamps show. I write into the darkness. I guess the joy of reading a book is to find out what happens, and for me that's the joy of writing one too!

George R. R. Martin: "I have the best fans in the world"

Finally!

You've been asking, and we've been promising, but this video is finally ready for prime time. (We're sorry it's taken so long. Really.) Last summer, the hugely popular author of the epic "Song of Ice and Fire" series answered questions submitted by Amazon Books Facebook fans. He talks about his childhood (I was a "geek ... I lived a lot in my own mind"), his writing life, the many worlds he's created, and his admiration for Tolkien. 

Last year, Martin was named one of "the most influential people in the world" by Time magazine, which called him the "American Tolkien."

He's a brilliant man, a thoughtful and thought-provoking writer, and we hope you enjoy this engaging 20-minute chat with one of the most fascinating of contemporary writers.  

 

 

The Votes Are In: Literary Award Winners and Finalists

Almost as exciting as the Republican primaries: it was a huge week for lit contests, six of which announced winners and/or finalists...

The Story Prize finalists:

• Don DeLillo, The Angel Esmeralda
• Steven Millhauser, We Others
• Edith Pearlman, Binocular Vision

Winner to receive a $20,000 prize on March 21 at the New School in New York.

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Among the winners of the 2011 National Jewish Book Awards are Jerusalem: The Biography, by Simon Sebag Montefiore, which won the Everett Family Foundation Jewish Book of the Year Award, and Aharon Appelfeld's Until the Dawn's Light, which won the fiction award. Art Spiegelman won the biography and memoir award for MetaMaus: A Look Inside a Modern Classic, Maus.

The full list of winners and finalists in 18 categories can be found here.

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Seven novels (instead of the usual five) made the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize shortlist:

• Jamil Ahmad (Pakistan), The Wandering Falcon
• Jahnavi Barua (India), Rebirth
• Rahul Bhattacharya (India), The Sly Company of People Who Care
• Amitav Ghosh (India), River of Smoke
• Kyung-Sook Shin (South Korea), Please Look After Mom
• Yan Lianke (China), Dream of Ding Village
• Banana Yoshimoto (Japan), The Lake

The winner will be announced March 15 in Hong Kong.

YA Wednesday: John Green Says Thanks to His "Amazonian" Fans

Yesterday we posted an exclusive excerpt from John's heartbreaking new book, The Fault in Our Stars. Today, John extends his gratitude to "the people of the Amazon."

[Watch this space tomorrow for another excerpt - Chapter 2 of The Fault in Our Stars.]

 

Exclusive Interview with Amor Towles, Author of "Rules of Civility"

Amor Towles visited our Amazon.com campuses a while back to discuss his breakout debut novel, Rules of Civility, which was one of our Best Books of 2011. He also read an excerpt for us, which you can watch here. (Thanks to our friends at Cuoco restaurant for the cozy lounge space.)

 

Two Cops Named Harry

The gods of noir recently presented me with an holiday gift: two compelling yet very different detective novels, both featuring haunted, flawed, aging crime-fighters named Harry, each in pursuit of a serial killer.

Jo Nesbo's Inspector Harry Hole is a ravaged mess, which is where Nesbo's previous novel, The Snowman, left him. At the start of The Leopard, we find Hole hiding away from the world, smoking opium in a squalid back-alley Hong Kong flophouse. But we know he won't stay there for long. In Michael Connelly's The Drop, Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch learns he's got three years left before his enforced retirement from the LAPD. (The book's title refers partly to the Deferred Retirement Option Plan.) While investigating open cases with the Open/Unsolved Unit, the apparent suicide of a councilman's son pulls him in a different direction. 

It was a treat reading these two novels side by side (both were among December's Best Books of the Month). I found Nesbo to be the better "writer." His language is visceral and visual, and often eloquent. The Hong Kong scenes are full of gritty poetry; once Hole is back in Norway, the landscape is dark, snowy, vast and empty. Connelly's writing can feel more procedural, but his plot and pacing were more steady and compelling. He doesn't digress like Nesbo, keeping his foot on the gas throughout.   

The storylines differ in tone but share some crime-thriller DNA (serial killers, corrupt cops). In The Leopard, a pretty young police officer drags Hole reluctantly back from Hong Kong to Norway, to pursue another killer, this one more twisted and vicious than the Snowman. The killer has brutally murdered two women with a sadistic (and, thankfully, fictional) torture device. When a female member of parliament is killed, Hole suspects a connection, and pursues the case even after he's warned to stop.

In The Drop, Bosch takes on two seemingly unrelated cases. The first is a botched DNA test from a 1989 rape and murder, which has been pinned on a man who was only eight years old at the time of the crime. Harry's pursuit of that case is interrupted when the councilman--a former police chief and no fan of Harry's--insists that Harry investigate his son's suspicious death. In pursuit of the truth, and an elusive killer, Bosch and his partner uncover secrets and a political conspiracy deep within the police department.

Connelly's aging hero is a flawed, haunted, and unforgettable character; his creator is a master craftsman. Despite some far-fetched scenes, Hole is damaged, soulful, and believable, and Nesbo is proving to be a major talent.

Spending time with these two Harrys made me wonder if they’re both intended as homage to the original renegade detective, Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry” Callahan.

Happy Holidays From Your Book-Obsessed Friends at Amazon

(photo by Greg Rutty)

Feel free to copy and paste, forward and share, post and tweet our book tree.

We're looking forward to sharing more great books with you in the new year.

 

Exclusive Interview with Photographer Annie Leibovitz

It was a great thrill to have Annie Leibovitz stop by and chat with us about the diverse images in her very personal new book, Pilgrimage.

Some of the places she visited and photographed had been on a list of places she and her partner, Susan Sontag, had hoped to visit together. When Sontag died in 2005, Leibovitz assumed that project was gone as well. Then she stood beside Niagara Falls with her three children, and saw the falls through their wide eyes, and decided to revive and expand the idea of photographing places that mean something to her, and to attempt to see them with fresh eyes. The photograph on the book's jacket was taken that day with her children.

"This is really for them," she told me.

Leibovitz openly discussed the "rough couple of years" she recently went through--including the much-publicized financial woes that left her emotionally drained. She wasn't sure there was anything left, but was "pleasantly surprised that there was a deep well." Visiting the homes of Georgia O'Keefe, Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, Virginia Woolf and others turned the project into one of much-needed "renewal."

"It definitely restored me, tremendously," she said.

Click here to listen to our full interview with Annie Leibovitz