At the
FSG blog, Ryan Chapman has a discussion on the state of book jacket design with three of the best designers out there: Susan Mitchell, Charlotte Strick, and Henry Sene Yee.
At Reading Matters, Kim has featured my blog on her
Triple Choice Tuesday. My choices?
The Ghost Writer,
So Long, See You Tomorrow, and
Butcher's Crossing. Pop on over and see my fresh, brief write-up of each title.
For Independence Day, the Huffington Post has a slide show of
fifteen great independent publishers, featuring a few of my favorites --
Open Letter,
Archipelago -- and a few I didn't know about.
New Directions is a model of perfection, and I agree. I have stacks and stacks of books from these three presses, and I'm anxious to see what the others have to offer.
This year's
Berkshire Wordfest will be held at the beautiful Edith Wharton estate,
The Mount, on July 23 - 25. I will be going north that weekend, but I will be stopping at
Tarrytown, New York, for some
other fun. Still, a trip to the Berkshires is always pleasant, and a literary festival at Edith Wharton's house is a must if you're available.
Michiko Kakutani's
review of Jacob de Zoet is surprising in its lack of substance. It's mostly just a plot rehash (which I think gives away a bit too much). It's boring to read and insightless, where I usually enjoy her reviews even if I disagree (as I do here). I'm not saying my reviews are better, surely, but this is pretty poor for
The New York Times daily and from a Pulitzer-winning critic.
The PEN American Center has started its first online book club (
click here for their page). Their first book is Clarice Lispector's
The Hour of the Star, published by the great
New Directions.
In the new issue of
The New Yorker, James Wood
takes a look at The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: "This is to argue not that David Mitchell should be more like Tolstoy or Conrad or Beckett but, curiously, that he might be more Mitchellian—that the reader wants a kind of moral or metaphysical pressure that is absent, and that has ceded all the ground to pure storytelling."
KevinfromCanada features
a guest post from Kathleen Winter, author of
Anabel, which KFC also just
reviewed.
The Paris Review blog has a
Q&A with Jennifer Egan, author of
The Goon Squad, a piece of which was published in
The New Yorker and discussed
here.
Click
here for the
Never Let Me Go trailer. I didn't like the book as much as I hoped I would, but the trailer makes the film look good.
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Click 
The Help??? The Orange Prize just became less prestigious in my eyes.
I wondered about that too, Kerry. Though all I know of The Help is what I see of its marketing. Anyone read it?
There’s been a lot of griping about the lack of accuracy and research in The Help. If you check out this year’s Tournament of Books, you’ll find some of the discussion there.
Let us pause for a moment and cheer the absence of Dame Peggy Atwood’s The Year of the Flood from the long list of 20. Tends to restore my faith in juries. And, of course, Trevor’s perceptiveness.
I haven’t read The Help and don’t intend to — Kerry’s review is persuasive enough. I’ll put forward the hypothesis that it is this year’s version of The Spare Room by Helen Garner from the year previous. Those who loved it, really, really loved it — I tried to read the Garner (it is really just a novella) and the soppy sentimentality had me putting it down halfway through. If I did try The Help I am pretty sure I would have exactly the same response.
Great point, Kevin! I notice also that it lost in the first round of the tournament of books today too — to a lesser seeded book even.
*chuckle* At least I made it to the end of the Garner, Kevin! (http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/2009/04/25/the-spare-room-by-helen-garner-read-by-heather-bolton/)
Seriously, I too am sooo tired of the Tragic Issue at the core of the story; I think it links to The Misery Memoir pioneered by Angela’s Ashes and pop-psychology navel-gazing in general.
I haven’t read any of ‘em except Wolf Hall which would be a worthy winner IMO, but look forward to reading some reviews of this list with interest.
Lisa
Lisa: I checked your review of The Spare Room and would have to say we would be in complete agreement, if I had finished the book.
*chuckle* Great minds think alike!
Interesting, Kevin and Lisa. I did not find The Spare Room soppy at all, and I didn’t find Helen (author or character) to be judgemental. I had never heard of Helen Garner prior to reading the book though, so maybe that was an advantage. It seemed to me a book about a really good friend being able to think the unthinkable and say the unsayable. I did not see a moral high ground or anything like that.