My Menu For A Fictional Dinner

Yesterday I linked to a list of 'The Best Books That Never Existed' from The Guardian UK's David Barnett. It was a brief catalog of some of the cooler works of fiction that exist only in other works of fiction -- sort of like the contents of Dream's library in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman or of the lighthouse in Dylan Horrock's Hicksville . Anyway, it was so popular with our staff that I decided to leach off Barnett's brilliance and come up with a similar shtick for today's blog post.

(Don't be mad, David. I saved you a seat at the kids' table.)

Let's start with the dinner rolls:
Most manga fans will agree that no book has ever made bread sound better than Yakitate!! Japan (Takashi Hashiguchi). It's the story of Young Kazuma, a bakery prodigy with one dream: creating 'Ja-pan,' the ultimate bread for Japanese taste buds. (Fun fact: 'Pan' means bread in Japanese.) For those of us too far gone to worry about counting calories, why not add a little butter from the churns of the Little House on the Prairie (Laura Ingalls Wilder)?

Alternate choice for finicky fictional eaters:
Lembas bread from the LOTR trilogy (J.R.R. Tolkien)

Soup:
Um, I'm not a huge soup sipper, so I'm gonna dedicate this one to Mr. Bennet and his British brethren: The mysterious 'white soup' served at the Netherfield ball in Pride & Prejudice (Jane Austen).
Actually, you know what? I want to change my order. 'White soup' sounds like it's gonna look like wheat paste and taste like something from my days in the all-boys' school. Is it too late to get a bowl of Heartbreak Soup (Gilbert Hernandez) instead?

Alternate choice for finicky fictional eaters:
Chicken Soup for the (insert random, self-diagnosed malady here) (Insert random, shameless author's name here)

Appetizer:
Let's see...do I get an appetizer or do I save room for dessert? Who am I kidding? I do both. In fact, I'm gonna go American Psycho (Bret Easton Ellis) and order an entree -- lobster with caviar and peach ravioli -- as my app.

Alternate choice for finicky fictional eaters:
Salad from Anthony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare)
(Okay, so no one in A&C actually talks about salad, but the expression "salad days" is used by Cleopatra.)
(And yes, I did have to resort to Googling blindly to find this one.)

Main course:
For my 'real' entree, I'll have the orgasm inducing 'Quail in Rose Petal Sauce' from Like Water For Chocolate (Laura Esquivel). Oh, and my advice for the fellas: Put your napkin in your lap before tasting.

Alternate choice for finicky fictional eaters:
Wilbur from Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)

Dessert:
I'm gonna have go with one of those giant banana splits that Jughead used to always order at Pop's Malt Shop in Archie Comics (various), with a side of maple syrup so I can drown the sundae in it. (This is a super stretched to the limit reference to the scene in To Kill A Mockingbird where Alabama redneck Walter Cunningham pours syrup all over his dinner. Truth be told, I often do the same damned thing.)

Alternate choice for finicky fictional eaters:
Madeline cakes from In Search of Lost Time and/or Remembrance of Things Past (Marcel Proust)
Note: I'm giving myself +5 blogger points for finally referencing a college level work of fiction. We now return you to your regularly scheduled dumb shit, already in progress.

Now it's at this point -- before the plaque settles and the semen stains -- that I'd politely excuse myself from the table, run into the bathroom, and brush my teeth with the toothpaste from The Toothpaste Millionaire (Jean Merrill & Jan Palmer). This goopy amalgam of household items is the brainchild of a poor kid who decides that store bought toothpaste costs too much so he recruits a group of his neighborhood pals to make and market their own. (Oh, and the best part? The packaging. They sell the shit in in old baby food jars.)

Voila! My belly is full (Jim Aylesworth & Wendy Anderson Halperin) and my teeth are white (Zadie Smith). While I clear the dirty plates, why don't y'all give me your ideas for alternate dishes in the comments section.

Author Du Jour: Emma Bull

Biography:
(stolen whole from Wikipedia)
Emma Bull (born 13 December 1954) is a science fiction and fantasy author whose best-known novel is War for the Oaks, one of the pioneering works of urban fantasy. She has participated in Terri Windling's Borderland shared universe, which is the setting of her 1994 novel Finder. She sang in the rock-funk band Cats Laughing, and both sang and played guitar in the folk duo The Flash Girls while living in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Her 1991 post-apocalyptic science fiction novel Bone Dance was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards. In 2007 Bull released Territory, a radical retelling of the shootout at Tomstone's O.K. Corral involving tough minded widows, battling wizards, and a bungled stagecoach robbery.

Bibliography - Novels
(again, thanks to Wikipedia)
War for the Oaks (1987)
Falcon (1989)
Bone Dance (1991; nominated for Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards)
Finder (1994)
The Princess and the Lord of Night (1994)
Freedom and Necessity (1997, with Steven Brust)
Territory (July 2007)

Selected Interviews
w/ Backstage Live
w/ Bookslut
w/ um...herself, at the Magical Musings blog

To read the free e-book of War for the Oaks, click here.

Care to see an author sing? Emma Bull sings western ditties below.

Book News, In Brief

Embarrassed by the fact that no one in the U.S. had heard of this year's Pulitzer Prize winner, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, NPR has whipped up a list of The Best Foreign Books You've Never Heard Of. (Bonus! With NPR's streaming audio, you'll learn how to properly pronounce the writers' names. Now you'll not only appear enlightened, but edge-u-ma-cated as well!)

The Guardian UK's David Barnett has followed up his 'Night Out in Fictional Pubs' piece with a new one: 'The Best Books That Never Existed.' (Kids take note: Not only are Barnett's articles fun to read, but he's figured out the perfect way to write for a national newspaper without doing any actual research. That's what the repetitious call a 'win-win.')

Can I get an un-ironic 'Yee-haw' from all the indie-rockers rocking cowboy hats? Alt-country magazine No Depression is back -- as a 'bookazine.' Via Newsobserver.com: No Depression will feature the longform music journalism the magazine was known for, but it will be published in a large-format paperback book. The bookazine will be sold primarily in bookstores and without any advertising in its pages.

Not At All Book Related

(unless you're connecting the book industry's sagging sales to the worldwide economy crisis)
(and really, why wouldn't you?)

Via The AP: Don't Assume You're Too Rich For Aid: Financial-Aid Tips For Well-Off Families. Wait, wasn't giving rich, white folks unnecessary financial breaks what got us into this mess in the first place?

Via Time Magazine: Is it okay to pray for your 401K? A Whitman's sampler of spiritual scam artists/sound byte whores theologians provide advice to zealots worried about their earthly rewards.

Via The Guardian UK: Are people becoming addicted to sex because of the financial crisis? Answer: No. The press is just killing time, running 'Investors Jumping Into Bed' stories until the 'Investors Jumping Out Of Windows' stories start pouring in.

Recommended Viewing:Lynda Barry in San Fransisco

Yes, it's choppy. And yes, it does start and stop at random. But Barry is an engaging and entertaining speaker, and it's a helluva lot better than Two Girls & A Cup.
Parts 2 & 3

Book News, In Brief

Marie Toulantis, former head of Barnes & Noble.com, will be receiving over $1 million as part of her "termination agreement." Psst, Barnes & Noble. Fire me!

Money-centric website The Motley Fool has chosen the following three retailers as candidates for foreclosure in the coming year: Circuit City, Talbots, and...wait for it...Borders! Hmn...I wonder what the severance pay-offs will be like for the executives of this big box bookstore? (Hint: $$$) And for the worker bees? (Hint: --- )

Marcia! Marcia! Marcia! In Brady Bunch babe Maureen McCormick's new memoir, Here's the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice, the actress admits to being nervous about singing the song It's a Sunshine Day, the awkwardness of hanging out with Micheal Jackson, and, oh yeah -- trading sex for drugs.

Top 5 Prison Books(because even the most relaxed rectum won't hold six)

Cast the First Stone
Chester Himes
From enotes.com: Cast the First Stone (1952) is another of Himes's semi-autobiographical novels. The main character, Jim Monroe, is a white man, but seems to represent Himes as is evidenced by their similarities: both attended college, suffered a serious back injury, and were sentenced to 25 years for armed robbery. The novel focuses on the growth that Monroe experiences while in prison, and is notable for its direct treatment of homosexual relationships in prison.

Escape from Colditz; The two classic escape stories: The Colditz story, and Men of Colditz
P. R Reid
From Iron Gumby: Escape from Colditz is a factual book which reads like a fictional work. P.R. Reid who wrote the book is the main character who is narrating, and participating in the story. The book tells how the Prisoners of war during World War Two lived in confinement and how they used their surroundings to make their escape using replicated German uniforms, and a glider constructed of bed frames and fabric hidden in the attic of a chapel. The prisoners are all bent on escape and the story is how these men plan to flee to Sweden.

Papillon
Henri Charriere
From dooyoo.co.uk: In a nutshell, this book is a tale of Papillons many escape attempts to get away from the penal settlements in French Guiana (many of which were sucessful in the short term) and the amazing lengths he went to to avoid spending the rest of his life repenting a crime he was innocent of. In the end he only served 13 years of his sentence, but to survive 13 years in the environment he found himself in was an accomplishment it itself. He continually escaped, was re-captured, escaped again, was re-captured again and it goes on and on. His escape attempts were daring as he said he'd rather die trying to be a free man than carry on living in the living hell he was in. His final escape was made from Devil's Island, riding the biggest wave that hit the island chained to a sack full of coconut shells.

Are Prisons Obsolete?
Angela Davis
From Political Affairs Magazine: Just a little over 30 years ago the entire prison population stood at 200,000 in the US; that is a tenfold jump in just one generation. In California alone, 3 prisons were built between 1852 and 1952; from 1984 to the present, over 80 facilities were constructed that now house almost 160,000 people. While being jailed or imprisoned has become “an ordinary dimension of community life,” according to Davis, for men in working-class Black, Latino, Native American and some Asian American communities, it is also increasingly an issue women of these communities have come to face.
Davis points to the increased involvement of corporations in prison construction, security, health care delivery, food programs and commodity production using prison labor as the main source of the growth of the prison-industrial complex. As prisons became a new source of profits, it became clear to prison corporations that more facilities and prisoners were needed to increase income. It is evident that increased crime is not the cause of the prison boom. Davis writes “that many corporations with global markets now rely on prisons as an important source of profits helps us to understand the rapidity with which prisons began to proliferate precisely at a time when official studies indicated that the crime rate was falling.”

Arkham Asylum: Living Hell
by Dan Sloott and Ryan Sook
From Jorge: This book is good, creepy fun! Much like the old HBO show OZ, this is the story of all the inmates in a prison, but this time around it's the prison for all of Batman's villains. We follow an all new character, the Great White Shark (a white collar criminal), as he is thrown into the loony bin with the rest of Batman's bad guys. Will he make it out alive? How will this experience change him? Or is he possibly a new Bat-villian in the making? Those are the questions that keep you flipping page after page in this book.
The first half of the book is some of the best Batman/Gotham City stories I've read in a long time. What makes it even more impressive is that Batman is barely in it! And most of the characters (Humpty Dumpty, Death Rattle, Jane Doe, and Junkyard Dog) are new. But they FEEL like they've been Batman characters for YEARS. That's where this book really excels. I had to go online and make sure that there weren't Batman stories that I'd missed over the years. And that, right there, is something very special that the writer and artist pulled off effortlessly. I bought that these were longstanding Bat-villains. And they are SO good, that I hope future Batman writers incorporate them into future stories.
The second half of this book takes a drastic and sudden turn into, what I feel, is a wrong direction. The rug gets pulled out from under us and the prison drama we were reading suddenly turns into a horror film. It's the same drastic turn like the movie Dusk Till Dawn. And, in this case, it really doesn't work.
However, even in the later half of the book, there are STILL priceless Bat-villain moments-- like the Joker's escape, his subsequent palindrome crimes, and his eventual "run in" with Batman. With that in mind, I'd recommend buying this book. Because even though it takes a wrong turn and slightly stumbles, even then it's still better than most of the Batman books out there. And the first half of the book (especially the Humpty Dumpty issue) when everything's working, Arkham Asylum: Living Hell is some of the best Batman work I've ever read!

Book News, In Brief

Everybody knows that having a prominent politician name drop your book will give sales a boost. But what happens when an aw-shucks Alaskan VP candidate attempts to ban your book? The online auction asking price skyrockets to $500+!

Hmn...I wonder what Palin's gonna think of Bible Illuminated: The Book. It's a Swedish repackaging of the so-called 'Good Book' which pairs "intense photo essays" -- including shots Martin Luther King Jr. and Angelina Jolie -- with passages from the New Testament. In Sweden, where Bible sales average 60K per year, Bible Illuminated has already sold 30K. A US release is due later this month.

The folks on the Nobel literature jury suspect that the name of this year's pick -- Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio -- was leaked early. Why? The surprising number of online bettors who picked Le Clezio to win. For those of you us who have never heard of J.M.G.L.C., click here for his Wikipedia entry. For those of us you who didn't know you could bet on the Nobel prizewinners, click here.

Two brothers created two online bookstores. One bookstore was a "wide site," featuring links that kept browsers close to the homepage. The other bookstore was a "deep site," which allowed browsers to navigate through countless links, bringing them further and further away from the homepage. The point of this? To find out if the ol' 'hunter/gatherer' stereotypes about men and women proved true on the internet. To read the results, both men and women may click here.

I've Gone To Canada to Visit Librairie Premiere-- My Fourth Favorite Combination Comic Book Shop/Used SF Bookstore in The World!

I'll be back on Monday the 13th.


Until then, entertain yourselves with this...
Blog-Jacking: IO9
Scientists Pick The Greatest Books And Movies Of All Time
Originally posted Oct 1 2008
By Charlie Jane Anders
At last, the most important works of science fiction are being determined scientifically. New Scientist magazine is doing a special science fiction issue on Nov. 15, and the magazine is polling its science-boffin readers as to the greatest books and movies in the genre. The magazine's own staff have already voted, and you might not be surprised by the books they put first. But you may have some issues with their most hated movies and books.

It's hard to quibble with their picks for best movies and books. Being mostly Brits, the New Scientist group put Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy at the top of the novel heap. Iain M. Banks would have won, but his vote was split among a few of his books. (Including Feersum Enjinn. Really?) Frank Herbert's Dune also came close to winning. The best movie, according to the NS crew, was Blade Runner, followed by 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris and Serenity.

To read the picks for Worst SF, click here.

Book News, In Brief

The home of The Jewel of Medina's English publisher was firebombed this weekend. While the the US publishers have temporarily closed their offices ("a precautionary measure"), they're still planning to release the book on October 15.

The Guardian UK makes this bold statement: Respect for religion now makes censorship the norm. When publishers are too intimidated to print even novels that may offend, it shows how far we've lost our way on free speech. To read the screed, click here.

John Bemelmans Marciano, grandson to Madeline author Ludwig Bemelmans, has announced his plans to write and draw the first new Madeline book in over fifty years. Yes, this is clearly a case of cashing in, but considering yesterday's announcement from the granddaughter of Anne of Green Gables author, who's gonna complain?

Got A Half Hour To Kill?

Check out The Comics Reporter's super-enjoyable The 50 Things That Every Comics Collection Truly Needs.
(Hell, even if you're not a comics fan yourself, you can use it as a cheat sheet for Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa presents this holiday season!)

Book News, In Brief All Bad

When life (or the current financial crisis) gives you lemons (or a 30% drop in book sales), make lemonade (or an overly sunny PR piece that reads well with the elderly and mentally infirmed, but holds nothing but laughs for those of us sadly in the know).

Over at Penguin Books, bad news abounds. Well, books about bad news, anyway. The orange tinted imprint has just purchased the rights to Andrew Ross Sorkin's Too Big To Fail. This is the third book about the current financial crisis that Penguin has bought in the past week.

To be fair, bad news abounds everywhere. According to the Wall Street Journal, if Borders doesn't find a buyer soon, "the chain must grant Pershing Square Capital 5.15 million warrants to purchase additional shares in the company, a move which will give the hedge fund an even greater stake in the chain." Wait. That might be good news...for some of us.

On a seriously somber note, the family of Anne of Green Gables author, Lucy Maud Montgomery, has come forward with a shocking revelation regarding the esteemed writer's death: It was a suicide, via an intentional drug overdose. Montgomery's granddaughter explains: "I have come to feel very strongly that the stigma surrounding mental illness will be forever upon us as a society until we sweep away the misconception that depression happens to other people, not us – and most certainly not to our heroes and icons...The fictional Anne went on to happiness and a life full of love and fulfilment. My grandmother's reality was not so positive, although she continues to inspire generations of readers with her books, which reveal her understanding of nature – both in matters of the heart and the world...I hope that by writing about my grandmother now there might be less secrecy and more awareness that will ease the unnecessary suffering so many people experience as a result of such depressions."

Book News, In Brief

Having garnered the ire of every bookstore, Amazon is hoping to make a brand new enemy: Apple/iTunes.

I'll admit it. I'd been purposefully avoiding linking to the dozens of different 'Text Books Are Too Expensive for College Kids!' articles littering the web. Every other book blog was posting them, so I figured, why bother? But this new angle -- Textbooks are bad for your health -- well, I've gotta give the kids credit for coming up with this one.

Damn. If I'd seen this ten minutes ago, I'd have blog-jacked the whole page and saved myself a 'Book News, In Brief' post. Via The Guardian UK:
Antonia Fraser on writing biography
Wendy Cope on writing poetry
Robert Harris on writing novels
Simon Jenkins on journalism

Blog-Jacking: Boing Boing (again!)

Book-spines turned into stories
Originally posted by Cory Doctorow, September 25, 2008 9:59 AM
The Sorted Books project picks books out of collections whose spines, when placed in sequence, can be made into a sentence or story. (There's plenty more pics at Sorted Books)
Blow Boing Boing a kiss.

Phew!

The stock market crashing...the skyrocketing price of fuel...my pudding induced impotence...
We'll worry about those some other day.
For now, let's celebrate the following, via the AP:
Purr-fect ending to battle over Hemingway's cats
KEY WEST, Fla. - The famed six-toed cats at Ernest Hemingway's island home aren't going anywhere.
The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum announced Thursday it reached an agreement with the federal government that lets the 50 or so cats continue roaming the grounds, ending a five-year battle that could have resulted in them being removed or caged.
I repeat: Phew!

The Dirty/Literary Joke of the Day

As told by The Office's B.J. Novak:
With all due respect to Edgar Allen Poe and Lord Byron and Franz Liszt...there is simply no such thing as a 'romantic period.'
Thank you. Goodnight.

Blog-Jacking: Boing Boing

Burning Bookmark
Originally posted by David Pescovitz, September 23, 2008 8:47 AM
Just in time for Banned Books Week (9/27-10/4), the good folks at Gama-Go are taking orders for this new "Burning Bookmark." It's $6.
Link: Burning Bookmark/Gamma Go
Hit up Boing Boing here.

Recommended Viewing:Bookslut Interviews Eddie Campbell

Visit the Bookslut website by clicking here.

Book News, In Brief

S'funny, I was just having a similar discussion with Inkwell Michelle the other night: Humor Books - They Don't Get No Respect.

It's not nearly as lurid as Franz Kafka's porn stash, but it's still worth a look: Charles Schulz' bookshelves.

When I first read the following headline, I thought it said, Barbarians Still Turning to Books. That would've been awesome. But Barbadians Still Turning to Books? Zzz...

Jonathan Lethem on The Dark Knight

"After a long summer spent laboring in the salt mine of a novel-in-progress," Lethem ventured out to the multiplex to see this year's biggest film. Here are a sampling of his thoughts on the pic, as expressed to the NYTimes and its readers:

No wonder we crave an entertainment like “The Dark Knight,” where every topic we’re unable to quit not-thinking about is whirled into a cognitively dissonant milkshake of rage, fear and, finally, absolving confusion.

It may be possible to see the nightly news in a similar light, where any risk of uncovering the vulnerable yearnings, all the tenderness aroused by, yes, the seemingly needless death of a promising young actor or of a brilliant colleague, all hope of conversation between the paranoid blues and the paranoid reds, all that might bind us together, is forever armored in a gleeful and cynical cartoon of spin and disinformation. Keywords — “change,” “victory” — are repeated until adapted out of meaning, into self-canceling glyphs. Meanwhile, pigs break into the lipstick store, and we go hollering down the street after them, relieving ourselves of another hour or day or week of clear thought.

Beneath the sniping, so many real things lie in ruins: a corporate paradigm displaying no shred of responsibility, but eager for rescue by taxpayers; a military leadership’s implicit promise to its recruits and their families; a public discourse commodified into channels that feed any given preacher’s resentments to a self-selecting chorus. In these déjà vu battles, the combatants forever escape one another’s final judgment, whirl off into the void, leaving us standing awed in the rubble, uncertain of what we’ve seen, only sure we’re primed for the sequel.

If everything is broken, perhaps it is because for the moment we like it better that way. Unlike some others, I have no theory who Batman is — but the Joker is us.

To read Lethem's full review/political diatribe, click here.