Second Only to Where The Wild Things Are in My Movie-Going Heart:

From Edgar Wright, the director of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz...
Based on the comics by Bryan Lee O'Malley...
THE ANTICIPATION FOR THIS ADAPTATION IS PUMMELING ME!!!

Book News, In Brief

In response to last week's announcement that two of Micheal Crichton's recently "found" novels were going to be published posthumously, the Guardian UK pleads, Leave unfinished works alone - let their authors rest in peace!


Semi-related is a second Guardian UK piece, this one regarding Agatha Christie. But where the previous piece called on folks to let sleeping scribes lie, this one quotes from 'textual analysts' who believe they've found signs of Alzheimer's disease in Christie's later novels.


A 51-year-old IL woman plans to publish first novel serially. No, wait. Make that cereal-ly. Lori Degman was crowned the winner of Cheerios' second annual Spoonful of Stories contest. Her book, One Zany Zoo, will be stuffed into select boxes of Cheerios in the Spring of 2010.


A recent CNN.com article about self-publishing doubled as a profile piece for local author, Lisa Genova. Not only has Genova proven countless nay-saying literary agents and publishing houses wrong with the runaway success of her novel, Still Alice, she'll be speaking at our store on April 18th.
(Editor's Note: If that sounded like shameless self-promotion...you're damned right!)

Depending on Your Tolerance for Glittery Goths, This News is Either Gonna be Great or Grim

From the four-color hotel doormat, USA Today:
Twilight author Stephenie Meyer continues to dominate USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list. Sales of her novels accounted for about 16% of all book sales tracked by the list in the first quarter of 2009. That's about one in seven books.

David Foster Wallace +/vs. Premier Magazine

Film writer Glenn Kenny waxes nostalgic in an interview with The House Next Door, reminiscing about the times he edited David Foster Wallace for Premiere movie magazine.

Some choice quotes:
Dave would often be commissioned to do pieces at 5,000-7,500 words so he understood that at a certain point in the process it was quite possible this would happen, but in a way he was constitutionally incapable of keeping to a word length. It was a tacit agreement you had with him when you commissioned a piece that you were going to get something long. But if you can run a piece that long, he’s one of the cheapest first rate literary writers out there—you pay him X amount of dollars per word, but you get five times the words.

and:

Dave could just walk around, getting as much out of the environment as possible. After 45 minutes of looking, he’d go out into the hallway in the convention center, sit up against the wall and write in his legal pad for 20-30 minutes, which was a good thing for him, because then he could zone out and not notice anything that was happening around him. I think the reason he had such an aversion to severely urban areas was the sensory overload of having to perceive that much.

and:

We talked about things like addiction. He was always solicitous of your own condition, your own health. I know he had some very profound struggles in areas like that. Even had he not been depressed, I don’t think Dave was adverse to happiness but I think he was incredibly suspicious because of all of the false things in the culture that are proposed to simulate happiness. He looked at the concept askance because of that. Part of his personal struggle was to find a form of happiness that was not ersatz.

It's a great piece, one which enriches not only your appreciation of D.F.W., but also the value of a good editor/author relationship. To read the whole thing, click here.

Comic Book News, In Brief

Bookslut recently ran a wonderful interview with comics legend, Jules Feiffer. Topics ranged from racism in comics to sexism in comics to optimism...in children's books.


Comics letterer & logo designer, Todd Klein, has a blog. In it, he reviews new books, reassesses his old work, and analyzes the progression of various logos from funnybooks' past.


To help promote their upcoming Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers mini-series, Marvel Comics is holding a contest. The rules are simple: Take a picture of your pet dressed up as a Marvel superhero, then send the incriminating photos to their Pet Avengers Flickr group. The actual 'prizes' are crap, but isn't publicly humiliating your furry friend reward enough?


In 1970, writer William S. Burroughs and artist Malcolm McNeill teamed up to write a graphic novel, Ah Pook Is Here. Excessive printing costs (some of the full color illustrations are over 25 feet long) and insufficient public interest (it was, after all, only a comic book) eighty-sixed its release. Fast forward 39 years, and a project history, story synopsis, and gallery of McNeill's mindblowing images have been put on line. Click here to enjoy.

A Litmus Test of Literary Links(Or: If you don't find this sh*t cool, give me back my friendship bracelet.)

The second Where The Wild Things Are movie poster has hit the net. Please, God, don't let me die before October.
(See also: Assorted WTWTA adaptation links)


Vietnam (Việt Nam) 1. A communist state in Indochina 2. A scenic backdrop for the acid flashbacks of drug-addled veterans. 3. A book lover's Shangri-la.
(See also: DW-World's Booksellers Flee Paris to Create City of Books)


Lucy Knisley (French Milk) read all four Twilight books in one weekend. Upon recovery, she made two hilarious comic strips about the harrowing experience.
(Thanks to AutumnBottom for the tip!)
(See also: AutumnBottom's 10 Tips From A Former Traveling Sales Rep)


Entertainment Weekly has posted an exclusive excerpt of Elmore Leonard's next novel, Road Dogs. Fans of Out of Sight's Jack Foley will want to check this out, as he's the star of this book, too.
(See also: My slavish, slobbering ode to Leonard)

In Troubled Times, Our Leaders Turn to Kids' Lit

When world leaders met last week at London's G20 summit, it wasn't the collapsing economy or the threat of North Korean missiles that had everyone buzzing. It was J.K. Rowling.
From The Telegraph UK's article, G20 summit: Barack Obama is a fan of Harry Potter:
The President made a beeline for Miss Rowling at the end of the Downing Street G20 dinner, and told her that he had read all her books himself and to his children Sasha and Malia.
Miss Rowling then received a second presidential seal of approval for the boy wizard from Russia's President Medvedev and his wife Svetlana, who not only admitted to having read the Harry Potter books but also asked for her autograph.
To read the rest, tap your wand here.

The AP Wants To Sue Me...For Linking To An AP Article About The AP Wanting To Sue Me!

Okay, so the Associated Press doesn't really want to sue me personally, but they do plan to start filing lawsuits against websites that link to their articles and/or reprint their headlines without permission and/or a pay-off. The AP's lawyers are also eyeing Google Web Search, Yahoo News, and personal Facebook feeds -- in other words, anyone who has ever linked to anything other than an lolcat.
To find out more, click here and here.
(Warning: The second one's an AP link!)

Tuesday's Tips for Flailing Writers

It's a basic question, but one which boggles a good many writers: What's the difference between story and plot? IO9 explains.


Repeated rejection is funny. At first it hurts, then it annoys, then it causes a numbing sensation that makes you wonder, 'Why bother?' But if you truly believe in your work, you can't give up. Remember, even the most well-respected authors were once rejects like you.


Self-publishing inevitably means self-promoting. But just as everyone with an idea is not necessarily a writer, everyone with a book is not necessarily a publicist. In an effort to help, Comics Worth Reading offers a few things to avoid when pimping your prose.


While we're on the topic of what-not-to-do, here's another: Should you go the self-publishing route, please-oh-please-oh-please do not make fake special orders of your book in an attempt to get it into bookstores. Not only will the duped bookstores do everything in their power to sabotage the sale of your book, they'll warn other bookstores, effectively ending your writing career before it's even begun.

Go, Look: The Yummy & The Yuggoth

This is why I love Super Punch. I mean, where else are you gonna find photos of a Where The Wild Things Are bento box paired up with a link to a Lovecraftian take on that same story?
Answer: Nowhere.
Go, look!

The Perfect Prose for a Pisces Like Me

While I'm a big fan of genre fiction, I'm an even bigger fan of the sub-genres. That's why I nearly vomited with joy when I read a recent post by The Hipster Book Club's Dorothy Parka describing an almost fetishistic off-shoot of the historical fiction/romance genre: Scottish Female Herring Worker fiction.
A quick Googling of this phrase brings up just two applicable results. The first is an article from the Social Semiotics scholarly journal analyzing the way SFHWs are portrayed on the covers of romance novels. (Cost to read it: $30. Amount I'm being paid to write this blog post: $0. Guess it's gonna have to wait.*) The second is a name: Evelyn Hood.
Google Hood's name, and you'll find that she's a Scottish journalist-turned-novelist and the author of at least two different SFHW titles, A Sparkle of Salt and The Shimmer of the Herring. According to the reviewers on Amazon.uk, both books are well worth picking up. Apparently, Hood is an accomplished storyteller whose detailed descriptions of salty seas, gutted fish, and passionate embraces have helped many a reader reach orgasm. (No small feat!)
Anything this bizarre is usually worth at least a cursory glance. But this is sooo bizarre...I don't know...I feel like I need to read an SFHW novel A.S.A.P. If anyone has a recommendation for a title to start with, please let me know in the comments section below. Until then, I'll be down at the docks, looking for horny herring girls.

*Although I've never been published in any quote-unquote "scholarly journals," I do tend daily to a barely read, bookstore blog. I figure that's gotta qualify me to write at least two lines of cover art analysis, no? Hell, I'll even try and make it dry and pretentious like a real scholarly journal. Well, here goes: The SFHW covers look like old, Chinese propaganda posters as redesigned by Leni Riefenstahl and Alex Ross. Of particular note is the complete lack of any painterly portrayals of Fabio-looking lotharios, which hints at a more progressive brand of female wish fulfillment. Voila! Painless and pretentious, just like I promised. And best of all, it was free!

For more information on the real life 'herring girls' who inspired these nutty niche novels, click here and here.

Book News, In Brief

Every year, a random reporter with a crush on Franny Glass convinces his or her editor to fund a fruitless trek to New Hampshire in hopes of landing an interview with J.D. Salinger. Every year, the results are the same. Click here to read 2009's EPIC FAIL.


April is National Poetry Month. It is the sacred duty of every God-fearing American to come up with at least one dirty limerick involving the Isle of Nantucket. Once that's finished, head on over to Books On The Nightstand and The Guardian UK for various poetry-related links.


Chinese police have arrested a young woman accused of stealing nearly 2,000 books from bookstores in and around Taiwan. Before you feel any pangs of pity for the underprivileged overachievers of the East, realize this: Homegirl wasn't a voracious reader with a limited income. She was stealing the books to sell on-line.


After dumbing down bookselling to the point where every other 'customer' was actually just a caffeine addict looking to read the newest issue of Maxim for free, Borders has decided to re-make their image into a place where "real book people belong." Uh...good luck with that, fellas.


Cost-conscious Kindle owners have staged an uprising, boycotting any and all e-books priced over $9.99. When their Amazonian overlords were asked to comment, they cackled maniacally and said, "These suckers spent $400+ on a poorly reviewed e-reader. Their financial advice is not to be taken seriously."

Book News, In Brief

It's called nepotism, y'all: President Obama's half-sister has a book deal. The details have yet to be hammered out, but who cares -- she's Obama's half-sister!
(See also: Bill Clinton's Brother's Acting Career, George Bush Jr.'s Presidency)


In an effort to lessen their $217.8 million debt, Borders will close the majority of its remaining Waldenbooks stores. Too bad they couldn't charge an hourly fee to the bums sprawled out in the aisles sipping cold cups of crappy coffee. They'd make billions.
(See also: Barnes & Noble Execs Get Salaries Frozen)


The next time someone tells you that the future of bookselling is niche bookstores, tell them to shut the f**k up. In the last week alone, San Francisco's Babylon Falling and LA's Cook's Library have both announced that they're going out of business -- and these stores were as niche as niche could be.
(See also: The 1,670,000+ search results for the phrase "bookstore closing")


Whether it's Pam Anderson as the unlikely bookstore employee in Stacks, or Sandra Bullock as the even less likely 'high powered book editor' in this June's The Proposal, Hollywood has never shied away from using the book industry as a backdrop for its lame stories and ludicrous casting. The Guardian UK asks, 'Um...why?'
(See also: The LATimes' What Does Publishing Mean To Hollywood?)

Go, Look!

My favorite cult movie site, Twitch, ran a piece yesterday titled, Adapt That! Five Grossly Unfaithful Book to Film Adaptations...That worked! In it, they make a compelling case for the way that movies like Blade Runner, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and O Brother Where Art Thou scrapped the minutia (and sometimes the plot) of their source novels in favor of looser, more abstract translations. Depending on your tastes, it's either gonna be food for thought or stay up late and debate bait.
Well, what are you waiting for? Go, look!

Humorous Excerpts From Recent Comics Reviews

Chris' Invincible Super-Blog on Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose #55:
Tarot won three awards, and not a single one of them was for Most Haunted Vagina. Instead, in addition to giving “Best Indy Villain” to a character who hasn’t been a villain in like eight years, the Internet voters behind Project Fanboy awarded Tarot both “Best Title” and “Best Indy Title.” Seriously. That actually happened. And one can only assume that it’s issues like this, wherein Tarot goes to the Witchity County Fair and divines the future by groping a naked woman with ouija board tattoos (with “Yes” and “No” on her breasts, naturally), that have convinced people that this is THE ABSOLUTE BEST THAT COMIC BOOKS HAVE TO OFFER.


Tucker Stone on X-Force/Cable: Messiah War # 1:
It's about a team of mutants led by Wolverine and Bosley'ed by Cyclops, watching them sent into the future to catch up with a time-hopping Cable and his ward, a fantastic little girl New Mutant the cover depicts as having 11 inch long legs, all so that they won't be caught by a guy named Lucas Bishop that used to have a curly mullet that made Lionel Richie's hair look subtle, and they have to watch out for a guy named Stryfe, who dresses like a professional wrestler with no sense of humor mixed with the metalworks empire of King Arthur....Keeping up with whatever the fuck this is supposed to be about ain't easy. They probably give Harvey Awards for that.


From Comics Worth Reading's review of Camelot 3000:
The space fantasy Camelot 3000, by Mike W. Barr and Brian Bolland, postulates King Arthur returning in the year 3000 in order to save the earth from alien invaders.
Strangely enough, that's not the humorous excerpt, but the po-faced plot summation. Here's the funny:
The dialogue is talky, with plenty of exposition, in the style of 80s comics. They were beginning to write for adults in those days, but they were still figuring out how to do it. Instead of trusting the audience to bring more to the table, often the approach was one of still explaining what the reader saw on the page but with bigger words and purpler prose.


Alright, so Mike Sterling isn't reviewing a comic here, but he is reviewing a listing from Diamond Comic Distributor's newest catalog:
Page 418 - Monopoly 1935 Deluxe 1st Edition. Released just in time for another Depression! Now that's good nostalgic marketing...oh, wait.


Semi-Related: Am I Seriously The Last Person On Earth To Realize That Watchmen's Laurie Juspeczyk Intends To Become The Comedienne?

Liberal Booksellers Have A New Anti-Kindle Argument!

The Kindle is Conservative!
(Or at the very least, it's the learning tool favored by the far right.)
(Well, at the moment anyway.)
According to Amazon's own bestseller listings, 6 of the top 10 Kindle-ready e-books are either outright conservative (Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto by Mark R. Levin), semi-conservative (Stephenie Meyers' wait-'til-marriage vampires books), or a giant leap back for the women's movement (I was gonna put Steve Harvey's Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man here, but I guess I could just re-list the Meyers' oeuvre, couldn't I?).
The overly-simplistic, semi-jingoistic moral: Electric cars, good. Digital books, bad.

(Tune in tomorrow, when I'll use the Conservatives' fears and an inevitable shift in the bestseller listings to create an anti-Kindle argument for the Right.)

Inquiring Book Bloggers Want To Know...

Inspired by the series finales of both Battlestar Galactica and Y: The Last Man, Second Printing wonders, What are your favorite beautiful endings?


I don't know if The Guardian UK is hoping to shock the literary elite out of their hoi polloi pretensions, or if they just really love Half-Life. Either way, they're asking, Are computer games a literary genre?


This next one's a simple yes or no question, but the answer reveals you to be either shallow or deep, artistically bent or aesthetically inept, a font fetishist or a freakin' idiot. Author Joanna Campbell Slan asks, Do you judge a book by its cover?


Abe Books is technically our competition (well, in the same way that the Ford Motor Company was Big Daddy Roth's), but my dead, Alzheimer-y Granny would've found this question charming, so I'm including it anyway: Do you own a cookbook that has been handed down to you by your mother or father, grandmother, or even great grandparents? If so, which one(s)?


Last month, anti-gay author Scott Lively (whose book, The Pink Swastika, purports that Hitler and other high-ranking Nazis were gay) was scheduled to speak at a Falbrook, CA country club. Protest threats from gay rights organizations (and, one suspects, a few historians) caused the caustic Q&A to be canceled. The LGBT Book, Film & Video Blog asks, Was this an example of censorship or public safety?

Recommended Viewing:C.K. Williams' Poetry for all Seasons of Life

Related: Ghostface Killah's Whip You With A Strap

Tuesday's Tips for Flailing Writers

Soothe your unfounded and unwarranted paranoia: The Publetariat explains where and how to copyright your work.


Kung Fu Monkey found a unique way to use the corporate world's b.s. to flesh out his fictional characters: He gives 'em all a '360 degree review.'


A second link to The Publetariat! This time they're investigating the science & psychology behind writer's block, then offering some simple suggestions for getting past it.


StorytellersUnplugged proclaims, "Your first draft is always going to suck." While this sounds like the sort of soul-crushing patter I spew here daily, they mean it encouragingly. Honest!

Am I Seriously The Last Person On Earth To Realize That Watchmen's Laurie Juspeczyk Intends To Become The Comedienne?

I was just reading an article over at The Hooded Utilitarian in defense of Alan Moore's female characters. Apparently, some folks think Moore crafts crappy dames, despite the fact that he's probably created more multifaceted (and just plain fascinating) female characters than just about any other comic book writer (outside of the Hernandez Bros. and Charles Schultz).
So anyway, I was reading the article, totally agreeing with everything that the author was saying, experiencing that subtle ego boost one gets when one reads their opinions expounded upon in a way in which one is incapable of doing oneself, when I came across this:
Finally, in her final panel in the book, Laurie is shown speculating about getting a new costume with protective leather and a mask, and perhaps a gun. She also says "Silk Spectre" is too girly and she wants a new name. The implication is that she's going to become the Comedian.
Wait. Whoa. Hold up a second. How did I miss this the first five times I read Watchmen? I consider myself a pretty aware fellow, yet somehow I never took Laurie's line to mean anything more than, 'I've gotta get something more protective than this sheer skirt.' Am I the only one? A quick read through the article's comments section would seem to insinuate I am. And what's worse, I LOVE THIS BOOK! I can't imagine what I might've missed in the books I only mildly adore.
But am I the only one that this has happened to? Has anyone else ever missed something so obvious, so significant, in a book they've read multiple times? And if so, would you care to share? Anonymous admissions of obliviousness may be submitted to the comments section below.