Tudormania Lives -- Part Deux

Picking up -- briefly -- on an earlier post about the latest influx of Tudor-focused historical novels: it's not over yet!

The latest news is that historian and novelist Alison Weir has signed a contract to produce a series of six novels featuring, yes, you guessed it, each of the six wives of Henry VIII, for British publisher Headline, the first of which will see the light of day in 2016.

The news sparked quite a kerfuffle over on the Historical Novel Society's Facebook page, of which I'm a member. Reading between the lines, there are a handful of aspiring novelists out there interested in writing about other eras who seem to feel that the combination of the proven market clout of the Tudors and Alison Weir's ability to bridge the gap between popular history and popular fiction better than most writers, may do what lesser-known luminary of the historical crime writing world Lynn Shepherd alleged that JK Rowling was doing with her shift to adult fiction: using her celebrity to suck the oxygen out of the atmosphere and making it tougher for other writers to breathe.

Not that Weir is JK Rowling; she's just one of dozens of writers, ranging from those with household names (the ubiquitous Philippa Gregory) who have long made the Tudors her bread and butter, and to whom readers have gravitated as a result. (She's also earned a reputation for being far more generous than many of her peers with many of those aspiring writers, so kudos to her.)

That said: is there anything left to say about these six women?? To be blunt, they wore the crown matrimonial and weren't reigning queens. Arguably, Catherine of Aragon was significant for her heritage and the longevity of the marriage, but how many times is it entertaining to read a novel about the breakdown of the same marriage? Similarly, how many times is it fascinating to read about Anne Boleyn, when you know just how very, very badly the story ends for her? With biographies aplenty out there, and novels based on the latest scholarly research, what remains to be said? Catherine Howard met her end on the block as a teenager after a rather furtive little affair; it's tragic, but again, not the stuff of which countless novels of tremendous interest are made. Do we read the same story over and over again, or go in search of new fare?

I think the challenge for Weir will be to prove that she can approach these stories with a truly new angle. The challenge for publishers? That's a tougher one altogether. I want someone to prove to me that they are willing to take a risk and publish some novels set in less-usual eras and places, and by authors who aren't (yet) household names. For me, that means no Tudors, no Wars of the Roses, and very little from ancient Rome, World War I or World War II. In the coming weeks, I'll try to draw attention to a couple of these books -- and challenge readers to give them a chance, too.

Book Porn; or, Are Book Publishers Really Dealers in Addictive Substances?

Are book publishers just drug pushers in disguise? I sometimes wonder. Certainly, every time I take a step back to look at a list of upcoming books, I begin to think that for all the agonizing that has been going on about the crisis in which publishers find themselves, they really have one big ace tucked firmly up their sleeves. They have the books that we all want to read.

Sorry, but I'm just not queuing up to read a vast number of the books that are made available by Amazon's own publishing divisions, however intriguing I find their business model and however delighted I am that it has created new career options for many authors whom the short-sighted business policies of the New York behemoth publishers have left to flounder. I've tried several and thus far my reactions boil down to "meh". I'll keep trying, and I'll let you know if that changes.

I'll always, always, always be scrutinizing new offerings from a handful of smaller publishers that have firmly established themselves as my favorites, based on my tremendous success with their offerings. A while back, I summarized some of these and listed their attractions. Today, I'd add the likes of Graywolf Press to the list, thanks to books like The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison, which I'll try to get around to discussing one day soon on these cyber pages.

But around this time of year, I sit down to pull together a list of books that I am desperately eager to read, and I realize just why book publishers might do very, very well as peddlers of various illegal and intoxicating substances of the kind of things our parents told us we're supposed to "just say NO" to. Their wares are seductive and appealing. And I know that just like a really great drug might do, they'll take me away from ugly realities -- or at least, catapult me into someone else's ugly reality, reminding me that my own really isn't all that bad, after all. They'll make me believe in some greater wisdom. They'll inspire me. They'll show me wonderful imaginations at work; tremendous writing. And yes, there will be some disappointments, too, but that's part of the game.

And unlike the drug pushers, they get to promote their wares publicly. So to share some of the pain of anticipation, I'm going to tell you about some of the books that I'm most eager to read in the coming few months. Call it drugs; call it book porn; call it whatever you want. All I know is that, one way or another, by hook or by crook, these are the books that will be finding their way onto my shelves or my Kindle. A book habit can indeed become a very, very scary thing.

December 2014
Moriarty by Anthony Horwitz (my most coveted and most elusive mystery books of the winter!)
The Lonely War: One Woman's Account of the Struggle for Modern Iran by Nazila Fathi (timely...)
The Convert's Song by Sebastian Rotella (people keep telling me this is an author to read)
When Books Went to War by Molly Guptill Manning (if they packed 'em, I want to know why)

January 2015
Honeydew by Edith Pearlman (yum, more short stories by this truly amazing author)
The Honest Folk of Guadeloupe by Anthony Williams (new author, but from Soho Press)
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (lotsa buzz about this suspense novel)
Once Upon a Revolution by Thanassis Cambanis (likely to be a good book about the Arab Spring)
The Orphan Sky by Ella Leya (yes, set in Azerbaijan, but why not?)

February 2015
Shame and the Captives by Thomas Keneally (WWII POWs in Australia)
The Siege Winter by Ariana Franklin (finished posthumously by her daughter)
Discontent and Its Civilizations by Mohsin Hamid (non-fiction anthology by a fave novelist)
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald (falconry; grief; it just won the Samuel Johnson Prize)
We Are Pirates by Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket writes for grownups!)
When the Doves Disappeared by Sofi Oksanen (Estonian resistance to the Soviets; lotsa buzz)
The Last Good Paradise by Tatjana Soli (I loved her debut novel)

March 2015
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro (how to resist??)
Leaving Berlin by Joseph Kanon (a 50/50 chance of being a winning suspense yarn)
Epitaph by Mary Doria Russell (the sequel to Doc; it's time for the OK Corral...)
The Porcelain Thief by Hsu Huan (scouring China for buried... china?)
Mademoiselle Chanel by C.W. Gortner (a move to the 20th century for this author)
Meet Me in Atlantis by Mark Adams (the quest for the lost city...)
Rebel Queen by Michelle Moran (historical fiction about the Indian mutiny)
Last Wake by Erik Larson (The Lusitania's sinking; marking the centenary)

Tiptoeing Back Into the Blogosphere...

Suddenly, literally overnight, I stopped blogging about books. It happened a little over two years ago, and I remember precisely what happened. I had been attending the National Association of Business Economics conference in downtown Manhattan and, after a very long day of listening to people talk about the business cycle, employment data, commodities prices -- and interviewing Sheila Bair about financial market regulations -- I staggered home to Brooklyn. I let myself in the gate in the fence that surrounded the brownstone in which I had an apartment, and lifted up the flap of the mailbox affixed to that fence. Up until that day, I had always been grateful for the large flap -- it meant that if I wasn't home, USPS, UPS, etc. could simply put any deliveries from Amazon, Book Depository or elsewhere in the big metal container. There was no problem about getting oversized mail.

As it turned out, there was also no problem in receiving other, less desirable, substances. A short while previously, I'd received an advance review copy of a new book by a debut author. I really hadn't liked it. I had said so in my review. I hadn't used any vulgarity; I hadn't commented on the author; I hadn't told people that they should burn their copies. I just said that my experience of the book made it one I wished I hadn't read at all, and listed the reasons. Usually, when I pick up a book like that, I put it down -- I return it to the library and forget about it. In this case, I had made a commitment to review it, and did (although not on this blog.) I didn't Tweet about the review, or otherwise draw attention to it. Nonetheless, instead of allowing the review to sink into obscurity, the author, as I recently chronicled in a recent column for The Guardian about the perils of book reviewing, took offense -- great offense. So did a great number of her fans. Someone -- I have no way of knowing who it was -- decided to wrap some dog sh*t in a piece of paper, on which were printed some of the same phrases that the author had used on her blog to castigate me. In my hurry to get home, I had reached my hand into the mailbox and straight into the poop.

Of course, I called the cops; I preserved the "evidence" for a few days, until it was clear that they weren't going to show up to get it and conduct DNA tests or whatever one does with such unwanted gifts, at which point it went into the trash. My sweater went to the drycleaners. My hands got scrubbed with disinfectants, using a rough nailbrush that subsequently went into the trash. And I stopped blogging. Because, let's face it, why deal with loonies?

I still reviewed for Amazon's Vine program, and resurrected the dog poop experience, at my editor's insistence, when I sat down to write about the democratization of reviewing, and how getting a bad review can temporarily unhinge some authors. Not that that is anything new, of course. Richard Ford spat in Colson Whitehead's face after a bad review, and shot a bullet into a copy of a book by Alice Hoffman after she also failed to appreciate his genius. It's fairly safe to say that you won't see me weighing in on Ford's prose here, especially since my recent reading of Canada left me underwhelmed. Pissed off writers with guns worry me considerably more than those with blogs and fans with dogs and dog poop.

Writing the column for the Guardian made me stop and think, however. I hate bullies. I don't know who was responsible for shoving that dog shit in my mailbox -- the author (who removed the offensive content from their website after I contacted the publisher), their spouse (who admitted harassing me with a series of messages), or one of the author's fans, from whom I also heard. I'll never know. But whoever it was, was a bully -- and that person took advantage of my reluctance to fight back. After writing and posting that review elsewhere, any review I posted on my blog ended up with my e-mail box full of obnoxious messages and lots of messages here for me to wade my way through and delete so that they wouldn't affect what a handful of readers enjoyed -- the discussion about books. But why give in to bullies?

I also read author Matt Haig's wonderful post about blogging. Haig spoke out, via Twitter, in favor of "a critical culture in books", arguing that we need "people to say what they want about books", even if it isn't unrelentingly positive cheerleading. He acknowledges that he himself has felt under pressure to say "nice things I only half mean". And that not all books can be good. Finally, of all people, I listened to a presentation by Peter Stothard, editor of the Times Literary Supplement, at the Boston Book Festival. To be clear, I think his views about blogging cross the line into elitism -- certainly, he'd have no time for someone like me -- but he did make several arguments that I couldn't help but agree with. Firstly, talking about books isn't just talking about what you "like" -- in fact, he skillfully eviscerated his final questioner of the day, someone who clearly was expecting a sympathetic reaction when she identified herself as a professional reviewer who explained her dilemma -- that she only found herself reviewing what she "liked", because, after all, life is too short. Stothard looked at her in disbelief. "You don't need to like a book to think about it critically," he said. Clearly, in his eyes, professional reviewers like her were as much of a problem as amateurs like myself. "If everyone only reviewed what they liked..." And words failed him, which I suspect doesn't happen to the likes of Sir Peter Stothard very frequently.

So, with all of the above in mind, I'm tiptoeing back into book blogging. We'll see how it goes. Whether I love a book or loathe it, what you'll continue to read here are my honest opinions. Perhaps I could do worse than to borrow some other words of wisdom from Stothard: one "should never say anything in a review that one wouldn't say to the author's face." I think that's generally good advice for anything in the public domain, in any event. On the flip side, I think reviewers need to feel able to voice an opinion without worrying about what's in their mailbox or -- far more heinous -- being cracked over the head with a bottle of wine while out shopping.

Happy reading, everyone.

A Timely Commentary on Kindle Singles!

Only a few hours after writing my earlier post about the Kindle Singles I've been reading, I spotted this article by the author of a new Kindle Single that I haven't yet read, but probably now will. In it, he comments that "essays are now the kiss of death almost everywhere in the publishing businesses... The prevailing wisdom is that nobody reads them." If true, that's horrifying -- and it probably is true. In any case, the author spells out something that I've wondered about for a while: whether there might not be a market for short segments of longer and more complex non-fiction books. In some cases, these might address specific topics of interest, but they might also pique a reader's curiosity, prodding them to buy the longer opus. Jim Cullen writes "at some point in the process of working on my new book, I found myself wondering, does this make sense as a book? Might it not make more sense as a set of five or six chapter-length e-books? Very often, instructors only use part of a book; in any case, they rarely assign the whole thing at once ... I made a pitch along these lines to a major university press, which reacted with respectful interest. It's in their future, I was told. But not yet."


Except that the bright mind at Amazon that I referred to earlier has already caught on to this...


I'll continue to keep an eye on Kindle Singles and report back on the best of them.

Books for Kindles: Some Thoughts & Recommendations

In today's issue of The Observer (the Sunday edition of The Guardian), there's a fascinating article by John Naughton about the doors that have been opened to previously unpublished authors by the arrival of the Kindle and other e-readers. That prompted me to ponder the proliferation of Kindle-only content, "independent" publishing and other such phenomena, and generated some mixed conclusions.

The first of these is that -- without question -- Naughton's observation that "at a stroke, all those tiresome gatekeepers – those self-important agents, editors and publishers who stood between you and recognition – are abolished. Suddenly, the world can see your hitherto unrecognised talent in all its glory" is all-too-true. Out of curiosity, I have downloaded some books that looked appealing, only to find that they were almost literally unreadable. Even when the plot was borderline coherent, and the characters marginally interesting, the authors have failed to realize that their work could only be improved with some oversight by some of those very "tiresome gatekeepers." After all, the job of the latter is to try and make a book the best book it can possibly be, and thus they have a vested interest in winnowing out purplish prose, eliminating repetitive redundancies (yes, I did that on purpose...) and cleaning up typos and grammatical hiccups. Some authors, sadly, fail to realize that their deathless prose might actually be improved by an editor or that their stories need a lot of work before they are ready for prime time, and interpret constructive criticism from pernicious gatekeepers as a refusal to recognize their peerless prose for what it is.

Don't misunderstand me. I have stumbled across some winners among self-published books, particularly in the arena of historical fiction. Susan Higginbotham's debut (and still my fave among her books), The Traitor's Wife, was picked up by a mainstream publisher after wowing a lot of historical fiction fans with its fascinating and well-researched look at the fall of Edward II, orchestrated by his queen and her lover. (In my eyes, it helped that the story was told through the eyes of a little-known player, the king's niece and wife to his 'favorite', Hugh le Despenser.) Another veteran of the HF scene, Brian Wainwright, has written a few self-published books, including the absolutely hilarious Adventures of Alianore Audley and the rather dense Within the Fetterlock, both of which definitely deserve wider audiences and a mainstream publisher.

By and large, however, the Kindle-only titles contain -- sadly -- a lot of books that never reach their full potential, for whatever reason. With one glaring example: Kindle Singles.

I don't know which genius at Amazon (or elsewhere) came up with this concept, but whoever it is should be carefully followed, because that person has a good eye for publishing concepts that will work in the digital era. I've now read more than half-a-dozen of these small-scale offerings (which translate into anywhere from 14 to 70-odd pages in "real" "dead tree" books), and conclude that this is a brilliant way to bring great reporting to a wider audience than would otherwise be possible -- and to do it in a timely fashion.

For instance, within only a few weeks of Osama bin Laden's death, Kindlers like me (and remember, you don't need to own the e-reader itself to sample these; the Kindle app is available for computers, phones and other devices) could read Christopher Hitchens's musings on "bin Ladenism" in The Enemy. I've read the moving tale of Jacques Leslie's return to Indochina, where he worked as a war correspondent in Vietnam and Cambodia, in War Wounds. ProPublica has taken advantage of the Kindle Single to showcase some of its prize-winning work by folks like Sebastian Rotella, who scored an Overseas Press Club Award for reporting that shows up in Pakistan and the Mumbai Terror Attacks, and the inimitable Jesse Eisinger, who scored a Pulitzer for his reporting on the financial crisis this year -- which Kindle Single followers can read in The Wall Street Money Machine: together, these are a great example of a new kind of journalism (for more info on the non-profit ProPublica, check out its site here) taking advantage of a new kind of publishing model.

Of all of these, a list of my three favorites have to start with the painful and painstakingly-researched piece by Jon Krakauer that put an end to Greg Mortenson's career as philanthropic hero, Three Cups of Deceit. From David Wolman, author of an upcoming book about the future of money, came The Instigators, a behind-the-scenes-look at the Egyptian revolution of early this year, through the tale of Ahmed Mahar, an engineer who unexpectedly found himself becoming a political activism in the years that lead up to Mubarak's ouster. Chinese Dreams, by Indian writer Anand Giridharas, addresses China's economic boom in a way that I've been curious about for years, but haven't seen many writers focus on in isolation: the question of whether there is a uniquely Chinese approach to being a superpower and whether the rejection of the West's "lessons" might be more than just pique. All three are heartily recommended -- 4.5 star offerings from the world of the Kindle Single.

The ability to send content out into the world, unmediated, via Kindle may be a trap for writers without the ability to take a cold, hard look at their own prose, it can be a boon for those of us with an interest in longform journalism. At any rate, in spite of Naughton's valid qualms about e-book publishing outlined in his article, I can only conclude that there's at least some gold to be found out there in Kindle-land by those willing to hunt for it -- and that means that we'll see even more creative uses of this new way to reach readers in the future.

The Book Biz: Next-Gen Book Tours

When Chasing Goldman Sachs came out last summer, and people started asking me when/where I'd be going on book tour, my publicist broke it to me that book tours are so last century. But it looks like Ayelet Waldman has found a clever way to innovate! And my friend Kim Brittingham has come up with an even wilder proposal: anyone who buys a very large quantity of her new memoir, Read My Hips, to give away, wins her presence and participation in a creative project of the purchaser's choice. Glad to see such creativity in marketing, beyond the creativity on the printed page!

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/06/book-tours-age-social-networks?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/followthereader