#FridayReads Misogyny, the late Jack Holland’s modern classic, a thorough study of what he calls “The World’s Oldest Prejudice,” to help me understand current events. Just starting If The Dead Rise Not, an electric Bernie Gunther WWII-era thriller by Philip Kerr.
Today my publishing friend David Wilk has posted Booksellers and Co-opetition, an intriguing commentary on his blog, suggesting that indie booksellers should consider selling ereading devices in their brick & mortar stores, even Kindles and Nooks, as a way to maintain their connections with customers who are migrating to digital reading, even as many of them continue to read print books too. I suggest you read David’s piece, and think about how independent bookstores might carve out a new place in the emerging ereading environment.
A pretty amazing discovery: an original transcript of the 1944 Bretton Woods economic conference has surfaced. Evidently, all accounts since the end of WWII have relied on second-hand sources and recollections, but an 800-page transcript of the summit that viewed the wreckage from the war and set the course for the postwar financial structure–when the World Bank and the IMF were set up–has now been found in the US Treasury Library. The transcript would be of tremendous value to historians and scholars in an annotated edition, and I’ve contacted the Daily Telegraph‘s business commentator Jeremy Warner who broke this story to see if he’d be interested in developing a book with me and the people who discovered the transcript.
In the attached black & white photo, US Treasury Secretary is seated on the right next to John Maynard Keynes. In his Daily Telegraph blog Warner has written about the discovery of the transcript and observes that:
I’ve been fascinated by the conference for a long time, not least because it was held at the majestic Mt. Washington Hotel, near where I went to college in New Hampshire, at Franconia College. Bretton Woods is an alternate name for the hotel, and the moniker has also always been used to describe the historic conference. Useful histories of the hotel and the conference can be found here and here.
#Fridayreads Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter, Carmen Aguirre’s chronicle of her upbringing in flight from Pinochet’s Chile, winner of the 2012 Canada Reads: True Stories competition. Aguirre’s family first fled to Canada after Allende’s fall, but her firebrand mother moved them to Bolivia, on the doorstep of their homeland, so she could participate in the revolutionary struggle to liberate their country. When Carmen turns 18, she becomes an active member of the struggle. Gripping and good.
Also, finishing John D. MacDonald’s the chiller, The Executioners, the 1957 novel on which the movie “Cape Fear” would be based.
Book Camp on Sunday, February 12 was a spirited ‘unconference,’ a confab of experimentally-inclined publishing people enjoyed enormously by the 150 + plus in attendance, including me.
If you’ve never taken part in an ‘unconference’–and I never had until the first NY Book Camp in 2010–these gatherings are deliberately unplanned and unprogrammed up to the moment they begin. Book Camp is very much opposite to the two big digital publishing conferences held each year, Digital Book World and Tools of Change. As scripted and prepped as speakers are at those events, the presentations at Book Camp are informal, casual, and exploratory. Here, people aren’t sure what they think about a publishing question until they’ve had a chance to say it aloud, or listened to a colleague talking about it. / / more. . .
#Fridayreads Ex Libris, terrific novel of 17th C. London by Ross King, best known for his art historical nonfiction (‘Judgment of Paris’). Protagonist is Isaac Inchbold, a bookseller on the trail of an esoteric manuscript.
Next book up: ‘Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter’ by Carmen Aguirre, winner of the 2012 Canada Reads: True Stories competition.
#fridayreads Creator of the Travis McGee series, John D. MacDonald’s The Executioners the basis of “Cape Fear,” w/Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck.
Congratulations to friends Emiko Morita, Jesse Finkelstein, and Scott McIntyre of Douglas & McIntyre Publishers of Vancouver for their book Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter by Carmen Aguirre being named winner of the “Canada Reads: True Stores” competition on CBC! It was brilliantly championed in this week-long on-air debate by musician Shad. The runner-up was Ken Dryden’s timeless hockey classic The Game. Other finalists during the week were On a Cold Road: Adventures in Canadian Rock by Dave Bidini, longtime member of the great band The Rheostatics; The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Valliant; and Prisoner of Tehran, a memoir by Marina Nemat. Hour-long discussions and debates on the five books have been held each day this week, carried on CBC Radio One, and on the CBC website, with each finalist championed, not by its author, but by an advocate. TV personality Alan Thicke boosted The Game, for instance, and also did a great job.
This was the first year Canada Reads was devoted to nonfiction books. The process began a few months ago with a longlist of fifty books, and through readers and fans voting for their favorite books, the crop was reduced to the shortlist of five. Despite issues I had with the judging at times seeming too much of a reality show, with books being eliminated one by one, and one advocate who I simply came to loathe, I think a months-long national reading fest like this is a great way to raise the awareness of books and reading among the widest possible population. I don’t suggest that the U.S. do this precisely, but initiatives with entire cities reading the same book have been quite successful. As members of the U.S. book community we certainly ought to continue experimenting with ways to heighten the visibility of great books and reading. Winners of Canada Reads invariably become huge national bestsellers. I find time after time that U.S. cultural industries–publishing and music especially–have a lot to learn from the ways that Canada promotes its arts and artists.
Something Fierce will be published in the US in August. I am getting a copy from D&M and will be writing about on this site.
[Feb. 10-This post has been updated with new information from the publisher in Vancouver about the forthcoming edition.]