Category Archives: guilty pleasures

September 21, 2011   Miriam   fiction, fun, great books, guilty pleasures, Miriam, reading, reviews  
21

Virtuous reading

My neighborhood book club is tomorrow night and I’m about 100 pages into this month’s fiction pick, The Tiger’s Wife.  I guess that if I stay up late and cram I can finish it in time to dazzle the ladies with my literary insights.  Problem is, I got to page 100 about two months ago and I have had zero desire to pick the book up again.  Despite the apocalyptically excellent reviews (sorry, couldn’t come up with an adjective BIG enough for the unctuous praise the book received), those first 100 pages left me pretty cold.  Sure, Ms. Obreht is a precociously fine writer, but if you’re familiar with magical realism and Eastern European novels of the last half century, you might find, like I did, that a lot of her schtick is derivative and not particularly emotionally impactful.

Or, you might think it’s a brilliant book and that I’m a boor for being bored by it.  No matter.  The point of my rambling today is that with any other book, I might have reached that 100-page stopping point and, deciding that life’s too short, buried the novel somewhere in the lower shelves of an overstuffed bookcase never to be seen again.  But, I can’t seem to do that.  This is one of those books that I feel obligated to slog through no matter how disappointed in it I already am or how certain that the next 200 pages are not going to change my mind.  What I want to be reading for pleasure is a toothy thriller, or a frothy paranormal, or literary fare that speaks to themes I’m concerned with right now, or historical nonfiction with lots of plot twists and stranger-than-fiction characters, or a totally irredeemable celebrity memoir.  What I feel obligated to do is finish Ms. Obreht’s opus just so that I can say I did.

I’ve always struggled with the notion of virtuous reading.  On the one hand, if it weren’t for virtuous reading, my literary education would be sorely lacking in some key areas (I’m thinking of you, James Fenimore Cooper).  On the other hand, with so many great books beckoning and the certainty that I’ll never get to enjoy but a fraction of the ones on my multi-page list of things to read before I die, it really rankles to devote valuable time to something just because it’s supposed to be good for me.

Where do you fall on this issue?  Do I keep reading and pat myself on the back for my moral fortitude or chuck it and move on to some other page turner?  What would you do?

September 08, 2011   Jessica   favorites, format, guilty pleasures, Jessica  
5

Fun with Fonts

I have a bit of a fixation with fonts. I like the notes in the back of books that describe the provenance of the typeface. When I was a kid, my family subscribed to the now defunct but nerdily wonderful u&lc magazine (upper and lower case) and I have whiled away unconscionable hours with the font pull down menus on assorted word processing programs. So it is perhaps not a surprise that I greeted the publication of Simon Garfield’s Just My Type with real pleasure http://www.npr.org/2011/09/04/140126278/know-this-headlines-font-youre-just-my-type.

Garfield writes “Twenty years ago we hardly knew them, but now we all have favorites. Computers have rendered us all gods of type, a privilege we could never have anticipated in the age of the typewriter.”

Here’s a video of the author “judging some books by their covers” http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/video/2010/oct/17/typography.

Do you have a favorite font? My default is Times New Roman, but I regularly use Arial for e-mails, and I have a weakness for Sylfaen even though I think it’s a bit fey. I hate reading in Courier, such that if I am able, I will change the typeface before I read a manuscript in what I find an arid, joyless type style. (Unlike those who fetishize the Smith Corona, apparentlyI have painful memories of using an actual typewriter.)

Anyway, I probably lean more serif than sans in the most general sense, and I am prone to reading into the font choices of those who e-mail me (Aqua Palatino. Hmmm…)

How about you?

June 22, 2011   Miriam   Amazon, audience, author events, authors, Barnes and Noble, comics, culture, favorites, guilty pleasures, independent bookstores, Miriam, retailers  
14

The price of admission

There was a little used book store around the corner from my apartment complex, when I was growing up in Miami, that was my second home.  Nerdy, latch-key kid that I was, I spent hours browsing the shelves, trying to get the owner to throw in an extra dog-eared paperback in exchange for the stack of Spanish language comic books I was trading, and generally getting high on the smell of old paper and ink.  I still have treasured editions scattered throughout my many bookcases whose provenance was that little shop.

Then, when I first got to New York, I was blown away by places like Shakespeare & Co., Brentano’s, Coliseum Books, Papyrus and that promised land for bibliophiles, The Strand.   A few years later many of my favorite haunts had gone out of business or been taken over by soulless corporate giants (you know who you are) but I never lost my love of browsing aimlessly in book stores.  These days, I still occasionally wander over to the Barnes & Noble on Union Square and spend my lunch hour in the fiction stacks on the fourth floor.

Of course, book stores have also traditionally been a place for authors to do their dog and pony show in support of their work.   Book tours are going the way of the Amazon forests but certain authors are still a huge draw (just try to get anywhere near the third floor at the aforementioned Barnes & Noble when David Sedaris is doing a reading).  Some of these events can make you fall in love with a book or its author, sometimes both.   They’re also the makings of a cheap date for grown-ups and an alternative to a $30 movie outing for young kids.  Except, it seems, no more.

Check out this  Gawker piece about the new trend of book stores charging admission to author events.  I actually understand and support independents in their efforts to get people in the door.  These are trying times for book sellers and if they are to keep their doors open in the face of the online juggernauts (you know who you are, cough, Amazon) they are going to have to figure out a way to make money.  But it does make me sad.   How many times did I walk out of a book store with a title I had no intention of buying when I went in after stumbling upon an author reading from his/her book?  I wonder if the days of the accidental book buyer are numbered as a result of these new pay-for-play tactics.

What do you all think about this new development?

June 03, 2011   Rachel   collecting, fun, guilty pleasures, Rachel S.  
7

I swear, I don’t have a problem!

Since moving is basically my life right now, I can’t help but write about it again. Finding a new apartment, it figures, is just the beginning. The relief only lasts for a little while before you turn around and see the vast accumulation of things you own. Where did all of this stuff come from? At least, that’s what I was thinking just the other night as my roommate and I were trying to devise ingenious plans for packing up and moving everything we own. Furniture? Simple. Clothes? That’s what suitcases are for.

All of this seemed reasonable, until I turned around again and was faced with the bookshelf. And the books stacked next to it. And the ones stacked in front of it. I looked in the kitchen and there was the pile of cookbooks on the radiator. Slowly, with suspicion, I walked into my room and saw the scattered jumble of books next to my dresser and on my nightstand. Same in the other bedroom. Panic. We don’t have enough boxes for this! There might not be enough boxes in all of Brooklyn for this! When did we turn into book hoarders?

Of course, I suppose, books aren’t the worst things we could be hoarding. Better than, say, perishable food or cats, and I suppose we don’t have a serious problem (yet), but it’s still overwhelming. I really don’t want to get rid of any of my books, despite that I know I’ll never read some of them again! As Matt Paxton, one of Jane’s clients and host of the A&E show Hoarders, writes in his book, The Secret Lives of Hoarders, there are many levels of hoarding, and I still think I’m safely below even level one. Which is a relief. I mean, come on, it’s books! There’s nothing wrong with having a lot of books! Surely some of you have similar problems in this particular area of hoarding and just for assurance that we don’t all yet need to be clinically diagnosed, maybe it’s best to check out this video from the expert himself:

Until it begins impeding on my daily life, I don’t think I’ll start worrying in seriousness, so I’ll just turn my focus now on accumulating boxes (and boxes. And boxes) in which to pack up the masses of reading material we’ve acquired over the years. If anyone is around on moving day, please don’t hesitate to help out—because after packing, comes actual transportation and then the most dreaded of all—unpacking…

April 06, 2011   Miriam   fun, guilty pleasures, Miriam, reading  
4

…in bed.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but I have some seriously slothful tendencies. If I thought I’d get anything done, I’d install a hammock in my office. My point is I like lounging around. A stack of books on my night table, a lap desk and a laptop nearby, and some Mad Men episodes on the DVR and I could stay in bed for days. There’s something about the relaxed state you find yourself in when propped up against a bunch of pillows that allows for a certain type of creativity—assuming, of course, that you can stay awake.

This fun piece by Meg Wolitzer reminded me that the bed can be as creative a hub as the dining table or the library. It also got me thinking about literary goings-on in beds (usually sex and death, but not always). What are your favorite bedroom scenes in literature?

February 04, 2011   Rachel   fun, guilty pleasures, independent bookstores, Rachel S.  
12

I am a girl looking for a boy and I like…

This morning I went to the coffeeshop around the corner from my apartment to, well, get some coffee and do the crossword (coffeeshops always lose points when they don’t offer free newspapers with Arts sections for me to poach) and I noticed that the cut-out snowflakes that had been adorning the windows since December were now replaced with multicolored paper hearts. It took me a minute, but I finally figured out that it was February, and February means Valentine’s Day.

Whether or not you’re a supporter of February 14th or not, there’s no denying its presence during the bleakest month each year. I mentioned briefly in an earlier post the matchmaking board at Word, an independent bookshop in my neighborhood. I love reading all the slips of paper tacked to it every time I stop by. They’re all the same format, with spaces only for “I’m a _____ looking for a ______” and what books/authors you do like and those you don’t. That’s it! No other personality traits or qualifications, these matches are made based on books and writing preference alone.

Which gets me thinking. How much does compatibility in literary tastes matter in compatibility? Does it matter? Similar or, conversely, vastly different tastes are certainly helpful for awkward first date conversation—mention the book you’re reading (or, really, any subjective artistic pursuit) and whether the two of you can gush together or argue amicably, there’s at least ten minutes of waiting for the food to come covered. I would never decisively say that a preference for a certain genre of literature or a writer’s body of work could ever define a person (as evidenced by John’s post earlier this week), but it’s still really fun to find someone else who has read the same obscure novel or loves the same generally ridiculed author as you.

In any case, while I myself am hardly adventurous enough to fill out one of those forms and stick them up for the world to see, I wholeheartedly encourage everyone else to do so—otherwise I don’t get to read them!

May 27, 2010   DG&B   fun, guilty pleasures, lists, Michael, reading  
10

LOST in a good book

by Michael

It’s BEA week, and I’m in New York, in a hotel, exhausted by my day of standing around. But my mind keeps drifting back to Sunday and the finale of LOST. As I said to friends, I laughed, I cried, and I was completely caught up in the moment. I will miss the show, flaws and all.

What’s this got to do with books, you ask? LOST had many literary allusions throughout the show, and this LA Times blog post  goes through a bunch of them. Interestingly, the producers and I like many of the same books. Are any of the LOST books on your favorites list?

January 19, 2010   DG&B   contest, fun, guilty pleasures, Lauren, titles  
42

Titling, and DGLM’s first contest!

by Lauren

The Ghostbusters theme has been ringing through my head this morning, because of a charmingly named article I’ve been corresponding about written by one of the agency’s clients. I’ve had “Paperback Writer” stuck in my head for days because of my own foolish blog post title from Friday. And I was once tormented for months by two projects I had on submission at the same time that had song lyrics as working titles.

Titles can certainly stick with us, especially when they’re allusions to something else. In college I took a class on literature of the “transition” with a professor who was fond of irrelevant tangents, so I often entertained myself by picking out book titles from the poetry course pack. WB Yeats’s “The Second Coming” alone is owed a debt of gratitude from the classics Things Fall Apart and Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and if you search the poem’s key phrases you can find a surprising number of others. WWI era poetry has also provided authors quite a bit of inspiration.

And beyond songs and poetry, puns and movie titles provide a treasure trove of opportunities for books, especially series fiction. Our own Victoria Laurie’s two mystery series are a perfect example.

Unfortunately, titling books is often much, much harder than just coming up with something to reference. As agents, we often have a hand in helping to come up with great titles for our books—and brainstorming lists of options for each others’ clients can be both a fun and trying experience. Recently, after hundreds of choices were suggested and nixed for a particular book, I decided to consult the internet for help and stumbled upon a great and also hysterical tool for authors: author MD Benoit’s Random Title Generator (note: there are words that might offend some, so use with caution). We actually found a handful of really good titles—though none quite right for the book—and some that were so delightfully unfortunate we had to share those with each other, too. Click on over to the title generator and get yourself a new title for your masterpiece or a working title so atrocious it’ll help lighten the mood whenever you get frustrated with writers’ block.

But we think that you, our faithful blog readers, can do better than a random word combiner. So come up with the best bad fake book title you can and leave it in the comments—bonus points for giving us a logline or subtitle to give us context. We’ll take entries until the end of the day on Friday, select our favorites as finalists, and let you fine folks pick the winner here on the blog. Winner gets a shiny new DGLM water bottle!

December 16, 2009   DG&B   guilty pleasures, Jim, Miriam, nonfiction, opinion, scandal, what we're looking for  
7

Chasing ambulances

by Miriam

Every once in a while a celebrity news story morphs into a veritable hydra-headed monster of a tabloid saga. And, given my love for that particular brand of infotainment, I am usually sucked in right along with the other readers of Us Weekly, People, and, yes, Star. So, you know I’ve been bouncing from one blog to another for the last couple of weeks following the supernova of a meltdown that is the Tiger Woods saga. Same thing happened with the Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford and John Edwards gossip fests. The rubber necking fascination for grown men behaving badly never seems to wane, despite the fact that at this point it seems more the norm than the exception. Fame/Money + Unbridled Ego = Tabloid story in the making.

So, whenever one of these events turns into the usual circus, my colleagues and I immediately think “Is there a book in this?” And, of course, there usually is. In fact, there are usually 10 books. So, how do you decide whether to jump on the ambulance chasing wagon, track down a writer and loose them on the story or take a chance on the “insider” account by one of the members of the disgraced figure’s entourage, his ex-whatever, or his second grade teacher or simply keep watching from afar. The answer is tricky and it depends on what kind of agent/agency you are.

Generally speaking, we take on books that we think we’re going to be able to sell because we don’t get paid for our efforts unless we do. Given that simple premise, it doesn’t make sense to run through hoops in order to try to make a book about one of these scandals happen unless (a) that book is going to offer revelations that are truly not to be found in the 24/7 coverage by blogs, magazines, newspapers, and tv shows (b) there is serious analysis of the situation and its more universal implications by a writer who has strong credentials and who is not just going to do a clip job restating the obvious and (c) one of the main players is willing to sell out his mother for a book deal and really does know where the bodies are buried. Ultimately, though, it’s one thing to be titillated by these kinds of stories while eating your Cheerios and quite another to spend the time, energy and dedication it takes to get a book published on a narrative that will soon be supplanted by the next celebrity/politician/sports star behaving badly. And, sometimes, despite the potential monetary windfall, the subject is just too distasteful to pursue–I don’t think anyone here would have repped OJ Simpson’s book (except perhaps Jim), even though we all would strenuously defend an agent’s choice to do so.

If you were agents would you try to sell a Tiger Woods book right now?

November 18, 2009   DG&B   fun, guilty pleasures, Miriam, reading  
14

Guilty Pleasures

by Miriam

Browsing NPR.org’s Book section, I came across this and it made me think about my own literary guilty pleasures. Given that I take pride in being an eclectic (some might say schizoid) reader, I don’t generally feel guilty about many of my choices but every once in a while I find myself sneaking around with a book that I think will raise eyebrows on the train or lead to outright taunting by my rude friends and family members. Usually, this has to do more with the cover art–certain romance novels leave very little to the imagination–or provocative title than with the actual content, but I find that I tend to feel a little guilty reading certain pop culture blockbusters such as the Twilight series. It’s positively unseemly to be swooning over vampires, along with millions of teenaged girls. Or is it? What are your guilty pleasures?

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