Category Archives: reading

February 18, 2011   Lauren   characters, fun, Lauren, opinion, reading  
14

What’s in a name?

I’ve been thinking about character names having recently tried to complete this surprisingly difficult Sporcle quiz.  (Do you Sporcle?  You should.  Unless you feel the internet already provides too many distractions, in which case do not click that under any circumstances.)  There are so many associations people have with certain names—some predictable, if they’re the names of famous people or popular characters in books, TV shows, and movies, and others just because of people they happen to know.  I grew up under the impression that Lauren was not a terribly popular name since I never seemed to see it in books or hear it on TV—not uncommon, mind you, but rarer than the seemingly omnipresent Laura—but I now know that I was wrong since it was exceedingly popular when I was born.  In the last few years, I’ve come to associate my own name with a rather unfortunate type of person, thanks in no small part to Lauren Conrad.  After she came on the scene, suddenly it seemed that that was what a Lauren was and every time a Lauren cropped up anywhere, she was kind of awful.  Similarly, Bella has always been one of my favorite names and was up until recently the name that I had always said I’d give a theoretical future daughter, but that’s out now, because I wouldn’t want people thinking I’d named this imaginary hypothetical child after Twilight—which surely plenty of people are doing—since if people are going to make name-based assumptions, I’d rather they be the ones I’m actually aiming for.  I wouldn’t be opposed to naming children after literary characters, but I’d be selecting them pretty carefully, and I don’t think Ms. Swan would make the cut.

When I read, though, I’m also bringing those opinions to bear.  I think part of my attachment to 1984 initially sprung from my fondness for the name Julia.  Reading Bridget Jones’s Diary, for about half the book, I had trouble realigning my impression of Bridgets from the Bridget I grew up with to Bridget Jones—they couldn’t be more different.  Jo March was an early favorite because my grandmother is Josephine, but I’ve long had to resist holding Amy March against people I meet named Amy.

So tell me, authors, do you find yourself deliberating about the associations you have with names you might give your characters?  Do you ever name anyone after people you know, but then feel odd about making that character go through something difficult?  Do you worry that people you know will think you’re assigning their attributes to characters who happen to share their names?  Or do you deliberately avoid names of anyone you actually know and anyone famous, so that the names don’t bring anything to the table?  With so many names out there, how do you choose?

February 17, 2011   Jessica   future of publishing, Jessica, nonfiction, opinion, reading  
2

Between interest and exhaustion

We live in interesting times: It remains to be seen what will happen in Bahrain, Yemen, Libya and the other Middle Eastern and North African nations where citizens are demanding more responsive, democratic governments, but it is as good a time as any to reflect on the way current events and more broadly, history, are published. Publishing houses must weigh whether they can rush or “crash” a book out in order to capitalize on often-fickle public and media interest, or wait until there is some clarity about the facts on the ground. A book on Egypt that went to press on the night of Thursday, February 10, when Hosni Mubarak announced that he would not step down, would look very different than one that went to press nineteen hours later, when he tendered his resignation. Book publishing has, for obvious reasons, been ill-suited to record breaking news. Books are time consuming to write, and to tie a book too closely to volatile situations is to risk publishing a work that is outdated before it hits the shelves, or worse yet, one that’s just plain wrong, a latter day Dewey Defeats Truman. So we look to books for the long view—analysis, breadth and depth. Yet once written, both paper and e-books can actually be created quite quickly (interestingly, it can take just as long to get e-books into retailers’ systems as paper books).  Publishers are always keen to capitalize on media attention, hoping to leap through—and ideally wedge open—the magical window that exists before Americans grow exhausted of a given subject. It’s not easy.

My question: have current events driven any of your book purchases?

February 16, 2011   Miriam   fun, Miriam, music, reading  
6

Literary sounds

A lot of bookish people I know are also obsessed with music.  It seems to me that the gene that accounts for compulsive reading and the almost psychotic belief that characters and situations on a page are as real as our next door neighbor and her cat is the same that allows us to catalogue our lives through the music we were listening to at the time important things were happening.  In the last weeks of my pregnancy, for instance, I vividly remember sitting in the waiting room of my doctor’s office reading Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.  I also remember walking to Lamaze classes while listening to an odd mix I’d made that included music from Johnny Cash, Janis Joplin, Oasis, and Stevie Nicks, among other wouldn’t-be-caught-dead-on-the-same-tribute-album artists.

Driving in to work this week, I’ve been listening to my latest bizarre playlist featuring Sting’s haunting “Moon over Bourbon Street,” which was, of course, inspired by Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire.  That tune got me thinking about other great literary songs that I’ve loved, like Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” and Suzanne Vega’s “Calypso.”  Literary and music geek that I am, I get positively giddy when confronted with a great song that references a beloved book or literary character.

So, tell me, what are your favorite literary songs?  (Maybe my next playlist will be a collection of book inspired music!)

P.S.  Here’s a performance of “Moon over Bourbon Street” which offers the added bonus of Sting speaking French:

February 14, 2011   Jim   favorites, fun, Jim, reading, romance  
14

A Very Dystel Valentine

I feel like my blog posts have been coming at you straight from dullsville for the past few weeks, and I need to spice things up a bit! So: romance!

In honor of Valentine’s Day, the holiday invented by couples specifically to scorch the hearts of their single friends, I’ve decided to poll some fellow Dystel-ites on the most romantic books of all time.

Miriam picked Jane Eyre and The English Patient with a nod to Love in the Time of Cholera which should come as no surprise seeing as her most recent entry testified to her love of its first line: “It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.” While everyone else in the office complained that they couldn’t think of romantic books, she continued with her suggestions: The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love; most of Turgenev; some Milan Kundera; A Tale of Two Cities.

Jane’s response was immediate and perfect: does romance get more epic that Gone with the Wind? I think not.

Lauren took a decidedly anti-romantic approach. While she does enjoy, say, the poetry of Keats, her favorite books tend to be bleaker and feature antiheroes and assholes. I pointed out that assholes need love too, and she settled on The Great Gatsby. Romantic AND bleak. It qualifies!

Everyone else scrambled for answers as though romance in books was a totally unfamiliar concept. But they came up with favorites eventually! John settled on Wuthering Heights. Michael got stuck coming up with a list of the most inappropriate choices of all time (Lolita, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Revolutionary Road, Flowers in the Attic!), but eventually refocused on actual romance and selected the  much more appropriate Shopgirl. Stephanie chose A Walk to Remember, which I haven’t read, but I did see the Mandy Moore movie!

As for me, my choice doesn’t have a happy ending, but I still think it’s the most romantic book ever (and one of my all-time favorites). The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I mean, come on! SPOILER ALERT. Quasimodo loves Esmeralda so much that he clutches her dead body until HE DIES TOO! And the last line! “When they tried to detach the skeleton which he held in his embrace, he fell to dust.” I love that line like Quasi loved his gypsy girl.

What about all you folks? What do you think the most romantic novels of all time are?

February 14, 2011   Jane   inspiration, Jane, reading, writing  
6

Where do those incredible ideas come from?

We all know that memoirs are based on the writer’s life experiences, and other narrative non-fiction is written because the author has an interest in the subject and usually has to do a great deal of research into what he or she is writing about.

But what about fiction?

Many people say they write about what they know, at least in their first novel.

I suspect a book like Room has a basis in real life events, although the point of view is totally fresh and the author’s talent is superb.  But what about others like The Hunger Games or our own Jacqueline Carey’s world creation in the Kushiel series? What about Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow? Where do those ideas come from?

There was a superb piece in this last weekend’s Wall Street Journal entitled “The Life Well-Read” by Eric Ormsby which discusses where writers’ inspirations come from.  Many rely on books they have read—especially as children.

The other very important point this piece makes, though, is that we all remember books by how they feel and look; will we remember them as well if all we have done is read them on an electronic monitor?  What a good question.

I wonder what books you remember, what you think inspired their authors, and whether you think you would remember these reading experiences in the same way if you had read them on an electronic device rather than in hard copy?

February 11, 2011   Lauren   controversy, favorites, fun, Lauren, opinion, reading  
8

When the ones you love are kind of…awful

Reading this article in the Guardian about the latest snide Martin Amis remark to disgust people, I was struck by a familiar sentiment:  Oh, Martin, must you always make it so embarrassing to like you?

Apparently Amis declared that he would only write a children’s book if he had brain damage.  Charming, truly charming.  With one asinine comment, he managed to insult children’s book authors, the brain damaged, and, well, children.

Now surely, this attitude problem is much of what Amis is all about and at least part of the reason anyone bothers to talk about him.  (For the record, the other part is that he’s genuinely talented.  Whatever he may be as a man, I truly love London Fields.)  This isn’t the first time he’s said something seemingly exclusively to annoy others.  The protagonist of Money is one of the more repulsive characters in contemporary fiction, and Amis named him John Self.  (Points for self awareness, perhaps?)  And a great many writers of wonderful, wonderful things were also terrible, terrible people.  If we ruled out the artistic products of people who are not also lovely people we don’t object to, it’s terrifying to think what cultural gems we’d lose.  The list of drunks who were nasty to their wives alone would deprive us of much of the canon.

I could list examples, but I’d be here all day.  Instead, enjoy this clip of Jill Sobule singing “Heroes,” her song on this very subject.

Giving that a listen, there are far worse things one could be than a jackass, I suppose.  I think my issue with Amis is less his attitude, which I’d potentially find amusing and endearing if he ever seemed insightful or funny or clever when putting someone down for no reason.  It’s not like I want him to be nice.  It just all seems to come from such a defensive, sad, ain’t never gonna win the Booker sort of place.  Witness his public kerfuffle* over everyone’s favorite British non-celebrity, Katie “Jordan” Price—when an acclaimed literary novelist comes off as jealous of a girl who is famous for wearing little clothing, being so tacky that tacky people look on in horror, and trying to date herself into greater stardom, I find it hard to get upset about his misogyny.  What he was saying was sort of beside the point—the aggravating thing is that he felt the need to say it at all.  It’s not easy to see this as a brave man speaking truth to power and damn the consequences.  Instead, he just seems petulant and insecure, and really, I just want him to be more.  If he’s going to take people down for sport, is it too much to ask that he do it with style and a little more effort to hide his wounded ego?

Looking at your own favorite books, are any of them written by people who are sort of hard to champion?

*With the standard caveat that Wikipedia is perhaps not the most accurate source of information.  Suffice it to say that I’m assuming no one’s sabotaging the integrity of this particular piece of information.  It’s not like it’s a subject where accuracy is of vital importance, like Justin Bieber.

February 11, 2011   Rachel   fun, Rachel S., reading, short stories  
3

Once upon a time there was a princess the end.

If I had my way, there would be a lot of days that I would wake up, get dressed (I realize that it’s a bit weird that I can’t actually be comfortable unless I change out of pajamas into real clothes in the morning) and spend a few hours doing nothing but reading a great long book before I start having an actual day. Obviously, this is entirely unique and you have probably never felt this way yourself, nor have you heard or read of anyone else wanting to do the same thing. Kidding aside, only in a perfect world is this life of absolute leisure a possibility. I still like to read a little mornings, but it’s a bit frustrating getting through less than 30 pages in a sitting every time I open a novel.

And thus, I present to you the wonder of the short story.

Of course, short stories are an art unto themselves. It’s not necessarily any easier to write a really good short story than it is to write an even mediocre full-length book. There’s far less time to develop characters, background and plot, yet the effect should, in the end, be similar. Or not. Sometimes, a short story is wonderful because of all it leaves out, while still managing to maintain the feeling of a complete narrative. I have a vast collection of short story anthologies that are perfect for those times when there’s only maybe 20 minutes to sit down and really read. I can read a whole story in that time, without feeling rushed or wasting precious time flipping back through the pages of a novel to get an idea of where I left off.

The first book of short stories I bought was a few years ago, during a particularly wonderful day spent in the café at the Border’s near my home town. As I’m wont to do, I amassed a huge pile of books—for these purposes, it’s always cookbooks, philosophy, social science-y books, literary criticism, and various types of prose that’s easy to flip through without much concentration. This time, however, I also picked up a massive book of short stories, essays and short non-fiction, solely for it’s title: The Paris Review Book: of Heartbreak, Madness, Sex, Love, Betrayal, Outsiders, Intoxication, War, Whimsy, Horrors, God, Death, Dinner, Baseball, … and Everything Else in the World Since 1953. Come on, how could you not?

In any case, thus began my love for brief passages of narration—whether it be fiction, essay or otherwise, I love anthologies. The Best American Series (both Short Stories and Non-Required Reading) hold steady and I recently read a collection of re-worked fairytales called My Mother She Killed me, My Father He Ate Me (I tell you, I’m a sucker for titles). I’m a fan also of collected stories by a single author—Julian Barnes’ The Lemon Table, for example, is a book I picked up on a whim, never having read anything by the man before. He’s now one of my favorite authors.

I’ll never give up on the novel—perish the thought!—but when I’m in need of a book to throw in my bag for solace or entertainment during a subway ride or stint in a waiting room, it’ll be a collection of short prose for sure.

February 09, 2011   Miriam   advice, fun, Miriam, opinion, reading, writing  
16

First lines and all that

I’ve been on a fiction reading tear of late and, like Jim, excited by several manuscripts that have landed in my inbox since the beginning of the year.  Because, as we’ve mentioned countless times in this blog, it’s relatively rare (percentage wise, that is) for us to fall in love with a novel to a degree that makes us want to represent it, I’ve been (again, like Jim) wondering why this sudden embarrassment of riches.  I’ve actually been reviewing my “process” in order to try and figure out what about these novels grabbed me in the first place.

Then, I came upon this piece in the Huffington Post and remembered how insidiously effective a great first line is.  Not all first lines are as pithy as “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” or “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,”  of course, but a well crafted opening in a novel immediately grabs you by the metaphorical lapels, drags you into a comfortable chair, and forces you to keep turning pages until, hopefully, you reach a satisfying conclusion.  Sometimes it’s not until you reach that last page that you turn back to the beginning and see how everything was presaged and encapsulated in that first sentence (or two).

I know that I’m not communicating anything new here (we’ve even had a first lines contest on this blog) and that all of you avid readers have had the experience I describe above numerous times, but I think it’s necessary for all authors and those of us who work with authors to remind ourselves how crucial a novel’s opening salvo is.  Once you nail that, I’m pretty sure the rest of the novel just writes itself.  (Kidding…or am I?)

What are your favorite first lines?   One of mine is “It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”

February 03, 2011   Jessica   advice, international literature, Jessica, reading  
2

Reading Egypt

Like many people, I’ve been riveted to the reports coming out of Egypt this past week. Prior to rejoining DGLM, I lived and worked in Cairo for several years, and I have watched, electrified, exhilarated and terrified at the history-making events unfolding in Egypt. Tahrir Square, which has been the nerve center of the protests, is not far from where my office at the American University in Cairo Press was located. Indeed, the press’s proximity to the demonstrations made it an easy target. The offices were ransacked, and the looters left a path of pointless destruction in their wake.  I feel terrible for my former officemates but far more relieved that they themselves are all safe.

Internet connectivity was restored yesterday (alarming and outrageous that the internet, along with cell phone service, can be summarily “switched off””) so I was, at long last, able to communicate with friends and colleagues whose first-hand reports were welcome after so much anxious speculation.  Yesterday’s violence—clashes between anti-government protesters and pro Mubarak “supporters” widely believed to be security forces brought in to incite violence—was deplorable, and the potential for greater bloodshed remains. While it is impossible to predict what will transpire in the coming weeks (it is my fervent wish that Egypt will get the democratic, free and fair government its people desire and deserve), it is possible to better understand the social and political forces that brought tens of thousands of ordinary people to go to such extraordinary measures.

Given that this is a blog devoted to publishing and not politics, I’ll leave the analysis to people better qualified to make it (but check out Mona El Tahawy), the reportage to the people actually in Cairo (worth reading the TheArabist.net), and recommend a brief reading list, one that can provide some context for the extraordinary events of the last ten days.  The following books are by no means a comprehensive list, but they do represent a good and engrossing starting point to getting a bead on Egypt.

In fiction, the late Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz’s Karnak Café. His Cairo trilogy is better known, but this slim volume looks at the repressive political atmosphere of the Nasser era and could well have been written last year.

Alaa Al Aswany’s The Yacoubian Building, which shines a revelatory light on the fictional inhabitants, rich and poor, virtuous and venal, of an actual Cairo apartment building

Sonallah Ibrahim’s ZAAT, a darkly funny political satire of one Egyptian woman’s misadventures under three regimes.

In nonfiction, Galal Amin’s Whatever Happened to the Egyptians: Changes in Egyptian Society from 1950 to the Present, a lively and lighthearted (really) discussion of the vast changes Egypt has undergone. Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to Mubarak by Tarek Osman, and Arthur Goldschmidt’s Modern Egypt: The Making of a Nation State, both of which are thoughtful, comprehensive and readable.

Feel free to chime in with your own recommendations. Meanwhile, I’ll hope that Egypt’s next chapter—the one now being written—is long on triumph and short on tragedy.

January 28, 2011   Rachel   fun, Rachel S., reading  
10

Still waiting for the perfect “antediluvian” moment

One of my favorite things about reading is the inevitability of coming across new words. It’s nearly certain that with every new book I read, there will be at least a few words that I’ve either never seen or heard before or haven’t taken much notice of if I have. Once I do recognize and finally fully understand a word, it of course starts popping up everywhere—and I wonder how I could ever have missed its existence before.

The best thing, however, about these words is how often certain ones show up in literature, but rarely in conversation. There are always those terms that the general reading population can collectively correctly define, but have never and will probably never utter out loud. You might write them in a letter and you will most certainly read them, but use them in day-to-day speech? Probably not. (Exceptions are those that you come across that are just so great that you wait for the perfect opportunity to use in real life—which is an extraordinarily difficult task because of course you want it to sound natural and not rehearsed or forced, but it’s such a unique word that the situation has to be exactly right. But it’s so satisfying when it finally happens! I had a wonderful experience with “indefatigable.”)

Of course, when these words are never spoken aloud, thus never really heard by anyone, there can be grievous errors in pronunciation. For years I thought the word “bedraggled” was pronounced “bed-raggled.” And that made sense! I mean…someone who’s bedraggled surely would look like they had just come out of bed and were…raggly? I never really thought about it, and it wasn’t until I think some time in high school when a teacher used it in a lecture. I still think it took me some time before I realized that her pronunciation of “bedraggled” and my understanding of “bed-raggled” were in fact the same word and not two that were both similar and conveniently meant the same thing.

Tell me! What are the best words you’ve learned from reading? Have you been able to use them in real life without sounding like you meant to? How off have you been on the correct pronunciation of a word that you really thought you were incredibly familiar with?

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