**Interesting Articles on Books, Authors, Reading, etc. - July/August 2010

Just starting a new thread for July & August!

A friend sent me the link to this piece poking fun at the male midlife crisis novel. It's well-done and hilarious (imo, of course).

http://tigerbeatdown.com/2010/07/01/fond-memories-of-vagina-martin-amis-the-preg...

The post is actually part review of a Martin Amis book.

In honor of Independence Day in the US, The Huffington Post published an article about 15 independent small presses that are publishing quality and cutting edge fiction. Several of my favorites made the list, including Archipelago Books, Coffee House Books, New Directions and Open Letter Books, but I was unfamiliar with more than half of these presses. Several other small presses were also listed as ones deserving wider attention.

Independence Day: 15 Feisty Small Presses and the Books You're Going to Want from Them

In the spirit of this article, I'll buy one of the books from the presses on this list, I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita, published by Coffee House Press.

>3 kidzdoc: nice nod to small presses, I knew about 3/4 of them. Since I shop small presses fairly regularly, I don't feel the need to be patriotic and buy something today.

#4: I should say that I was planning to buy I Hotel before I saw this article; I'll just buy it a bit sooner than I had planned to, as my one of my local Borders stores has it in stock.

>5 kidzdoc: I suspect you are like me in that any excuse is a good excuse to buy a book!

In this month's segment of the National Public Radio's series You Must Read This, the author Aimee Bender talks about Flannery O'Connor's collection of essays, Mystery and Manners. The Library of America book of O'Connor's Collected Works has some but not all of these essays, so I'll almost certainly buy this book ASAP and read it later this year.

The 'Mystery And Manners' Of Flannery O'Connor

The Sunday Styles section of today's New York Times has an interesting article about the increasing use of online videos by authors to sell their books:

The Author Takes a Star Turn

Laura Miller in Salon.com "Beware of blurbs: From back-scratching to overpraise, why author endorsements are so bad -- and so unreliable"
http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2010/07/09/blurbs/index.html

Clara Claiborne Park died earlier this month, which was reported in today's New York Times. She was a lecturer at Williams College in Massachusetts, and the author of the 1967 book The Siege: A Family's Journey Into the World of an Autistic Child, which described the early life of her daughter Jessy, who was diagnosed with autism after years of misdiagnoses by doctors. Her subsequent book about Jessy, Exiting Nirvana: A Daughter's Life with Autism, was published in 2001, and describes Jessy's life as an adult; she has worked in the mail room at Williams College since her late teens or early twenties. I read "Exiting Nirvana" when it came out, and "The Siege" soon afterward; both books are fantastic, both in the description of the life of an autistic child and its effects on the family, the poor job that the medical profession did in not helping Jessy and her family and laying blame on her mother for her condition, due to erroneous beliefs about its cause. They are both among my favorite books on medicine and childhood illness. I was saddened to learn of her death, and would highly recommend both books to everyone.

Clara Claiborne Park, 86, Dies; Wrote About Autistic Child

>8 avaland:, Lois, I thought that was such an intriguing and disillusioning article.

#8 I for one hate books that only have blurbs/reviews and none of them actually say what the book is about! When I pick up a book that I have never heard of, to decide whether to read it, I want to know what it's about not how fabulous the prose is, gifted the writer, or life changing the book is.

>10 fannyprice: I've known this for quite a while and have always been skeptical of most blurbs. Some authors blurb rarely so I give them more credibility than, say, Jonathan Lethem who blurbs frequently.

>11 kiwiflowa: I agree to some extent, though sometimes a word or two from a blurber might really intrigue me.

I found this really fun AND educational site last night. It has short, factual bios of classic British authors, written in a very amusing manner and with hilarious footnotes. Just had to share it with you all!

Mary Roach was on the Daily Show last night (scroll to time 13:40):
http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/mon-august-2-2010-mary-roach?xrs=synd_...

#7 I'll second Kizdoc's recommendation's of Clara Park's books. I read the the Siege: A family's journey long ago, back when it was common to blame the family, and I was very impressed. I read the other more recently. My first thought on hearing she died was about what would her daughter do, although Exiting Nirvana was a lot about preparing for that, as well as a description of how far she had come.

People may not agree with this list but it is thought-provoking (and better presented than usual) - the 15 most overrated contemporary American writers.

>16 Jargoneer:, You know the funny thing about that list was that I had never even heard of most of those people! Still, it was quite a humorous literary take-down.

16> Wow, he really took on the big guns! (Since I teach English at a university, I was familiar with all but one of them.) I agree with a lot of his points--but then, I'm kind of considered an out-of-touch old fogey because of my lack of interest in postmodernism.

Some of the poets on his list--Graham, Gluck, Oliver--used to be favorites of mine, but I have to agree that they seem not only to not have grown over the years but to have lost whatever sense of wonder and love of words and images that they orignally had. Of the novelists, I enjoy some of them but yes, they might be overrated.

Thanks for posting the link, jargoneer. I'll be looking for his list of most underrated writers.

Edited b/c I didn't realize that "Anvi" was a man!

Did someone ask about underrated writers?

Who are your favourite underrated writers?