What are you reading? March 26, 2005

I've invited patron/subscribers to the store's e-mail newsletter (sent out today) to give us their recent reading suggestions (or warnings). Adding your own comment to the list below is easy and painless and I'd like to see just how many of you will participate. If you so desire, you can remain essentially anonymous.

I'd love to make this a monthly feature.

I'm reading John Paul II: A Tribute in Words and Pictures, by Monsignor Virgilio Levi and Christine Allison. A timely read as the pontiff suffers, this book is filled with facts that I (not a Roman Catholic) never knew.

We're told, for example, that the Il Papa, an orphan by the age of 20, considers family to be at the core of the "civilization of love." As if we didn't already suspect that.

What are you reading?

The Story Behind the Book Behind the Movie

One great general book-industry Web site I can recommend to you is Pat Holt's Holt Uncensored. She's a former San Francisco newspaper book reviewer, an independent book editor and a much-in-demand book doctor who stays on top of trends in the publishing world and the political environment surrounding bookselling.

She's a fierce advocate for authors and for independent bookselling, and offers a monthly e-newsletter column that's packed with fascinating tidbits.

Today, I wanted to share with you the lead of her latest column: the story of the making of a feature film from the book The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, by Terry Ryan.



So let me tell this story of one book's incredible interlude with Hollywood and the sudden tragedy that befell us by describing the latest adventures of my partner Terry Ryan and her memoir, "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less." It's going to take three columns to tell it, but boy, what a story.

As many readers know, I've had a lot of fun writing about Terry (see http://holtuncensored.c.topica.com/maadjPEabfkFCb7UDGjb/ ) because "Tuff" (her childhood nickname) came to represent that Great Hope of U.S. Literature today - the chance that unknown and untried writers can successfully negotiate their way through an indifferent publishing system that has increasingly placed authors at the bottom of the pile.

Terry is not a best-selling writer - she is an old-fashioned *and typical* "backlist author," meaning that her book (originally published in hardcover in 2001) sells steadily if slowly (in its 2002 paperback edition) without benefit of advertising or continued publicity. The audience keeps spreading the word in its own quietly imploding way, and booksellers - most of them independent - continue to sense the need to keep it in stock.

So what a thrill it was going to be, I thought, to describe the migration last October of Terry, her nine siblings and their families to Toronto, where they not only visited the set of the movie adaptation of "Prize Winner"; they also took part in their own scene (and Terry had yet another scene).

YOU CAN SCROLL THROUGH THIS IF YOU'RE TIRED OF MY DESCRIPTIONS OF THE BOOK

Terry's memoir is about the contest era of the '50s and '60s, when Madison Avenue invited consumers to send in boxtops and coupons with jingles, poems and limericks extolling the wonders of advertised products.

Evelyn Ryan, Terry's mother, had a knack for filling out lines such as "I wonder where the yellow went" for Pepsodent toothpaste ("The yellow battled/As it went,/But it didn't make/A PepsoDENT)" or writing such hope-chest jingles for soap as "Dial is wonderful:/Sweet young things/Declare that Dialing/Gets those rings."

While her 10 kids were growing up and her alcoholic husband was drinking away a third of his paycheck, Evelyn began to win big - cars, jewelry, trips to Europe, bicycles, color TVs, a washer-dryer, full-sized jukebox. And she won small: dozens of clock radios, baseball gloves, toys, phonographs, watches, silverware, picture frames, accordion lessons and (Terry always gets a big laugh out of this one), three pairs of Arthur Murray shoes.

(Arthur Murray was a ballroom-dancing teacher who became famous during the early days of television.)

More than a jingle-writer, Evelyn had the gift of a poet like Ogden Nash and the sense of humor of housewife columnists like Peg Bracken or Erma Bombeck:

Poison Ivy
Victims share a symptom,
Which is:
Everyone who has it
Itches

If there is a single, visual memory that the Ryan kids took from their childhood (and that Tuff makes unforgettable in the book), it's the picture of Mom Ryan standing at her ironing board, a pile of pre-sprinkled clothes on one side and her "contesting" notebooks on the other. There she worked out the kind of sparkling wordplay that make her entries distinctive even today, including this entry in a 25-words-or-less contest for that great segmented candy bar, Tootsie Roll.

For wholesome, toothsome, chewy goodness, Tootsie Rolls are right.
Lots of nibbling for a nickel,
And they show me where to bite.

In the book, Evelyn's originality as a "contester" saves the day time after time as she stands up against bill collectors, the Catholic Church and antiquated ideas about housewives.

But the big story in "Prize Winner" is the miraculous timing of Evelyn's biggest wins. When the family faced eviction from its rental home, Evelyn won a huge cash prize against 60,000 other entries that covered the down payment on a new house. Twelve years later, after her husband Kelly secretly took out a second mortgage on the house and drank away the payments, Evelyn stopped foreclosure proceedings when her entry won a Dr. Pepper contest over 240,000 competing entries.

-----

START READING AGAIN ALL YOU LAYABOUTS WHO SKIPPED THE ABOVE

What a great idea for a movie, yes? So thought Robert Zemeckis, the director of "Forrest Gump," "Back to the Future," "Castaway" and "Polar Express," who optioned the book and gave the adaptation job to screenwriter Jane Anderson ("How to Make an American Quilt," "It Could Happen to You").

Jane had just turned her own stage play, "Normal," into an HBO movie that she also directed starring Jessica Lange and Tom Wilkinson. Nominated for two Golden Globes (no mean feat in the year of "Angels in America"), "Normal" is set in the very cornfields of the Midwest that "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio," would inhabit, and just like any reader of Terry's book, Jane fell in love with Evelyn Ryan.

FORGET ALL YOU'VE HEARD ABOUT HOLLYWOOD

Terry's first lesson of filmdom was to disregard all those stories everyone has heard about Hollywood's disinterest in, and dismissal of, authors of books.

True, books have long been sold to the movies for their titles only and gutted to the bone so yet another run-of-the-mill love/war/adventure/assisted-suicide story can be retold. Authors have routinely been given notice never to request taking a look at the script, let alone have an opinion, or be allowed to set foot on a sound stage.

For Terry, however, the reverse was true right from the beginning. Jane Anderson flew to San Francisco to visit Tuff and see for herself what the family had discovered after Evelyn's death - the contents of seven dressers and a huge cedar chest that Terry had loaded into a rented van in her home town of Defiance, Ohio, and hauled to San Francisco.

This was a treasure trove for Jane. She would open a drawer or lid and find original contest entry blanks in their fading newsprint clippings; perfectly preserved letters from sponsors ("Dear Mrs. Ryan: Congratulations on your new Motorola color TV set. Signed, Ed Sullivan"), the dozen now-famous ironing-board notebooks; press photos of "The Winning Mom and Her Family" (one of which appears on the cover of Terry's book); tickets to the football game where eldest son Dick received his First Prize bicycle along with $5,000 cash that saved the Ryans from eviction; and uncountable poems and jingles that never went anywhere but are a joy to read today.

There are moms who can cook,
And moms who can sew,
And moms who will come
When they're beckoned.
But give me that pearl,
Of a mom-type girl ...
A mom who can slide
Into second.

The respect that Jane brought to everything Tuff had saved after Evelyn's death, and her delight at the way Terry told her mother's story in the book, were to set the tone for all that would happen during the writing and - because Zemeckis eventually turned over the directing job to Jane as well - the filming of "Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio" (the only change is that the "The" has been dropped).

Terry and her youngest sister Betsy (who wrote the epilogue for the book) not only took Jane to Defiance to see the house their mother won, the Catholic school they attended, the parks, the library (a Carnegie classic) and what Tuff calls "the slow collision" of the Maumee and Auglaize rivers in front of Fort Defiance. They also drove Jane through the cornfields that surround the town and brought her to nearby Payne, Ohio, where she met Dortha Schaefer, their mother's best friend and president of the contesting club called The Affadaisies (so named for the affidavit that would come in the mail requiring winners to prove their identity).

Jane absorbed it all like a sponge. She wrote a script that made Evelyn's love for the quiet hilarity of life as boldly cinematic as it was in real life. Here we see "Narrator Evelyn," who speaks directly to the camera to explain how contests work, and "Character Evelyn," who tries to create a semblance of order with 10 boisterous children and one boozy Dad.

And while the pastoral, verdant, river-steamed Defiance, Ohio, was the kind of Small Town USA that itself acts as a character in the book, and everyone including Jane hoped it would be the setting for a movie shot on location, here is the great book-to-movie lesson we all needed to learn: The difference in cost to shoot this film in Canada as opposed to Defiance was so dramatic (in the millions of dollars) that Jane had no choice but to take the crew to Toronto with its nearby towns of leafy streets and sleepy downtowns bearing a 1950s look.

Toronto, in fact, was famous at the time as a magnet for Hollywood. Its tax breaks for film productions and state-of-the-art sound stages had already saved the day for many a low-to-medium-budget movie. The analogy we heard quoted by veteran wags was that barely a minute in the movie, "A New York Minute," had been shot in New York - the rest of it was filmed in Toronto.

Then there was the conventional wisdom in filmdom that says when you have a movie about a big family, you don't have the time to single out every child as a character because you're too busy telling the story. Look at "The Sound of Music," people said. Viewers are lucky that even two of the kids' characters are developed enough to be recognizable, let alone remembered.

Even while writing the book, Terry had been advised against creating a distinctive personality for each of the 10 Ryan children - let alone for the chicken, cats, bird and mouse that Evelyn Ryan seemed to be raising at the same time.

But the Ryans, as the world would soon learn, are an all or nothing family - no one is singled out; so, once you get to know 'em, everyone is singled out. And if Mom Ryan decided that Charlie the Chicken would be part of that family (at least in his impressionable years when the family cat adopted him and he later acted like a confused attack dog), that's the way Terry would write the book.

Jane wanted the same depth of character for each individual in the movie, so she cast not one but at least two and sometimes three child actors for every Ryan sibling, because the movie covers a 20-year period and the kids grow up fast.

She found former "Cheers" actor Woody Harrelson to play Terry's father with all his seeming contradictions - drunken outrage, inner decency, resentment and redemptive love - and Laura Dern to play the key supporting role of Dortha Schaefer.

Best of all, Jane found another young mother, an actress who had already been nominated (four times) for an Academy Award, to play Evelyn Ryan's role, and this was the astounding Julianne Moore.

Prolific Science Fiction Author Andre Norton Dies

Andre Norton Dies at 93, An Unusual Last Wish Fulfilled

by Kevin Howell, PW Daily -- 3/22/2005

Prolific science fiction/fantasy author Andre Norton, 93, died Thursday of congestive heart failure--not long after her publisher fulfilled her wish to hold a copy of her final novel in her hands.

Tor Books president and publisher Tom Doherty did this by pushing the printing and binding date of Three Hands for Scorpio ahead by two weeks. "We did the entire print run of her book early," said Jim Frenkel, who edited Norton's books at Tor for the last two decades.

The company got a copy "straight from the bindery," Frenkel continued. "We Fed-Ex overnighted her a first copy. I heard secondhand that she held it and said she was pleased by the cobalt blue color of the jacket. She was very specific that when she died she wanted her first and last novels to be cremated with her."

During the past few years, the author had severe health problems, although her publishing output remained strong. She survived cancer in her 80s but broke a hip, which made it hard for her to move around in her home. "Last year she moved in with Sue Stewart and her husband and they had a special room built onto their house specifically equipped to make Andre comfortable," Frenkel said. "Recently she'd had little strokes and a larger stroke about a week ago."

During a writing career that spanned more than 70 years, Norton wrote more than 160 novels, anthologies and collections. She started writing in her teens and after finding resistance from publishers because of her gender, she adopted an androgynous literary pseudonym to get published. In 1934, when she published her first novel, The Prince Commands, at the age of 22, she legally changed her name to Andre Alice Norton.

"She was one of the very early pioneer female authors in the male dominated genre of science fiction/fantasy writing," Larry Woods, owner of Bookman/Bookwoman Rare and Used Books in Nashville, Tenn., told PW Daily. Norton moved to Murfreesboro, a Nashville suburb, in the early 1990s. "Her early novels were highly successful from the very beginning. She was always very well thought of and respected by everyone who knew her."

"She broke ground in science-fiction/fantasy not only as a woman writing in that genre but for having non-standard protagonists, like women and Native-Americans," Frenkel told PW Daily.

"She was a remarkable storyteller and marvelous adventure writer. She was one of the bestselling authors in fantasy, period. She was so generous with her time and unselfish about helping other writers."

"Alice Mary Norton was the very first professional writer to ever extend to me a helping hand," Hugo Award-winning author Harlan Ellison told PW Daily. "I was still in high school, and we both lived in Cleveland. I remember taking a streetcar to visit her. At the time she was probably in her 30s, which seemed ancient for me. We sat for several hours in her parlor talking, and she fed me milk and cookies. She gave me a great piece of advice--make sure the word 'star' or 'space' is in the title." Norton and Ellison were founding members of the Cleveland Science Fiction Society.

Arguably her most popular books were the titles of her Witch World series, which began in 1963. The first novel, Witch World, was nominated for the World Science Fiction Society's HUGO award as best novel of the year. The Beastmaster was made into a film starring Marc Singer in 1982. It was followed by two sequels (Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time in 1991 and the TV movie Beastmaster 3: The Eye of Braxus). It also spawned a syndicated TV series that ran from 1999 to 2002.

Her novels were always "YA friendly with no explicit violence, sexuality or language," Frenkel commented. "But her novels were not delicate; there was always lots of real action in her books." Ellison agreed, noting, "Andre went on to become one of the two germinal sources to drawing young readers to the genre of imaginative fiction. She and the juvenile novels of Robert Heinlein were the two major writers to inveigle readers to look further into the genres. People would graduate from Andre's straightforward adventure novels to more complex novels."

In later years, the prolific Norton co-authored novels with many of science-fiction/fantasy's top female writers, including Marion Zimmer Bradley, Mercedes Lackey, A.C. Crispen and Sherwood Smith. (She even collaborated with her mother, Bertha Stemm Norton, co-authoring the semi-autobiographical 1969 novel, Bertie and May, about two little girls living in rural Ohio in the 1880s.)

Just nine months ago, Frenkel was working with Norton on her final novel, Three Hands for Scorpio (due in April). "It was a marvelous experience," said Frenkel. "She was very responsive to my suggestions. She wrote her books in longhand and had someone transcribe them onto a computer. Her handwriting wasn't great, but it was no worse than mine. She'd planned this novel as the first book in a trilogy, but unlike many multi-part books, Scorpio stands on its own."
Besides the forthcoming Three Hands for Scorpio, Tor Books is releasing four Norton hardcovers in 2005. The Duke's Ballad (Jan.) is co-authored with Lyn McConchie. Beast Master's Planet (May) is an omnibus of two previously published novels in the Hosteen Storm series. Dragon Blade (Aug.) is the fourth book in the Cycle of Oak, Yew, Ash, and Rowan series and co-authored with Sasha Miller. And Masks of the Outcasts (Sept.) is an omnibus of two previously published novels, Catseye and Night of Masks.

This year, just a few days after her 93rd birthday on February 17, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America created the Andre Norton Award, a new literary award to recognize outstanding science fiction and fantasy novels written for the young adult market. Norton was the first woman to win SFWA's Grand Master of Fantasy Award in 1977. She also won the Nebula Grand Master Award in 1984.

"She was unfailingly open and generous," remembered Ellison. "A fine, kind, and decent woman. She was not a reclusive woman, but a very private and quiet lady. She was also one of the least quirky people I've ever met."

Guest Review: Jonathan Safran Foer's Latest

We're always happy to offer advance reading copies to our Patron Passport members. In some cases, we're so spot-on in picking the patron that we run the risk of giving away a copy to the only patron who will ever want to read the book.

That's not the case with today's reviewed book. Jon Faith has put a lot of effort into this review, but all we ask of you when we give you a galley, proof, or advance reader copy is that you give us a quick one-paragraph review of the book.

Jonathan Safran Foer soars with Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Without further ado, here is patron Jon Faith's take on this new novel:


The events of September 11, 2001 have been avoided by and large by literary fiction. How would one represent that sense of panic, that desperate heroism that colored that sunny Tuesday? Somehow Pete Hamill’s maudlin, Gumpish depiction at the conclusion of his novel Forever resonated with an insulting thud. The tragic nature of that day’s events both undermined our national hubris and fatally punctured the patina of security which had previously reminded us to be wary of pit bulls, genetically modified food and internet chat rooms. Suddenly no one is safe and literature has been slow to approach this untimely dilemma. Jonathan Safran Foer has warily climbed to the task, with a move that many might find fraught with the confidence of youth. He burst upon the literary stage in 2002 with Everything Is Illuminated, smoldering tale of love, memory and the Holocaust.

His second novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close personalizes the tragedy through the use of a precocious child protagonist, named Oskar, who spends the days after the attacks on the World Trade Center in a near autistic torrent of information, slowly coming to terms with his father’s death and his mother’s apparent distance. Foer unrolls Oskar’s investigation of his father’s last days alongside a parallel narrative which explains that Oskar’s grandparents survived the firebombing of Dresden during the Second World War and attempted to explain and codify that “survival” with varying success ever since.

Foer’s characters are an odd ensemble: the protagonist is reminiscent of Mark Haddon’s autistic detective and the grandfather is but a ghost and struck me as being similar to Edward Wallant’s Pawnbroker. The text is laden with photographs and different colored passages, effects sagely employed and worthy of a tradition from Lawrence Sterne to W.G. Sebald. Foer’s prose is bereft of jingoistic admonishment; its terrain is only populated with the affected. The novel is masterful in depoliticizing tragedy and fermenting a mixture of history’s atrocity within the unlimited basin of the imagination.

Welcome California's Coffee House

What a treat it was to try out New Albany's newest independent business tonight, California's Coffee House at 1515 East Market Street.

That's the elegant building just west of Tommy Lancaster's and, coincidentally, a building Ann and I considered for our bookstore way back in 2004.

At 10:30, I had a double-shot cappucino and a chicken-pork tamale and I'm sure to be going back often. Call ahead if you're in a hurry and Rey and Valeria Espinosa will have your order waiting. They offer sweet rolls, muffins, specialty coffees and espresso, salads, cold beverages and tamales. By the way, my 12 oz. cappu and mouthwatering tamale cost $4.50.

R & V will soon be joining the growing contingent of business owners who work, but don't live, in the East Spring Street Historic District and support the ESS Neighborhood Association.

Stop by early and often and let them know how welcome they are to our community. I'm sure you'll show them the same support you currently show for New Albany's other fine independent businesses.

What's the best way to welcome them? BUY SOMETHING!

Bull***t Points

Today, I'm going to give you a little project, but you'll be well rewarded and entertained in the end.

I was curious about a hot selling book by Harry G. Frankfurt, put out by Princeton University Press. It's nothing more than an essay by the Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University. His books include The Reasons of Love (Princeton), Necessity, Volition, and Love, and The Importance of What We Care About.

This endorsement says it all:

"A gem of psychological insight, social commentary, philosophical analysis, and good humor. This is the work of an extraordinarily acute, attentive, and versatile philosopher who has succeeded in addressing an audience comprised of both other philosophers and the general public on a topic of considerable human interest in a characteristically wry and engaging way. It is one of the most enjoyable and humanly illuminating short pieces of philosophy produced in the past fifty years."--Raymond Geuss, University of Cambridge

What's the book, you ask?

Check out the link at http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/video/frankfurt/. Then give me a call. I believe it will make a great gift book, and you can always read it before you give it.

Book Group to Discuss Dorsey Novels

The first meeting of the Serge Storms Historical Research & Debating Society will be Tuesday, March 29, 2005 at Destinations Booksellers.

What is SSHR&DS? The Shredders is book discussion group for fans, and soon-to-be fans, of author Tim Dorsey and his manic anti-hero, Serge Storms. If you’ve never found yourself rooting for a serial killer, then you’ve never met Serge Storms. An encyclopedic knowledge of Old Florida history and a visceral revulsion toward anyone out to make a quick buck off of it makes Serge just a little bit dangerous.

Join us as at 7 pm as we discuss “Florida Roadkill”, the first of the 7-book series. Enjoy coffee and dessert while Serge cuts a swath of destruction across the landscape of a land God never intended for people to live on. Dorsey’s character brings swift, if extra-legal justice to the ne’er-do-wells, looters, and polluters that make Florida so weird.

Start a great friendship

Frank Delaney is the author of the popular new saga, Ireland, a former judge for the Booker Prize, and a true Irishman now living in the United States.

This morning on NPR, during an interview about the book, Delaney remarked that some of his greatest friendships began when someone asked "Have you read...?"

One of our secret aspirations for the store is that it become a place where great friendships begin. That has been true for us and for many of you already.

But isn't Delaney right? Haven't you formed lasting friendships in the sharing of a favorite book or author or genre?

Try it this week. When you meet a new person or run into an acquaintance, why don't you try that question?

"Have you read...?"

And I invite (nay, implore) you to use the comments section below to begin the process. Let us know what your "go-to" book is and let's see who joins us.

I'll start. You've all heard me ramble about the joys of Tim Dorsey and his Serge Storms novels, so let's try something a little different.

In the coming weeks, BookSense will be coming out with its list of book group favorites, and one of my choices has been selected for inclusion in the national list. It's not your usual book group pick, but here's what I offered to the other independent booksellers in America:


Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card, has, in its nearly 30 years of existence, become a story everyone thinks they know, whether they have read the book or not. It is the perfect book for introducing a fascinating genre to those friends who say "I don't read science fiction."

The plot stands on its own, but these years later the enjoyment is heightened by the knowledge that there are many more episodes to come in the lives of these children.

Ender Wiggin is the original Harry Potter - a juvenile protagonist who captures adult hearts and minds. As groups seek alternatives to the Potter phenomenon, Ender's Game offers good fiction while stimulating discussions of three hot-button cultural issues...how our culture treats its children, how society as a whole can support war and empire when it is safely at a remove, and how we as a people respond to the assertion of government infallibility.

Author Fawn Germer at Destinations Booksellers

Fawn Germer, author of “Mustang Sallies: Success Secrets of Women Who Refuse to Run with the Herd” and “Hard Won Wisdom” will be at Destinations Booksellers for an author appearance on Tue., March 8, 2005, from 7-9 pm.

Germer, who will be the keynote speaker at the Regional Minority and Women Business Owners Conference on Wed., explains how trailblazing women achieve success. “Mustang Sallies” includes interviews with Ann Richards, Erin Brokovich, Mary Higgins Clark, Hilary Clinton, among others.