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Two Truths and a Lie
2010 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
How about a little party game, folks? I’ve played Two Truths and a Lie as an icebreaker at conferences and as a drinking game (but never, unfortunately, at the same time), but I haven’t seen it on a blog yet. If you’re unfamiliar, the concept is simple: I’ll give you three statements, and you identify which two are true and which is a lie.
Since I spent most of September traveling for bookish events (the Decatur Book Festival and the annual conferences of NAIBA and SIBA), these are pulled from my experiences there. Dust off your bullshit detectors. Here we go.
Oh, and to sweeten the deal, I’ll compile all of the correct responses and send a randomly selected winner three titles from my TBR.
Ready?
1. When I saw Jonathan Franzen in Decatur, I told him he was pantyworthy.
2. I heard a well-known children’s author repeatedly mutter “The fuckers! The fuckers!” every time his/her team lost a point during a friendly competition.
3. I saw an up-and-coming novelist cry and kiss Fannie Flagg’s hand when they met at SIBA.
Leave your answer in the comments.
Feel free to see how well I know you and leave your own two truths and a lie.
Five More Books I Can’t Wait to Read
2010 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
Or, I went to Daytona, and all I got were these damn books!
I’m sure I’m not the first person to say it, but the great irony of attending book industry conferences is that you spend several days surrounded by books and the people who love them, and you get absolutely no reading done. None. Zip. Zero. Nada. You come home behind on work and reading but reinvigorated about books and loaded with titles you can’t wait to explore. I love nothing more than having people who know their stuff handsell me great books. Here are just a few of the ones that came home from SIBA with me.
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin
In all honesty, I have no idea what this book is about. What I can tell you is that at least five different people put it in my hand this weekend and told me I absolutely have to read it. And that’s more than enough for me.
The publisher’s description calls this “an atmospheric drama set in rural Mississippi,” and Richard Russo, whose taste I trust implicitly, said:
Long after the other 75 novels of suspense you’ve read this year merge in your memory, you’ll vividly recall this novel. Franklin has written not just a thriller of the first order, but a very fine novel, indeed.
Read Ron Charles’s review at The Washington Post
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin will be published October 5, 2010 by William Morrow.
High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America by Jessica B. Harris
Hearing Jessica Harris discuss this book was one of the highlights of my week at SIBA. The experience was something akin to going to church. Harris is an academic who has spent much of her career studying the African diaspora, and this book is her exploration of the ways in which the food and cultural practices of Africa have become the food and cultural practices of the American south. In her short talk at SIBA, Harris discussed the propriety and manners we associate with white Southern culture and pointed out that those practices were often put in place by the African Americans who worked in the homes of white southerners. High on the Hog sounds fascinating, and I absolutely can’t wait to dig into it and try some of the tradition recipes Harris includes in her history.
High on the Hog by Jessica B. Harris will be published January 2011 by Bloomsbury USA.
Read more
Bling for Banned Books Week
2010 at 4pm Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
If you’ve been paying any kind of attention lately, you know that Banned Books Week is upon us once again (in fact, we’re about halfway through it). I had every intention of putting together a week-long celebration of my favorite banned and challenged books, but, well, it didn’t happen, and I don’t need to bore you with all the details.
It has come to my attention that in addition to reading banned books, we can wear our support for literature and freedom of speech. So let’s go shopping, shall we?
ABFFE (the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression) sells gorgeous banned books bracelets that are the literary equivalent of charm bracelets.
A version of the bracelet with young adult titles is also available.
At the SIBA (Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance) conference last week, I bought a pendant of one of my favorite books, To Kill a Mockingbird, which also appears on ABFEE’s list of banned and challenged books.
This came from All Things Small, and they have a huge selection of book cover pendants. They’ll also make you a custom pendant or bracelet of any book you want. (I have one of my all-time favorite The Great Gatsby on order.) So you can see where it hits, here’s a quick photo of me wearing it.
I haven’t quite mastered The Pioneer Woman’s self-portrait technique, but hey, a girl’s gotta start somewhere.
If jewelry’s not your thing, have no fear. You can wear the out-of-print cover of your favorite book thanks to Out of Print Clothing. The transportation team at SIBA rocked these tees one day, and I just about died of jealousy. I’ll be ordering one of these super soon.
Your turn: what’s your favorite bookish accessory?
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Rebecca Schinsky
The Bare Necessities—Joyce Hinnefeld (STRANGER HERE BELOW)
2010 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
The Bare Necessities is a series in which writers and book industry professionals share annotated reading lists of the books they love.
Joyce Hinnefeld is the author of Stranger Here Below, a novel about “the travails of women in the struggle to stay connected to one another across every boundary during one of the most difficult eras of the American experience—1908–1968.”
A charge to write about “the best books I’ve ever read” or “the books that have been most important to me” absolutely paralyzes me, so I’m grateful for the freedom to define my list of “Bare Necessities” here as “some books that were important to me during the many years of writing and rewriting the book that eventually became Stranger Here Below.”
That makes me feel like I can start typing.
It’s dated now, its scholarship has been supplanted by more recent and more nuanced interpretations of the Civil War and its aftermath, but I still believe that every American should read C. Vann Woodward’s second revised edition of The Strange Career of Jim Crow. First published in 1955 and revised and reissued in 1966, this is a book that will break your heart, for a number of reasons. First (at least if you’re my age or older), for all it will teach you that you didn’t learn in school (“Um, Reconstruction? Weren’t there people called Carpetbaggers who took advantage of the poor, defeated South?”). And more than this: for the tragic missed opportunities—for interracial understanding and for unity among all poor and working people—the book recounts. Reading this book made me feel an even greater urgency about telling the story of what happened at Berea College in the first half of the twentieth century in Stranger Here Below. Read more
Just Read It: SKIPPY DIES by Paul Murray
2010 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
Published August 2010 by Faber and Faber, Inc.
Imagine if the Harry Potter books were written for adults, set at an all-boys boarding school in Dublin, and had dirtier jokes and a more serious theme, and you’ll have the phenomenal Skippy Dies by Paul Murray.
The titular event takes place in the book’s opening pages when fourteen-year-old Daniel “Skippy” Juster, one of Seabrook College’s punier students, dies on the floor of the local doughnut shop just moments after writing his final message on the floor in jelly he desperately smashed out of a doughnut. Skippy’s overweight genius roommate Ruprecht Van Doren looks on wondering if Skippy was poisoned and quickly realizes that no, Skippy hadn’t actually eaten anything at the doughnut shop. So the circumstances of Skippy’s death are mysterious at best and highly suspicious at worst, and the remainder of the book (divided into three sections: Hopeland, Heartland, and Ghostland) delves into the daily lives of the people of Seabrook College and the events that led up to Skippy’s death.
But make no mistake—Skippy Dies is no whodunit mystery, and we’re not looking for a smoking gun. Read more
