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Sep
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The Sunday Salon 9.26.10
2010 at 8am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
I’m coming to you this morning from Daytona Beach, Florida, where I’m attending the annual conference of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA). The real working part of the this trip was over Friday morning after the presentation I did with Kelly Justice (owner of Fountain Bookstore) and Ron Hogan (Beatrice.com) about blogger-bookstore partnerships, and I’ve had a blast kicking back for the last few days. I’ve seen some fabulous presentations, learned a lot, and picked up far more books than I planned to. (The post-SIBA edition of The Book Lady’s Buzz is going to be a beast, but in a really great way.)
The best part of SIBA so far? Well, that would be the bed executive director Wanda Jewell had placed on the show floor to promote the Get in Bed with a Book Blogger campaign and creative partnerships of all kinds. Check it:
I also met the lovely ladies (or should I say Foxy Ladies?) of FoxTale Book Shoppe in Woodstock, GA. If anyone understands the secret to making reading sexy and fun, it’s these women.
Another true highlight was watching author Lisa Patton (second from the right) meet her literary hero Fannie Flagg after the SIBA Supper Friday night. She was crying like she was meeting the Beatles, and it was a powerful reminder of the ways the books we love shape our lives as readers and writers. Read more
The Bare Necessities—Jay Varner (NOTHING LEFT TO BURN)
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.
Jay Varner is the author of Nothing Left to Burn, a fascinating memoir about a family connected by a legacy of fire.
Sometimes I’ll meet people who don’t read. Books are never something that crosses their minds. And that never ceases to amaze and shock me. I was lucky to grow up in a family where everybody read something—novels, history, the Bible. And through the years, I accumulated like-minded friends. I love books the same way I love water or oxygen—not having any of them would bring about a slow death.
Throughout high school, I read Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Vonnegut, and Plath. I was particularly fond of reading books that were looked down on at school. Anything counter-cultural that challenged the establishment. Catch-22, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Bell Jar, 1984, and In Cold Blood. These were violent, impure books! And I loved them. After that, I fell down the rabbit hole, so to speak. One led to the other, and continues to do just that. Read more
Bookrageous Podcast, Episode 4: MOCKINGJAY
2010 at 5pm Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
So, yeah, I hated Mockingjay.
But my very smart partners in bookrageousness, Josh and Jenn, both really liked it. So we talked about it.
A lot.
And we dropped the F bomb.
A lot.
(PSA: Bookrageous is intended for mature audiences.)
And though the conversation didn’t make me change my mind about the book, it did help me think about certain aspects of it differently. Plus, it’s always fun to disagree about a book with people whose opinions you trust, right?
For the full dish, check out the latest edition of the Bookrageous podcast, and subscribe to the Bookrageous Tumblr to stay up-to-date on all things ‘rageous.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Rebecca Schinsky
The Book Lady’s Buzz, Post-NAIBA Edition [Four Books I Can't Wait to Read]
2010 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
I spent the first part of this week in Atlantic City for the annual conference of the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA), where I gave a presentation with Ron Hogan about how bookstores can partner with bloggers to increase their online presence and leverage multiple networks to cross-promote store events. When I wasn’t busy giggling about how easy it was to pick out the book people amidst the casino people, I learned a lot, and I came home with some great books, hand-picked by publishing reps during the Pick of the Lists presentation.
Here are a few I’m really excited about.
Proust’s Overcoat by Lorenza Foschini
Okay, so this book is already out (good news for you!), but I couldn’t resist adding it to the list. Lorenza Foschini presents the story of Jacques Guérin, a prominent French businessman obsessed with all things Proust. Upon finding out that Proust’s family, who are deeply ashamed of, well, all of the things that him Proust, are destroying and giving away all of his belongings, Guérin charms his way into their lives and begins building the collection he’s always dreamed of. At a slim 130 pages, Proust’s Overcoat looks to be a one-sitting read, and I’m looking forward to spending a quiet afternoon with it soon.
Proust’s Overcoat by Lorenza Foschini was published August 3, 2010 by Ecco Publishing. Read more
Crime Fiction in Disguise (The Bare Necessities—Emily St. John Mandel)
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.
Emily St. John Mandel is the author of The Singer’s Gun, a literary thriller about identity, corruption, and human trafficking (and one of the best books I’ve read this year).
I’ve been having an interesting time with genre lately. I write novels, and what I’ve tried to do in my work is to write fiction that’s as literary as anything out there, but to do it with the strongest possible plotting and narrative drive.
An unexpected side effect of this has been that the focus that I’ve placed on plot seems to have pushed my novels into the borderlands of genre fiction, and it’s forced me to think about questions of genre in a way that I hadn’t before. I really thought I was writing literary fiction when I wrote both my first and second novels, but I know of at least one genre bookstore that sells my novels in their Mystery section, and my second novel, The Singer’s Gun, was reviewed in Mystery Scene.
Which raises an interesting question: if The Singer’s Gun—a love story, a political novel, a book in which illegal immigration plays as important a role as does the crime alluded to in the title—is crime fiction, then what else is? Lolita, obviously. Crime and Punishment. And, when I stand in front of my bookshelves and consider the matter, any number of my other absolute favourite books. Read more
