RIP Ray Bradbury

Another legend has died. Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and my personal favorite book of all time The Martian Chronicles has died today 91.

I'll be re-reading some of my favorite stories of his over the next few days.

More to come.

New Addition to the PHBC Must Read List

I just finished reading The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga and immediatly decided it was worthy of adding the the PHBC list of books to read before you die ( http://pleasanthillbookclub.blogspot.com/p/phbc-must-read-list.html).

Below is a description of the book from amazon.com:

-The white tiger of this novel is Balram Halwai, a poor Indian villager whose great ambition leads him to the zenith of Indian business culture, the world of the Bangalore entrepreneur. On the occasion of the president of China’s impending trip to Bangalore, Balram writes a letter to him describing his transformation and his experience as driver and servant to a wealthy Indian family, which he thinks exemplifies the contradictions and complications of Indian society.

The White Tiger recalls The Death of Vishnu and Bangkok 8 in ambition, scope, and narrative genius, with a mischief and personality all its own. Amoral, irreverent, deeply endearing, and utterly contemporary, this novel is an international publishing sensation—and a startling, provocative debut.-

http://www.amazon.com/The-White-Tiger-A-Novel/dp/1416562605/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338760418&sr=8-1

The Bathroom Muse by Charles Simic

via nybooks.com/blog

The Bathroom Muse

Charles Simic

If you are like me, you must always have something to read in the bathroom. Anything will do. A reporter once told me about spending the night in the home of an ex-president. Being in desperate need to read something, he set out to find a book or a magazine and to his astonishment, wherever he went in that huge seaside mansion, he could not find a single thing to read, not even a Chinese takeout menu or a flyer for a bake sale at the local church. Lately, as I’ve discovered, there has been an attempt to remedy this. An anthology called Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader is widely available and describes itself on the Amazon website in these words:

At last…Here it is…The book you’ve been waiting for! No more frantic searches at the last minute for that perfect magazine article. No agonizing choices between light reading and the serious stuff. This little volume has it all: entertainment, humor, education, trivia, science, history, pop culture…and more! And it’s even divided by length—you can spend a minute with the Quickies, relax with Normal-Length articles, or really get comfortable with Long Items.

Has there ever been any survey conducted among those who lock themselves in the bathroom inquiring how they spend their time? Do they read, smoke, talk to themselves, think things over, say their prayers, or just stare into space? If not, how come? All those lights burning in bathrooms late at night in large and small cities must indicate someone is doing much more in them than just answering the call of nature. Wives slipping away from husbands who snore, husbands kept awake by their wives grinding their teeth, or just plain old insomniacs, they seek a refuge, a quiet place to read and meditate. With all the surveillance that dozens of government agencies and countless private companies are subjecting every American to, I would not be surprised if they are not already tearing down the veil of secrecy from these late night activities and have a certain dentist in Miami, a farmer in Iowa, a showgirl in Vegas, and thousands of others around the country closely monitored to determine the level of threat they and other bathroom readers may be posing to our country that may require congressional action once their findings are made public.
 
Did our Founding Fathers read while sitting on their chamber pots? In my childhood in Serbia, when outhouses were common in the countryside and toilet paper was regarded by ordinary folk as a decadent luxury, the pile of old newspapers we kept in there provided not only the necessary substitute, but also inviting reading material, which supplemented my education and entertained me. It used to be a common experience, and most likely still is in some homes, that if a child or a grownup was missing and could not be found, someone was sent to knock on the bathroom door. We’ve all had family members who spent inordinate amount of time on the potty or lying in a tub filled with water reading magazines and novels, until a small line had formed outside the door, each of us as impatient to relieve ourselves as to find out what the last occupant, looking guilty, had been reading in there.

As a guest in homes of strangers, I have discovered bathroom libraries that took my breath away by their size and intellectual pretensions. It was unclear to me whether Plato’s dialogues in original Greek, together with Marx’s The Communist Manifesto, Thomas Pynchon’s latest novel were there to impress the visitor, or in the case of another fellow who had a pile of memoirs by ex-presidents going back to Reagan, to make him laugh. I can’t say that I’ve encountered a whole lot of poetry in bathrooms, even in the homes of poets, though I’ve come across many an anthology. Would reading one of Hamlet’s soliloquies or John Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale” in such a setting be unbecoming? I don’t know. I’ve heard of people reading the Bible on the toilet, which even for an unbeliever like me came as a shock. Even more appalling to me was the discovery, in a famous art collector’s bathroom, of a painting of the Madonna and the Child, either by some highly competent imitator of Raphael—or perish the thought!—by the master himself.

As for my own reading preferences, I gravitate toward works of reference like Halliwell’s Film Guide, The Guinness Book of World Records, Dictionary of Philosophy, and Farmers’ Almanac. But in an emergency I’ll read about Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon being distant cousins and whether Emma Stone would rather kiss Ryan Gosling or Andrew Garfield in People magazine. Once, at what seemed to me like the world’s most boring dinner party, it occurred to me that a prolonged visit to the can might alleviate my tedium. However when I got there and found one of those modern bathrooms the size of Grand Central Station, there was nothing to read except some pages of instructions in minuscule print inside a box of cough syrup, which I studied thoroughly in no rush to return to my hosts and their guests. Of course, if there’s nothing to read, one can always pass the time mulling over whether to buy a companion for the one goldfish in the aquarium at home or ponder whether the universe is finite or infinite. Kidding aside, I’m convinced that a lot of serious thinking has always been done in bathrooms, and that it is an irreparable loss to humanity that the names and ideas of these philosophers are not known.

No doubt Pascal was right when he said that most evils in life arose from “man’s being unable to sit still in a room.” Puffy-eyed and wrapped in a vintage bathrobe, grandpa shuffles in stocking feet past his granddaughter and son, letting out a groan, since both are too busy to notice him as they stare intently into the screens of their phones. He knows that history is against him; that he may belong to a species about to become extinct, the one relying on printed matter destined to be relegated in the future to the Smithsonian museum, where a replica of someone like him sits on the can with his pants lowered reading a newspaper, while puzzled visitors pass by, a few of them bending over with curiosity to read the brief accompanying description about the reading habits of their ancestors. On the other hand, the old man could very well be wrong and technology in the future will happily address this human need and provide a new generation of e-readers and iPhones especially designed for use in bathrooms, public toilets, and other such disreputable places.

April 17, 2012, 12:35 p.m.

 

New Twist on an Old Joke

Q: What's black and white and not as read (red) as it used to be?

A: A newspaper

har har

Audiobooks Question

I was looking at the back case of an audiobook I'm currently listening to, 'Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz", and noticed something strange. Its sale price was $44.95. This lead me to the question, "Who the hell would pay $45 for an audiobook?"

I don't mean this in the sense that audiobooks are not worth that price. Many are over 10 hours long and read by professional voice actors. I just don't get how the demand for this market exists. Who is buying these audiobooks? Who has the combination of lack of reading interest and the means to pay $45 for a book they are probably going to listen to once, yet does not have the capability of renting it from the library or finding a "free" version online.

Only realistic markets for people who buy audiobooks at full price that I can think of...
1. Housebound blind or nearly blind elderly (I assume non-housebound elderly and blind non-elderly people have means to acquire these books at a lower cost, whatever those may be)
2. Insane people
  
That's it. 

If you are someone, or know someone, who buys audiobooks at full price, I would love to know the motive. Please enlighten me in the comments section.

PS- Sorry if this sounds ranty or insensitive. I'm just genuinely at a loss.

Attention E-book Readers

I came across this site recently. I haven't explored it fully yet, but it looks promising.

Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

Message from their welcome page:
Project Gutenberg offers over 39,000 free ebooks: choose among free epub books, free kindle books, download them or read them online.

We carry high quality ebooks: All our ebooks were previously published by bona fide publishers. We digitized and diligently proofread them with the help of thousands of volunteers.

No fee or registration is required, but if you find Project Gutenberg useful, we kindly ask you to donate a small amount so we can buy and digitize more books. Other ways to help include digitizing more books, recording audio books, or reporting errors.

Over 100,000 free ebooks are available through our Partners, Affiliates and Resources.

Milestone!

Earlier this month our blog passed 20,000 unique visitors! What's more impressive is that we have averaged over 1,000 unique visitors every month since last October! Big thanks to all of our readers!

Maurice Sendak

"Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it."
 -Maurice Sendak

Coincidence?

Several months ago Maurice Sendak appeared on the Colbert Report (http://pleasanthillbookclub.blogspot.com/2012/01/stephen-colbert-with-maurice-sendak.html) where he gave an endorsement of Stephen Colbert's new children's book, I Am A Pole (And So Can You). Sendak's quote, which appears on the cover of the book, states, "The Sad thing is, I like it."

The publishing date of Colbert's book is today, May 8th, the same day of Sendak's death. I guess Sendak's integrity couldn't allow himself to live another day knowing his quote might help the sales of this book.

If you want to purchase I Am A Pole (And So Can You), follow the link below.
http://www.amazon.com/Am-Pole-And-Can-You/dp/1455523429/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336493774&sr=8-1

Maurice Sendak Dies at 83

Via yahoo.com
By Dylan Stableford
The Cutline

Maurice Sendak, the renowned children's author whose books captivated generations of kids and simultaneously scared their parents, has died. He was 83. Sendak passed away on Tuesday from complications caused by a recent stroke, his editor told the New York Times.

He lived in Ridgefield, Conn., and was hospitalized in nearby Danbury. According to the Associated Press, Sendak suffered the stroke on Friday. Sendak wrote and illustrated more than 50 children's books--including "Where the Wild Things Are," his most famous, published in 1963. The book--about a disobedient boy named Max who, after being sent to his room without supper, creates a surreal world inhabited by wild creatures--won Sendak the coveted Caldecott Medal, the equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize, in 1964. "Where The Wild Things Are" was adapted into a live-action film by Spike Jonze in 2009. "Where The Wild Things Are" was not only revolutionary--it was wildly profitable, selling more than 17 million copies, according to Bloomberg.com.

Sendak's other groundbreaking works include "In the Night Kitchen," "Outside Over There," "The Sign on Rosie's Door," "Higglety Pigglety Pop!" and "The Nutshell Library." "Bumble-Ardy," his first book in 30 years, was published by HarperCollins last year. A posthumous picture book, "My Brother's Book," is slated for 2012. Sendak "transformed children's literature from a gentle playscape into a medium to address the psychological intensity of growing up," the Washington Post said in an obituary. His "unsentimental approach to storytelling revolutionized the genre," the Los Angeles Times said. "In book after book," the New York Times wrote, "Mr. Sendak upended the staid, centuries-old tradition of American children's literature, in which young heroes and heroines were typically well scrubbed and even better behaved; nothing really bad ever happened for very long; and everything was tied up at the end in a neat, moralistic bow."

That's why, perhaps, Sendak could never break free from being labeled a children's book author, despite his exploration of darker themes. "I write books as an old man," Sendak said in a 2003 interview. "But in this country you have to be categorized, and I guess a little boy swimming in the nude in a bowl of milk can't be called an adult book. So I write books that seem more suitable for children, and that's OK with me. They are a better audience and tougher critics. Kids tell you what they think, not what they think they should think."

 In January, Sendak appeared on "The Colbert Report," giving Stephen Colbert some advice on how to make it as a children's book author. "You've started already by being an idiot," Sendak said. "I don't write for children," Sendak told Colbert. "I write, and then someone says, 'That's for children.'"

 "Sendak understood," Slate observed, "that kids need literature that makes adults uncomfortable. They need books that reflect their chaotic and dark worlds, in which sometimes children do have to feed their mothers." After Colbert pointed out that Newt Gingrich said American children don't have a great work ethic, Sendak said, "Newt Gingrich is an idiot of great renown. There is something so hopelessly gross and vile about him, it's hard to take him seriously."

President Barack Obama has made it something of a tradition to read from "Where The Wild Things Are" at the annual White House Easter Egg Roll.

Sendak was heavily involved in Jonze's film adaptation. "He was involved in every aspect," Dave Eggers, who co-wrote the script, said. "Maurice really trusted Spike to do the book justice, and not to be afraid of the book and not to be too reverent."

May 5 Book Haul

First stop, Pleasant Hill Library Book Sale. Showed restraint, left with three books. Martian Time-Slip by Philip K. Dick, Master Mind of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and a cool old reference book on the Age of Enlightenment. Total cost: $2.

Stop 2, Flying Colors Comics (FCC) for Free Comic Book Day. Line was about 80 yards long. I love comics, and I love free stuff even more, but I wasn't about to wait an hour to get some. Fortunately there was a FCC staff member handing some out to those in line. So I left with a copy of a DC The New 52 and went home.

Good day.

Free Comic Book Day!

Every first Saturday of May is National Free Comic Book Day! The only comic store I know of in the Pleasant Hill area is Flying Colors Comics. Here is a link to there store: http://www.flyingcolorscomics.com/

May Book of the Month: A Night of Horrors by John C. Berry

via goodreads.com A thriller about the 24 hours leading up to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. This tightly plotted novel captures the single day when John Booth and his conspirators plot to kill President, VP, and Secretary of State; the Cabinet plans a post-war US; and the Lincolns dream about their future. It builds to the simultaneous and brutal attacks that left lives shattered and a nation paralyzed. By the way, this is our first exclusively Kindle book. Hope that's a not the same as a "straight to video" movie. To be determined.