This Week’s Recommended Books (7.10.2003)

Smokler on September 12, 2003

Dear Friends,

It’s all about Litquake for the next 10 days which is why were late to the party with this edition of The Smoke Signal. Read on…

SAVE THE DATE: Litquake, San Francisco’s largest literary festival rumbles into town next week, Thurs. Sept 18-Sun Sept 21. Over 80 authors including Dorothy Allison, Po Bronson, former Poet Laureate Robert Hass, JT LeRoy and Irvine Welsh will be reading at the main festival on Saturday and Sunday.

The festival begins with an opening panel on Thursday night entitled “Creative Demons: Writers Behaving Badly” that I’ll be moderating. I’ll also be reading as part of the Saturday Night event along with Irvine Welsh and JT Leroy. It’s an honor.

A complete schedule of Litquake events and all relevent details is here:

http://www.litquake.org

A complete list of authors reading is here…

http://www.litquake.org/2003/EventAuthors.html

Litquake is the Bay Area’s most exciting literary happening of the year. The main festival is entirely free and the remainder of the events are all under $10. It’s a must attend for fans of books, authors, and literature in the region. You won’t be sorry.

Also, should you live in the Bay Area and always wanted to right a novel, the fall semester of classes begins this week at A Clean Well Lighted Place for Books.

Fiction Writing with Donna Levin
10 Wednesdays, Sept. 17 – Nov. 19 � 6:30 – 9PM
$300 ($150 due at registration, balance on first class)

This class is designed for the serious writer – both novice and
experienced. Using student work as a springboard, Donna will
cover the essentials of craft: plot, character, voice, dialogue.
Students should be prepared to share their work. Includes one
private consultation.

Donna Levin has taught writing for more than 10 years.
She�s the author of
Get That Novel Written.

ACWLP is on Van Ness at Turk in San Francisco
www.bookstore.com

-RECOMMENDED BOOKS-

I’ve been a fan of Sherman Alexie for since I heard a radio program about “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven”, his first collection of short stories that was the basis of the film “Smoke Signals.” I’ve since followed his career religiously, reading his newest book whenever I got my hands on it, which is something I rarely do with any author.

“Ten Little Indians” (Grove Press, $24 in Hardcover, 243 pp) is actually nine stories mostly about Indians living off the reservation and in major cities. It’s an artistic leap forward for Alexie whose tone here is loose and wearied. I’m about 2/3 of the way through and loving it. It’s the kind of book where you say “I’ll just read a few pages before bed” and then you look up and it’s dawn.

You many remember one of the stories “What you Pawn, I Will Redeem” debuted in the New Yorker a few months ago.

Get your own:

link

“Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books” by Paul Collins (Bloomsbury, $23.95 in Hardcover, 224 pp.) was passed along to me by an officemate with the suggestion that Paul Collins would be great for my anthology. I read it on two long airplane flights, to and from my brother’s wedding and loved every bit.

Collins, a writer with a thing for old books and obscure literature, his wife and young son were living in an overpriced apartment in San Francisco when they decided it was time to look for something more affordable. Hye-on-Rye is a tiny town in England with more booksellers per capita than any municipality in the world. To Collins, it seemed like a perfect match.

What followed is the family’s search for a house, tentative mating dances with their potential neighbors and piles and piles of books. Collins’s writing style is loose, smart and allows itself plenty of time for segues, some pointless but all of them fun. It’s the kind of book which is over way too fast and sends you searching for a hidden chapter, somewhere past the back cover.

A must read for any bibliophile. If you weren’t, would you be reading this?

Sixpence House:

link

“Portraits of Guilt” by Jeanne Boylan is the autobiography of perhaps the world’s most famous crime sketch artist. I put it on my Amazon wish list after seeing a segment about her on “Unsolved Mysteries.” My friend Matt get it for me for my birthday.

Boylan is best known for the sketches that cracked the Polly Klass kipnapping, the Oaklahoma City bombing and the now iconic Unibomber drawing. She ain’t much of a writer but her life story essentially spans every major crime of the last decade. And I’m into that sort of thing. Check my Tivo. Nothing but “Unsolved Mysteries” and “City Confidential” episodes.

Guilty!: link

-END RECOMMENDED BOOKS-

Remember friends. Litquake all weekend (www.litquake.org) mostly free, all cool. Don’t miss it.

Kevin

Written while listening to “Freak Out” by Chic.

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This Week’s Recommended Books (8/14/2003)

Smokler on August 14, 2003

Dear friends,

Been a few weeks but glad to be back. I’m 30 now, well rested after a wonderful birthday and ready to get back to work. Shall we then?

FOR BAY AREA READERS: An announcement. I’ll be giving a Seminar/Q & A on publishing, agents and making a living as a professional writer at Boadecia’s Books in Kensington in the East Bay this Tuesday at 7:30 PM. Boadecia’s in a woman-owned and operated bookstore on Kensington Circle, specializing in fiction, memoir, women’s literature and gay and lesbian books which has fallen on hard economic times. Event cost is $5 with all the money going to the store.

Boadecia’s is at 398 Colusa Avenue at Colusa Circle, where the cities of Albany, Berkeley, El Cerrito, and Kensington all meet. We are 1/2 mile south of Fairmount Avenue in El Cerrito, and 1/2 mile north of Solano Avenue in Berkeley. Telephone # 510-559-9184.

And if you’re really ambitious, I’m giving a personalized seminar the following week, same time, same place where we will be digging into individual book projects and deciding on the best way to get them the publishing and marketing attention the deserve. If you’ve got a book project and don’t know what to do next, we’ll be answering those questions. Seminar cost is $40, again with all money going toward Boadecia’s Books.

On a personal note, I see these talks I put on as a great way to raise money for independendent bookstores and non-profit literacy organizations. But it only works if people show up. Please come by if you can. It’s a Tuesday night and a great little bookstore needs your support.

More information about Boadecia’s can be found at www.bookpride.com

Moving on…

THIS WEEKS RECOMMENDED BOOKS

The theme: Lil’ books.

While in New York, I muscled my way through Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, a mammoth novel exploring race relations in England over the second half of the twentieth energy. It’s a wonderous achievement but it left me feeling spent, like I’d just had great sex for several days on end. Now was the time for a little minty drop of afterglow.

Hence little books. I love knocking out a few short books after finishing a colossus. They clense the palate and allow me time to munch on something light while still tasting the feast I just finished.

I started with Sandra Cisneros’s 1984 novel “The House on Mango Street” (Vintage, $9.95 in Paperback, 110 pp.) which is credited, rightly or wrongly, with bringing Mexican-American Literature into public conscience. Its told in a series of vignettes from the point of view of a Latino girl growing up in Chicago, her family and the men and women who made up the songs and gyrations of her neighborhood on Mango street.

I’m about ankle deep in it now, reading it in small chunks before bed, and loving it. Cisneros doesn’t waste a word, rubbing each 1-3 page chapter into a jewel. They’re simply delicious, seemingly slight but emiting a deep, humming glow. I’ve been stalled for a few days trying to finish a novel I’m slated to review but tonight, I get to go back. I can’t wait.

To pick this ‘Mango’:

http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=27063&cgi=search/search/&searchtype=kw&searchfor=9780679734772

On a parallel agenda, I’m still trying to read some classics before the year is out. The shortest book on my classic shelf packs two novels between as many covers and still clocks in at less than 200 pages. Nathaniel West’s “Day of the Locust” and “Miss Lonleyhearts” (I have a 1962 New Directions Paperback additon, $6.95 in paperback) are as far as I know all he left to the world when he died in an auto accident, unkown, in 1940. “Locust” is considered the greatest novel ever written about Hollywood and “Lonleyhearts”, one of 20th century literature’s saddest, most poignant love stories. Even Harold Bloom, the great shambling enemy of contemporary literature, loves these books.

My parents gave me this book in high school when I was a die hard film nut. I’m finally reading it during my tentative, frightened classics mission on the belief that it’s very difficult to write a boring book about movies, flinty newspaper columnists and men named Shrike. I hope I’m right.

Catch a ‘Locust:’

http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=27063&cgi=search/search/&searchtype=kw&searchfor=0811202151

“Rapture” by Susan Minot will always have a special place in my heart, not just because I reviewed it for The San Francisco Chronicle and loved it but because Knopf used one of my quotes for an add that appeared in the New York Times. I went around for weeks telling everyone I knew that ended up in the New York Times by slipping in the back door.

“Rapture” (Knopf, $18.00 in Hardcover, 116 pp.) is an eroniously glimpse into an afternoon of sex that shouldn’t have happened. Two ex-lovers find themselves in bed in the first scene and the story spirals out to show how we got here. We see how their relationship petered out long ago and now the site of this “rapture” is less an ignited love next than an emotional crime scene.

It’s an elegant, beautifully written book that you can read in an afternoon then ruminate on for a month.

Get ‘Raptured’!

http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=27063&cgi=search/search/&searchtype=kw&searchfor=0375413278

Again, if you’re available, please consider attending my seminar next Tuesday evening, 7:30 PM at Bodecia’s Books. The store is a gem and needs our support.

Until next week,

Kevin

Written while listening to “Help” by the Beatles.

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This Week’s Recommended Books:

Smokler on June 11, 2003

Greetings Friends,

Not much news to report this week. Several projects a abrew, which you here about when they reach boil. I suppose I should take this time to update you on that question I get asked about 20 times a week.

“So what is it exactly that you do?”

1. The Book. My agent has just begun shopping my book proposal around. Please keep your fingers crossed.

2. Consulting. I’ve hung a shingle and have begun consulting on people’s book projects in order to bring in a little money. I specialize in developing grass roots marketing plans for books with small or non-existent marketing budgets. I’ve worked with both aspiring writers who self-publish and authors at major publishing houses who still have small marketing budgets. My rates are reasonable, my service impeccable. If it sounds like I can help you, please drop me an email.

3. Live events. I’m putting together a reading series for a local cafe and working for Litquake.

4. Various other pieces for magazines and radio.

5. Planning some new speaking engagements. My talks focus on how publishing works, how writers can develop professional skills and be the lead agents of their own careers. I speak to MFA classes, writers conferences and at bookstores.

I get dizzy just thinking about it all. Let’s talk books.

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