Category: Reading and Books

Mary Roach’s Virtual Book Tour has finished. i’d be interested in hearing everyone’s feedback if you’ve got some.

Hey ya’ll,

Today is the last day of the Virtual Book Tour. An excerpt of Stiff makes an appearence in the July issue of Inkblots Magazine, Geoffrey Long’s fine publication out of Washington D.C.

And that’s a wrap. It’s been a helluva ride that succeeded way beyond our expectations. I’ll be soliciting reader feedback starting next week.

Thanks for your support.

Today on the VBT, an interview with Ms. Roach at Crabwalk.com, conducted by the master of ceremonies over there, Josh Benton.

Tomorrow, The Final Day. *sniff*

Hey ya’ll,

Mary Roach shows up at Kottke.org to guest post today. Last I looked, there’s a raging debate going on as to how one would feel giving their body to science.

Check it out.

Tomorrow, the tour crawls into Dallas and stops at Crabwalk.com.

The VBT is in Seattle today with a stop at Erik Benson’s All Consuming. Erik interviewed Mary Roach earlier this week.

Tomorrow: Back to New York. Mary will be taking over Kottke.org for the day.

The VBT took the weekend off to give everyone involved some much needed rest.

Today it leaps into Toronto with a stop at James McNally’s Consolation Champs.

In other news, the tour was listed at Library & Information Science News, a publication that keeps track of such things.

I’ve already begun thinking about the next tour, what book to feature, which blogs to include. We’re getting to that scary place where people with money might want to be involved. That presents a whole host of difficult questions not the least of which is how uncomfortable I am with the perception that the tour might be for sale to the highest bidder. I’ve got a lot of thinking to do before we take the next big step here.

The VBT gallops into Oakland today with a stop at Brain Dump. Min Jung was gallant enough to step in for a last minute tour cancellation. She’s a buddy and a readerly soul.

A few other nice mentions of the tour this week but I’m too tired to blog them. We’ll be back at it on Monday. Have a nice weekend, everyone. And thank you for your support.

Today the VBT scoots down the east coast and pulls up at Heath Row’s Media Diet. Mary Roach will be blogging there today about web sites, publications and general media of interest to those fascinated with the deceased.

In linky news, The Virtual Book Tour has been mentioned at Harrumph, Shift.com’s weblog, Bookslut and is #28 on Popdex last I looked.

As with anything, the VBT is not without its detractors. Jessa Crispin of Bookslut has a valid point when she indicates that the tour has been a bit slow to get off the ground and the a series of blurbs across a series of blogs does not a revolution make.

I agree. Here’s why the tour has been the way it has thus far. First, Mary Roach was out of town our first three days tending to real world tour responsibilities. We’re hoping that things pick up now that she’s back home. Second, every blogger commits to as much as they can based on their available free time. No one is getting paid here and if a tour site is too busy to do anything other than post an excerpt, then that’s what they can do. Finally, we’re all beginniners here. This is at best a rough draft of a new, barely-proven project. I’m hoping our mistakes for the first tour will be our improvements for the second.

One more thing…There’s a mistaken notion floating around that the VBT is somehow acting as hired guns for Mary and W.W. Norton, her publisher. My guess is that this is an idea borne of lack of clairty on my part and a subsequent misundestanding.

1) The sites of the VBT receive no funds from publishers or me, only copies of the touring book.

2) Every blog is treated as an autonomous unit, with complete editorial control. So if any site on this tour hated Stiff, they had free reign to say so.

3) Touring books are selected by me, based on what I think will be an enjoyable read for the owners of the tour sites, and agreed to by them. I’m certainly not interested in wasting their time with lousy books and my intent behind the tour is to promote quality contemporary literature, the kind not often featured in the weblog community. To me, that contains much more intrinsic and collaberative value than trashing something for its own sake, just to show what an independent thinker I am.

We all love books here, good ones especially. The point of the tour is to bring good books to light. That’s all.

Tomorrow, the tour heads into Oakland, for a stop at Brain Dump.

For those new to Where There’s Smoke, I have a weekly newsletter called The Smoke Signal I send out that recommends three books worth taking a look at. You can sign up for The Smoke Signal here if you’re looking to get more of your read on. Comes out weekly, isn’t sold-off to anyone. The gist of it is below.

Political Fictions by Joan Didion (Vintage, $14 in paperback, 338 pp.)

Political writing bores me to tears. Unless it’s written by one of about three people I trust on the subject. Joan Didion is one of those people.

Way back in 1988, Didion was commissioned to do a series of long essays on presidential elections by the New York Review of Books. I read a few scattered across the book and was, of course, wowed by her cool, wise and (if it’s possible considering the subject) unique perspective. Didion follows candidates on foot, hangs out with airport security guards and gives a kind of New-Journalism-With-Crows-Feet take on the process that most armchair pundits don’t do for feat of getitng their hands dirty. She also avoids ideologuing and sticks with the process, one now so foreign to the roots of democracy that calling it that is as converse as calling truth fiction.

Or put simply, a book about politics for smart people not that interested in politics.

Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World by Carl Hiassen
(Ballantine, $8.95 in paperback, 83pp.)

I found this one at an east bay booksale after remembering my friend Jeremy had recommended it to me many moons ago. It’s a book length essay/rant about how Hiaasen, bestselling mystery writer and native Floridian considers Disney the 800 pound mouse leaving its droppings all over the Sunshine State.

It all amounts to little more than a well-researched rant but in the hands of a pro like Hiassen, it’s downright hilarious. And not being much of a Disney fan myself, it’s a delicious sort of cheapshot

Team Rodent was part of the Library of Contemporary Thought series that Ballantine put together several years ago. It gave well-known writers a chance to explore some issue in a small book/long essay format. I have no idea what happened to it but it’s a neat idea.

Pieces of the Frame by John McPhee (Noonday, $9.95 in paperback, 308 pp.)

I thought I was the world’s biggest John McPhee fan even though I’d only read one of his books (Levels of the Game about Arthur Ashe’s winning the U.S. Open). Then my friend Josh introduced me to Pieces of the Frame, a collection of McPhee pieces that he’d deemed his favorite. He’d read about six McPhee books and walked away with the title.

McPhee was kind of the older brother to the generation of 60’s New Journalists (Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson, Joan Didion etc.) who were all into reporters being self-consciously a part of their stories. McPhee himself doesn’t appear too often in his work with a notable exception in this book “The Search for Marvin Gardens.” here, he brilliantly juxtaposes playing Monopoly with friends and a vain search for the real Marvin Gardens. The result is a quietly devastating look at urban decay and the forgotton dreams of Atlantic City.

I wouldn’t say John McPhee is for everybody. His prose can be painstaking and he takes his take getting to the point. When you arrive, what glory. If you’re into the kind of writer who can take any subject and walk you through it with the precision, skill and wisdom of a sage, he’s for you.

Today the tour, in one flying leap, heads back to the east coast and sets down in New York City at the virtual home of Carrie Bickner (recently married and now Carrie Zeldman I believe, in non-professional life), the Rogue Librarian. I met Carrie at SXSWi last year and invited her to sit on a panel I was moderating about books and digital culture. Her wisdom helped light the fuse for the idea.

The love continues. The VBT was mentioned at Anil Dashes Daily Links, The Morning News, Library Stuff, Jish.nu, Kottke.org and many many others. Thank you to everyone who has mentioned us on your blog, who has send emails of encouragment and who has inquired about participating in a future tour. If the last one is you, I encourage you to read our guidelines. It’ll be easier for everyone that way.

I hope all this attention means we’re onto something. My Spidey sense is tingling. I’m going to be dropping selected notes to publishers and editors I know to seed the clouds, if I have some time today.

Tomorrow: Mary Roach appears! She’ll be taking over Heath Row’s Media Diet for the day and blogging about dead people.