Between the Covers

A welcome respite from sentimentality

I'm intrigued by Amy Driscoll's review of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. David Wroblewski's big fat debut novel, which also earned a starred review in Publisher's Weekly, does involve dogs that can wordlessly communicate with humans, and you know how I am about dog stories...but her assertion that the book - about a family that breeds a special sort of canine - is not sloppily sentimental is somewhat reassuring.

PWeekly calls it "a literary thriller with commercial legs." At 500 plus pages, though, I'm thinking maybe this is not the one to lug across the country with me on vacation. Maybe when I get back I'll have time to enjoy it.

The loom of fate, she is a tough mistress

  This is what I want to do every time I try to find one of my movie reviews on The Miami Herald website and fail. EVERY WEEK. But alas, I lack an arsenal.

Fortunately they do not lack weapons in the very silly movie Wanted, a Matrix wannabe that was adapted from comic books by Mark Millar, so it doesn't exactly count as being adapted from a book, but close enough. It's kind of entertaining but...silly. You can read my review here and decide for yourself if it would be worth ten bucks.

A disclaimer: I do remember Angelina Jolie took a serious role in A Mighty Heart, but besides that she seems to favor this sort of action-figure character. What the hell. She's got the lack of body fat to do it.

Shawnie came home with a mission

I love Shawn Colvin; I really do. I love her versions of Steve Earle's plaintive Someday and Bob Dylan's classic You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go and the late, great Warren Zevon's Tenderness on the Block. I think her CD Whole New You is one of the most underrated albums by a singer-songwriter, and I was happy she won a Grammy - not that Grammys matter at ALL anymore - for A Few Small Repairs and its song Sunny Came Home.

So you might think I would thrill to the news she's writing - you guessed it - a memoir, entitled A Few Small Repairs, due to be published by HarperCollins sometime in 2009.

What I wish though is she'd work on a follow-up to These Four Walls, which came out way back in 2006. Shawn! Sing for us! Please!

Get off the couch and into the pool

Good news for all you slackers who say you're too old to get in shape (or maybe it's bad news...I'm not sure): W. Hodding Carter says you don't necessarily have to lose muscle mass as you get older. (Of course, you have to get off the couch to keep it. And step away from the Doritos.) He should know: the 40something competitive swimmer and author of Off the Deep End has been training for the Olympics.

I didn't make his reading last night at Books & Books, but spy reports indicate it was another good one and that former swimmers were in abundance in the audience. Carter, who was introduced by former Olympic swimmer Gary Hall, Sr. says his book isn't so much about swimming as it is having a goal and sticking to it.

Herald writer Howard Cohen did a nice piece on Carter earlier this week; click here to check it out.

New Krakauer book on hold

Anybody who can't wait to get their hands on Jon Krakauer's latest book is going to have to wait a bit longer. Publisher's Weekly is reporting that the author's The Hero - a meditation on the nature of heroism centered on football player Pat Tillman, who was killed by friendly fire in Afganistan - is on hold indefinitely.

The book was scheduled for release mid-October, but PW writes that Krakauer "has withdrawn the title," and that he's unhappy with the manuscript. Doubleday was planning a 500,000-copy first printing; now the publisher is assuming the book won't be ready to hit shelves until 2009.

Krakauer is the author of three of the best nonfiction works I've ever read: Into the Wild (made into a mediocre movie by Sean Penn; nice job, Sean); Into Thin Air (about the Everest disaster of which he was a part) and Under the Banner of Heaven (about Mormon fundamentalists). All are absolutely riveting, and I was really looking forward to this book.

Unique insight into Florida's ugly past

Peter Matthiessen, author of Shadow Country (which used to be informally known as the Mr. Watson trilogy), joins the already-confirmed panelists for the 2009 Key West Literary Seminar, which takes place in January and will focus on the theme of "Historical Fiction and the Search for Truth."

The seminar, which fills up fast, has also signed on Gore Vidal, Russell Banks, Calvin Baker, Andrea Barrett, Allan Gurganus, Tony Horwitz, Geraldine Brooks, Barry Unsworth and Madison Smartt Bell.

Click on the seminar's blog for further updates.

Will gas prices kill author tours?

The folks over at PublishersWeekly.com asked an intriguing question in a recent story: Will rising gas prices affect in-store author appearances, which is often the "bread and butter" (or so the story says) of the independent bookstore?

One would imagine it would not affect appearances virtually guaranteed to draw a crowd - say, the upcoming Salman Rushdie event for Books & Books - but what about the lesser known authors? Will publishing houses still be willing to send debut authors around the country? Will they merely travel regionally - or not at all?

It would be a shame; I have never been disappointed with any author event I've ever attended. I'd hate to see them fall victim to the same thing that's plaguing us all. (Isn't the $2.33 for regular gas, as seen over here on the right, positively quaint? I paid $4.09 the other day and was thrilled, as every other place nearby was $4.15)

I carry a 700 degree fire in my hand

I don't, actually, carry a 700 degree fire around, but David Sedaris used to. Not anymore. In his new collection of essays When You Are Engulfed in Flames, he writes about how he finally quit smoking: Cold turkey on a 3 month trip to Japan. He figures it cost him at least $20,000, so you might want to stick with the patch.

Flames is, of course, hilarious, more so if you listen to Sedaris read the book than if you read it himself. The audiobook is that good. My two favorite essays in it (Solution to Saturday's Puzzle and In the Waiting Room) I had read in the New Yorker months ago, and yet hearing them again read with Sedaris' perfect comic timing was a joy.

I think my favorite essays of his out of all of them may be from his last collection, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim: Rooster at the Hitching Post (about his brother's wedding) and...I can't think of the name of the other, but it's about Dutch legends about Santa Claus, which almost caused me to wreck my car when I was listening to it. I agree, Mr. Sedaris: Santa didn't USED to do anything.

You can read my review of When You Are Engulfed in Flames here. And you can hear a clip of Sedaris reading from The Smoking Section chapter here.

What do Harry Potter and Cormac McCarthy have in common?

In its newest issue, Entertainment Weekly has listed its top 100 classics in various areas (movies, TV, style, music, etc.) and of course books. The best book in the past 25 years? They choose Cormac McCarthy's The Road, with - and this is really a strange choice - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Now I've read Goblet, and I loved it, but I'm just not sure I'm going to list it no. 2. First of all, The Prisoner of Azkaban was really when the series got rolling, so shouldn't it get a nod first? Then: Well. Harry Potter is a phenomenon like the publishing world has never seen, but is it the second best book of the past 25 years? I have to think about that one.

Of course, I'm happy to see Zadie Smith on there (for On Beauty), and Alice Munro (Selected Stories), and Possession (A.S. Byatt), and Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, and Kate Atkinson's Case Histories, and ... well. You can see the book list for yourself by clicking here. For other lists, visit ew.com

TGIF (That "Guru" is Frightening)

It's been one of those weeks you're glad to see come to an end.

Among myriad other fun events, I reviewed four movies, which film critic Rene Rodriguez has kindly linked to on his blog. Which you should definitely check out, even if you don't care what I thought of The Love Guru or Get Smart, because he has posted this enthralling poster with Javier Bardem and, I think, some women, though I'm not sure because I'm just looking at Javier Bardem. Which almost makes up for having to sit through The Love Guru.

One of the films I reviewed was When Did You Last See Your Father?, based on the memoir by British poet Blake Morrison. The movie wasn't bad but it sure was gloomy, so be warned. I can't say it made me want to pick up Morrison's book, but then, that subject matter is rough.