Between the Covers

Stephen King is the thing

I'm glad to hear Stephen King's new collection of short stories Just After Sunset is a keeper, according to Herald film critic Rene Rodriguez. Rene is the king of all things horror-related, even if he insanely suggested that Thomas Harris' Hannibal was in fact a masterwork instead of the embarrassing, overly florid disaster that it was. That said, he's usually on the money with King.

I'm just hoping there's a story as good as Everything's Eventual, my personal favorite in the King ouevre.

By the way: No, it's not your eyes. The cover design calls for that type on the book jacket to be blurry.

Making Afghanistan stronger, one school at a time

Penguin Group (USA), working with the United Nations Refugee Agency and novelist Khaled Hosseini, announced the opening of a new school for children in Afghanistan that will serve 270 local kids, Publisher's Weekly reports.

The project was inspired by the bestselling Hosseini, who wrote The Kite Runner and the devastating A Thousand Splendid Suns, who was chosen as an envoy to the agency in 2006. The school is located in Arababshirali, about 150 miles from Kabul.

Matthiessen wins his second National Book Award

I guess the (idiotic) suggestion that Peter Matthiessen's Shadow Country - the reworked, edited version of his Mr. Watson trilogy - wasn't really a new book was ignored on Wednesday, when Matthiessen won the National Book Award.

And if you missed him at the Miami Book Fair International, don't miss Fred Grimm's wonderful story on the writer, who won the nonfiction prize 30 years ago for The Snow Leopard.

Other winners:

Annette Gordon-Reed, nonfiction, for The Hemingses of Monticello

Mark Doty, poetry, Fire to Fire

Judy Blundell, young people's literature, What I Saw and How I Lied

There's still time to sign up for the Key West Literary Seminar

The first session of the 2009 Key West Literary Seminar is sold out, but you can still participate in the second session, which runs from Jan. 15-18 and includes some pretty impressive names: keynote speaker Barry Unsworth, Calvin Baker, Russell Banks, Andrea Barrett, Madison Smartt Bell, Alan Cheuse, Elizabeth Gaffney, Francisco Goldman, Samantha Hunt, William Kennedy, Thomas Mallon, Valerie Martin, Anchee Min, Mary Morris, David Nasaw, Marilynne Robinson and John Burnham Schwartz.

Andrea Barrett!

For more information call  888-293-9291.

What are you reading now?

"I just read the memoir Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life [by David Carr]. It's really good and interesting. There's something almost cinematic about it. . . . The story involves a gun, and you can almost see it changing hands as he writes.''

SLOANE CROSLEY, author of I Was Told There'd Be Cake

Joe the Plumber gets a book deal. No, really.

Seriously, does this mean if I don't pay my taxes I can get one, too? And here I thought that was illegal.

Here's what Dermot McEvoy had to say about it in Publisher's Weekly:

"I know America is breathless for this information about an unemployed Ohio plumber who doesn’t pay his taxes. But, hey, this is America and here’s the big news—the book will be called Joe the Plumber—Fighting for the American Dream, and it will be released by a group called PearlGate Publishing. By the way, Joe, you’re way over on your 15 minutes of fame. And here’s a way to jumpstart your American dream—get a job!"

AMEN.

Sorry there's no photo with this item, but I refuse to give that loser any more press.

My only complaint about the book fair

OK, it's a small one, but still: I always buy fair memorabilia, shirts and totebags for friends who couldn't make it here. So I go to the memorabilia tent, and this year it's suddenly 1960: They take cash or checks only. Who carries cash now? Who writes checks!? It's 2008. They've always taken credit or debit cards, so I hadn't really worried about it, bringing only enough cash to maybe get an arepa or two.

The kind volunteer at the tent pointed out the ATMs, all of which had long lines and irritate the hell out of me by charging me twice to get my money out. I had been eyeing some shirts, a coffee mug, the very cool poster with all 25 book fair posters on it. I left without buying anything.

Now I realize it's more work to take debit or credit, and the fair doesn't have time to worry about whether I stand in a long line or face those surcharges for using an ATM but...come on. Accepting credit has always worked before! In this economy it doesn't seem like a good idea to set up roadblocks to people spending money.

Sunday's highlights

As I said in my wrap-up of the fair story, Junot Diaz summed it up best: "We're just an excuse for you to celebrate your community," he said. "We're just the liquor."

Celebrate we did. I never get tired of watching people pile into a vast array of auditoriums to listen to books, to talk about books.

Highlights for me on Sunday:

Peter Matthiessen (left) with a sore throat, reading a brutally graphic passage from his National Book Award-nominated Shadow Country about the devastation at a rookery, then looking out at the stunned, silent audience and saying, "The whole book isn't as grim as that."

Charming Wally Lamb dedicating his reading to Miami resident Mickey Warner, a long-time fan who waited a long time (nine years) for his new novel The Hour I First Believed. Sadly, Mickey died before she got to read the book, but the audience was treated to a wonderful hour in which Lamb read a funny biographical essay and a brief passage from the book..

Bilingual Miamians murmuring that they couldn't understand a word the extremely Southern Roy Blount Jr. said. Speak English, damn it!

The shirt of one of the volunteers: "Now can I vote on your marriage?"

The amusing Stewart O'Nan (right) demonstrating to the audience that they should read his slim novel Songs for the Missing instead of David Wroblewski's hefty The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.

The wonderful novelist Margot Livesey calling Miami "the kingdom of Mitch Kaplan."

Former Herald Palm Beach bureau alum Dexter Filkins' pictures of Iraq, where he covered the war for the New York Times.

The fact that Salman Rushdie's closing-night appearance was packed to the rafters, or would have been if the Chapman Conference Center had rafters.

Highlights from Saturday's fair

In no particular order:

The extraordinary grace with which novelist Patrick McGrath handled the audience members who flowed out of the room once they heard Joyce Carol Oates had canceled. Big mistake. "Thank you very much for coming - and for staying," McGrath said (using one of the all-time lovely reading voices) then added that he was planning on "channeling Joyce this morning." Next up was Francine Prose, who shed new light on Goldengrove by making us realize how funny the novel - about a girl grieving over her sister's death - could be.

A couple of readers taking former Miami Beach mayor Alex Daoud to task for his crimes during the Q and session. Good work, people. If he's going to sell books based on corruption and sleaze someone oughta remind him that crime shouldn't pay, even if it does.

Roy Blount Jr.'s introduction of Dave Barry and Frank McCourt, which I can't repeat here, but it had to do with a farmer "servicing" his pigs. I think most of the introductions go on too long, but this one was just about perfect.

McCourt's comment that education was like constipation: "It's everywhere." I personally have never seen Barry laugh so hard.

The warm smile of Nikki Giovanni.

All the non-author journalists horking down the free (and tasty) food in the author's lounge. Oh wait. That was just me.

The very strange Richard Belzer, clad in hat and spiffy 40s attire (and what looked suspiciously like spats), who walked around with his little dog on a leash and greeting people with terrorist fist bumps.

Arepas!

NPR's Scott Simon - who was terrific in talking about his novel Windy City - flagging down the character of Madeleine who had wandered over to the autographing line from Children's Alley, and then handing his iPhone to a bystander and posing for a photo with her.

The packed crowd at the Write Out Loud Cafe for the late-in-the-day performances by the Lip Service Allstars. Co-producer Andrea Askowitz asked us to come, and we tried, but we couldn't wedge ourselves into the room. Just more proof that locally speaking, there's never a dull moment at the book fair.

I've changed my mind about the book fair poster

I admit I was a little startled by it at first - of course I was, and you were, too; it was drawn by the wild and crazy Art Spiegelman, whom unfortunately I did not get to meet at Saturday's fair.

But now, after watching people lug tote bags around with the illustration on it, I've kind of come around. It does look kinda cool on a t-shirt, too.

If you see me at the memorabilia tent later, don't be surprised.