The Book Riot Podcast, Episode #2: Pillow Talk with Robert Langdon

Jeff and Rebecca talk about The Great Gatsby movie reactions and box office, along with discussions on the new Dan Brown novel, ebook market share, a tool to randomly browse the Amazon bookstore, the trailer for James Franco’s As I Lay Dying, and Judy Blume’s disavowal of the label “YA writer.” This week’s episode is sponsored by Nolet’s Silver Dry Gin and Start Here, Volume 2.

You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes (click here) or via RSS (link here).

Links discussed in the show:

The Great Gatsby on Rotten Tomatoes

Dan Brown’s phone sex song

www.bookbookgoose.com

Ebooks made up 20% of US consumer book industry in 2012

As I Lay Dying trailer

Judy Blume’s Tiger Eyes film, not thinking she’s a YA writer

Browse previous episodes of The Book Riot Podcast.

First up: We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo (Reagan Arthur, May 21^st). The premise of this book really intrigued me: a young girl, Darling, leaves Zimbabwe in search of a better life in America. Bulawayo uses her own life experiences to flesh out Darling’s character, and in turn the reader is able to get an actual sense of how this must feel. Bulawayo’s main goal is to leave the reader with a feeling that no matter what country Darling is from, “she is from anywhere else where people live and hope and dream and live.” The feelings and emotions in We Need New Names are so raw. After moving to America, Darling has no idea what happened to her friends back in Zimbabwe. Did they get out as well? She is tied to her homeland, but lives an almost parallel universe kind of existence. As she is at the mall with her new friends, her old friends Bastard, Chipo, Godknows, Sbho, and Stina are sneaking off to Budapest, eating guavas, and carrying on as usual. Or are they? Not knowing is part of what makes the second half of the book so amazing. Bulawayo includes a touching and almost poetic chapter called “How They Lived” that is more of a “this is how immigrants feel in America” and takes Darling totally out of it. It’s a very quick read and easy to follow, which makes it a perfect introduction to African literature if you haven’t introduced yourself already.

And then, there was Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Knopf). I already had Half of a Yellow Sun flagged after so many of you guys suggested it, and I was really excited to sneak a peek at her new novel. So… I don’t run out of words much and I’m the girl you roll your eyes at because I start talking to you in the middle of the bagged salad fridge at the grocery store, but… I’m really having a hard time saying what I want to say about Americanah. I can say with every fiber of my being that people NEED to read it. It has the same theme as We Need New Names: Ifemelu comes to America from Nigeria in search of a better life. She leaves her boyfriend Obinze behind, she cuts off contact with him, and he tries to make a life in England. He is deported, moves back to Nigeria, and becomes an extremely successful businessman with a perfect wife and daughter. Ifemelu has no issues remaining in the United States after college and later starts a blog about what race means to her as a non-American black. After she becomes a citizen, she moves back to Nigeria, gets back in touch with Obinze, and BOOM! The great love story is told. It has more than enough plot to keep the narrative going, and covers enough social and political issues to make you think the top of your head off. I rarely mark up books, and my poor little Americanah ARC has more ink than Book Riot contributors. What got me thinking the most? When Ifemelu received her first piece of junk mail with her name on it, she was overcome with emotion. Someone in America knew who she was. She was a person. I don’t even give mail coupons a passing glance.

Americanah is probably more mainstream than We Need New Names, although I know buzz is seriously building for it. So when you finish your new Dan Brown book, consider trying one of these quiet diamonds.

Inbox (Books Acquired)

Inferno by Dan Brown

Handsome Symbologist Robert Langdon is back, and he’s being handsomer and more symbology-solving than ever. Or at least as much as you expect him to be. Brown’s latest blockbuster is set in Florence, where Langdon unravels a series of clues related to Dante’s Inferno and a modern-day madman with a bad, bad plan for how to solve overpopulation. There’s obsessively detailed obscure art history. There are capers. There’s awkward flirting (I think it’s flirting?) There’s Handsome Symbologist Robert Langdon’s coveted Mickey Mouse watch. And there’s a boat called The Mendacium. (I’ll give you a dollar if you can guess whether the owner is a good guy or a bad guy.) These are all the things I want from a Dan Brown book–it’s a fun, entertaining read, and it’s not pretending to be anything else. Also, it’s not nearly as ridiculous as The Lost Symbol, so if you thought that shiz put you off Brown forever, it might be worth giving him another shot.

Outbox (Books Finished)

She by H. Rider Haggard

Okay, so there’s this woman who lives in a cave in Egypt and has supposedly been alive for thousands of years, and the local tribal people (it’s the mid-1800s, by the way) fear her, and she’s maybe descended from Greek gods (I think? The details get a little fuzzy.) and thinks that one of the human men in this story is the reincarnation of her thousands-of-years-ago lover, and the whole thing is bananas. Oh, and they call her She-who-must-be-obeyed. How’s that for a nickname? Our intrepid narrator journeys to Africa with his adopted son to try to find out if she’s real (spoiler: she is…kind of), and shit gets real. Cannibals and slaves who are mute so they can’t spill secrets and hallucinations and secret messages carved onto clay pots real. I can’t say I loved reading this book, but I have certainly loved talking about it (the whole reason I’m reading it is for the quarterly book club edition of the Bookrageous podcast), and that’s valuable in its own way.

If you dig Victorian fiction and want to have a look at a book that Margaret Atwood says was hugely influential in shaping her as a reader and writer, you might give this one a shot.

In the Queue

The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes

As I, along with most of the reading world, devoured Gone Girl and then Gillian Flynn’s backlist last summer, I fell wicked hard for her mix of thriller and feminist/social commentary. A smart friend recommended that I go back to one of the originators of that trend, so then I fell even harder for Dorothy B. Hughes’ In a Lonely Place. It is so, so good, and I’m looking forward to getting to know more of Hughes’ work. Shake up your summer with some way-back backlist goodness and join me, why don’t ya?

That’s my reading week. How was yours?

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Image source: Kate Gabrielle of Flapper Doodle

People think I’m ridiculous when I tell them I have certain relationships with books, and that those relationships dictate how I read those books.

Why don’t you just finish one book before you pick up another?

That book was terrible, how could you finish that one and not this one? And how could you LIKE it?

And so on. I can’t finish a book until I’m in a relationship with it. If I’m not feeling a connection to the book, one of the characters/the setting/something about the plot, I’m going to put it into rotation (and eventually back on the shelf if it doesn’t step up). However, if I find one thing, one thing, about a book that bonds me to it – I won’t let it go. But this happens so rarely that it seems to those around me that I am constantly not committing to one book… and this would be the truth.

So, I’m left to wonder. Are our relationships with books similar to relationships with people? I look around and can’t help but think there might be something to this…

Surfacey Relationship People

These are the people who know a LOT of other people and are “great” friends with them all. Ask them something deep or quite personal about one of those dear friends and they will often not have the answer. These people don’t tend to have a lot of time for reading, they are too busy socializing (and by socializing I mean hanging out with Honey Boo Boo and Kim Kardashian too). Ask them who David Foster Wallace is and they probably won’t have the answer either… Sophie Kinsella and Dan Brown? Probably…. they’re reading one of their books over the summer. The entire summer.

Serial Monogamists

These are the people who jump from long-term romantic relationship to long-term romantic relationship. They also jump from one long book to the next. The book they are reading is usually a project, usually on their nightstands for some time, and usually something “important.” They don’t give up (they wouldn’t dream of it), and when they know it’s coming close to the ending, they’ve already researched and planned which book will be next on the nightstand. No empty nightstands (or beds) for these people.

Committed People

These are the people who are in committed long-term relationships and probably have a few kids. They’ve settled down, they’ve got their groove. They know which books they like and they stick with them, why change? And if something new is introduced to their palate, they’ll eventually (when they have time) try to juggle it in and then feel ecstatic that they have something new and fresh in their lives. Did you know about this?! They’ll exclaim to their friends who have more time on their hands than they do. Yes, those friends will answer, it came out eight months ago and the entire Internet/Night Show Circuit/Bestseller Lists was blowing up about it. (Rinse and repeat eight months later.)

Commitment Phobic People

These are the people who don’t tend to like everyone they meet. They date sporadically because most people don’t entice them, but they have a series of crushes to get them through day-to-day life. Then, randomly they’ll meet someone and be hooked. Same goes for books, these are the people who start books and stop them like other people use chewing gum. Sometimes they come back to try them again – see if they’re a better fit, and then move on again. Then one day they find something that hooks them and doesn’t let them go and they can’t-stop-reading. Once that book is done they look wildly around for another to make them feel as wonderful as the last, but we all know they’ll get back into the cycle of reading a few pages of one, then a few pages of another…

Because these statements are statistically tested, there is no reason to argue with them. They are black and white and as solid of assessments as can be in the book reading world. Of course, there are no other types of readers (or relationships) and every single person fits precisely into one of the above categories. However, if we were to imagine that these previous statements weren’t true, and/or that this piece is entirely sarcastic, what types of readers and relationships have I missed exploring? Write your own Type of Relationship and synopsis below…

Literary fiction is my wheelhouse, and my adventures in sci-fi/fantasy and speculative fiction have been mostly successful thanks to the recent trend of literary writers playing with genre. Authors like Colson Whitehead, Justin Cronin, Margaret Atwood, Karen Russell, and Nick Harkaway made it easy for me–they write beautifully and build worlds that are similar enough to ours that I can see them as I read (which doesn’t always happen for this language-driven reader). Ditto for thrillers, thanks to Gillian Flynn, Natsuo Kirino, and Sarah Waters, among others. Pageturner stories AND skillful writing? What’s not to love about that?!

(Yes, it was something of a revelation to me when I began this project that genre fiction wasn’t *just* about the plot.)

Once I’d tested the waters of sci-fi and thrillers and found that (gasp!) I enjoyed them and knew how to talk about them (good writing is good writing), I decided to approach my final frontier: romance. I had all kinds of stereotypes about romance novels (heaving bosoms and throbbing members and damsels in distress) and less than zero actual knowledge of the genre, so I asked a friend (Sarah Wendell of the uber-awesome Smart Bitches, Trashy Books) to recommend a good starting point. And then I spent a weekend with Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie. It was fun and non-threatening, and the female lead wasn’t a virgin who magically had seven orgasms the first time she had sex (that’s a trope I can’t abide), so I chalked it up as a win. But it took THREE HUNDRED WHOLE PAGES to even get to the sex, and I am not that patient. So then Sarah recommended that I try some erotica. Mission accomplished.

Ever since that experiment, I’ve been dipping into romance and erotica (and erotic romance, which is also a thing–I’m pretty sure no genre has more subgenres than romance does), and it’s been fun. It’s been exactly what I want reading dirty books to be. Thanks to a suggestion from fellow Rioter Jenn, I fell ass over teakettle in love with Sarah MacLean’s Rules of Scoundrels series (you guys, there’s a sex scene in One Good Earl Deserves a Lover that doesn’t even have any touching, and it’s so hot the pages sizzle). On a whim, I picked up The Siren by Tiffany Reisz and found myself devouring her stories about a dominatrix-turned-erotica-writer who still visits the dungeon. I’m getting pretty good at knowing what I like and don’t like in romance books, and that makes me happy.

But here’s where I get stuck: I’m still a total noob with the genre, and I’m not nearly familiar enough with it to recognize all the conventions and tropes (and there are A LOT of conventions and tropes), much less evaluate how well a book fits them. I can say, “I liked this, and here’s why,” but I can’t really tell if a romance book is GOOD or not. Readerly enjoyment and literary quality are separate dimensions of judgment, and right now I can only use one of them (unless the book is very obviously baaaaaaad). So I’m stressed!

What if it turns out that the romance books I’ve been enjoying are considered not-so-great by romance readers who, like, actually know things? Why do I even care what other readers think about a book, as long as I’m enjoying it? (Answer: because I am, for better or worse, somewhat invested in my identity as a Discerning Reader.) It seems to me that readerly enjoyment is a primary goal of romance writing anyway….so maybe I don’t need to think about the “is this a quote-unquote good book” issue at all and just go with what I enjoy? Is this an “If you build it, they will come” (hah! come!) kind of thing, and I just have to read more dirty books before I can answer these questions for myself? And if that’s the case, how will I learn how to make good romance recommendations for other readers? Sex and sexytimes writing preferences are so personal! Perhaps this is why community has become so important for romance readers, particularly online–you’ve gotta get to know other readers and their preferences well before you can successfully recommend the right romance books for them? I have SO MANY QUESTIONS.

Help me, readers. How do you select romance and erotica? How do you evaluate it? Should I loosen up, let my mind wander, and stop worrying about what’s good versus not good?

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Like the first book in our START HERE series, START HERE, Vol. 2 will have 25 chapters, and each will provide a 3- or 4-book sequence for discovering a different author’s work. It’s important to us to cover a wide range of authors and meet as many readers’ requests as we can. Authors we know will be covered include: Jennifer Egan, William Faulkner, Anne Carson, Ursula K. LeGuin, David Mitchell, Toni Morrison, Alan Moore, John Green, and Philip Roth.

START HERE, Vol. 2 backers and Book Riot editors will determine how to fill most of the remaining spots, but you readers have total control over one. Vote in the poll below for the one author you most want to see covered in START HERE. The poll is open through 11:59 pm Eastern next Friday, May 24, 2013.

And remember–START HERE, Vol. 2 won’t happen unless we hit our $2oK funding goal on Kickstarter. So back it, share it, and shout it out. We can’t do it without you!

Love true stories about fascinating people? So do the folks at Biographile, a website dedicated to helping readers discover a rich mix of real lives through author interviews, news updates, reviews, essays, contests, and more. One of their latest Q&As is an exclusive interview with the hilarious comedian and actor Jim Gaffigan, whose explosively funny memoir recounting the joys and horrors of raising five kids (in a two-bedroom apartment) is just out from Crown.

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at The Hairpin, 10 Things That Happened While Reading THE WOMAN IN WHITE

at Terrible Minds, 25 Things You Should Know About Outlining

at Flavorwire, 10 Disappointing Film Adaptations of Classic American Novels

at The Guardian, Top 10 Books About Burma

at USA Today’s Pop Candy, 25 Favorite Books from the Last 25 Years

at PWxyz, 10 Biggest Book Adaptation Flops

at Flavorwire, 15 Books You Should Definitely Not Read in Your 20s

at The AV Club, 13 Surprising Celebrity Novels

But the movie’s excess is okay. Think about how great it would be if there were a major new Walt Disney World ride dedicated to jazz age underground New York City, and then think about the fact that Baz Lurhmann’s The Great Gatsby really is a long and excellent Walt Disney World ride through jazz-age underground New York City. What’s not to like about this?

Nothing, that’s what’s not to like about that.

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The Guardian made the Naipaul Test in 2011, with a collection of excerpts presented as a gender quiz. I thought it would be fun to create one myself, skimming well-known books for a flash that caught my eye, a silver fish darting in a sentence that seemed to give away the sensibility of its author, often one dealing with the body or the mind, violence, love.

Good luck.

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I’m a self-help queen, dedicated to continuous improvement. I read books about problems I don’t have, just in case I develop obsessive-compulsive disorder or crippling phobias. Of course there’s nothing I recommend. If I ever found anything useful, I’d keep it to myself, to steal a mean advantage.

Hilary Mantel is just the coolest.

But this was how I felt inside:

I mean, why should it matter to me either way, right? I’ve moved on.

However, I recently heard that his book actually is getting published soon.
My new internal reaction was a bit like this.

And maybe a little bit like this:

Now, I know I should just be cool about the whole thing.

But I’m actually sort of dreading the book’s release.

It’s not that I don’t wish him well.

It’s just that I kiiinda don’t want to hear or see anything about it.

Especially because my own writing experience is feeling a bit like this:

Like, I don’t think I can handle it if he wins a Pulitzer or something.

I’m sure I’ll take the high road, though. Maybe I’ll even give him a call to congratulate him.

And we’ll get a celebratory drink.

Because I’m not bitter! I swear!

But…I might make myself feel better by giving his book one star on Goodreads.

Just kidding!

No, really, it’s aaaaall good.

THE END
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Marisa: A Questionable Shape was more a philosophical treatise on the ethics of living with and controlling the undead than it was a novel. That said, it was totally working.

Casey: Yeah, I was explaining it to someone as a road/quest/survival story, but with undead. To call it a zombie novel, which is the easy descriptor, is selling it short. A Questionable Shape isn’t an action movie with zombie headshots. It’s much more W.G. Sebald than George A. Romero. And I loved it. Really.

Marisa: Can we talk about the absolutely stunning writing? I probably overuse the phrase “brilliant writing” but Bennett Sims: you are a brilliant writer. Did you have any favorite passages?

Casey: There are so many. I was really swept up in Sims’s writing. I think one of my favorites was in a footnote. Yep, this book has footnotes. I had wondered to what end, and then Sims told me why… in a footnote:

Since the outbreak, I have often reflected that the footnote is the typographic mark most emblematic of undeath. By opening up a subjacent space on the page, the footnote digs a grave in the text, an underworld in the text. The words that are banished there are like thoughts that the text has repressed, pushed down into its unconscious. But they go on disturbing it from beneath, such that if the text were ever infected, they are words that would guide it. Footnotes are a text’s phantom feet.

Fantastic! I’ll never view footnotes in the same way again. There are a lot of footnotes in this book, often adding to the text, or offering up an anecdote to Michael’s (the narrator) present narration.

Marisa: Oh, that was such a good one. No surprise here, but my favorite passage actually had nothing to do with zombies and had everything to do with Michael’s obsession with books:

For the most part reading was just a joyless war of attrition with my to-read list. . . . For every book I disposed of I acquired three. . . . How to commit myself to one line of texts when there was so much else to read, when time lavished on Russian Formalism was time lost in phenomenology, philosophy of language, critical theory? And so my to-read list layered itself in this way, with upper and lower crusts of priority, undergoing the most volatile upheavals and displacements. . . . I would carry Shlovsky in my backpack . . . and then suddenly other authors–because I had read an interesting London Review of Books article about them, because I had otherwise been made to feel remiss for not having read them (as if the mere mention of an unread author’s name were some cloud of dust I’d been left behind in, kicked up by a competitor I was compelled to catch up with)–would become my number-one priority . . . each promoted to the top of my reading program and abandoned in turn with equal fitfulness and inattention.

I realize this is an isolated snippet that doesn’t give the best example of the book’s subject matter or plot, but check out that fine-tuned detailing and turn of phrase! So pithy and delicious.

Casey: No, that’s a great quote! Sims equates a reading list with the undead horde! It doesn’t matter how many books you read (zombies you put down/quarantine) there will always be more. And they will come at you faster than you can read (put down/quarantine) them. Let’s go back to the footnotes for a moment. I really enjoyed them. They enriched the text, and I didn’t find them tedious (which footnotes can be). What was your opinion?

Marisa: This is going to make you so mad, but I didn’t read all of them! There were quite a few I skimmed, because they pulled me out of the narrative too much. I saw the point in some of them (the footnote you quote above is a great use of footnotes), but other times the main plot won out.

Casey: What?! You did yourself a disservice. The footnotes really served as backstory to Michael, Rachel (Michael’s girlfriend), and Mazoch (Matt’s friend), but they also deepened what we knew of the undead epidemic. The footnotes were an integral part of the story! Its phantom feet!

Marisa: When they helped advance the plot or give backdrop to the epidemic they were useful, but sometimes the beauty of fiction is that you don’t know (and shouldn’t know) absolutely every angle of the story.

Casey: Maybe I’m less upset about your skipping some footnotes, and more concerned with your commitment to Sparkle Motion. I need to know you’re reading these books (my picks)! If I’m going to push through [name/title redacted], you should be doing the same. Plus, like with this book, you enjoyed it.

Marisa: In my defense, I didn’t skip, I skimmed, and I only skimmed on occasion. And mostly just the bits heavy with theory and philosophy that referenced academics that I’d never heard of before. Sometimes I felt the footnotes the footnotes were just layering Michael’s personality. So once I got the point: skimmed. And OMG SPARKLES.

Casey: So much of the narration was the conversations I’ve had with myself, and others, about a world in which there are undead. Reading this book was sort of like having my thoughts told back to me, with a plot. The book is broken into days, (Monday, Tuesday, etc), and I think some of my favorite pieces of zombie philosophy came on Thursday and Friday. Sims really dives into the problem of having to disassociate yourself from a loved one who has reanimated. And that’s a huge conundrum. That loved one, once turned, is no longer your loved one. But how do you, how can you put down your undead brother/mother/friend/lover? And I think Sims captured (100 percent captured. “Capital C” Captured) the essence of loneliness that comes from an undead epidemic. Relationships are a liability. Everyone is a liability.

Marisa: So this leads us to the book’s ultimate ethical conundrum (SPOILERS, PEOPLE!): What was Mazoch’s endgame? Do you think he was planning to kill his (undead) father if he ever found him?

Casey: Chiefly, I think Mazoch wanted to know that his father was no longer among the living. That sense of not truly knowing someone’s fate, particularly in a disaster scenario, is its own form of torture. What Sims is doing here feels like commentary (subtle, though) on a post-Katrina New Orleans. The search for the missing must have drove people mad, and that’s what we have with Mazoch.

Marisa: I definitely agree that this was in many ways a post-Katrina commentary. I don’t think it was all that subtle.

Casey: But to answer your question, I do think Mazoch was going to kill his undead father. For closure. And because that what you do with the undead. Not that it was going to be easy, which is the point Michael makes throughout the entire novel.

Casey: So, what Sims has done here is crafted a novel that deals with loss: things already lost, things found, and things that might someday be lost. It’s a novel about fear and friendship, and it just happens to be set against a backdrop of moaning, undead hordes. A Questionable Shape was a huge success for me. It’s easily one of the best books I’ll read this year.

Marisa: I loved it, too. And I can almost guarantee I wouldn’t have picked this one up on my own. So thanks, Casey! I’ll return the favor next month with J. Courtney Sullivan’s The Engagements. Get ready…!

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For your voyeuristic pleasure, here’s a grainy shot of my copy lurking in a shadowy corner of my bookshelf.

Lolita is one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read, and it made the list of Book Riot Readers’ Top 50 Favorite Novels, so I know that a lot of people agree with me about that. But it’s also one of the most disturbing, and not just for its subject matter, but because the beauty is what you emerge from its pages remembering. It’s unsettling when an author has that kind of power over his or her readers, and Nabokov certainly does, from the opening line onward: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.” Did you get chills? I did.

When I began thinking of what I should suggest reading next, I considered books I knew had similar old man/young girl relationships but also beautiful language and/or engaging writing.

These recommendations might come in handy for those days when it seems that feeling psychologically well is the enemy.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass* by Lewis Carroll
These two books (almost always presented in one volume) comprise probably the best-known and most-discussed account of old man/young girl fascination in literature. Often, such a reading comes as a shock for those who hold the Disney version dear. There are good arguments for both sides: some think Charles Dodgson, a.k.a. Lewis Carroll, was merely young at heart and found children, specifically Alice Liddell, to be kindred spirits; others believe that he was a pedophile and that his interest in children, particularly Alice, was not at all benign. (And it’s pretty widely known that he proposed marriage before she came of age and promised to wait on her.) (And the photos he took of her were also questionable.) Whether you believe Dodgson/Carroll’s intentions were innocent, a little skeevy, or totally creeptastic, it’s difficult to read his Alice tales the same way after reading Lolita. The parallels are all too clear.

Tiger, Tiger by Margaux Fragoso
(Trigger warning for survivors of sexual violence. I can’t stress this enough.)
Fragoso’s memoir is a haunting and extremely disturbing glimpse into the life of a young woman who spent her childhood under the spell of an manipulative but charismatic abuser who taught her (through the process of grooming) to be his perfect victim. Tiger, Tiger is scary and sad and awful to hear account in the victim’s voice (some reviews even called it Lolita’s side of the story), but there is power and catharsis in telling the tale as she recalls it, and in doing so graphically and unflinchingly. The title’s reference to Blake is something of a “why?”; it also interestingly mirrors Humbert Humbert’s repetitive name. A difficult but worthwhile, well-written read.

Lamb by Bonnie Nadzam
This novel is as compulsively readable as it is repulsive. David Lamb, under the assumed name of “Gary,” convinces eleven-year-old Tommie to travel west with him, attempting also to convince himself that he has not abducted her; that, rather, he has taken her away from a miserable life to give her adventure instead. Tommie acquiesces but we see it’s because Lamb (through his calculated language) becomes increasingly manipulative and leading. We wonder how Tommie will remember the trip and Gary’s affections, which he believes to be benign on all counts. Nadzam offers glimpses of the future at infrequent but crucial points throughout the narrative, and these glimpses guide our feelings about Tommie’s experience, an entirely different one from Lamb’s.

*totally count as one, not two

(And yes, I left out Reading Lolita in Tehran, but you should totally read that one, too.)

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After the massive success of Cards Against Humanity post-Kickstarter (and their subsequent projects), it’s no surprise that a whole bunch of tabletop card games are hitting the popular crowdfunding platform.

There are a bunch of the usual in terms of tabletop games. Lots of fantasy games, Dungeons & Dragons style adventures with beautiful artwork. And zombies. A whole bunch of zombies. But a number of them have a fantastic literary slant, and I can’t stop myself from pledging to these campaigns.

And these three? I want them. Right now.

MOBY DICK, OR, THE CARD GAME: Currently seeking funding (and surpassing their goal by a lot), Moby Dick, or, The Card Game by New York’s King Post transforms Melville’s literary classic into an interactive game. Complete with beautiful illustrations and found art that draws from the era that inspired Melville, the game places you on the Pequod, and has you travel the sea collecting whale oil and recruiting crew members.

You’ve got until the end of the month to pledge $30 so you can get the deck of cards, but if you kick up your pledge to $50 you can get the gorgeous tote bag they’re offering up. Or hey, go crazy and get yourself an actual boat. That’s  at the $10,000 tier.

STORY WAR: THE STORYTELLING GAME: Created by Catnip Games in Astoria, NY, Story War isn’t about scoring the most points. It’s about the actual story you’re creating. Players create unique stories using the artwork and descriptions given to them by the cards, and weave their own narrative.

The Kickstarter campaign blew up to the point where they’ve got a number of new game modes, promised expansions, online multiplayer components, and more.  The game saw support from YA author John Green and a number of celebrated webcomic artists, some of whom ended up being in the game.

Sadly, the special Kickstarter exclusive cards, which included adorable pieces from Anthony Clark, Pendleton Ward, and Dinosaur Comics won’t be available outside of the campaign… but maybe one day! Hold on to hope, dear readers. Because Party Cat is awesome.

You can pre-order the game via Catnip’s official website, $25 for the regular set, $40 for the game with the expansion.

THE CARD GAME OF OZ: Have you always wanted to spin your own story in Frank L. Baum’s classic work? I mean, why should Sam Raimi have all the fun? This Kickstarted tabletop game let’s you populate the world of Oz, working together with other ‘authors’ (players) to tell the story.

The game is currently available for pre-order via Springboard, who apparently crowdfund a lot of cool stuff.  I mean seriously, look at all of this.

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There are plenty of other games getting crowdfunded every day! Did I miss one that you love? Add it in the comments! And don’t forget to check out Book Riot’s own Kickstarter running right now, to publish START HERE, Vol. 2: Read Your Way Into 25 Amazing Authors.

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The World’s Strongest Librarian

Josh Hanagarne is a librarian and a lapsed Mormon, which made me feel like we were destined to be spirit-animals right off the bat. But the similarities dwindle from there. Josh suffers from Tourette Syndrome so severe that, in its darkest moments, has caused him to punch himself repeatedly in his own face. In The World’s Strongest Librarian, Josh writes about turning to books and strength training to cope with his crushing challenges. This is a moving and enjoyable read, and Hanagarne is a totally lovable bookworm — consider: his adorable childhood crush on Fern from Charlotte’s Web, his adolescent binge reading sessions of Sweet Valley High, and his enduring obsession with the non-Mormon-approved Stephen King. Books were Josh’s friends when friends were tough to come by, and that love shines through in a bubbly and heartfelt way throughout all his struggles and soul-searching. The World’s Strongest Librarian is also a fascinating read about faith — what it means to have it, question it, lose it, reclaim it, and ultimately make peace with it.

Verdict: BUY, because as a book-lover, you’re going to want this AMAZING book about loving books. And probably give away a few copies as gifts.

Lost At Sea by Jon Ronson

There are two kinds of readers: those who are devoted Jon Ronson fangirls-and-boys, and those who haven’t heard of Jon Ronson yet. Friends, I present Jon Ronson: a bespectacled British journalist who writes thoughtful long-form journalism about quirky fringe phenomena like telepathy, aliens, and psychopaths. He was first introduced to an American audience on the radio show This American Life, and he’s got a knack for the sort of stuff that makes fans of that show swoon — sniffing out the peculiar in everyday life, getting to the heart with equal parts empathy and wit, and drawing wry conclusions about modern life. Lost at Sea is his collection of haunting and hilarious shorter pieces from the past decade, including stories about Insane Clown Posse, James Bond, Stanley Kubrick, robots, and too many other bizarre and wonderful things to name. Ronson is a fabulous narrator of his own work, and my like for Lost at Sea blossomed into full-blown love when I switched from the print to the audio.

Verdict: BORROW, because you’re going to want the audiobook and that @#&$% is pricey! Save your cash to splurge on his earlier books The Men Who Stare at Goats and The Psychopath Test instead.

The Sugar Frosted Nutsack by Mark Leyner

I was excited to read The Sugar Frosted Nutsack mainly because it has a naughty title, and secondly because I read a giddy mainstream review that described it as “gun-to-the-head comedy delivered with a stratospheric I.Q.” But after giving it the old college try, I’m afraid I can only partly agree (… get it?). The Sugar Frosted Nutsack is a Greek epic / pop culture mashup that follows unemployed butcher Ike Karton on his misadventures with mischievous gods who’ve just gotten back from a cray-cray spring break à la Jersey Shore. I think the target audience for this book is probably edgy classics scholars in tweed jackets (love you guys!) who are like “Shut UP oh no he DIDN’T!” when Leyner jams a pop-culture reference right up against something more erudite. For me, this exuberant geekery and word play eclipsed the other things I tend to like about books.

Verdict: BYPASS, unless you are a special snowflake who likes arcane classical references more than anything else in the whole world.

Rontel by Sam Pink

Sam Pink first caught my attention when his publisher launched an unusual promotion for his book Rontel this Valentine’s Day: “Order Sam Pink’s new eBook and he’ll sext you on February 14!” I’m not saying whether Sam Pink sexted me or not, but I will say that I totally loved this book. Its meandering narrative follows a 28-year-old protagonist as he wanders the streets of Chicago desperately trying to hate everything, only to be thwarted by cute things like cats and dancing babies. It’s a tiny little novel that yearns to uncover what it means to be a “real man” in 2013, and I imagine it’s what Charles Bukowski and Albert Camus would’ve written had they teamed up and been like, “Hey, let’s write a comedy together!” Sam Pink also has an incredible eye and ear for the streets of Chicago, and he knows how to turn out a damned funny product review, too: “We all know paper towels are a whiz in the kitchen. But did you ever think they’d be so great to dry yourself off? I say — beep beep — go ahead.”

Verdict: BUY, because you don’t know where that copy you’re about to borrow has been.
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Others, though, took their frustrations in more productive direction. Rosenblum’s article prompted a wide-ranging discussion on blogs and Twitter and comment threads—and probably out there in the fleshy real world, too—about what libraries are for and why they matter. Book Riot’s own Rita Meade wrote a beautiful, funny response, as did the Magpie Librarian, Ingrid Henny Abrams. Here’s a snippet from Abrams’s Twittertastic debate with Rosenblum, to give you some of the flavor of the whole fracas:

Hint: go follow @MagpieLibrarian. You’re welcome.

A disproportionate number of voices raised in horror at Rosenblum’s nonsense were, unsurprisingly, librarians’ voices. That’s incredible and important—but it isn’t enough. Patrons, whose access to information resources is threatened by the misinformation spread by commentators like Rosenblum, aren’t heard nearly enough. That’s why Abrams and Natalie Binder got together and decided to start a Tumblr. Libraries Changed My Life (like My Library Story, which launched late last year and is still running) is designed to give patrons a platform to share stories about how libraries have affected them.

It went up on Tuesday, and already the range of posts is amazing. Adventure and job-seeking resources, internet access and comfort—that’s what a library is. I don’t agree with every single thing a patron has written, but that’s the beauty, right? That libraries offer resources to a diverse array of people who probably don’t entirely agree with one another but who all think libraries are an important part of their lives.

I thought to celebrate the site’s launch, I’d pull some highlights from the posts so far. Though, really, I encourage you to go read them all.

From “I Traveled Everywhere When I Read Books”:

I’ve had asthma and severe allergies to everything with fur or pollen since I was 5 years old. Because I was born and raised in Iowa, this meant that I couldn’t go outside and play like the other kids at recess, and it also meant that I couldn’t travel very often … [W]hen I was 5, my mother took me to the Mt Pleasant Library where I read every book in the children’s section in a little less than 3 years. The wonderful librarian…allowed me “behind the rope” into the regular stacks of the library when I was 8 years old, and it was one of the most exciting moments of my life! All these classic authors awaited to share their views of the world with me! I read Travels With Charley and thrilled with Steinbeck and Charley the poodle as they crossed the country in search of good times and good stories. I was not limited by where my body couldn’t go, I could travel anywhere in my mind, and have adventures unbound by time and space in books!

From “Libraries Helped Me Rebuild My Life”:

I don’t know what I’d do if libraries never existed. As a kid, I was a voracious reader, and if not for the free books in libraries, my parents might have gone broke trying to keep me in fresh literature. But as a young adult, when I got sick and lost my job (due to my illness), and had no safety net of family or money, libraries gave me free access to the internet so I could find out about resources, new jobs, ways to take care of myself – and still plenty of free books as entertainment for someone who couldn’t afford TV and was stuck spending time in bed recuperating. I am now a contributing member of society, healthy and have a job, but I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have access to my local library.

From “Free wifi changed my life!”:

I was visiting my soon-to-be home across the country when my wife landed a new job at a university. I didn’t have connections there, so I knew I’d have to find some part-time work or something before I could apply to graduate school. We had no friends there, no way to use anyone’s home network, and neither of us brought our laptop, so we couldn’t get online at Starbucks. We walked to the public library, where I got a 2-hour guest pass to use their computers, where I managed to fill out three job applications…. We were only in town for a weekend, but I had a job offer before we left.

From “The wonder of libraries and librarians”:

Libraries have always been one of the cornerstones of civilization. You can be rich/poor/black/white/male/female/old/young/etc. and still be afforded the same opportunity to learn. Books can nourish the soul, feed the brain and/or take the reader on a fantastic journey. Whenever I am in the library and see a mom or dad with a child checking out books it gives me a smile. I always try to tell them how incredible it is that they are reading and that I know their parents are proud of them. And our librarians are the incredible stewards of the libraries. I have never met a librarian that couldn’t answer a question or find the answer. Our world would be a much sadder place without libraries.

Do you have a good library story? Consider writing it up for a comment here at Book Riot, and then you could pop over to Libraries Changed My Life to submit it there. We’d love to hear it!

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Beluga Bookends:  That prized collection of Moby-Dick editions getting a bit too unwieldy? Straighten and decorate with a smiling set of bookends.

Bookish Font: A page-turning design for getting your point across, designed by Byggstudio.

Reader Mud Flap Girl: An intellectual argument to the traditional mud flap girl, this decal shouts, “Smart is sexy!”

DIY Pages Table Runner: Though the natural use for this table runner is for a bookish wedding, a bookish birthday or other party would also invite this unique decoration.

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And I have a real problem with this idea that only what is “good” deserves financial success, or that something is off when what is “not good” sells eleventy billion copies.  Because I think there is a judgment implied there that carries over to the reader – like, we can dismiss the thoughts of Twilightfans, because we’ve already decided we can dismiss Twilight.

This, I like.

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Ebooks made up 20% of the U.S. consumer book industry in 2012, up from 15% in 2011. 

33% year-over-year growth. Slower by percentage, much bigger by total volume. 

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We have managed the publishing part, thanks in large part to the fact that my husband is a book-designer himself and was able both to sub and format the manuscript. The next part requires one to be good at publicity and marketing, two skills that take many years to acquire. People devote acres of print and whole theses to this topic. And yet I am presuming to send a tweet to the general public (or whoever) saying – ‘Buy my book! ‘Cos it’s jolly good! I know it’s good, so it must be!!!1!’

Very successful self-published writers are mostly very successful marketers who have a book to sell. 

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BookLikes is a blog platform designed particularly for people interested in books, with functions dedicated to readers which makes it a better choice for book bloggers than other platforms, e.g. Blogspot, Tumblr or WordPress. The service makes it possible to easily share book reviews using specially designed templates.

Man, I was JUST thinking about how there weren’t enough reader-generated reviews out there. 

It’s can be a very odd and hard-to-comprehend belief, if you aren’t raised with it. Not least because it continually fails to happen when it’s supposed to.

Growing up, Aaron Hartzler’s family, as detailed in Rapture Practice, is not only intensely religious, but they are also firm believers in the Rapture – although they decline to put a day and time on it. Aaron’s father works for various churches, and Aaron and his whole family are completely immersed in a world of extremely strict, very devout Christianity every moment of their day.

The problem, of course, is that from a very early age, Aaron’s restless, mentally and physically. Unthinking faith can only sustain him so long, and when he ages enough to begin asking questions and considering the world around him, he begins running into the walls that his family – lovingly enough – has constructed around him. It is rapidly evident that this isn’t the life for him, and the book explores his gradual, careful attempts to break free.

I read Rapture Practice in two days, very fast, because it is a compelling and exciting read. It is also like reading a novel, in the easy way that some memoirs are written, and this is very enjoyable and very surprising. He does an excellent job of bringing to life not only his parents, but all the other teenagers around him…and indeed, the mental goings-on of a young man trying to figure out who he is instead of who his parents have told him to be.

My first surprise in the book was how very little the Rapture itself actually came up…and of course, this makes sense, when we stop to think about it. It’s all well and good to think Jesus is coming back and scooping you up, but since you don’t know when, you have to get on with your day to day life. It winds up having to be a big, vague reward that may or may not come, in the future. Waiting for the Rapture is like waiting for your ship to come in.

What happens instead is daily life, and it doesn’t matter how religious a family they are, it’s impossible to shut out the entire world and keep Aaron from it. Slowly, he grows up and discovers music and friends, and girls, and beer, and movies. Little events – seeing a movie in a theater! – take on tremendous gravitas and importance when you have the weight not only of God and the religion sitting on top of you but, even worse, the crushing weight of disappointing your parents, even as you know you have to to live.

It’s always interesting to figure out how much of one’s own life you need to bring to a book review, and indeed to the book itself. My parents work for the Catholic church and have done so for as long as I can remember, and so I grew up as enmeshed in a religion as Aaron did. My parents were much less strident, and I don’t think I ever heard the term Rapture, but still. There are only so many ways to grow up in a religious environment and slowly work to come to terms with the wider world, and in that manner, the book resonated against me, like I was a tuning fork.

There are two really remarkable elements of Rapture Practice: one is that Hartzler presents all of these people and their beliefs, his clashes with his parents and the world…and he does it all without judging. There are no sides taken in the book. Is the Rapture right or wrong? Is being extremely devout more or less correct than seeing a rated-R movie? The book doesn’t champion one and hate the other. It simply explores, with delicacy, the balancing act that is everyone’s life, sooner or later.

The second remarkable element of Rapture Practice is one I will not discuss in full detail, because it was a tremendous pleasure as the book rolled along to slowly put little bits and pieces together and realize something major about Aaron’s life. Slowly, I became aware of an aspect of him which I didn’t have fully confirmed until I was done reading. It was an excellent piece of subtle building, and I want to talk about it, but I want people to discover it all their own.

On the whole, Rapture Practice is an excellent read. Very fast, very sharp and enjoyable, and a book I’m going to need to revisit. It was a hard book to condense into a review, and I tend to think that’s a sure sign of a good book.

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Surrounded by enemies, the once-great nation of Ravka has been torn in two by the Shadow Fold, a swath of near impenetrable darkness crawling with monsters. Now its fate may rest on the shoulders of one lonely refugee.

Alina Starkov has never been good at anything. But when her regiment is attacked on the Fold and her best friend is brutally injured, Alina reveals a dormant power that saves his life—a power that could be the key to setting her war-ravaged country free. Wrenched from everything she knows, Alina is whisked away to the royal court to be trained as a member of the Grisha, the magical elite led by the mysterious Darkling.

With darkness looming and an entire kingdom depending on her untamed power, Alina will have to confront the secrets of the Grisha…and the secrets of her heart.

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Before we reveal the answers, a look back at last week’s prompt:

Name Authors Who Have Written Books Featuring Characters Created by Someone Else.

And here are some selected responses:

Gregory Maguire

Neil Gaiman

Brandon Sanderson

Jean Rhys

Jeffrey Deaver

Kingsley Amis

Jasper Fforde

Geraldine Brooks

Seth Grahame-Smith

Alan Moore

Ruth Plumly Thompson

PD James

Laurie King

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Here are a few publishers that consistently put out covers that make me want to read the book, no matter what it’s about.

Europa Editions

The Europa Editions covers are a thing of beauty. They are simple, classic, and make excellent use of color. They mix artistic styles effectively, while maintaing a certain continuity throughout their catalog. The logo is easily recognized, the fonts are consistent, and I absolutely adore the way the spines all match. It’s my favorite section of the bookshelf.

Farrar, Straus & Giroux 

Bold colors, spare use of text, and simplicity of design are the keys to the success of so many of FSG’s covers. I’m also a sucker for books on book covers. The symmetry on the HHhH cover is nice, too.

Melville House 

Melville House is such a great publisher for so many reasons, but I’d have to say that their consistently amazing cover art is right at the top of the list. Both of these covers benefit from good use of color, simplicity, and depth (that’s the best way this not-an-artist can describe the fact that neither cover looks flat).

Vintage 

Vintage’s covers don’t always make me happy. Sometimes I feel like they try too hard. But they’re on the mark more often than they aren’t. I love the way that the paper is folded in half on the cover of The Double Game, and I just have a feeling that the cover is an accurate portrayal of the book. The second cover doesn’t seem as closely related to the text, but I actually think that it might be perfect. The title is bit misleading, too, right?

Pretty much all of these covers come from 2012 or before. Which of this year’s books have the best covers?

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I thought my favorite Doctor Who library would always be the 51st-century library featured in the award-winning 2008 episodes “Silence in the Library” and “Forest of the Dead.” But, after “Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS” (which aired late last month), I’m not so sure. Granted, the former got two whole episodes where the library in “Journey” is on screen for mere minutes. But it was entirely enrapturing all the same.

I can’t decide which I like better, so I figured I’d ask you all to help out.

Here follows my thinking about the two libraries, with pros and cons for each. Then it’ll be up to you to settle the matter once and for all (or until the Doctor and his companions wander their way into another awesome library).

“SILENCE IN THE LIBRARY”/”FOREST OF THE DEAD”

In these gorgeous, creepy episodes, the Doctor and Donna visit a library planet (yes, planet) in the 51st century to see the universe’s knowledge in all its glory. Gory is more like it, though. They find the library deserted except for an archeological team eager to find out what went wrong when every patron suddenly disappeared and the planet was quarantined.

PROS:

• Obviously, there’s the fact that it contains every book ever published anywhere, in any form. Because: GIMME.
• No need for a print-vs.-digital debate, since you get the best of both worlds. All the books are printed—since, as the Doctor puts it, “you need the…smell of books”—but the library itself is run by an extraordinarily powerful computer (of sorts).
• It’s pretty damn grand, both in scale and architecturally speaking:

The whole planet is covered with these buildings, and they’re all FULL OF BOOKS.

“Pretty,” I think we call it.

• A teleportation system means you can pop by for a book from anywhere, as well as navigate the planet-sized library with ease. Anyone who’s scoured the stacks at even a decent-sized library can understand the lazy appeal of that.

CONS:

• It’s a bit overwhelming, isn’t it? I can’t even really wrap my brain around it. I worry I’d end up cowering in a corner—probably in the movie novelization section, or something equally embarrassing—unable to take advantage of the opportunity.
• The “librarians” are machines with creepy human faces:

Not okay. “Uncanny valley,” people. Look it up.

• Oh, and speaking of faces, the library happens to be infested with the shadow-dwelling, flesh-eating Vashta Nerada:

How are you supposed to read all the books after the bugs eat your eyes?

“JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE TARDIS”

In this recent episode, a TARDIS crash (it seems to break down a lot, come to think of it) separates the Doctor and Clara, the latter of whom gets lost in the labyrinthine spaceship. As she tries to find her way back to the control room, Clara is pursued by a monster of some fashion, and she hides in a library that’s, well…let’s just say that Clara mutters, “Now that’s just showing off” when she first sees it, and I can’t blame her.

PROS:

• I mean, just look at it. The levels, the arches, the wallpaper, the skylight (which you can’t see in this shot, but I promise it’s there). And the books, the books, the books

I think “Gasp!” is the appropriate response.

• It’s a library in the TARDIS, so you know it’s full of batshit-awesome things. Like an encyclopedia of a near-extinct species that doesn’t have any pages. Because it’s IN BOTTLES THAT TALK:

I don’t think you’re supposed to drink it.

•  There’s a magisterially-displayed History of the Time War, which would make it much easier to figure out what the Doctor is on about when he’s being all cryptic about his past:

You can tell it’s important because it’s on a fancy stand. Like a bible. Or a dictionary.

• That it’s in the TARDIS makes it the ultimate mobile library. (Take that, bookmobiles!) With this feature, you can, for example, pause for a bit of reading amidst your desperate fight for survival:

Phew, and just when all that running and screaming was getting dull: a book!

CONS:

• The TARDIS rearranges its architecture with some regularity, so you might lose track of where the library is. And while it’s one thing to lose a library book, it’s a whole different thing to lose a whole library.
• The TARDIS is infinite, but it doesn’t appear that the library is. It likely has fewer books than the library planet (though probably more books-that-are-actually-talking-bottles).
• Also, zombie monster thingies that keep popping up. They’ll certainly interrupt a quiet afternoon in the library:

And here I was, just looking for a quiet place to study.

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See, I’m torn? It’s up to you to save me from the pains of my indecision. Which of these two libraries is more awesome? (Or, lord help me, is there yet another amazing library I’m overlooking?)

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