The Written Nerd

Happy 2009! The time for year-end lists, including mine, is past -- time to look at some interesting new stuff again. Behold, the linkage! - New York Comic Con is a-comin' (February 6-8), and Lance Fensterman's blog is once again featuring genius lo-tech superhero promo videos. - Coming up even faster: Winter Institute IV ! (January 29 - February 1) I am so jealous of everyone who is going -- there is some good stuff going on, and I hope to participate vicariously through whatever virtual means possible... - The Leonard Lopate Show had a call-in segment devoted to changing reading habits on New Year's Eve that's worth listening to. For a piece about the "new" world of books, there's a fair amount of the same old doom-and-gloom. But IBNYC member Bonnie Slotnik has a great remark at the bottom of the comments that reminds folks that even in changing times "bookstores are here to stay." - I saw the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Butto...

Shop Indie Bookstores Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion by Sara Miles (bonus: a smitch of Christianity for Christmas Eve) As she'll tell you from page 1, Sara Miles is not your traditional (American) Christian. Raised by atheists (themselves raised by missionaries, and soured on the whole thing), she had a child as a single mother, came out as a lesbian, found her best mentors in restaurant kitchen work, and was deeply involved in leftist international activism. One day for no explainable reason, she walked into a church in San Francisco, and was blown away by the ritual of Communion. It's pretty strange and powerful stuff if it hits you right: Christ feeding people with his body, people feeding each other, regardless of whether they're handing the holy foodstuff to a lover or friend or enemy or stranger or beggar. "Take this bread," is the command. "Feed my sheep." With years of experience of the power of eating together from her restaurant w...

Shop Indie Bookstores Brooklyn Was Mine edited by by Valerie Steiker and Chris Knutsen (Riverhead) (bonus: giving some love to the local!) If there's anything your Book Nerd loves more than books and indie bookstores, it's my adopted home town of Brooklyn. So of course I snatched up this nonfiction anthology (which, as I mentioned here , benefits the organization Develop Don't Destroy , which opposes what I think is the worst idea in Brooklyn development history.) It could have been hit or miss -- as Colson Whitehead hilariously observed , there's a certain amount of hype around Brooklyn these days, especially as a literary Mecca. Luckily, the mix of authors here offers views and voices beyond literary hipsterdom. The introduction by Pete Hamill offers several decades' perspective on the "sudden emergence" of Brooklyn, and opines that it will probaby remain itself whatever the condo developers or anti-gentrifiers attempt. Lara Vapnyar has an illuminating ...

Shop Indie Bookstores Goldengrove by Francine Prose (Harper) (Bonus: Features an independent bookstore!) This is yet another book that I was motivated to read after hearing the author speak. Francine Prose had the misfortune to be scheduled at McNally Jackson on the same evening as one of the three presidential debates, so the crowd was shockingly sparse for a nationally recognized novelist and essayist. But she was extremely gracious about the situation, and delivered an eloquent talk and reading about her book and surrounding issues. Goldengrove is actually the name of an independent bookstore in the novel -- a sure-fire way to get me to at least pick it up! (It's also a reference to a wonderful poem by Gerard Manly Hopkins, which I actually memorized as a teenager and have returned to with deepening appreciation as an adult.) The store becomes the refuge of the 13-year-old protagonist during the summer after her adored older sister drowns -- it's owned by her parents,...

Shop Indie Bookstores The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis (bonus: great Christmas vacation reading!) Okay, I'm totally cheating on this one: not only was it not published this year, but it wasn't even on my original list of favorites. I realized I miscounted and needed one more to push it up to a full Advent calendar 24. Reading Laura Miller's appreciation of Lewis , and especially his association with Christmas, convinced me that it's not totally out of bounds to declare my love for this many-times-read series, especially at this particular season. On a visit to my family in California this summer, I joined them at a Ventura movie theater for a viewing of Prince Caspian , since all of us grew up having the Chronicles read to us until we could read them ourselves. The movie was pretty terrible, at least for us purists -- the directors added a nasty power struggle and an unbelievable romance that are entirely absent from Lewis' pre-adolescent adventures -- but...

Shop Indie Bookstores Netherland by Joseph O'Neill (bonus: most likely to become a classic) You probably don't need me to tell you about this book -- it's made every shortlist and Top 10 list it was eligible for. Critics are comparing it to The Great Gatsby -- which it certainly references -- and its sales show that readers think highly of it as well. As my "bonus" indicates, I'm inclined to the camp that thinks this is a book that will be read for years to come. It's not a perfect book. If you like cricket you probably won't get enough of it, and if you don't care about cricket you'll probably think there's too much, and as a lifetime Brooklynite recently pointed out to me, O'Neill gets some of his geography wrong. And you might feel like you never get to know Chuck, one of the two central characters (though not the narrator). But like Gatsby, Chuck is somewhat inscrutable, and something of an iconic figure of the American dream...

Shop Indie Bookstores The Kingdom of Ordinary Time by Marie Howe (W. W. Norton) (bonus: star power to make you weepy!) Despite being an English/creative writing major and getting my fair share of poems published in my high school and college literary magazines, I don't write or read poetry much these days. It takes something out of the ordinary to commit to the complex, contemplative pleasures of a poetry collection instead of the narrative through line of fiction. And like most of us, I'm sometimes a little intimidated by the whole thing, and subconsciously avoid revealing my ignorance about the world of poetry by staying out of it. This may be why when Marie Howe read at McNally Jackson earlier this year, I was stunned by the huge crowd that turned out. We do a lot of poetry readings, but mostly with smaller authors who perform their art for friends, family, and a few die-hards -- but Howe packed the house. And she has a presence like an opera diva in the best sense: gra...