The Written Nerd

Happy holiday Monday, everyone (unless you work in retail, of course). I'm taking the day off from blogging and ceding book review duties to everyone's favorite, the ALP. * * * Back when I was in high school, I somehow stumbled across the Black Lizard edition of Jim Thompson's After Dark, My Sweet . I don't know how I came across it. I may have thought the book was about vampires or something. Anyway, back then, most of the Black Lizard books had a uniform look: a blurry black and white cover photo with bars of vivid color criss-crossing the photo. The covers had a matte finish that gave them a pleasingly thick and slightly pebbled feel, like really high-quality old paper. The look was distinct and badass. It had a lurid and pulpy edge, appropriate to the contents, but the quality of presentation also suggested something lasting and enduring. As physical objects, these books were a perfect manifestation of the publisher's philosophy that these unjustly neglected ge...

You can read my (somewhat abridged) report from New York Comic Con in today's Shelf Awareness. I had a great time, but I know I only saw a tiny "swath" of what was going on over the weekend, and some of the other 77,000 fans who attended have been reporting back as well. Douglas Wolk & crew report on Scott Pilgrim #5 and other "big books" that were selling at NYCC in the fabulously titled Publishers Weekly piece " Scott Pilgrim Wins the Convention! " MediaBistro's GalleyCat blog asks " Can You Sell Comic Books In This Economy? " -- and the answer from the Con seems to be yes. (Great wookie picture, too.) They've also got a video interview about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies with an editor from Quirk Books, and some other vids from the Con. Show director Lance Fensterman has, of course, tons of good links on his blog. (I got a kick out of running into Lance on Thursday and giving him a big hug, though he was deep in se...

Having one of those weeks -- so much going on -- NYCC, NAIBA, industry stuff, store stuff, etc.... I'll be back when I can, promise...

Guess what comes out in comic shops today? SCOTT PILGRIM NUMBER FIVE!! As you may have noticed, I am somewhat obsessed with this Canadian comic book series by Bryan Lee O'Malley . It's got everything you could want in a comic, or any book really: rock and roll, hapless hero, true love, kung fu, running gags, mysterious backstories, you name it. I've been one of the legions waiting breathlessly for the 5th and second-to-last installment, and early reports indicate that the wait has been worthwhile -- Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe delivers the goods. I wasn't able to make it to last night's midnight release party with O'Malley at Jim Hanley's Universe , nor will I be able to attend this evening's book party with the author at Rocketship (I blame "making a living", which often interferes with my comic book reading.) But you can bet I'm jetting over to Rocketship as soon as they open this morning to pick up the copy the supernice owne...

I've spent an amazingly satisfactory day cleaning house, cooking soup, and enjoying the sunlight through the windows. Before I go in to the bookstore to host tonight's event , and while I wait for booksellers' reports on WI4, there's time for a book review or two. Neither of these books have been published yet, but they were both miss-my-subway-stop compelling January reading, so I wanted to talk about them now while they're still fresh in my mind. Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard (Doubleday, July 2009) The jacket copy on this beautifully designed ARC (it looks like a Mexican Day of the Dead woodcut, very creepy/fun) suggests that Johannes Cabal should be compared to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell or Wicked . After we both read it, the ALP and I agreed that a more apt comparison would be Good Omens , the apocalypse comedy collaboration between Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. You've got your self-important forces of evil arrayed, co...

Umm.... I guess I'm on Facebook now. We recently created a Facebook page for McNally Jackson -- I admit I groaned a little at first, but it's becoming a neat way to spread the word about events , extend discussion beyond the bookstore, and share the love. I had to create a personal profile to administer the store page, and well.... there are just so many cool people out there (that I do, actually know IRL**) that I now find myself friending with abandon. I think I'd avoided Facebook for a long time for the same reason I haven't read Harry Potter -- if everyone else is doing it, why should I? (In other words, I'm a snob, and it somehow seemed like something for kids with short attention spans.) And I still have my reservations about the procrastination potential, not to mention the idea that relationships can be maintained without face-to-face contact, and that "friend" is a verb... but I think perhaps I was just being stubborn by avoiding it altoge...

One of my oft-lamented pet peeves is the recurrence of media stories about books and independent bookstores that tell the same old story: indie bookstores are a dying breed, reading is the victim of new technologies, etc. So I must give credit where credit is due to two pieces of journalism today that present a more nuanced picture of the world of books and bookstores. Via Publishers Weekly, here's an LA Times piece on the uncertain future of the fabulous and venerable Hollywood bookstore Book Soup, after the too-young, too-soon death of its founder Glen Goldman. Even with this somber starting point, the LAT piece offers the most balanced and realistic picture of the actual business of bookstores that I've read in a national newspaper. Here's a sample: In recent decades, independent bookstores have become endangered, closing as chain stores move into their neighborhoods and market share is gobbled up by online booksellers such as Amazon .com. Some, like Dutton's Br...