[A couple of months ago, I met with Murray Browne of the Atlanta-Decatur blog, The Book Shopper for coffee at Dancing Goats to commiserate about the self-imposed, (self-loathing?), and somehow never-ending toil of blogging. We agreed to help each other out once in awhile by exchanging entries – doing a kind of a crossover posting (though without the need to buy mutiple floppy editions or waiting for the trade paperback). What follows is the first of what we hope will be many such collaborations. - Rube]

By Murray Browne

Whenever I think of writers whose works are influenced by music, I think of Jonathan Lethem, a critically acclaimed novelist who seamlessly mixes music and popular culture into his fiction. His most celebrated book is The Fortress of Solitude, a racially charged story of a white kid who grows up in a predominantly black section of Brooklyn in the 1970s. In the words of Nick Hornby, “anyone who has grown up listening to black music or even white music derived from black music will have some point of connection to this book.”

In Fortress, the white kid, Dylan Edbus, becomes friends with the black Mingus Rude, but the friendship, while long-lasting is never easy. One of their connections is music, especially through Mingus’s father, a former lead singer of a moderately successful soul group. This connection to Mingus and his father lays the groundwork for Dylan’s career as a rock critic. There are plenty of references to R&B music of the late 60s and early 70s sprinkled throughout the book including one chapter (written as liner notes) about the father’s soul group, the Distinctions.

Lethem’s latest novel, Chronic City, also mixes music into the fiction, but not to the degree that it was in Fortress. Chronic City is set in present day Manhattan, which Lethem has turned into a bleak surreal metropolis inhabited with glittery socialites, politicians, and the two main characters—former child television star Chase Insteadmen, who drifts into the orbit of down-and out-music and culture critic Perkus Tooth.

Late in the novel, Perkus is evicted and seeks refuge in an apartment house for stray dogs (the legacy of a socialite with a twisted sense of charity). Lethem’s description of Perkus’ transformed life are hilarious (especially the companionship between Perkus and the three-legged dog Ava). One of the impoverished Perkus’s most prized possessions is an old phonograph player and a copy of the initial release of the album Some Girls by the Rolling Stones, which included hits “Miss You” and “Shattered” and the controversial cover art of the Stones in drag mixed in with the faces of several female celebrities. Says Perkus of Some Girls, “You can tell it’s the first pressing, because right afterward they had to withdraw this jacket—the Garland and Monroe Estates sued. It’s incredible how much this music is steeped in the ambiance of the New York City of 1978. It’s as much a New York record as White Light / White Heat or Blonde On Blonde.”

After reading Lethem, I always find myself dropping some of his lines into my everyday vernacular in an effort to sound hip and relevant for those times when I have coffee with those music bloggers.

Murray Browne is the author of The Book Shopper: A Life in Review published by Paul Dry Books of Philadelphia. For more information, visit thebookshopper.org.

Beast of Burden by the Rolling Stones as performed by Alejandro Escovedo, Live at Sloss Furnace (08-24-2007)

By Yankee Rose

The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers by Thomas Mullen (Random House, 2010), is a (multiple) murder mystery that twists and turns until the very last page.  Mullen, a Decatur resident, has already excelled in writing historical fiction with the award winning The Last Town on Earth.  The fantastic plot of The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers was enriched by Mullen’s deep understanding of the depression era crime waves the book is based upon.

The period vocabulary makes this a challenging book for those unwilling to grab a dictionary or ask your grandmother what a yegg or avatar is.  (Burglar or safecracker and archetype, respectively.)  For those who enjoy this kind of enlightenment, Mullen’s incredible attention to the language of the time will transport the reader into the personal circle of two notorious bank robbers.  Mullen’s historical details are a key element in helping the reader approach his criminally minded protagonist with empathy and appreciation.

Solving the mystery of the book was always just out of my grasp, making it a stimulating and gripping read.  The plot is not only well-conceived, but brilliantly executed with showers of comic relief breaking up the otherwise dismal economic backdrop and constant death.  I would recommend this book to any serious reader – or anyone looking for a great mystery novel.

Until next time we’ll be here, reading the books so you don’t have to.

Some would say that us trying to review a children’s book is a stretch. They’re probably right. But we have (sorta) done it before and we’re gonna do it again.

It’s a lot easier this time because we know two discerning consumers who love it. At ages 3 and 6, our critical advisors, who have had a copy of the original self-published Pete the Cat for well over a year, know it by heart.

The simple but inspired story of Pete the Cat is a lesson in optimism and attitude. It’s also a lot of fun with James Dean’s wonderful drawings and the accompanying mp3 featuring local music teacher and author, “Mr. Eric” Litwin. Soon enough your kids will be singing along, waving their arms and saying “Goodness, no!” – it’s a great antidote for the tears, we promise.

The best way to experience Pete the Cat is live and in person. You can do that this Saturday, March 6, at the official Book Release Party at Little Shop of Stories. Mr. Eric will sing and James will draw Pete live as they lead everyone through this delightful story. Copies of the new HarperCollins addition will be available too. The fun begins at 7pm.

Should you skip it? Goodness, no!

Dear John Dan,

It’s been a while since we first got together. A lot has changed since then. You’ve changed, but so have I. Some might say we’ve grown, but I don’t know if we’ve done that together.

I admit that I saw you first about the same time everybody else started taking notice. I certainly wasn’t the first to spot you but I was in there a bit earlier than many, before super stardom called your name.

You drew me in innocently enough. I wasn’t necessarily looking for something easy and the prospect of loosely interpreted history and social commentary was seductive. The hint of truth which illuminated your work was the bait. I swallowed it and the hook too.

After the first famous one, I read your other novels in fast succession. Then sought the kernel of truth behind the legendary novel. As a semester long student of Christology at university, maybe I wanted to know if what you had suggested could trump that scholar who came to my modest school from the pantheon of Yale. I found a used hardcover copy of your primary source on the internet. Your wildfire fame had not yet pushed it into new paperback editions. As I dove onto the history that was the fount of your thesis, I found was written with a hyperbolic, scattered style that was not interconnected or the least bit persuasive. When questions about the quality of its research arose, I was in no position to defend them.

I was now a sceptic. When asked, I would always praise your compelling plots, your quick pacing, and even your easy style.

Still I knew I wasn’t being faithful. I knew I believed something else, but I wasn’t ready to let go. I always thought myself a man of the people. Certainly, they could not all be wrong. I patiently waited for the chance for us to get back together – to reassemble our codex.

When that chance finally came I resisted the urge to rush back into your arms. I read only one review. Of course it was from the old grey lady – who else? – and her guest reviewer was not entirely unkind.

Still, I decided to be coy. I didn’t buy the first run despite the deep discounts being offered by everybody from the internet to the supermarket. Instead, I decided I would wait and let you come to me in time. I placed my name on the library waiting list. There were only 629 people requesting your company in front of me.

Seven months later my name came up. I picked up my assigned copy with a surprising lack of enthusiasm. You were still a star atop the only bestseller list that really counts, even if not the very top. This book was no fluke. Still I was not excited like I should be. It was a sign.

I am so sorry. I have started and I don’t know if I can finish. It may be trivial but to me there is a difference between foreshadowing and telegraphing. Certainly literary devices are fine, we all use them (this letter may be one), but in the wrong hands they can be…well, hamfisted.

Yes, I said it. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be mean. Really I think I should just stop now. I know that maybe I shouldn’t. Some will say it’s the wrong thing to do. That you should always finish what you’ve started, but I can’t help the feeling that I can’t go on.

I want to believe that my friends on the Capitol Police force are competent and that kids only bend spoons with their mind on The Matrix. Please Dan, just tell me. Will you make suffer another gender bending introduction like that of the CIA official? Is this what your feminist critique has become?

I did it again. I am being mean. I will stop now. It’s not right and I will stop. We have grown apart and I really am more sorry than you know. Please forgive me.

There are others out there for you (252 are still waiting at last glance). It’s time for me to put you down and let them have their turn.

We’ll always have Rome…

Yours,
Rube

By Yankee Rose

www.eyehook.com CC BY 2.5

The other day Rube pointed out that I’ve been reading a lot of books about love lately.  Maybe he noticed that I have been tearing up behind the paperbacks, or maybe he checked the reading list, but either way he was on to something.  Love is a favorite theme among authors; few other emotions capture people that well.

Here are a couple books I’ve recently read that take unique approaches to the traditional love story:

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan (Ballantine Books, August 7, 2007).  Loving Frank is a vivid account of the affair between Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney.  Meeting when Ms. Cheney and her husband hire Mr. Wright to design their new home, both ended up leaving their spouses to live out their lives together in exile.  I won’t ruin the ending for those less intimately familiar with Mr. Wright’s personal history, but the reality of the story makes the next page an insatiable curiosity.  Horan built the book off of Ms. Cheney’s diary and surviving letters, along with verbal and historical accounts of the affair.  If this story wasn’t real – I don’t know if I would have bought it.  As Rube says “You can’t make this stuff up.”

Us: Americans Talk About Love by John Bowe (Faber & Faber, January 5, 2010).  From all corners of America Bowe persuades a cross section of Americans to talk about their first hand accounts of love.  Their love stories are tragic, happy, complacent, tortured, and so raw that you can feel like you have known the lovers for years.  Bowe doesn’t wrap each story with a bow and a happy ending, and the book is as much about life after a great love and life with a great love.  This collection of shorts could touch any reader – from the biggest sceptic to the most sentimental.

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Mary 27, 2010).  I know many people have already experienced this wonderful novel, but it touched me so deeply I couldn’t resist mentioning it.  Niffenegger is absolutely captivating in a love story that defies all odds.  Her creativity is stunning and her characters continue to haunt me daily.  The Time Traveler’s Wife is a deeply emotional and intellectual read.  It is rare to find a book that tickles as many senses as this book did for me.  If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend it.  As an added bonus it will be our A-List Literates Book Club book in May.

By Yankee Rose & Rube Ambler

It’s our last list of the year (whew) and a little shorter than the others, but still a good list (we think). As we consider our favorite books that were first published this year, we also thought for a minute about one thing that usually distinguishes book lovers from music lovers – their continuing interest in discovering the classics. It really is no surprise after all. It takes less than 80 minutes to listen to The Basement Tapes again (even including the time it takes to flip, switch, and flip the two records). It takes considerably longer to reread The Great Gatsby. What’s more, the attentive reader, like the attentive listener, wants to spend some time with the artist’s work so speeding through isn’t in order.

That same ratio of time invested applies when discovering that great work for the first time. Your first go around with The White Album will take less time than a bowl game. Your first time through The White Tiger: A Novel (a modern classic in our eyes) may take an entire bowl season. This is all by way of noting that several of the best books we read for the first time this year, were not published this year. We have written about some, like the The White Tiger and Coyote Blue, and let you know we were reading others, such as Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, and will continue to do so to let you discover whatever book you may need to read but haven’t yet come across.

We did read a fair number of new books though, so we thought we would share a quick list of those that really stood out in the crowd. Here they are.

Fool by Christopher Moore (January 31, 2009).

If you didn’t guess we were fans of Christopher Moore, you probably missed my gushing reviews of Fool and Coyote Blue. Rube introduced me to Moore last Spring, and I have torn through his books as fast as I could get my hands on them. While Fool is not a traditional Moore novel, it is a wonderful retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear that will bring a new light to the workings of one medieval royal family.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett (February 9, 2009).

Recommended to me by our favorite local librarian, The Help is an excellent depiction of the civil rights movement in a small Mississippi town. As much about the changing role of women in the South as the ever-present race struggles of the era, this book empowers all to make their own small differences in the world.

Bound South by Susan Rebecca White (February 9, 2009).

Bound South is the debut novel of Atlanta resident Susan Rebecca White. Bound South is an excellent depiction of class struggles in the South, taking The Help forward 40 years to examine class struggles that have moved beyond racial lines. We reviewed it here, and look forward to her next book, A Soft Place to Land, due out this May.

All The Broken Pieces by Ann Burg (April 1, 2009).

A stunning debut for the young reader in your home (even if it’s you). After what I wrote in my review earlier this year, it had to be a lock for this list.

Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music by Greg Kot (May 19, 2009).

Greg Kot’s investigation of the forces that have moved music from the CD to the MP3 is great fun for the music fan, and we might suggest required reading for anybody who thinks they need to be in the music business.

Chronic Cityby Jonathan Lethem (October 13, 2009).

This novel narrated by a former child actor is set in an alternate reality Manhattan where you can get a “War Free” edition of the Times.  But the meta text hardly stops there and in end all that we really know is real about this story may (or may not) be the human condition Lethem so skillfully navigates.