Writers: Enter BookSwim's 2009 NaNoWriMo Competition
Now announcing BookSwim's 2009 NaNoWriMo Competition. Submit your NaNoWriMo novel and have a chance to see your novel in BookSwim's catalog! Send in your work or nominate a friend's.
Okay peoples. You have nominated and you have voted and a winner has emerged. We here at The Literary Life posed the question to you, the BookSwimmers: What book will you read to help you accomplish your New Year’s Resolution?
With so many self-help and guide books from which to choose, with 23% of the vote, you decided that ANY book would do. That’s right, so many of you have made the New Year’s Resolution to simply read more.
Well then it’s a good thing that you have a BookSwim membership, because you can read more without spending more. You’re so thrifty!
Any suggestions for what category we should pose next Friday for February’s top ten?
I had a great idea yesterday. So good, I knew I couldn’t tell anyone about it or someone might steal it. What if there were a book about…. [great idea I can't share]? And instantly, I found myself plotting how I would write the Most Compelling Book Ever within the next year.
According to yesterday’s edition of The New York Times, in an article entitled “Self-Publishers Flourish as Writers Pay the Tab”, this is a common impulse. Almost everyone thinks he or she has a brilliant novel dormant in the subconscious. Once a little effort is spent sitting down and writing the thing, the beloved project will sweep across the nation, changing minds and hearts in a furious blast of praise and appreciation, and the humble writer will never have to work their stupid day job again.
Call me an elitist, but I think I prefer the time when publishing a novel seemed impossible. Now, anyone with the willingness to inflict his written opinions on the public can add to the pile of published dreck waiting for the incinerator or recycling bin. Volumes of bad poetry pour from Lulu.com’s presses, and it seems every author contacts us asking if we can add Crocodiles I Have Loved, the new book of stunning genius from previously unpublished author Joe Schmoe, to our catalog.
The sad truth is: not everyone can write. Each of us without fail thinks we’re the one to produce that work– witty, engaging, meaningful, something that transcends genre or specific population and speaks to everyone. And I suppose it’s a beautiful thing when anyone with a voice, a story to tell, and a penchant for self-expression can get his work out there. But is it worth filling our shelves with works that belonged in the back of the sock drawer? Is it worth going from the equivalent of a newspaper, wherein every piece you see has been edited and approved by professionals from the idea stage to final copyediting, to blogs, where you could have a Shakespeare typing on the same website used by teenage girls to talk about their middle school crushes?
Well, enough pondering for one day. I have this brilliant idea, and I’ve got a book to write.
Hey! I’m all fancy-schmancy, with a picture and everything. Okay, enough about looking at myself…how about that column?
It’s not often that I give up on a book. Partially, that’s because it’s not often that my intuition on whether or not I’ll like it winds up failing me. But fail it has. Though everyone I know has give The Zombie Survival Guide rave reviews, I’m going out on a limb, against the grain, and saying that, y’know what, world? It’s not for me.
I think the concept of the book - the premise, that is - is hilarious. Unfortunately, the book takes itself so seriously that, beyond the first chuckle, it just reads like an actual survival guide, be it for surviving the wilderness or the concrete jungle.
So rather than punish myself by forcing myself to endure the entire book, cover-to-cover (a side note: one friend recommended skipping around, but even that didn’t help), I’ve simply put it down, placed it in my BookSwim return bag, and picked up the next book. That’s one of the things I love most about BookSwim: I don’t feel as though I just wasted $14 on a book I won’t even read once.
Even though I just finished a David Sedaris‘ book, I received Holidays on Ice in my latest package and, with only three short stories to go before I finish the book (I’d read most of this pint-sized collection a few years ago), I figured I’d feel less like a quitter and more like I’m accomplishing something if I go on ahead and polish this one off. I’m just a few pages from finished already and, as always, Sedaris fails to disappoint.
I suppose I’ll have to take the guide’s sequel, World War Z, out of my rental pool.
Have you ever received a bad tip on a book from a friend?
A few weeks ago I put in book orders for my Spring semester classes at Oberlin College. Before I did so, I checked to see how much they cost. This is a new habit of mine, ever since I published a paperback textbook for Composition courses. When my book was first published, it cost $40. That seemed high, but fairly average for textbook prices. But when I checked its Amazon sales rank a few months ago (662,300!), I saw the price has risen to $70. There is a bit of voodoo economics in increasing the cost of a book as it gets older….
…..Despite these drawbacks, I give the program a tentative two thumbs up. I am not the market audience for this service, though. Students and recent grads are—what do you think?
This review o’ the week is brought to you by Lucia from Kentucky, offering her take on Changing Tides by Michael Thomas Ford.
I must admit that the reason I first selected this book was the book-jacket photo - very intriguing. However, since I neglected to read the brief story line, also, it was rather a shock to discover (well into the story) that the book basically was about gay love - particularly between two of the three main characters, paralleled by the story of John Steinbeck and one of his friends possibly also having been in the same sort of relationship. However, the book was well written, the characters sensitively portrayed (including that of the 3rd main character, Ben’s daughter, 16 year-old Caddie) and except for several unnecessarily overly descriptive scenes between the two men, as well as the quick tying everything up neatly at the end - I found it a rather engrossing tale, especially the deep sea diving descriptions.
Huzzah– deep sea diving and an engrossing love story. What more do you want? Thanks, as always, for the review.
In perhaps our most silly survey yet, last week, you faithful BookSwimmers decided that Walt Whitman looked eerily like that benevolent bringer of bounty, Santa Claus.
This week, however, we’re getting gritty here at The Literary Life. With James Patterson’s continued prolific domination of the charts, we’re curious to know, if you were to commit a heinous crime, which of his most popular detectives breathing down your neck would inspire the most fear in your heart; the most adrenaline pumping through your veins; or simply, Which Patterson detective kicks the most butt?
Select your answer to the right, debate the injustice of the current score in the comments section below, and clip your nails in the privacy of your own home.
Wow! Has it really been two week? Sorry Chip & Eric missed you for last week’s podcast (Eric was in Miami recording a news segment for CBS), but they are back this week with a vengeance! Against whom have they sworn this revenge? Against your book-loving ears, about to assaulted by awesomeness!
This week’s podcast discusses fun things like the looming launch of BookSwim 3.0 and how you can get involved, the return of The BookSwim Minute, Chip & Eric’s impending trip to ComicCon and many more exciting things, as well!
Stay tuned for next week when we provide the list of writers who we’ll be interviewing for upcoming BookSwim Minute segments, so that you, dear BookSwimmers, can let us know what questions we should ask them.
In related news, please write a 25- to 50-word essay in the comments section (below) on how much you missed us last week. Oh, and uh, jazz it up a bit, wouldja?
Despite the fact that FOX News is already hard at work trying to elaborate less than a week into the full first 100 days (patience, everybody…patience), the year is still new, and most of us have yet to give up on our New Year’s resolutions.
But hey, why be so cynical? Why not read a book to help you on your way, instead? It’s been one week since we tallied your nominations and began the voting and with the votes pouring in, we offer you fabulous BookSwimmers one more bite at the proverbial apple (well, seven, if you count it by days) to vote for which book or books you’ll be reading in the coming year to help you accomplish your New Year’s Resolution.
Remember: voting closes at 9am on Friday, January 30th, when we formally announce the Top Ten ranking, so get your vote in now!
Finished voting? Still have the urge to go vote for something but don’t have the patience to wait for the 2010 interim elections? Try casting your vote in this week’s Silly Survey!
A question of etiquette, dear readers. This morning, after my daily lapse of consciousness on the train ride to work, I glanced over at one of my fellow passengers. He was reading a book on his lap so I couldn’t see the cover; I could just make out that the pages were yellowing, and figured it was a find in a used bookstore that I had no chance of recognizing.
He turned the page, and I recognized the picture of the Doomsday clock, a few minutes to midnight, with the picture of something red ‘oozing’ down an otherwise black page. This was the only graphic novel to make it to Time’s 100 Top Novels of the 20th Century: Alan Moore’s Watchmen, a dark epic of humanity’s failings that transcends its format.
When I’m talking to a customer on the phone and I see a book in a member’s pool that I’ve read, my usual reaction is to bellow in approval and encourage swift reading of the title. This kneejerk reaction doesn’t seem appropriate on the train. At the same time, though, it’s tough being a book fan– it’s not like a movie, where millions tend to see the same film at the same time. Where can we go to talk about our books and share our enthusiasm? When we notice one of those easily-missed details in a book, and we’re excited to share it with other readers who might not have seen something so small, who do we talk to?
Reading a book is a solitary experience– when we we someone reading the same book, it can be hard to fight that impulse to share our insights because we have so few opportunities to do so. Hard to say on the morning commute, though, when everyone is struggling to muster the energy for the day ahead and may not be open to literary discussion.
So, the question that began this post: fellow book-lovers, when you recognize a book that a random stranger is reading, what do you do?
Well, I’ve been 5 days in Florida and just a few days back in this freezing heck hole (yeah, I said it) we call New Jersey. Having experienced both in the past week, I can officially state that anytime anyone in Florida complains about anything, they’re being ungrateful. For those of you just catching up, I was knee-deep in the ocean on Sunday, and have been relegated to wearing 7 layers the past few days of 11 de-frickin’-grees. Also, for those of you in states North of here (like Maine or Michigan), I have no more sympathy for you than I do for Floridians; you chose to freeze 11 months of the year and now you must live with that decision.
I’m still in the early portion of the book which defines what zombies are, how they came to be, how they differ from the living and how they spread their kind. I assume that, once I have been fully explained the parameters of this zombie-filled world, the pacing will pick up a little bit and leave some of the redundancy of this earlier portions behind (which I accept as necessary, given the format of this unique tome).
It should also be noted that, while Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is my hands-down favorite book of all time (is my inner nerd showing?), this book is wholly different as it is not a book about a guide, so much as an actual guidebook.
I will leave you this week with a teaser from the back of the book: The top 10 lessons for surviving a zombie attack: 1. Organize before they rise! 2. They feel no fear, why should you? 3. Use your head: cut off theirs. 4. Blades don’t need reloading. 5. Ideal protection = tight clothes, short hair. 6. Get up the staircase, then destroy it. 7. Get out of the car, get onto the bike. 8. Keep moving, keep low, keep quiet, keep alert! 9. No place is safe, only safer. 10. The zombie may be gone, but the threat lives on.
On second thought, I will leave you with a zombie-themed song by my friend, Jonathan Coulton: Re: Your Brains.
Should Max’s father, writer/director/comedian/all-around-awesome-guy Mel Brooks adapt this book and/or its sequel, World War Z, for the silver screen?
You know those sappy sentimental how-to books instructing you how to build a meaningful relationship? Kathryn in South Carolina delivers a scathing review of one such title. Here it is for the world to see– the truth about Lies at the Altar: The Truth About Great Marriages:
I’m sorry to be the only one to leave a review, and a bad one at that… But like everyone else Oprah endorses, this woman is completely unqualified. What does she know about marriage? She was married once, for less than five years.
Besides “marriage”, she seems to know next to nothing about men in general. Try asking your boyfriend/fiance/husband 276 questions. Go ahead. You know what you’ll get? Exchanged for a woman who doesn’t badger them about stupid things like “how do you FEEL about unexpected guests?” and “how do you mentally justify to yourself what you said to me about that thing last week?”
Its the female equivalent of being dragged to a some barely-known sports game in the freezing cold, and asked to give a running narrative. Agonizing.
As for this woman giving advice and formulas and capitalizing words that shouldn’t be to make them seem more meaningful, I would say there are no absolutes in relationships. No one size fits all. She’s no better than Sylvia Brown, promising people vague answers and happiness. Don’t waste your time.
Thanks for the honest review– I’m glad someone else is baffled by the presence of marathon questionnaires in these kinds of books. Counter-argument, anyone?
Inauguration day is here and, with it, the results to last week’s Silly Survey. We asked you which presidential biography best prepares Americans for the next 4 years and you, the faithful BookSwimmers, voted overwhelmingly for Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Perhaps you felt it imperative to get inside the mind of another representative of the great state of Illinois, or maybe it had something to do with the Emancipation Proclamation. Your reasons are clearly your own, and I dare not speculate further.
Well, it’s been a long time coming (since the 19th century, actually), but we want to know which famous (and very dead) writer you think may have walked the Earth (or at least our imaginations) more than once.
Oh, and while you’re at it, take these next few days to vote in this month’s Top Ten, which asks BookSwimmers which book or books will you read to help accomplish your New Year’s resolution.
CORAL GABLES (CBS4) ― As consumers try to budget in these tough economic times, on-line retailers are growing in popularity, and now books are within reach of those with tight budgets thanks to a new website.
Eric Ginsberg of Bookswim.com, tells 4 Your Money Reporter Gwen Belton that traffic on the site is increasing daily. “Bookswim.com on-line is a book rental company kind of like Netflix but for books,” says Ginsberg.
He says memberships start as low as $9.95 a month and you keep the books as long as you want. Ginsberg says it’s a convenient and inexpensive alternative to dishing out close to $20 for that book you just ‘gotta’ have.
The local book store might also offer fun events for all ages that are usually free of charge. Mitch Kaplan, owner of local book retailer Books and Books says most of their author events are free.
“When they’re here, what we’re often able to provide them are author events that are often very free,” said Kaplan.
While it is not a substitute for your local library, where you can check out books for free, or for those die hard bookstore fans, Ginsberg says the site can provide you another option that can fit into many lifestyles.
Sorry, folks– due to Eric’s sojourn to Florida and a flood o’ work we’ve got here, we don’t have a show for you this week. You can still vote on the Top Ten of the month below, though, and check through the archives for your dose of Chip & Eric. We’ll be back next week!
We’re halfway through the month of January– it’s decision time for determining whether those resolutions you made two weeks ago were for that night or 2009. The nominations are in, and we’ve compiled a list of honorees with a collection of the most popular books in our catalog. Which book would help you most in pursuit of your goal?
For those of you who haven’t read them all, here are the nominees with short descriptions from their pages:
–The Alchemist: “Like the one-time bestseller Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Alchemist presents a simple fable, based on simple truths and places it in a highly unique situation. And though we may sniff a bestselling formula, it is certainly not a new one: even the ancient tribal storytellers knew that this is the most successful method of entertaining an audience while slipping in a lesson or two.”
–The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous, and Broke: “If you are tired of struggling to make ends meet but don’t know a 401(k) from Special K, this book is for you. Aimed specifically at “Generation Broke”–those in their twenties and thirties who are working yet buried in credit card debt and student loans–this user-friendly guide offers a clear introduction to practical investing and money management techniques that can turn even a dismal financial situation around.”
– Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: “Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family abandoned the industrial-food pipeline to live a rural life—vowing that, for one year, they’d only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it.”
–The Classics: A Farewell to Arms, Lolita, Moby Dick– like vitamin pills, you know they’re all good for you.
– Outliers: The Story of Success: “Now that he’s gotten us talking about the viral life of ideas and the power of gut reactions, Malcolm Gladwell poses a more provocative question in Outliers: why do some people succeed, living remarkably productive and impactful lives, while so many more never reach their potential?”
–Why We Suck: A Feel-Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid: “In Why We Suck, Dr. Denis Leary uses his common sense, and his biting and hilarious take on the world, to attack the politically correct, the hypocritical, the obese, the thin–basically everyone who takes themselves too seriously.”
–Hot, Flat and Crowded: “In his brilliant, essential new book, Friedman takes a fresh and provocative look at two of the biggest challenges we face today: America’s surprising loss of focus and national purpose since 9/11; and the global environmental crisis, which is affecting everything from food to fuel to forests.”
–The Audacity of Hope: :With his second book The Audacity of Hope, Obama engages themes raised in his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, shares personal views on faith and values and offers a vision of the future that involves repairing a “political process that is broken” and restoring a government that has fallen out of touch with the people.”
–The Snowball: Warren Buffet and the Business of Life: “The legendary Omaha investor has never written a memoir, but now he has allowed one writer, Alice Schroeder, unprecedented access to explore directly with him and with those closest to him his work, opinions, struggles, triumphs, follies, and wisdom. The result is the personally revealing and complete biography of the man known everywhere as “The Oracle of Omaha.””
–Or is your goal simply to read as many books as you can rent?
Thanks to everyone who nominated. Cast your vote, and after two weeks we’ll find out– the Top Ten resolution-keeping books!
I had a great idea yesterday. So good, I knew I couldn’t tell anyone about it or someone might steal it. What if there were a book about…. [great idea I can't share]? And instantly, I found myself plotting how I would write the Most Compelling Book Ever within the next year. 
Hey! I’m all fancy-schmancy, with a picture and everything. Okay, enough about looking at myself…how about that column?
So rather than punish myself by forcing myself to endure the entire book, cover-to-cover (a side note: one friend recommended skipping around, but even that didn’t help), I’ve simply put it down, placed it in my BookSwim return bag, and picked up the next book. That’s one of the things I love most about BookSwim: I don’t feel as though I just wasted $14 on a book I won’t even read once.
