Julius Winsome reviewed in Kirkus

Here's an excerpt from the recent Kirkus review of Gerard Donovan's upcoming novel Julius Winsome... We've seen such a great early response--not only from everyone in the office, but also booksellers and reviewers who have seen advance copies--and we are really excited to get this one out on the shelves. Really a wonderful little book, and this is only the first of what I'm sure will be an avalanche of rave reviews. Read on...

Narrator Julius is a self-sufficient type living alone in a cabin in the woods of Maine. "I had never married, though I think I came near once," he tells us, "and so even the silences here were mine." In the cabin, he's surrounded by the thousands of books collected by his father, as well as ghostly memories of the dead man, a war veteran haunted by his murderous conscience. Julius needs little to get by; some part-time work in the warmer months is sufficient. Otherwise, he's content to drink tea, read Shakespeare, pet his beloved dog Hobbes and listen to the gunfire from hunters galumphing through the woods. But that all changes when he finds Hobbes dying from a shotgun blast. Studying the wound, the veterinarian tells Julius that whoever shot Hobbes came up close and probably patted him before firing the fatal shot. In the same eerily calm manner he would use to describe cutting wood, Julius then relates his walks into the forest with his grandfather's WWI-issue Enfield sniper rifle and starts killing hunters. Donovan's command of language is astonishingly precise, eerily reflecting Julius's disarmingly mild-mannered pathology as it ascribes no more importance to the cold-blooded shooting of a hunter than to going into town for groceries.

Finely tooled outsider fiction, as chilling as it is ultimately humane.

--John Mark

Rumo in Kirkus

A great mention of Walter Moers' upcoming book RUMO & HIS MIRACULOUS ADVENTURES appears in the July 1 issue of Kirkus Reviews. RUMO is a followup to last year's breakout THE 13 1/2 LIVES OF CAPTAIN BLUEBEAR, and again takes place in the weird world of Zamonia, and is once again filled with Moers' wonderful line drawings. This, by the way, marks the first time I've ever seen a book compared to both Shrek and Gunther Grass in the same breath, but then again, BLUEBEAR was called "Dr. Suess on Ecstasy" (another first), but I guess that's just the kind of book Moers writes...

"Cross Lord of the Rings with Yellow Submarine, throw in dashes of Monty Python, Douglas Adams, Shrek and The Princess Bride, season with more serious fare such as The Tin Drum and The Odyssey. That's the sort of alchemy in which this sprawling novel by German writer/artist Moers trades, and part of the pleasure of reading it is to see what echoes will next bounce off its crags."

--John Mark

A Star is Born

David Crystal’s upcoming HOW LANGUAGE WORKS earned a STARRED review in this week's Publishers Weekly!

"A world authority on language...brings clarity to a scholarly subject, and [HOW LANGUAGE WORKS] is sure to become a standard reference....[it] abounds in wisdom and dry wit."

Pick up a copy of this week's PW!--Jim

Another scoop, please...

I just wanted to keep the ball rolling with the ice cream related posts to celebrate the publication of Marilyn Powell's new book ICE CREAM: The Delicious History...

WFMU's eclectic blog has some mp3s of ice cream truck music here. Just in case you're not blessed enough to live in a neighborhood where the ice cream truck parks in front of your house and blares that same song over and over again with the accompanying screams of children swarming around the truck, you can load those guys on your ipod, set it for repeat and crank up the volume until you start to lose your temper...No really, I LOVE the ice cream truck song, even if it sometimes reminds me of the repetitive mind-control jingle in Halloween III.

More mp3s of ice cream-related music from WFMU here, as well as a long article on the history of ice cream truck music.

...and of course, what better way to beat the heat on a scorching summer afternoon than digging in to such classic ice cream flavors as squid and ox tongue? Am I right, or am I right?

--John Mark

Ice Cream is heating up!

Well, it's officially the first day of summer, the longest day of the year, and if it's not pushing 90 outside, it sure was in our office this morning. Thankfully whatever fit our air conditioning unit was throwing has been dealt with and we're getting some fresh, cool air flowing through the office again.

So you can imagine the exquisite torture of reading these reviews of Marilyn Powell's new book ICE CREAM: The Delicious History that were waiting in my inbox when I got in...

From New York's Newsday:

“For Marilyn Powell, "ice-cream territory" begins where history gives way to legend. Her quirky book--part chronicle, part narration, part dreamy rumination--shows how the facts about everyone's favorite cold dessert melt into myth if you look too closely. With a playful tone but a serious enthusiasm, Powell recounts the myths, dishing out a good deal of fact along the way. Both truth and fiction are intriguing here."

The Associated Press chose it as a cool summer book, and Mark Davis at The Daytona Beach News-Journal picks ICE CREAM as a Summer Read. More good things in the works from the Washington Post, Boston Globe, & NPR, so stay tuned!

--John Mark

I don't care if I ever get back...

...I decided this morning that I'm going to a Mets game tonight ($5 for the upper deck, but the threat of rain pretty much guarantees a seat upgrade after the first couple innings). Then I read about Anna Benson writing a book on Galley Cat, which I'm sure will be every bit as entertaining as David Wells' (auto?)biography. Only thing is, I thought her husband Kris Benson made his name as a pitcher for the Pirates. Certainly didn't do much for the Mets. Go figure.

P.S. If you ever wanted to see what David Wells looks like naked from behind, chasing a herd of sheep, that alone is worth the price of admission. If not, sorry for the image I just put into your head. Wouldn't be surprised if Mrs. Benson's book had a similar spread.

P.P.S. In the spring of 2007, Overlook will be publishing a book on the history of the poem "Casey at the Bat," which should prove to be family friendly, and, dare I say it...interesting.

--John Mark

Gerald Seymour in The Weekly Standard

A review of Gerald Seymour's TRAITOR’S KISS appears in the The Weekly Standard (subscription required for the full text):

“Seymour, formerly a British television reporter, has been producing intelligent political and espionage fiction since Harry’s Game. While he provides enouch action, danger, and hardware to satisfy the bread-and-butter thriller buff, his complex and conflicted characters commend him to readers of masters like Eric Ambler, John Le Carre, and Graham Greene. His political message never overwhelms the human story, but Seymour clearly believes Russia’s threat to the West did not end with the fall of the Soviet Union.”

--John Mark

Sons of the Conquerors: Between East & West

An intelligent, in-depth review of Hugh Pope's SONS OF THE CONQUERORS appears in the Summer issue of The Claremont Review of Books. Written by John S. Gardner (Deputy Assistant to George W. Bush and Special Assistant to George H.W. Bush), the review focuses on Turkey’s relationship with the EU and the overall importance of this often ignored region in world politics today, using SONS OF THE CONQUERORS as a jumping off point for each of his issues.

“We have to be reminded that the Turkic world stretches from the Adriatic to the western deserts of China, from northern Iraq and Iran to the vast steppes of Kazakhstan and southern Russia. Hugh Pope's Sons of the Conquerors: The Rise of the Turkic World is a significant effort to correct this gap in Americans' historical and geopolitical understanding. Pope is Istanbul correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, and the book shows reportorial insight and occasional boldness.”

More on Pope's book can be found here.

--John Mark

Welcome back from the week-end...

On Saturday I rode my bike out to the Far Rockaways and roasted on the beach for a few hours and capped it off with a whole mess of seafood (we took the train back home). Thankfully, we didn't have to deal with any corpses on the beach, but being the Rockaways, there was plenty of detritus... I'm not quite suffering from heat exhaustion (probably something closer to beach lethargy), but I'm working on snapping out of it...

While we were away The Christian Science Monitor heartily recommended THE WEEK-END BOOK.

“It's impossible to do justice to so charming a compendium of miscellany in such short space.”

“It's a disarming, somewhat anachronistic, and utterly quirky cross between the Farmers' Almanac and a countryside Baedeker's.”

“It's worth owning if only for the way it will look on a bookshelf (or in a tote bag): the cover with its vintage feel, endpapers that include a chessboard, and whimsical line drawings throughout.”

Grade: A

Happy Bloomsday!

From The Onion...

Mad Lit Professor Puts Finishing Touches On Bloomsday Device

June 14, 2006 | Issue 42•24

DUBLIN—Professor Hanlon O'Faolin, once called "mad" at the Royal Irish Academy for attempting to reanimate the traditional body of Celtic folktales with the power of elcectic multilingual puns, is readying his apoplectic Bloomsday Device for activation on June 16. "Yes! Yes, they laughed at me yes but now yes I will make them pay and yes!" O'Faolin wrote in a letters to the Irish Times, promising the destruction of Dublin on the same day portrayed in Joyce's Ulysses. "When the sun first strikes the Martello Tower, the first notes of 'The Rose of Castille' shall ring out, the streets shall run with rashers, kidneys, and sausages, and I shall forge in the smithy of Dublin's soul the uncreated conscience of my race!" Dublin police say they are working around the clock from profiles to create a portrait of the professor as a crazy man.

--John Mark

Poets Cori Copp and Drew Gardner read tonight at 7 PM!

Overlook's intrepid assistant editor Alex Young is running a poetry reading series at McNally Robinson (Overlook's friendly local independent bookstore) this summer. Come out to see some great poets!

Some poems by Drew Gardner. A handsome photo of him playing the drums.

Some poems by Corina Copp. A much-too-small photo.

Many delights await this summer! Click on the poster to enlarge and print for your fridge!--Jim

Galley Cats

Over at Galley Cat they're having a slow day away from the computer, so they're posting pictures of author's (and publishing people's) cats. Doing their part to cement any shared stereotypes shared between cat people and book people, I guess. If you have a cat and you read a fair amount, then it's pretty safe to say you spend a good portion of that time with a cat in your lap (or with a cat sitting on top of your book, or with a cat stoned out of his mind on catnip trying to tear up your book). I sent in a picture of my cat Callie, which you can see here, but just in case our other cat Bruce gets jealous and launches "a show of Bruce force against the Callistinians" tonight, I feel obligated to share this picture of Bruce (with Callie in the background).

Enjoy,
John Mark

Very Affordable Get-Aways to Tasmania: Book Your Weekend Today

Library Journal highly recommends Nicholas Shakespeare's In Tasmania as a destination for readers. To sum up in 20 words or less: "Novelist Shakespeare has written a fascinating book...this book is an irresistible account of a mysterious and beautiful land." Shade-oriented beverage sold seperately.--Jim

P.G. Wodehouse blogger buzz

Just a few links from the blogosphere on P. G. Wodehouse:

UCLA's inimitable Professor Bainbridge:

Longtime readers know that I regard P.G. Wodehouse as the greatest English language author of the 20th Century. So imagine my delight when I came across the Collector's Wodehouse series being published by Overlook Press. I'm gradually replacing my tattered old paperbacks with Overlook's impeccable hardback versions, which are attractively printed on Scottish cream-wove, acid-free paper. They'll likely last longer than I will.

Over at The Anchoress:

In such divisive times as these, it is always good to turn to a friend and be able to count on him to buck you up, lift you from the doldrums and otherwise stiffen the upper lip! But then that is The Code of the Woosters, to “never let a pal down.”

and at Mary's Library:

Pelham Grenville Wodehouse wrote some of the funniest books in the English language. Ask anyone who has read one of them.

...and finally, this classic Wodehouse quote from nihilistic_kid's blog:

INTERVIEWER: Do you read any contemporary novels?

WODEHOUSE: I've read some Norman Mailer.

INTERVIEWER: Do you like his writing?

WODEHOUSE: I don't like his novels very much, but he writes very interesting nonfiction stuff. I liked Advertisements for Myself very much.

INTERVIEWER: How about the Beats? Someone like Jack Kerouac, for instance, who died a few years ago?

WODEHOUSE: Jack Kerouac died! Did he?

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

WODEHOUSE: Oh... Gosh, they do die off, don't they?

Indeed!
--John Mark

Staff picks for summer reading: True Grit

This is the first in what will be a recurring series of staff picks for summer reading this season. Josh Mrvos, our Director of Sales, weighs in this week with a quick appreciation of TRUE GRIT by Charles Portis. Portis is also one of my favorite authors, and I've written more here.
--John Mark

I read this on the plane ride back from Ann Arbor. I was familiar with the classic film based on Portis' novel but had never picked up the novel. What an understated work of genius. The voice of young Mattie is so assured that you forget she is a teenager. This book is for any fan of Cormac McCarthy and raises revenge to an art form.
--Josh

Things to Distract Us from Hideous World Cup Beatdown

There is a cure for American World Cup Fever after all (take two goals from this guy and *don't* call me in the morning). Yes, the Czechs have rocked our casbah, which gives us time to turn to other more pleasant news. Check out (see you thought I was gonna do that "czech out" thing! Not me!) Edward Albee's appearance in today's (Yesterday's? Tomorrow's? That International Dateline really freaks me out) Sydney Morning Herald as he brings his controversal goat-loving play Down Under. Or a recent Op-Ed appearance of his in the LA TIMES. Or take a peak at the great notice The Seducer by Jan Kjaerstad (tough to do that ae pretzel online) gets at the LA TIMES. And be grateful the US is not yet football-crazy enough to riot after humiliating defeats! Already looking forward to 2010 in South Africa!--Jim

World Cup Fever

The last time the World Cup rolled around, I was really into it, waking up in the middle of the night, watching all morning, keeping track of the action. But come to think of it, I was also between jobs and had two soccer-mad friends from Japan in town for an extended visit. This time around I really have no idea (and no cable tv).

Overlook published a book in 2002 called BRILLIANT ORANGE: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Soccer, which is as much an exploration of the Dutch psyche as it is an examination of the the uniquely Dutch concept of "Total Football" or "Totaal Voetbal" in the vernacular.

So without further Adu, here are my utterly arbitrary picks for the first round, as much influenced by my experience with a country's cuisine as by the team's chances of advancing.

Group A:
Ecuador (my friend Coe spent 3 years there with the Peace Corps)
or Poland (because it would make my friend Agnieszka go nuts, so yeah, basically this round is Coe vs. Agnieszka.)

Group B:
Sweden (I've had a crush on the general concept of Sweden for several years)

Group C (The Group of DEATH):
Argentina will probably win it, but I'm going for the Ivory Coast. (I hear they're the underdogs, and hey, I'm a Mets fan.)

Group D:
Mexico (because there's a guy in my neighborhood with a bike that's painted green white and red and has an eagle painted on white fabric suspended in the triangle in the middle. It's amazing.)

Group E:
Either Czech Republic (this place should be fun to visit if they advance)
or Ghana (one of our former interns started here immediately after returning from Ghana)

Group F:
Brazil will probably win it (see Argentina above), but I'd like Japan to do well.

Group G:
Spain (my bike was made in Spain, Mallorca to be exact)

--John Mark

The Week-End Book in the Wall Street Journal

This great review from the Wall Street Journal not only features such Scrabble-worthy vocabulary words as "boskiness," "genteelery," "besotted," and "tishy-toshy," but it is also the first use of "TGIF" in a headline of a review of THE WEEK-END BOOK.
As a publicist, one tends to keep track of that sort of thing.

TGIF, Circa 1924: Then as Now, Get Out of Town
By KENT OWEN
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

IN THE 1920s, leisure was still a relatively new feature of life in the industrialized world and the spacious two-day “week-end” of socially obligatory relaxation still something of a novelty. But Francis Meynell, a British book designer and publisher, recognized early on an impulse that survives to this day: the urge to go out into the countryside and immerse oneself in the enchantments of nature, as far away as possible from urban annoyances.

In June 1924, a year after Meynell founded the Nonesuch Press—with his wife, Vera, and friend David Garnett—he brought out “The Week-End Book,” a handbook that, among much else, tutors the rural explorer (on foot, of course) in wildflowers, beasts of the field, birds, geological formations, crops, trees and stars.

Edited by Meynell with the help of his wife, “The Week-End Book” was an immediate success and was revised and updated periodically until its last edition, in 1955 (the current version is a sort of greatest-hits package.) Readers discovered to their evident delight that the book offered an abundance of diversions and useful observations. Some readers may have especially liked its sensible approach to enjoying the great outdoors: “We must beware of prophesying woe to those who ‘interfere with the balance of nature’ because ‘the balance of nature’ is a meaningless phrase. What we really imply by it is the arrangement which best suits ourselves; for every operation on the farm interferes with ‘Nature’ to a certain extent and if ‘Nature’ is left to herself in England the land returns, as we have seen, to light forest and scrub.”

For all its boskiness, “The Week-End Book” doesn’t forsake those who would rather take their pleasures away from sunlight and insects. The chapter on games includes both the outdoor and the indoor kind, the active and “the quieter.” It begins with a fetching epigraph, from British writer Stephen Potter’s sports-humor book “Gamesmanship” (1947), advising lesser tennis players to dress as if they’ve never played before, so that if they actually win a point, it will have a demoralizing effect on the opposition: “If you can’t volley, wear velvet socks.”

About a game called rounders (a cousin of baseball), “The Week-End Book” notes: “This is a good game, in spite of the quarrels which it engenders amongst those who do not study the observations following.” What follows are, essentially, the rules of the game. (“The runner must go unmolested to his nearest base.”) The book lays out the rules of other games as well—none of them, one suspects, to be adapted for PlayStation anytime soon. These include tierce, gallows, tishy-toshy, and Up-Jenkyns!, which seems to combine Simon Says with hide-and-seek.

When the competitive spirit wanes, other activitites may occupy the weekend hours: Meynell offers songs, recipes and drinks, first aid, law, etiquette and poems (some well-known, others—such as “New Countryman” by one Francis Meynell—less so). Under the etiquette rubric is a list of driving manners written by Paul Gallico, one of the few Americans to make Meynell’s quotable A-list: “There’s nothing wrong with women drivers. The trouble goes much further back to their being women. You’ll never fix that.”

Though “The Week-End Book” was originally edited for earlier British generations, latter-day readers needn’t be besotted with Anglophilia or quaint genteelery to find it to their liking. The prose is engaging, ambling and droll, and the topics covered reflect a clear-eyed curiosity trained on all sorts of stuff worth knowing. It could well be that “The Week-End Book” owes its staying power more to its quick sketch of a liberal education than to its undoubted charm and exurbanity.

--John Mark

George Pelecanos talks about TRUE GRIT on NPR

NPR.org has a running weekly feature this summer called "You Must Read This" with conversations with contemporary authors about books they love, and this week's piece brings us George Pelecanos on TRUE GRIT by Charles Portis.

In the interview they discuss some of the differences between the book and the 1969 John Wayne film adaptation, and I wholeheartedly agree with Pelecanos' point that "Portis' novel was a revelation and in every way surpassed my experience with the film." I've been a Portis fan for a while, and unlike Pelecanos saw the movie after reading the book.

I was also born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, not too far from Yell County and Fort Smith, where much of the action in the novel takes place. In high school I also spent a lot of time camping in and around Yell County (a very cosmopolitan region, home not only to Paris, Arkansas, but also Havana). I've even had some experience with the Rooster Cogburn-esque vigilante justice that abounds in the area, spending several hours in a holding cell in nearby Dardenelle, of which the most memorable detail was a life sized and very bloody crucifixion scene painted on the back wall. (The transgression here was a broken down car and some confusion with the authorities and the landowner who gave us permission over camping on private land--make sure your car is tuned and ready to go before driving through Yell County.)

It's beautiful country, and not too far away from Billstown, birthplace of Glenn Campbell (Wayne's sidekick in the movie), but watching the movie might lead you to believe that Ft. Smith (where Portis still lives) and Oklahoma look a lot like Colorado and California. A small nit to pick, but still...


Gunnison, Colorado, I would like to introduce you to
the view from Mt. Magazine in Yell County, Arkansas.

It's a mystery to me why more of Portis' books haven't been adapted to film, or why there hasn't been a remake of True Grit. I suppose True Grit is such a classic that no one wants to be measured against it, but if anyone wants to make that film, I'd be more than willing to do location scouting...just putting that out there.

--John Mark

Lemuria Books loves P.G. Wodehouse!

"Had his only contribution to literature been Lord Emsworth and Blandings Castle, his place in history would have been assured. Had he written of none but Psmith, he would be cherished today as the best and brightest of our comic authors. If Jeeves and Wooster had been his solitary theme, still he would be hailed as a comic master. If he had given us only Ukridge, or nothing but recollections of the Mulliner family, or a pure diet of golfing stories, Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse would nonetheless be considered immortal. That he gave us all those -- and more -- is our good fortune and a testament to one of the most industrious, prolific and beneficent authors ever to have sat down, scratched his head, and banged out a sentence."

Lemuria Books in Jackson, Mississippi has chosen the inimitable British humorist P. G. Wodehouse as their May "Author of the Month." Click here to check out two wonderful appreciations of Wodehouse's work (Catherine's is quoted above), as well as a four quick (and funny) summaries of Mulliner Nights, Money in the Bank, Pigs Have Wings, and Picadilly Jim.

AND they've helpfully broken down the books into the Blandings books, Jeeves books, Mulliner stories, and Psmith books.

I'm from Arkansas (I probably mention this enough on the blog--it tends to come out when I've had a few at the bar or when I'm blogging), but it's great to see the good folks down South keeping the upperclass hi-jinx of Edwardian England at the forefront of people's minds. Seriously. The thing with trying to explain Wodehouse to people is that you either do a passable job of it or you scare them off for good. It's part of my job to explain Wodehouse to people (a habit occasionally undertaken during my free time as well*), and this is hands down the best introduction to Jeeves and company that I've read...

--John Mark

*Yes, occasionally at the bar.