This drop-dead gorgeous view of the California coast is the spectacle that greets diners from the deck of the Nepenthe Restaurant in Big Sur. Romney Steele,a Bay Area food writer and stylist whose grandparents started the eating establishment. has just sold a book about her experiences, according to Publishers Marketplace:
Romney Steele's MY NEPENTHE, part memoir-part cookbook from the legendary Big Sur cliff-side restaurant and hangout of Henry Miller, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Kim Novak, to Kirsty Melville at Andrews McMeel, for publication in Fall 2009, by Carole Bidnick at Bidnick & Company (World).
Raj Patel, the author of the bestselling Stuffed and Starved, sold another book, according to Publishers Marketplace.
Raj Patel's THE VALUE OF NOTHING, an investigation by an activist and academic of why prices are always at odds with the value of things; how they never reflect hidden social and environmental costs and what impact free goods and services (be it Internet or healthcare) have on societies, to Philip Gwyn-Jones at Portobello Books, for publication in Fall 2009, by Karolina Sutton at Curtis Brown.
I went to the San Francisco Antiquarian Book Fair last weekend and just walked around, my mouth agape, at all the first editions of Dickens, Austen, Mailer, and more. I really enjoyed the display of Hubert Howe Bancroft's collected works on California. (The Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley is named after him) They were stored in a specially-built cabinet for a mere $15,000.
Every once in a while, a talented writer gets a break that you know is going to bring them the critical attention their work deserves.
Such is the case with San Francisco writer Kathryn Ma. A former attorney-turned-full-time-writer, Ma’s short stories have been published in The Antioch Review, Southwest Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Threepenny Review. Now Ma has won one of the most prestigious prizes of all – the Iowa Short Fiction award. It’s a contest where hundreds of writers from around the country submit their short story manuscripts and one is selected for publication.
Ma’s story collection, All That Work And Still No Boys, won the competition. It will be published by University of Iowa Press in October 2009. “In this collection, Ma’s sharply-observed stories expose the deepest fears and longings that we mask in family life and observe the long shadows cast by history and displacement,” according to the press release announcing Ma’s selection.
To make the award even more sweet, Ma’s manuscript was selected by Curtis Sittenfeld, the author of the critically acclaimed books Prep and American Wife. (It’s always nice when a well-respected author likes your work.) In 2008, Ma won the Meyerson Award for Fiction from the Southwest Review for the story that gives the title to her forthcoming book. The judge in that competition was Jim Shepard, the author of Like You Would Understand, Anyway: Stories.
Ma, whose parents emigrated from China, has three daughters and I think her book refers to Chinese tradition where boys are more prized than girls.
I have know Kathryn for a few years. We met in Geyserville, a small town north of Healdsburg in SonomaCounty, where both our families have summer houses. We started talking because of our common interest in writing, and it’s a conversation that has never ended. We don’t see one another frequently, but when we do, we always dive right in to the world of books, writing, and publishing. Now there will be even more to talk about.
John Jeter’s first novel, The Plunder Room, takes readers into the deep South, where they encounter Randol Duncan, a music critic who has just inherited a key to his grandfather’s room full of military treasures.
Unfortunately, Duncan is a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair and the valuables are locked in a room at the top of a set of stairs. As Duncan figures out a way how to gain entry in the room, he also unravels long-buried family secrets. The journey forces Duncan to examine questions of honor and valor and his family’s role in a proud Southern military tradition.
I met John Jeter in 1986, when we were both students at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. What I noticed first was his sense of humor. It seemed like he couldn’t say a sentence that wasn’t laced with a joke and a smile. That levity and humor permeated his writing as well. Jeter went on to a long career as a journalist, but switched careers in mid-life. He is now the proprietor of The Handlebar, a nightclub in Greenville, S.C.. It’s an appropriate name since Jeter sports his own curly handlebar mustache.
Jeter wrote fiction for 20 years, but The Plunder Room is his first published book. Amazingly, he sold and published it without an agent -- something that is rare in today's cutthroat publishing world. Jeter explained to me how he accomplished his feat and the story behind the book:
How did you get the idea for The Plunder Room?
THE PLUNDER ROOM came to me in a flash, as, I think, we as a country were all thinking about the war in Iraq and the spiraling descent of the country and where we were heading. Like Frances, I got to thinking about my forebears, especially my grandfather, a true war hero and Southern gentlemen in the most courageous sense of the word. I began to wonder how we got from the virtues and valor of his generation to the pierced kids with their serious sense of entitlement who come to my concert venue, The Handlebar; how we could go from a “noble” war, World War II, to Vietnam and Iraq; how we could get from thinkers and doers like Roosevelt to George W. Bush. Then I got pissed off, which -- read Sidney Cox’s “Indirections, for those who want to write” -- is a great inspiration for storytelling. The story really exploded in my head in an instant when the protagonist’s name blasted in.
How long did it take to write?
Three months.
Why did you put your protagonist in a wheelchair? What kind of advantages and disadvantages does it give him?
If he weren’t in a wheelchair, the novel would’ve been two pages long, Randol would’ve raced up the stairs, and that would’ve been that. But, seriously, as the story and character developed, it turned out that his paraplegia also proved a valuable metaphor for his impotence, his inability to stand up to anyone or for anything, his numbness - plus all the emotional and physical pain he - and all of us - carry that made him that much more human … a burden he has to wheel around with him in addition to fulfilling his.
You have been a journalist and novelist. Did one career help the other? Did it hurt it? What journalistic skills did you bring to your fiction writing?
In moving from journalism to fiction, I got too hung up on facts and details, not knowing what to leave in what to leave out. In my first novel (of seven), at one point, I believed it crucial to know what the weather was in Saigon on a specific Wednesday on a particular day of a precise date. This was pre-Internet, so it took a long time to find out. Then I realized -- in fiction, that detail was unimportant. I could’ve either made it up or worked around it.
Journalism also prevented me from being “honest” with invented characters and vice versa. In journalism, every word you write down that somebody says must be 100% what they said, accurate. In fiction, you get to make that up, BUT, it must be TRUE to what the character would say. Breaking through that wall of KNOWING what an invented person “would say,” I found, is incredibly difficult when you’ve been trained to pay so much attention to what is REAL. Likewise, if you write about, say, a house - as I did in the novel - and you move furniture around or add a chimney in or on a house that actually existed - it feels really weird. You simply can’t do that in journalism. Facts and details are crucial to journalism, but need to be stitched into fiction in just such a way that journalism can actually hinder. Still, journalism taught me to write FAST. Writing a story on deadline is a blast, I love to get it done. Then, as they say in film, “fix it in post.”
When did you first grow your handlebar mustache? Does your wife like it? Have you ever shaved it off?
I grew my mustache when I was recuperating in a San Antonio hospital with my brother after he gave me his kidney in 1984; we had a post-operative facial-hair-growing contest. Mine grew into a handlebar. In 1994, we opened The Handlebar in honor of that. Now I’m stuck with a well-known-brand logo on my face. I’m not sure if my wife likes it, but she met me this way, and, well, it’s corporate, we’re business partners, we love being married, she edited my novel and made it great - and she’s incredible. My brother’s awesome, too.
You sold THE PLUNDER ROOM without an agent. How did you do that?
I've written seven, four of them incalculably bad and two that I'm fond of. Anyway, I had pitched one of my earlier novels over the transom at Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin's Press. One of the editors there, Ruth Cavin, liked it, but not enough to publish it. So when I wrote another one, I sent it to her and she bought it.
So what was it about THE PLUNDER ROOM she liked?
It's a story that's about four generations of a Southern family - but I think Ruth realized it's not a Southern story, per se, it's a Southern-based allegory about the degeneration of the American character through those same four generations.
Starting from ... ?
The Greatest Generation through Generations Jones and X. I had attended my 20th reunion at ColumbiaUniversityJournalismSchool, and had lunch with a classmate who dates his family back to 13th-century China. We started talking about the Chinese proverb that tells about the generation that plants the orchard, the next that enjoys the fruit and the shade, the next that cuts down the trees and so forth. As with all fiction, some redemption has to be in there, and I think THE PLUNDER ROOM's timing happens to be right because we're at the age where THIS generation, politically and socially, can redeem us from the generation that plundered the American orchard.
Isn't getting a book published without an agent sort of like winning the lottery?
Yes and no. I've been working toward publication since I was 6 years old. I have been writing since I was eating Cap'n Crunch, but wrote my first novel - the first of the hilariously bad ones - 20 years ago. Through all those years, after thousands of rejections, a nervous breakdown and no choice but to keep beating my head against the wall, I became an overnight success. That is, if you define success as a published author.
So, what's next?
Sales. Writing's easier.
In what sense?
Bear with me through some long-windedness here: I own a concert venue called The Handlebar in Greenville, SC, and we get 3,000 to 4,000 queries each year from artists, bands and agencies to fill 300 to 400 slots each year, including headlining and opening slots. I book all the talent.
We've had Joan Baez and John Mayer, John Hiatt, Tower of Power, Shinedown, David Sanborn, Pat Metheny, Bela Fleck, David Lindley -- 2,500 shows in 15 years. And my responsibility as Talent Buyer is to procure world-class talent who will help us sell as many tickets as possible so that my venue makes money. As "publisher" here, I have to say no to thousands of artists and bands, almost all of whom are incredibly talented -- but don't have to "marquee value" to put bodies in the building. Likewise, the publishing industry receives -- last I heard -- 3 million manuscripts a year for 50,000 books it prints each year, on an incredibly tight margin. And in a lot of ways, the industry's very much a cottage industry like mine. That is to say, they have to sell books like I have to sell tickets (and beer). So I now have to switch off my Artist bulb and switch on my Promoter light, full blast, and start promoting my novel.
How?
Beats me, but I'm doing the very best I can. What's interesting is that because publishing houses, even the big ones, are a lot like The Handlebar, they do what we do. If we have a huge act -- say, John Hiatt or Joan Baez, those tickets are going to sell easily and sell quickly. Likewise, Barack Obama or Janet Evanovich have little trouble selling a bunch of books. The bulk of the house's marketing resources are going to go to the big guns, which, sure, it's ironic, will sell books without much effort. We at The Handlebar do the same thing, when it's the "developmental acts" that need the most promotional help. So, as a developmental act, as a writer, I know that I have to work my ass off to promote my book. I'm doing radio, TV, print, everything I can. I'm not all that good at the Web because I'm not a teenager, but I do love Facebook; the whole book-blog thing is mind-numbing to me in its sheer vastness.
What's next?
I still have those two other books I like and believe in and would like to see published. I should get back to writing, too, but a couple of issues stand in the way: the day job, which is sort of a night job, though it's mostly days, because I have to figure out how to sell tickets for the night club; and since I've been wearing my promoter hat these past two years -- both as music promoter and novel promoter, my Artistic Muse has decided to take a very long vacation without telling me when she plans on coming back.
Why don't you write nonfiction then, about The Handlebar or your kidney transplant nearly 25 years ago?
Because I don't have an agent, and I'm a little to close to both of those subjects -- even the transplant (my brother donated his kidney and it's not like I can take it out and get all clinical with it). Besides, I think it's better to leave nonfiction to the pros like Frances and try to lure my Muse back . . . somehow.
Do you believe that book sales and readers are vanishing?
No. On the contrary. I think economic doom and gloom, lack of money for travel, reeling in funds for expensive meals, etc., means folks will look for other forms of entertainment. TV and movies haven't historically been all that great and people are getting and want to get a lot smarter. Hence, books and other forms of reading -- even on the Internet. There's also this odd statistic I read, though probably outdated, from a couple of years ago, also from the Web: 85% of Americans said they hadn't read a book in the last year, but 85% of Americans either were writing a book or wanted to write one. After Harry Potter and the Twilight series and so many other amazing releases, I daresay more Americans have actually picked up a book in the last year or so. And if they're writing 'em, they should be reading 'em (though you'd be surprised).
Anything you want to add?
Yes. Buy books; they even make great household decor. Buy 'em by the bushel at LOCAL bookstores. And not just because it's about money, but because it's about culture and being smart and re-growing the American orchard. There was a most amazing post on Vermont Public Radio: http://www.vpr.net/episode/45359/ about bookstores and community. Thing is, if artists are community and bookstores are community and consumers are community, aren't we all in the same ... community? Where does that put the Internet? Sure, it can help create community, but it doesn't serve coffee or help with face-to-face or the visceral experience of live readings and so forth. Our new president called for Community. That should go for the arts, too.
As Paula S. Fass was growing up in Brooklyn, she only had one conversation with her mother about her parents’ murdered son. While they were sitting at the kitchen table one day, Fass worked up the courage to ask the name of her deceased brothers and sisters. Her mother paused, then asked her daughter why she needed the information. “For the future,” Fass replied.
Many decades later, after a lifetime of not knowing, Fass went on a search for the story of her siblings. (Her parents had both been married to other people before the war and had families who perished. They met after the war, had Fass, and came to the U.S). The fact that there was so much silence in her family about the Nazi genocide is a central theme in Fass’s new memoir, Inheriting the Holocaust: A Second Generation Memoir.
Many Holocaust survivors are now dead, but their children are finding that they, too, have been scarred by the genocide that took 6 million lives. Fass addresses how she has had to grapple with her “inherited memory.” While Fass did not suffer the deprivation and hardship of her parents, she grew up internalizing some of their pain. Their memories became her memories.
Paula Fass
I got a chance to meet Fass on Saturday Feb. 7 when she gave a presentation on her new book at a meeting of the Pen America Center West. Fass is a history professor at UC Berkeley and her main specialty is the Americas, particularly the history of childhood. For years Fass resisted writing the story of her parents, who each lost spouses and children in the Holocaust, but met in America and started anew. But the story haunted her, and she finally shifted gears to focus on her own history. The result is an evocative and moving memoir. Fass will be reading from her book at Black Oak Books in Berkeley on March 2.
I also got to read from Towers of Gold at the meeting of Pen America West. I have heard about this group for years and was pleased to finally attend a meeting. Pen America was founded in 1921 and defines itself as “an association of writers to advance literature, defend free expression, and foster international literary fellowship.” The presidents of the American chapter are among the most revered in literature: Arthur Miller, Norman Mailer, Susan Sontag, and Salman Rushdie.The West Coast chapter was started in 1981 by the poet Robert Haas and ow holds about eight meetings a year.
The Northern California chapter is headed by Brenda Webster, a prolific author who has just come out with her 10th book, the novel Vienna Triangle. There were other well-known writers at the meeting, including the dynamic literary duo of Irving and Marilyn Yalom, the poet Dorothy Gilbert, the novelist and anthology editor Victoria Zackheim, Margret Schaefer, who translates the work of the Viennese author Arthur Schnitzler, and Maria Espinosa,whose new novel, Dying Unfinished, has just been released. There were also many emeritus professors from UC Berkeley in the room
The group appeared to be mostly in their 60s and 70s, reflecting writers who became active during the Cold War and Vietnam War era.
It’s not easy to become a member of Pen. You must have published two or more books, or one book which is of “exceptional literary merit,” which they define as having won a major national prize. No Johnny-come-lately flash in the pan authors here; just those who clearly are dedicating their lives to writing and scholarship.
But one can become an associate member, which garners many of the same privileges as a regular member, particularly for people who live on the West Coast. Recent writers who have read from their work include Sue Miller and Page Stegner.
I was pleasantly pleased to discover that Towers of Goldmade the bestseller list of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association this week. Towers of Gold was the #7 bestselling book for the week of January 25.
But I was puzzled, too, since the only event I did that week was at the private Metropolitan Club in San Francisco. I sold about 25 books after my talk, but the books all came from a nearby Borders, which is a chain store. So how did I end up on a list from independent booksellers?
What made this even more puzzling was the fact that when Towers of Gold was on the San Francisco Chronicle bestseller list for three weeks in November and December, it wasn’t on the NCIBA list during that time. And I know I sold a lot of books at independent bookstores during that period. I did readings at Book Passage, Mrs. Dalloways, A Great Good Place for Books, Copperfields, Readers Books, Clayton Books and Stacey’s.
So I sent off an email to Hut Landon, the executive director of NCIBA. And what he told me was surprising.
The NCIBA list is based on reporting from more than fifty bookstores in the northern part of the state. That is considerably more than the Chronicle draws from. The NCIBA polls stores by ratings rather than numbers, so if a book is the third-best selling title in a a variety of stores, it would get that placement on the list.
The Chronicle, in contrast, from what I understand, ranks books according to the sheer number of titles sold in the bookstores it polls. This tends to tilt the list toward authors who are having events since groups come in to hear them and buy at one time.
Landon thinks the NCIBA list shows something different than the Chronicle list:
“Our method rewards titles that are selling in more stores, rather than one where an author has a couple of big events but doesn't sell much elsewhere. So making our list is sometimes harder, but the good news for you is that by making it at all you know that your book is selling "across the board", not just in a few stores.”
I did make another bestseller list – Kepler’s Books – this week, but this one I understand since I did a reading there on Jan. 27.
Of course the big mystery is the New York Times bestseller list and better minds than mine have tried to figure out how they calculate things. The way the list is classified is a trade secret.
This leaves two stand-alone book reviews in the U.S. -- the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. Even though the new Chronicle editor John McMurtriesaid recently that the paper's publisher was committed to a stand-alone review, one has to wonder if it can really continue. On the bright side, I have noticed more book advertising in the Chronicle.
The next few weeks will be revealing. The Chronicle will soon start using its new presses, which has already led to some changes. The Food and Home sections, for example, made their last Wednesday appearance today and from now on will appear in the Sunday paper. (I am personally disappointed by this development as I always looked forward to the Wednesday paper for its fabulous food section.)
That change may be a precursor to other changes.
While I am encouraged that the Washington Post will continue to actively review books, there is a difference between running a review on the front cover of a stand-alone book section and running on in the Style section. The first example makes a statement about a book's importance. The second just blends in with other cultural coverage.
San Francisco magazine has a great oral history showing how the intersection of Bay Area technology and grass roots politicos united to help Obama win.
The “storytellers” include David Talbot, a founder of Salon, Markos Moulitsas Kuniga, founder of Daily Kos, Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, Joan Blades, co-founder of MoveOn.org, and many more.
Michelle Richmond, author of No One You Know and The Year of Fog is interviewed at The Rumpus, the new on-line literary magazine conceived by writer Stephen Elliot.
Brenda Webster held a book release party Sunday for The Vienna Triangle, a novel that explores the inner circle of Sigmund Freud. (lots of intrigue and passion, too.) The Chronicle gave it a strong review.
Galley Cat interviewed Paul Malmont, whose novel Jack London in Paradise has appeared on the San Francisco Chronicle’s bestseller list the last two weeks. He talks about how using Facebook and Twitter helped him draw crowds to his readings.
Speaking of crowds, I hope I draw some when I speak about Towers of Gold tonight (Jan. 27) at Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park at 7:30 pm and on Thursday Jan. 29 when I speak at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco at 7 pm. For those of you in the East Bay, I will be speaking at the Stanford Women's Club annual Books on Review around 10 on Thursday. Find more info here.
This video shows Market Street in San Francisco in 1905, before the 1906 earthquake and fire wiped most of this out. I loved how people are running in front of the camera, the total traffic chaos, and the newsboys carrying their stacks of paper.
I took some other visits to the past recently. I went to visit the Levi Strauss archives at Levi Plaza in San Francisco. Lynn Downey, the company archivist who is writing a biography of Levi Strauss, opened her climate-controlled locked vault to show me some old Levi jeans. One pair was from 1879, and while it resembles some of today's jeans, there are some notable differences. Number One, the rivets are dated, a detail that was discontinued when the company's patent expired in 1890. Number two, the jeans have XX written on them, not 501.
I went to visit Downey and the archives because there is a long-standing relationship between the company and the Hellman family. As I noted in Towers of Gold, Levi Strauss sat on the board of the Nevada Bank, which Hellman purchased in 1890. Strauss was one of the prominent Jewish shareholders of the bank.
Strauss died without any heirs, and he left the company to the sons of his sister, Fanny Stern. Elise Stern eventually married Walter Haas, who took over Levis. Well the Haases and Hellmans have been friends for centuries, reaching back into their common birthplace, Reckendorf, in Bavaria Germany.
Walter Haas's father Abraham was partners with Herman Hellman, Isaias Hellman's brother, in a wholesale drygoods business in Los Angeles in the 19th century. Other Haases -- William, Jacob, Kalman, etc. -- did business with the Hellmans in one form or another for years. That relationship continues today. Until recently, Warren Hellman, the founder of Hellman and Friedman and the man behind the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, served as a director of Levi Strauss.
Did you know there was a thriving Jewish community in El Paso, Texas? I didn’t, until this review of Towers of Gold came out in the El Paso Times. Apparently there are three shuls and a HolocaustMuseum in that Texas city.
Towers of Gold “is a biography that is startling and engrossing, as well as indispensible to a complete understanding of California's development into a financial powerhouse.”
I have been somewhat remiss at posting my reviews and interviews, so here are a few more:
Nextbook, the on-line Jewish magazine, writes about Isaias Hellman here.
Here is the podcast of my interview with Michael Krasny on KQED’s Forum.
John McMurtrie has been editor of the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review since October 2008, and in his three-month tenure has seen the world of publishing deteriorate.
With the closure of the book review sections of the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Chronicle is one of the few remaining papers with a stand-alone review. While McMurtrie tells Ghost Word that the top editors of the Chronicle are dedicated to keeping the review section intact, the economic pressures facing the publishing industry are intense.
2008 will be remembered as a year of upheaval and consolidation. In the Bay Area, two prominent independent bookstores -- Cody's and Stacey's Books -- closed or announced their imminent closure. A number of publishers, including Random House. Macmillan, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt laid off staff. The latter company also announced that it would put a moratorium on acquiring new books for now. Book sales were lower this holiday season.
Still, McMurtire has high hopes for the Chronicle Review. He has already made some provocative changes, such as asking independent bookstores to recommend interesting books each week. He is making the review more timely as well, by including news about Bay Area book deals, release parties, and author events.
McMurtrie lives in Oakland with his wife and two-year old twins.
GW: Can you tell me a little about your background? How did you come to book reviewing? What is it you like about being a book critic?
JM: I've been a journalist for 20 years. My love of writing and newspapers and France (my mother was French) led to my first job, at the International Herald Tribune in Paris. (I was an editorial assistant, though a more accurate title might have been sports-agate monkey). This is my 10th year as an editor at the Chronicle. Before becoming the book editor, I regularly edited book reviews as an editor in the features section. I also wrote reviews as well as profiles of authors. And I've done freelance editing for book publishers.
What I love about journalism is the ability it gives you to learn a little bit about a lot of things - to be a generalist - and to try to share that knowledge. Being a book editor is an especially satisfying way to feed that curiosity. I can read up on any number of subjects - history, politics, film, food, fiction from around the world - and consider what's of value for readers. I also like the challenge of finding the right people to review books. Part of the fun is trying new approaches - as an example, I recently assigned a book about golf in Ireland to a singer/songwriter who happens to be a golf fanatic.
In the end, if readers of the section come away feeling that they know a bit more about the world, if it gets them talking about ideas, perhaps feeling inspired, then I'm happy.
GW: You have made some recent changes to the book review, such as adding recommendations from local bookstores and putting in some book news. What were you trying to do with these changes? Can readers expect other changes in the future?
I want the section to be about more than just reviews. I'll be running more essays, interviews with authors, and the like. I've included weekly recommendations from independent bookstores because the people who work at these stores have such a wealth of knowledge that can benefit us all. Also, I'm a fan of indie bookstores - they're a vital part of any community, and I believe in helping them. As for reporting book news, I thought it was important to help raise awareness of the vibrant literary scene in the Bay Area. Meantime, there's a lot that's happening in the publishing world these days (not all of it good, unfortunately) that I think readers would like to know about.
GW:How do you balance reviewing local writers, particularly emerging writers, with running reviews of nationally-known authors?
No easy answer to that one - I decide on a case-by-case basis. For example, I recently made "Going to See the Elephant" the lead review in the section not just because it's by a first-time local author, Rodes Fishburne, but also because it's set in the city and full of local color. And it's a fun read.
GW: How do you decide which books will be reviewed?
I strive for a good balance of fiction and nonfiction, a wide range of subjects, and a variety of voices. Some books are easy assignments (of course I'm going to assign the latest John Updike), others might not be as obvious but, on a closer read, are surprisingly good ("Wildwood," to name just one, by the late nature writer Roger Deakin).
Also, it's a big world out there, and, speaking for myself, I'd like to read more by authors from beyond our shores.
GW:Many other newspapers have eliminated their stand-alone book review sections. What do you see as the future of the SF Chronicle book review?
JW: It is sad what's happening to book review sections across the country. My bosses tell me that our section is an important part of the newspaper, they understand its relevance to readers, so I remain optimistic about the future. And I intend to do all I can to make the section valuable, intelligent and engaging.
GW: The Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, the New York Times all have blogs about books. Will the Chronicle book review develop a web format?
JM: We've been discussing that. Watch this space, as they say.
GW: What are some of your favorite books?
JM: In no particular order:
Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz
The digital folks at Macmillan (which owns St. Martins, my publisher) have produced a brief explanation of the book business. Funny, they didn't do any of these things for my book ... (via Galleycat)
Here is the list from Bookscan of the 50 top-selling books in the US in 2008. Stephanie Meyer’sTwilight series, in its numerous permutations, dominates the list. But it is also interesting to see the scope of other sales. Malcolm Gladwell’sOutliers was released in November and he sold 420,000 copies in just about two months. (And don’t forget his other two books continue to perch on the New York Times paperback non-fiction list.
I interviewed Kate Jacobs, the author of The Friday Night Knitting Club, for a panel at Book Group Expo in San Jose in August. I knew her first novel was a smash success, but I am astounded that it sold 683,000 copies. This is the quest on which publishers embark – finding that breakaway fiction bestseller.
There is only one book on this list that is new literary fiction: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski. It was an Oprah pick and has sold 580,000. The rest of the best-sellers are mass market fiction.
In that vein of looking for the next bestseller, I was astounded to see in the Sunday Jan. 11 San Francisco Chronicle book review not one, but two, full-page ads for Tiffany Baker’s debut novel, The Little Giant of Aberdeen County. Baker lives in Belvedere in MarinCounty, which many account for the double advertising, but it is clear her publisher Grand Central expects this one to do well. There was another full page ad in the New York Times book review.
The list from Bookscan:
1 Breaking Dawn Meyer, Stephenie 3,310,000
2 Twilight Meyer, Stephenie 3,175,000
3 A New Earth Tolle, Eckhart 3,146,000
4 The Last Lecture Pausch, Randy 2,705,000
5 New Moon Meyer, Stephenie 2,667,000
6 Eclipse Meyer, Stephenie 2,563,000
7 The Shack Young, William 2,551,000
8 The Tales of Beedle the Bard Rowling, JK 1,822,000
9 Brisingr Paolini, Christopher 1,312,000
10 Eat, Pray, Love Gilbert, Elizabeth 1,274,000
11 Three Cups of Tea Mortenson, Greg 1,099,000
12 The Appeal Grisham, John 954,000
13 New Moon Meyer, Stephenie 890,000
14 The Secret Byrne, Rhonda 828,000
15 The Host Meyer, Stephenie 794,000
16 The Audacity of Hope Obama, Barack 764,000
17 Diary of a Wimpy Kid Kinney, Jeff 721,000
18 Eat This Not That! Zinczenko, David 706,000
19 Rodrick Rules Kinney, Jeff 696,000
20 The Friday Night Knitting Club Jacobs, Kate 683,000
21 Dreams from My Father Obama, Barack 680,000
22 Water for Elephants Gruen, Sara 638,000
23 The Kite Runner Hosseini, Khaled 602,000
24 Twilight Meyer, Stephenie 584,000
25 The Story of Edgar Sawtelle Wroblewski, David 580,000
26 The Lucky One Sparks, Nicholas 575,000
27 Skinny Bitch Barnouin, Kim 565,000
28 Playing for Pizza Grisham, John 493,000
29 The Power of Now Tolle, Eckhart 489,000
30 Twilight Meyer, Stephenie 479,000
31 When You Are Engulfed in Flame Sedaris, David 477,000
32 Cross Country Patterson, James 474,000
33 Fearless Fourteen Evanovich, Janet 472,000
34 The Christmas Sweater Beck, Glenn 469,000
35 Nineteen Minutes Picoult, Jodi 461,000
36 The Pillars of the Earth Follett, Ken 456,000
37 Dewey: The Small-Town Library Myron, Vicki 449,000
38 Marley & Me Grogan, John 444,000
39 7th Heaven Patterson, James 441,000
40 Audition: A Memoir Walters, Barbara 437,000
41 The Hollow Roberts, Nora 9780515144598 427,000
42 Twilight (with poster) Meyer, Stephenie 425,000
43 Outliers Gladwell, Malcolm 420,000
44 90 Minutes in Heaven Piper, Don 418,000
45 Strengths Finder 2.0 Rath, Tom 399,000
46 A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity O'Reilly, Bill 387,000
47 Sail Patterson, James 383,000
48 The Battle of the Labyrinth Riordan, Rick 382,000
49 Gallop! Seder, Rufus Butler 379,000
50 The Alchemist Coelho, Paulo 377,000
Bookseller
I am the kind of person who carries a book with her wherever she goes – to pick up my kids from school, to a doctor’s appointment, and especially to the post office. That way if I have a few spare minutes I can read instead of sitting around bored.
My friends are always telling me they are amazed at how many books I read. In 2008, I read about 35 books, and that did not include books for research. But I have never thought of myself as a particularly prolific reader, and this interview with blogger Sarah Weinman reminds me why. She read 462 books in 2008. That is no typo. 462 books! Find out how.
Meredith Maran is one of the Bay Area’s most accomplished and interesting authors. She published her first poem at 15, her first book at 18, and has published numerous articles and books since then. She describes her work as an exploration of the difference between how things are in America and how they should be.
I remember being amazed at Maran’s 1995 memoir What It’s Like to Live Now, in which describes her life in Oakland with her female lover, two sons, ex-husband, and the art of navigating a racially and economically diverse neighborhood. Maran also wrote Class Dismissed, a book about a year at Berkeley High which has become a most read for people who send their children there. Dirty explored the teenage drug epidemic.
Maran has just sold another book, one that explores the years in which many daughters tapped into their repressed memories and accused their fathers of incest. It’s an outgrowth of an article she wrote for Playboy Magazine. Here is the blurb from Publisher’s Marketplace. Note the book was acquired by Alan Rinzler of Berkeley:
There are some days when I wish I lived in New York. Here’s one of them. I would love to take this class:
Pulitzer Prize-winner Debby Applegate will teach the art of turning historical research and the raw experience of lived life into written, publishable narrative in a master class at Marymount Manhattan College.
Applegate received the Pulitzer for The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher. She teaches at YaleUniversity, where she received a Ph.D. in American Studies.
"This is very much an old-fashioned craft course, where we focus on concrete techniques and skills that help the biographer or memoirist tame and then structure their material," Applegate told TBC. "Unlike many writing classes, I don't approach writing as a form of authorial self-expression."
"Instead," Applegate continued, "the class will focus on how to create a suspenseful, compelling experience for a reader, one that makes him or her want to keep reading, to keep turning the page."
I was surprised and saddened to open my Chronicle this morning and see that Stacey’s, the venerable bookstore on Market Street in San Francisco, is closing.
I had two wonderful encounters with the store just in the last two months, and countless others over the years,
I gave a lunchtime reading at Stacey’s for Towers of Gold on Nov. 18. It was one of the most pleasant readings I gave, for the space is next to a huge bank of windows looking out on Market Street. The area is bathed in natural light and there are comfy chairs to sit in and relax. Stacey’s sponsored hundreds of author talks at lunchtime each year, providing a nice intellectual lift-me-up for all of the city’s downtown office workers.
Stacey’s also supplied books for all the readings and events at the nearby Commonwealth Club. I did a panel there on California history for part of Litquake, and that was my other pleasant encounter.
Of course whenever I was shopping downtown and needed a break from the bright department store lights, I could duck into Stacey’s and browse through its wonderful collection.
Many people are lamenting the closing of this store, including Ed Champion, who now lives in New York, and Colleen Lindsey, a literary agent. Lindsey worked there for years, even doing a stint as the marketing and events manager, and said she is devastated. Here’s another tribute from Brad Craft, who worked there for 12 years.
I was pleasantly pleased to discover that 
I went to visit Downey and the archives because there is a long-standing relationship between the company and the Hellman family. As I noted in Towers of Gold, Levi Strauss sat on the board of the Nevada Bank, which Hellman purchased in 1890. Strauss was one of the prominent Jewish shareholders of the bank.
