Publishing Company Blog: November 2015

Monday, November 30, 2015

Peter Jackson and Capaldi 'Doctor Who' video fuels rumours he'll direct episode

Hobbit director appears in homemade video featuring a cameo from the Timelord and a Dalek and suggests Steven Moffatt is pestering him to sign up

Doctor Who fans have been left fantasising over the possibility that Peter Jackson may one day direct an episode of their beloved show after he posted a homemade video that included a cameo from the star of the series, Peter Capaldi.

Is that a copy of The Silmarillion?! Looks like Peter Jackson has used the TARDIS to acquire the film rights. http://pic.twitter.com/8gPmbItfSP

5 Hot Books: Indicting the NFL for Football Players' Concussions, and the Breast-Feeding Lobby for Guilt-Tripping Women

The following article first appeared in The National Book Review

Five books people are talking about this week -- or should be

1. Concussion: Dr. Benet Omalu Discovered Something He Could Not Ignore. The NFL Tried to Silence Him. His Courage Would Change Everything by Jeanne Marie Laskas (Random House paperback)

Concussion, which opens wide Christmas Day starring Will Smith and Alec Baldwin, is based on Laskas' pathbreaking reporting, first in GQ and later in this book. Laskas tells the story of Biafra-born forensic pathologist Benet Omalu, who made a startling discovery while examining retired Steeler Hall of Famer Mike Webster. Dr. Omalu realized that Webster, and many other football veterans, were victims of brain injuries, and with neuroscientists around the country he led a movement to challenge the NFL to do more to protect players.

2. The Complete Works of Primo Levi Edited by Ann Goldstein (Liveright Publishing)

These three impressive volumes, 3,000 pages elegantly cased together, encompass the published work of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers and deepest thinkers. Levi, an Italian chemist who survived Auschwitz, died in 1987, in what was ruled a suicide - though some insist it was an accident. Levi is best known for his Holocaust memoir, If This Is a Man, written in the neutral but powerful language that distinguished his work, and his autobiographical short story collection, The Periodic Table.

3. Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll by Peter Guralnick (Little, Brown and Company)

Guralnick, the celebrated music journalist, draws on 25 years of knowing Sam Phillips to write this compelling portrait of an underappreciated cultural force. Guralnick recounts how Phillips discovered artists like B.B. King, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash, and fused black and white music into a new musical form that would, quite simply, change everything.

4. Lactivism: How Feminists and Fundamentalists, Hippies and Yuppies, and Physicians and Politicians Made Breastfeeding Big Business and Bad Policy by Courtney Jung (Basic Books)

Jung, a University of Toronto political science professor, takes on the "breast is best" philosophy, and examines how breast-feeding advocates have become a mouthpiece for the breast-pumping industry. Jung argues that this growing industry and pro-pumping advocates are guilt-tripping women into going the breast pump route, when the benefits are less than certain.

5. The Big Green Tent by Ludmilla Ulitskaya, translated by Polly Gannon (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

A big, sprawling Russian novel by one of Russia's most prominent writers, and Putin critics, The Big Green Tent is set in Russia after Stalin. Ulitskaya charts the trajectory of three anti-establishment schoolboys as they grow up and discover love, art, and fear and paranoia, in a troubled society dominated by the KGB.

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Food and Drink Gift Books for the Holidays

FIRE + ICE: Classic Nordic Cooking by Darra Goldstein ( $40) -- For those who think that "New Nordic Cuisine" has anything to do with what people actually cook and eat in Scandinavia, Darra Goldstein's thick volume should shock you back to reality, without a live ant or bit of moss on the plate. Although Goldstein is not from any of the countries she covers in this splendidly illustrated volume, she's always been an intrepid scholar of culinary culture, and it shows in her understanding and preparation of dishes as disparate as chilled blueberry soup, asparagus and dill terrine, Jansson's Temptation, and Swedish almond bread.

BISTRONOMY: Recipes from the Best New Paris Bistros by Jane Sigal ($39.95) -- If you believe media who insist French cuisine has become stultified, open this beautiful book and be prepared to find that the best young chefs of Paris are doing stunning work, usually in homage to the classics but also wholly their own invention. You'll find Yves Camdeborde's green lentil soup with tapioca from Le Comptoir; charred squid with boudin noir, peas and herbed oil from Shaun Kelly's namesake restaurant; monkfish with asparagus and parmesan cream from Amélie Darvas's Haï Kaï; pork belly with darphin potatoes and tamatind jus from Septime's Bertrand Grébaut; and chocolate terrine with caramelized hazelnuts by Stéphane Jégo of L'Amis Jean. A sense of conviviality and youthful enthusiasm runs through the book, without a scintilla of affectation.

TRUE THAI: Real Flavors for Every Table by Hong Thaimee ($35) -- The subtitle of this book may be somewhat disingenuous, for many of the recipes require difficult-to-obtain ingredients of top quality, and, frankly, who's going to make his own Chiang Mai sausage at home? But Thaimee is an attractive, amiable and instructive teacher who insists that the Thai rule of thumb of rod mue-the "flavor of your hand," meaning your own personal taste-be observed. The recipes are very well written and ever enticing, from coconut and wild sesame sticky rice to "The 15-Minute Soup That Changed My Life," a shrimp dish with tamarind Thaimee made on the Iron Chef America TV show .

BOURBON CURIOUS: A Simple Tasting Guide for the Savvy Drinker by Fred Minnick ($22.99) -- Fred Minnick is my favorite spirits writer because he is knowledgeable, writes beautifully, and turns what could be a screed of dull tasting notes into an insightful discussion of the exploding world of a "brown liquor" that even ten years ago seemed poised to be relegated to redneck bars and juleps once a year on Derby Day. He spends nearly 100 pages giving you the history, the lore, the legal limits, and exposes much of the nonsense spread by producers about the confusing myriad single, small, ultra-rare bottlings with special treatment in casks coming out of Kentucky on a seasonal basis. Trust Minnick to steer you to the best of them.

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The Fox and the Star – in pictures

Coralie Bickford-Smith tells us how she made The Fox and the Star, her debut children’s book that has just been crowned Waterstones Book of the Year 2015

Check out the Guardian children’s books site homepage

Waterstones book of the year is Coralie Bickford-Smith's debut The Fox and the Star

Inspired by the poetry of Blake, Bickford-Smith’s picture-book fable about grief is awarded top prize for its ‘great physical beauty and timeless quality’

Gallery: illustrations from The Fox and the Star

Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman and Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train might have sold in eye-watering numbers over the last year, but booksellers at Waterstones have plumped for a sumptuously designed debut picture book about loss as their book of the year.

Waterstones book of the year is Coralie Bickford-Smith's debut The Fox and the Star

Inspired by the poetry of Blake, Bickford-Smith’s picture-book fable about grief is awarded top prize for its ‘great physical beauty and timeless quality’

Gallery: illustrations from The Fox and the Star

J.K. Rowling Is Ruining 'Harry Potter,' And It's All Our Fault

No literary fandom possesses a blessing or a curse (shall we say “hex”?) quite like J.K. Rowling.

Harry Potter has concluded, and the author is still out there making noise. She’s charming on Twitter; she’s not afraid to weigh in on rugby or Scottish politics or whether Ron and Hermione will need hefty doses of Amortentia to make their marriage work.

While her writing career has since veered toward more adult fare, and the "Harry Potter" movie series has receded into the rearview mirror, her enduring affection for Harry Potter is palpable, and not just through the rambling online clubhouse, Pottermore, which she built to ply fans with brand new Easter eggs and tidbits about the magical world.

She’ll Apparate into your Twitter feed to let you know what tuition at Hogwarts cost, that she’s secretly been pronouncing Voldemort with a silent ‘t’ this whole time, and, most recently, why she had Harry name his son after Severus Snape. (Apparently this last puzzle had been stumping readers for years, as Snape and Harry weren’t exactly bosom buddies.)

Each authorial revelation throws fans into a tizzy of joy (see, Rowling agreed all along!) or dismay (wait, how could she just change the terms like this??). Even her disquisition on Harry’s naming choice met significant pushback, though Occam’s Razor would have suggested that the answer was “because he loved Harry’s mother enough to die for Harry and the good of the wizarding world,” as Rowling herself argued.

Snape died for Harry out of love for Lily. Harry paid him tribute in forgiveness and gratitude. https://t.co/MPXBgUApa3
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) November 27, 2015

Many were suspicious of this argument -- Snape had been too cruel to Harry and his friends over the years for him to give that tainted name to his own child, they rejoined. It just DOESN’T MAKE SENSE.

Twitter fracas achieved. Mischief managed.

Rowling has become the puckish Peeves of the Potter fandom, popping in to disrupt ships or upset theories or spark controversies. Were there gay people at Hogwarts? Jewish ones? How many students went there, anyway? Why couldn’t everyone see Peter Pettigrew on the Marauder’s Map?? She rarely passes up an opportunity to fill in a gap, satisfy a reader’s curiosity or a journalist’s probe. And each time, we lose our collective minds.

Now, like any author, Rowling has every right to comment on her books and the characters she created. We all have that right, actually -- that’s what happens when a book is published. Somewhere between the words on the page and the rich world in our minds, private magic works within each of us, bringing new insights and leaps of imagination to bear on the people and places dreamed up by the author.

Then we come together to squabble over whether Hermione might ultimately regret choosing Ron instead of Harry (never!), or why Harry would ever name a child after a teacher who bullied him remorselessly, or possible plugs for plot holes, and these discussions are where we stretch our powers as readers. We learn to feel ownership over our thoughts and how to resolve gaps or ambiguities left by black-and-white text. Sometimes we even learn we just disagree with certain authors. That’s fine, even though it can be frustrating, especially when that author is as big-time as Rowling.

Her comments aren’t Imperius curses, however; they don’t control anything. Her constant "new revelations" are only a problem if we upset the applecart ourselves every time she pops out and says “Boo!”

Pronounce Voldemort however you want. Spin a theory that Harry named his son after Snape because the Potions master secretly loved him and protected him the whole time. The wizardry of literature is that you don’t have to listen to anything or anyone -- even the author -- just lose yourself between the pages of a book you love.

Also on HuffPost:

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David Almond’s fiction prizewinner is for grownups of 17, not children | Letter from Lynne Reid Banks

Buoyed up by David Almond’s beautiful description (21 November) of his inspiration for writing A Song for Ella Grey, which has just won the Guardian children’s book prize, I went out and bought two copies for my 12-year-old grandchildren. I trusted him, and I trusted the Guardian – I would never buy a Carnegie medal winner without reading it first.

In the first five pages there is lesbian love, swearing, drinking, and enough other indications that, once again, this is not a book for children. Children are people up to the age of 12. They are not grownups of 17. The books are going straight back to Waterstones.

James Patterson Uses CROSS JUSTICE To Paint a Fuller Picture of Alex Cross

Book Review - Jackie K Cooper
CROSS JUSTICE by James Patterson

Some people may sneer whenever it is announced James Paterson has authored a new book. They point to how most of his books now have a co-writer. This adds to the release of numerous new books during a year's time, which many consider a cheapening of his talent. Still Patterson has kept the "Alex Cross" books as his own and doesn't share any credit on them. CROSS JUSTICE is book number twenty three in this series and the adventures of the Washington, DC metro police detective continue.

At the start of this book Cross, his wife Bree, his grandmother Nana, his daughter Jannie and his son Ali are headed south. They are driving to Starkeville, North Carolina which is Cross' hometown, but is also a place where he has not been in thirty-five years. He left following the death of his mother and father and has never returned.

He is now making this trip because his cousin has been accused of murder and his niece Naomie is handling his defense. Cross will be there to do his "Cross" thing and to give moral support. This doesn't mean he thinks his cousin is innocent; he is keeping an open mind on all that. If he determines that his relative is guilty, then he will do what he can to make sure justice is served.

This is a very satisfying Alex Cross book as it answers some of the questions that have been raised previously concerning Cross' childhood and family lore. We learn through this story the why and how of Alex Cross and what has brought him to this point in his life. It is all a bit convoluted but it does get questions answered.

The least satisfying aspect of this story is in the "superman" events that occur. Cross gets into one tight situation after another. There are people in Starkville who want him dead, and they try over and over again to make this happen. But Alex Cross might as well be bulletproof. The logic of how he escapes so many attacks is asserted but it just doesn't hold water. After the third or fourth attempt on his life, reasonableness goes out the window and pure luck is the only explanation.

It is nice that Patterson still pushes forward the story of Nana Momma, an integral member of the Alex Cross cast. He also brings daughter Jannie's story up to date as she pursues a career in high school track events. It is to Patterson's credit he can gather such a large cast together and give each individual his due.

Once again Patterson keeps his plot fairly simple and his chapters short. The book is so nimble in its jump from chapter to chapter that it almost reads itself. This is the main aspect of Patterson's brilliance and the primary reason he is still working his craft after all these years. And doing it very successfully I might add.

If you have been a die hard Alex Cross fan then you will slurp this one up like gravy. It has all the things you like about the characters and Paterson's writing. The fact it is all just too much to be believed shouldn't slow you down a bit.

CROSS JUSTICE is published by Little, Brown. It contains 448 pages and sells for $29.00.

Jackie K Cooper
http://ift.tt/13fYVTB

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Sci-Fi Painter Simon Stålenhag Turns The Everyday Into Dystopia

Authors of dystopian fiction will tell you they aren’t imagining the future, but using otherworldly scenarios to throw harsh realities of the present into relief. Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy shows us the detriments of climate change, and the false intimacies that can be constructed through video games and online relationships. The Hunger Games chastises gluttony and constant cataloging. Divergent warns us that othering others can only cause calamity.

One artist working actively to infuse visions of the future into scenes from the present is Simon Stålenhag, whose narrative paintings have recently been collected into a book, thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign. The paintings in Tales from the Loop show children and adolescents traipsing across gray plains, energetic in spite of their glum surroundings. Power lines and radio towers dot the skyline, alongside foreign machines, hefty and ominous.

That Stålenhag’s imagined robots stand beside clusters of desktop computers, scoreboards and hatchbacks makes their existence that much more believable. “Look what we’ve created,” he seems to suggest. “Imagine what else we can create.”

In an interview with The Huffington Post, Stålenhag explained that his simultaneously dramatic and intimate settings come from his lifelong tendency to treat observation like a job. “I spend a tremendous amount of time walking with my camera taking photos of everything,” he said.

Those walks, which Stålenhag has taken since he was a kid, wound around the Swedish countryside, where he found beauty even in the dark and craggy winter months. When it was too cold to explore, he stayed inside and watched sci-fi movies directed by Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott and James Cameron. “We roamed the winter landscapes pretending we were escaping velociraptors or fighting aliens,” Stålenhag said.

“The Terminator” and “Aliens” weren’t the painter’s only influences. At an early age, he took an interest in birds and wildlife, and the Swedish painters who depicted them gracefully: Lars Jonsson, Bruno Liljefors and Gunnar Brusewitz. Stålenhag credits these painters for his own foray into the field, and their influence is clear. Alongside unmoving machinery, his scenes are flecked with birds in motion, with blades of grass swaying with the breeze.

“Nothing feels more rewarding to me than when people tell me my pictures bring back childhood memories,” Stålenhag said of his quotidian settings. “All those mundane spare moments in life that nobody ever talks about. I feel they need to be captured. And the science-fiction elements come in naturally. Those things were constantly occupying my mind growing up, so putting giant robots in those mundane scenes -- I still feel it's true to my experience.”

Also on HuffPost:

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A Poetic Treasure Hunt That Beguiles and Entrances

By Anmiryam Budner | Off the Shelf

I stumbled across A. S. Byatt's Possession on a remainder table in spring 1992. Having just finished the first year of an MBA, I needed to leave behind my forced immersion in the universe of spreadsheets and PowerPoint. What better time to be seduced by a book with a lush and swirling image in blue and gold from an Edward Burne-Jones painting on its cover?

As soon as I read the first pages I knew the book was going to fulfill the promise of its cover. The novel opens in 1986 with Roland Michell, a young, impecunious scholar eking out a living in the service of Professor James Blackadder. Blackadder, who is described as "discouraged and liked to discourage others," has been working on the complete edition of the works of Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash (based on the Victorian poet Robert Brown) since 1951.

One day, while sifting through the bookish version of a haystack, Roland actually manages to find a needle -- drafts of a letter written by the man himself to a female poet with a fervor and urgency that belies all that is understood about this most proper of men. Could it be that there was a relationship so hidden that it will radically transform the accepted narrative of his much-studied life? Luckily, the host of the breakfast referenced in the letter kept meticulous diaries and once Roland establishes the identity of the poetess, Christabel LaMotte, we're off and running.

Roland is joined by a young feminist scholar of LaMotte, Maud Bailey, and as the pair delve into the linkages between Ash and LaMotte, we are immersed into a story that contains a dizzying number of elements, making it read like a delightful potboiler: a literary treasure hunt, multiple love stories, secrets taken to the grave.

It's all delicious and addictive, but on top of the central mystery, there is so much more to relish in the book. Byatt's satire of academia is pitch perfect with characters representing different strains of scholarship joining the hunt. No one is safe from her incisive mimicry -- traditionalists, feminists, post-structuralists, and even an avaricious collector with the astounding name of Mortimer Cropper. Everyone is ridiculed for chasing after scraps of Ash and LaMotte to validate themselves. It's to Byatt's credit that as much as she pokes fun at virtually everyone, including Roland and Maud, she also manages empathy for even the most ridiculous.

Perhaps the most astonishing element of Byatt's Man Booker Prize-winning work is that she allows her Victorian characters to come to life through their own words via extended extracts of their writings in diaries, letters, fables, and poetry. It's a tour de force and the breadth of knowledge exhibited here is dazzling. Thankfully Byatt uses her erudition in service of the book and its thematic explorations rather than just to impress.

I've read Possession several times and even now, more than twenty years after I first found entertainment and challenge in its pages, I find it hard to resist. Byatt aptly subtitled the book "A Romance," for it beguiles and entrances, just as Nimue ensnares Merlin on the cover.

Anmiryam Budner is a bookseller at Main Point Books in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

More Recommendations from Off the Shelf:

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A Cento From Hillary Clinton's Emails

2015-11-25-1448484856-1524743-politifact_photos_hillary_email_presser_FINAL.jpg

Poet Jillian Weise, an Associate Professor of English at Clemson University, has written an excellent cento using excerpts from Hillary Clinton's emails. 50,000 pages of emails from Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State, all of which had previously been kept on a personal email server, were released to the public in December of 2015.

A cento is a poem composed of phrases originally written by someone else, arranged in a new order by the author. "Call Me" appears here with permission of the author.

Call Me

Are you on the call? I've done calls
on the black and white. Let me know
what, if anything, I should do.
I don't have a yellow phone.
Okay with me. Pls stay in touch.
It will probably be short. George.
He's so good. Can you talk?
Pls call if you can. Pls be sure
Bill knows there's a plan.
Why are you emailing me??
I was totally turned around.
I'm home now. It's not in my book.
I'm in the Dominican Republic.
Who knows???? Would you
rather do it later? I'm free.
I will tell Iraqis. Pls include me
on the Kurt meltdown. Sooner.
I thought this was done.
Put everything inside my book.
Why am I calling? Can you call?
Are you down there? What is
Wendy Sherman's email address?
What can we do to own
the Participation Age? Is this US
or Israeli $? Hope to talk soon.
Should I also call Calderone
about the terrible murders.
Yes, that's good. Thank you.
She said my husband would attend.
Call me. I just landed.
Has anyone called me back?

Jillian Weise is the author of The Amputee's Guide to Sex, The Colony, and The Book of Goodbyes, which won the 2013 Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets.

Seth Abramson is Series Editor for Best American Experimental Writing and an Assistant Professor of English at University of New Hampshire. His most recent book is Metamericana (BlazeVOX, 2015).

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Monday, November 30, 2015