Soup and Salad: Slinkachu, Sh*t Book Reviewers Say, Hybrid Books, A Commonplace Book, #writerwithadayjob, Book-Spine Animals, Shelf-Conscious, The Legitimacy of Paperbacks

On today's menu:

"They're Not Pets, Susan"

1.  Have you seen Slinkachu?  Good Lord, I am in love with his work ("Abandoning Little People on the Streets Since 2006") in which he creates miniature street scenes on real-life streets using small action figures integrated into "found props."  I want him to design the cover of my next book.  Here's another stunning example of his art:

2.  It's the return of the Totally Hip Book Reviewer!  Ron Charles is "luminous," "stunning," and "unputdownable" in Sh*t Book Reviewers Say.  In fact, he may just be the next Edith Wharton.




3.   Sorry, e-Book Haters, the Kindle may be hanging around for a while (in one form or another).  This report at Publishers Weekly suggests "a hybrid market for books is developing in which readers will buy both print and digital books."  PW crunches the numbers so you don't have to....


4.  Book critic Harvey Freedenberg has been keeping a "commonplace book" for nearly 30 years.  It began as a collection of newspaper clippings and "words scribbled on scraps of paper" and stuffed into his wallet.  "Today," he says, "it’s housed in a battered blue Rite Aid spiral notebook, encircled by a rubber band to secure the cover and the pieces that threaten to tumble from it."  He writes of its value in a moving personal essay at Beyond the Margins:

      The book is a companion in times of both sorrow and joy. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s exhortation to “live your life as if it were a work of art,” provided inspiration for the eulogy I delivered at my mother’s funeral in 2005. The poet Danny Siegel’s vision of a life that “arrays itself to you as a dazzling wedding feast” helped enrich the celebration of the two great-grandsons’ circumcisions she didn’t live to see. And rereading an evocative essay by a writer friend inspired me to include E.B. White’s observation that “It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer,” summing up in a single sentence the depth of a cherished friendship.
      There are too many here to name more than a few, so many wise and thoughtful and creative minds it would take several lifetimes to absorb all their wisdom. Walker Evans’ admonition to “Stare. Pry. Listen. Eavesdrop,” urges me to be more mindful of the world I inhabit. Kurt Vonnegut knew that “We are here on Earth to fart around,” encouraging me not to take myself or my daily struggles too seriously. With time I’ve added some personal thoughts, though like Auden, “I have tried to keep my own reflections…to a minimum, and let others, more learned, intelligent, imaginative, and witty than I, speak for me.”

5.  I don't talk much about my Day Job* here at the blog.  It's not that I'm ashamed of it or want to keep my blogging a secret from co-workers (some of them are regular readers of The Quivering Pen), but it's more because I've always considered my writing to be a "pastime."  I keep everything compartmentalized, putting the office and my creative keyboard into two separate cubicles, warning them, "Don't talk to each other.  Unless the building's on fire--in which case, you can say something."  This is one reason I get up at the ungodly hour of 3:30 am in order to blog and write creatively before I have to punch the clock at the office.  With the publication of Fobbit, that "hobby" may mushroom into something a little larger (though I still have no plans to quit the Day Job).  For now, I continue to live like Jekyll and Hyde, keeping the two halves of my life from ever meeting.  At her blog, The Practicing Writer, Erika Dreifus talks about why she's grateful for her non-writing employment and why she often appends #writerwithadayjob to her Tweets:

It’s true that the structure and routine of being expected in an away-from-home office–doing work for someone else–every day from 9 to 5 isn’t always a writer’s dream. But the structure and stability of a regular paycheck, health insurance, a retirement account, and paid leave are wonderful things.

6.  Go to your bookshelf.  Look at the spines of the volumes lined up there.  Chances are, you'll see a logo near the bottom of that spine.  Chances are also good that it's an animal of some kind: a penguin, a kangaroo, a seagull, a dolphin.  Ever wonder about the history behind the logos (called "colophons")?  No?  Well, I have.  The Publishing Trendsetter blog enlightens us.


7.  Speaking of shelves and spines, The Paris Review blog talks about writers' libraries and the history of bookcases in "Shelf-Conscious."

There are many varieties of nerd, but only two real species—the serious and the nonserious—and shelves are a pretty good indication of who is which. “To expose a bookshelf,” Harvard professor Leah Price writes in Unpacking My Library, a recent collection of interviews with writers about the books they own, “is to compose a self.”

Nicely said!  One of these days, I'll get around to writing about my own library here in the basement of my house in Butte, Montana.  For now, let me just say this: I have so many books, the thickness of the volumes insulates the walls and keeps me warm in the winter.  One more thing: my wife is a friggin' saint for putting up with my bibliomania for nearly 30 years.


8.  At the Women's Fiction Writers blog, Sarah Pinneo ponders the implications of her book coming out in trade paperback rather than hardcover:

     When my agent began to shop Julia’s Child, it was the editors of paperback imprints who showed the most interest. I’d always pictured the book as a hardcover, and not merely because I was having delusions of grandeur. The women’s fiction I’d read for years—Alice Hoffman, Jennifer Weiner, Jodi Picoult—was always hardback. Soft cover, I assumed, was for chick lit and genre romance.
      So I decided to (very casually) ask my agent about it. “So…” I said, “is this because I’m a loser, and nobody will ever take me seriously?”

I've been asking myself the same question lately since--from what I've been told--Fobbit will be coming out in paperback.  Like Pinneo, I'm just happy to be a published writer.  I get down on my knees every morning and thank my lucky stars for the Grove gods who smiled upon me.  And yet...I wonder if an original paperback release will reduce Fobbit's legitimacy in the eyes of book reviewers.  No matter how many novels debut in paperback these days (and the number is rising sharply), there's still a wrongly-held impression they're somehow second-class books.  But on the other hand, I wonder if a lower cover price will attract more readers.  And that--readers' eyes--is the most important consideration when you come right down to it.  I don't care if they're reading my words printed on the back of dried potato skins with blue ink, as long as they're reading, right?  What do you think?  Does format matter?  Discuss in the comments section.



*If you really must know, I work for the Bureau of Land Management in Montana.