AliceBakerBlog

The Litblog Co-op

Today's marketplace is inundated with new books of all sorts, and much book publicity is self-serving PR from mega-media corporate publishers.  The Litblog Co-op hopes to draw attention to the best and most underrated new fiction, authors, and small presses--things you might miss amid all the media hoopla over the Big Names.  In other words, books not written by authors named Grisham, Steel, or King.  The co-op is a collaboration of about twenty book bloggers and looks to be an excellent resource.

Link courtesy of Sites and Soundbytes.

I have a long weekend off upcoming.  Back Tuesday.

Teacher Man

Frank McCourt's unforgettable 1996 book Angela's Ashes, the story of his own impoverished boyhood in Limerick, Ireland, won many awards and changed him forever from a New York City schoolteacher to a beloved author. He followed up with 'Tis, the account of his coming to America.  As he puts it, "The Irish version is always better."

His new book, Teacher Man recounts his American life, his thirty-plus years as a teacher in the New York City school system.  It's been met with glowing reviews, like the following:

"A voyage of discovery for students and teacher and, ultimately, all who read this marvelous book. A particular interest in the teaching profession is not required: Teacher Man relates to us all.... Highly recommended." Mark Bay, Library Journal

The newest Powells newsletter offers an interview with McCourt:

Dave: In Teacher Man, you write, "There were no teenagers in Ireland, not in my world." How did that impact your teaching, do you think, in terms of the advantages and disadvantages of being such an outsider?

Frank McCourt: When I went to NYU, there was a required course in adolescent psychology. That baffled me. What the hell is this? I knew that something called teenagers existed because you saw them in the movies. I remember going to a movie when I was a small kid about Andy Hardy going through his adolescence, having tantrums and so on. But somebody said, "That's only in America."

Read more...

A Million Little Pieces

The Smoking Gun has published a report casting doubt on the veracity of many of the incidents and circumstances recounted in A Million Little Pieces by James Frey.  The article states:

"The 36-year-old author, these documents and interviews show, wholly fabricated or wildly embellished details of his purported criminal career, jail terms and status as an outlaw 'wanted in three states.' "

Read more...

Today's New York Times comments:

The discrepancies and Mr. Frey's reported admissions of falsifying details of his life raise questions about the publishing industry's increasing reliance on nonfiction memoirs as a fast track to the best-seller list. It is not at all uncommon to see new books marketed as nonfiction containing notes to readers saying the author has altered the time sequence of events, created composite characters, changed names or otherwise made up details of a memoir. "A Million Little Pieces," however, contains no such disclaimer.

Read more...

Andrea Barrett

Looking for a new slant on literary fiction?  Today, we'll pass along a recommendation of the works of Andrea Barrett.  Her best known book is Voyage of the Narwhal.  I haven't read this one yet (Though it's on the bedside pile.  It really is!), but I have read Ship Fever, discussed in this piece in Blog of a Bookslut.  Ship Fever is a collection of short stories and a novella, all loosely connected thematically by the natural sciences.  It's not science writing, it's fiction, very well done and memorable.  One story is about Carolus Linnaeus in old age, losing the edge on the keen intellect that classified the botanical world into a framework still used today.  Another story concerns an incisive-minded young 18th century woman, with boundless curiousity and energy to learn, who is bound and stifled by the customs and mores of her place in time.

Ship Fever won the National Book Award for fiction in 1996.  It would be an excellent book to start off the year. 

Ms. Barrett is a very interesting writer.  While not a scientist herself, she continually tackles science-related topics and researches them in acute detail for her fiction. She's been extolled by other book bloggers and was the subject of this most interesting interview, which is where I first learned of this fine writer.

New and Better

Thanks to the know-how and the techno wizardry of the system administrator of the CAFE group of libraries, I'm now able to link from this blog to items in our catalog.  So if I mention a great book like A Million Little Pieces, the link takes readers directly to our iBistro catalog.  You can read about the book and place a hold on it directly.

This is something I've wanted to offer here for a long time.  Hope it makes your life a bit easier.

MP3 Audios

Lake Superior State University has spoken about its annual selection of words and expressions to be avoided, but I can't help myself:

Breaking News!

Currently in process at the library--about a dozen audio books in MP3 format.  MP3 allows sound data to be compressed, so that more music, or in this case, more words, may be stored in less disk space.  One disk may hold an entire novel.  These audios need to be played on an MP3- enabled device.  Some newer cars have these players, but the exciting part of these MP3 audiobooks is that they can be played on hand-held MP3 players, and especially on iPods.

I took one of these new audios home last night for a test-drive and was very pleased with the ease of transferring it to my iPod.  I opened the audio in Windows Explorer; all it took was a quick click and drag and the book was on my iPod.  No lengthy download time. 

On my morning walk today, I was enjoying the wit and wisdom of Al Franken and feeling pretty smug.

A couple of these audios are processed and ready to go; the rest will be ready to go shortly.  Place your holds now!

Starting Slow

Happy 2006!  It seems like only yesterday we were embroiled in soul-searing terror over the onset of Y2K.  But here we are--we have survived and triumphed lo these past few years.

A new year lies ahead, clean and shiny.  It's time to put the holidays behind us and plunge, renewed and revitalized, into the work that must be done. 

Or not. 

We could just take it slowly, not making any sudden moves.  Just eeeease back to duty and work.  And if there is time to be wasted, might as well waste it on something really cool.  And here it is--an extremely cool Czech site full of animations and games that may be just the thing for a gray January day.