Girlosophy

In anticipation of the imminent release of The Girlo Travel Survival Guide, the next book in Anthea Paul’s Girlosophy series, I ordered in multiple copies of each book in the series for an endcap display. When they arrived I hand sold four copies straight out of the box, plus another one today off of the display! The feature title has yet to arrive and my display has hardly lasted a day! And this is the week after our spring break! I contacted Tom, my rep at Faherty & Associates, and sent in a second order today. Stores that are strong in this demographic ought to look into this series if they haven’t already done so!

The Resurrectionist Review

The Resurrectionist by Jack O’Connell is not a book that will keep you on the edge of your seat; it’s a book that opens the throttle full bore and slams you back into your chair, if not the wall behind it. It is an utterly bizarre wild ride, not unlike what Sweeney, the father of a comatose boy, is dragged into by Buzz Cote, the leader of a biker gang. What could possibly link a boy in a coma, a biker gang, and a comic book about circus freaks together? Nothing short of Limbo. The Resurrectionist is a wildly imaginative, gut-wrenching book about the metaphysical nature of identity. Part Michael Chabon, part Elmore Leonard, and all Jack O’Connell, this book will change the way you look at chicken boys forever.

Advice for print-on-demand authors

As a fellow print-on-demand author, I’m familiar with the struggles of getting your book into stores. I’ve been fortunate enough to do some book signings, which is one way to get a book into a store. I haven’t had a great deal of success with that – I’ve had to buy my copies from the publisher, then sell them to the store. Not a profitable route, but exposure is a must. Some stores will take books on consignment, which means they put it in the store but the inventory belongs to you until it goes through the register. The store then pays you only for the copies sold, which is low risk to them.

As a book buyer, my suggestions to you are likely the same you would hear at any bookstore. Stores tend to be biased against print-on-demand books, and overcoming that bias can be difficult. The biggest hurdle, however, is the issue of returns. If the publisher will not accept returns, it is unlikely that stores will stock the book. The option to return a book, particularly a title that may not get much marketing support, is paramount. This is where consignment comes in – again, it lowers the risk to the store. In order to qualify for consignment, your book should be bound with a title printed on the spine. Spiral and other bindings without titles require too much shelf space.

Consignment may be an option locally, but the only way to get beyond local distribution is to get the book carried by a national distributor like Ingram or Baker & Taylor/J.A. Majors. This makes your book more accessible to bookstores, whereas online sales are typically direct to customers. Distributors do take a cut of the margin on the book, and the option to return is still an issue, which means stores still may be hesitant to stock the book on the shelf. They will be able to order it if a customer requests it though, so it’s still a good avenue to pursue.

Current Reading List

I’ve finished reading the two books that weren’t on my list and just when I was about to start The White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov along came another welcome deviation, courtesy of my intrepid Book Travelers West rep Phoebe Gaston! She sent me an advance copy of The Resurrectionist by Jack O’Connell, which comes out next month from Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. Algonquin puts out such a nice selection I was inclined to buy everything in their catalog; it’s no wonder Phoebe is so enthusiastic about her line of work!

Gentlemen of the Road Review

Instead of writing a book about a writer of adventure stories, Michael Chabon has eliminated one lens and written the adventure story himself. One might not expect the author who won the Pulitzer Prize for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay to offer adventure apologetics, but an afterword included in Gentlemen of the Road (Random House, $21.95) does just that. As a fellow author who has described his own book as “just a little adventure story,” I must acknowledge my sympathies as a reviewer. While Chabon’s latest work is a genre departure from his previous award-winning oeuvre, it is no different in quality.

There is no difference in Chabon’s trademark unusual syntax, either; I had to re-read the first chapter in order to adjust to it. Once I had his adventurous syntax mapped out I was off on a fast-paced, nuanced, and entertaining tale, which I read in its entirety twice in a single week! Gentlemen of the Road relates just one of the many adventures shared by Amram, an axe-wielding Abyssinian, and Zelikman, a Frankish physician who treats as many wounds as he inflicts. As is wont to happen to gentlemen of the road, a chance encounter leaves in their charge Filaq, the sole survivor of a coup in Khazaria. The brash young heir wants to return home to seek vengeance, but Amram and Zelikman want only to deliver Filaq to an uncle’s keep and be on their way. Filaq’s obstinance, a Khazar death squad, and an invading Rus force intervene, altering their course and setting up multiple daring rescues and an armed confrontation with Buljan, the usurper who deprived Filaq of family, title, and more.

Finely illustrated by Gary Gianni and superbly written (including the most artistic, period-authentic anatomical description of my reading experience), Gentlemen of the Road is a can’t-miss adventure. It may not garner the accolades or the sales figures of Chabon’s previous two books, but it is more than mere artistic self-indulgence and certainly needs no apology.

Mass of Mass Markets

I’m drawn to tragic tales. Ultimate sacrifices. Unhappy endings. Take a look at my Top Ten and you’ll see some prime examples. Even so, I’m struggling with The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. Roy is a sensational writer, and the book is exquisitely crafted and beautifully tragic. I’m not struggling to get through it; I’m struggling against it. The God of Small Things doesn’t have “weight” as much as it has “mass” or “density.” Not a density in terms of language, but a density in terms of pull. I feel something similar to gravity working on me when I open the book. The story is a Law of Nature, irresistable and unavoidable. The downward pull is so strong that I’ve been forced to reach out for a buoy in the form of a mass market paperback. I took advantage of a recent trip to the library with my kids and checked out Exile, the fourth book in the Star Wars: Legacy of the Force series (the library didn’t have the first three). I’m drawn to the darker elements of Star Wars, too (my favorite episode has always been Empire Strikes Back), but alternating between the two books is like escaping from a black hole back into open space. It’s a relief. I find that I can enjoy both books better this way. The Star Wars book alone wouldn’t be satisfying, but taking The God of Small Things straight, like a pound of solid dark chocolate, is too rich. Mass market paperbacks are the knusperkeks of the indulgent reader’s fare!

A model employee

Not only am I a full-time book buyer at the University Campus Store, I’m also a part-time sweatshirt model! Check this out (but don’t let it stop you from visiting the website )!

Literally Life Changing

At a veritable crossroads in my life, when I was unemployed and living in a motel, I turned to Leon Uris, one of my favorite authors, for guidance. I was reading Mitla Pass for the first time, and this is what I found:

“One of the cheapest commodities in the world is unfulfilled genius. All of us want to be known as a unique individual, the one who broke out of the pack. So, you offer yourself up as a sacrifice and what you’re afraid of is losing and being thrown back into the pack. One question taunts you. Do you want to have, or do you want to be?”

I copied that quote down and put it on the mirror of my motel room. My answer to that question got me out of the motel and back on track. It literally changed my life. How has literature impacted your life?

Mortality

A couple of days ago, for reasons unknown, I decided to deviate from my reading list and started reading The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (I also need to amend my list to include Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy). Roy introduces her protagonists, Estha and Rahel, twins who share a “Siamese soul,” at the same age (31) at which their mother died. Roy goes on to describe the age of 31 as “Not young. Not old. A viable die-able age.” I just happened to be reading this on the morning of my thirty-first birthday. Is that merely an alarming coincidence or fate? I wasn’t planning on reading this book anytime soon, let alone on my birthday while waiting to go out to breakfast with my wife. What are the odds of this being a random occurrence versus that of it being a portent? Who can say? All I know is it’s a curious event worth adding to my blog!

“The privilege of never being bored”

I am indebted to Robyn Scott for providing the title of this post as well as the real privilege of never being bored while reading her pioneering book, Twenty Chickens for a Saddle (Penguin, $24.95). The Scott family are pioneers in the medical, scientific, and trailblazing sense of the word; now Robyn has added literary to that list! I’ve never read a book like this before, and I consider myself an avid reader. Like the Christmas trees the Scotts decorated on Molope Farm, it is a unique breed.

Molope Farm, Robyn’s childhood home, was a 2,000 acre farm in the bush of Botswana, just across the Limpopo River from South Africa. The Scott family relocated from New Zealand to Botswana when Robyn and her siblings, Damien and Lulu, were just children, but the book’s subtitle “the story of an African childhood” hardly describes the incredible story told therein. Even the most innocuous anecdote about her infamous Grandpa Ivor, a bush pilot known throughout Botswana, would seem outlandish recounted in this blog; in the book, it is a typical childhood memory!

Twenty Chickens for a Saddle is a difficult book to categorize, but a cinch to recommend. Read this book! Read it precisely for the reason that you would normally pass over it on a shelf of books by typical authors on typical subjects. Do not pass over this book! This is a reading experience that will take you far beyond your broadest horizons. Twenty Chickens for a Saddle is an ideal selection for a book club, as you will not be able to resist discussing it afterwards. You’ll probably wind up blogging about it, too!