Blurred Productions

(Via Club Jade)

The official blurb for the new post-Legacy of the Force Star Wars novel is up.

It sounds interesting. Luceno is one of my favorite SW authors but I fear this book could easily descend into prequel continuity porn. Color me cautiously optimistic.

Building on this post at Edge of the American West, and via Ezra Klein, the “long list” for the (very?) prestigious Booker Prize is up on the internets:

Aravind Adiga              The White Tiger
Gaynor Arnold             Girl in a Blue Dress
Sebastian Barry           The Secret Scripture
John Berger                 From A to X
Michelle de Kretser      The Lost Dog
Amitav Ghosh              Sea of Poppies
Linda Grant                 The Clothes on Their Backs
Mohammed Hanif         A Case of Exploding Mangoes
Philip Hensher             The Northern Clemency
Joseph O’Neill              Netherland
Salman Rushdie          The Enchantress of Florence
Tom Rob Smith            Child 44
Steve Toltz                   A Fraction of the Whole

It is awfully funny that I haven’t read any of the books on this list. Hell, except for the Rushdie book, I haven’t even heard of any of these books.

(Funnily [?] enough, I sold the one and only copy of the Rushdie book back when I worked at the book store)

I guess I can add modern American literature to one of the things I am (woefully?) ignorant of.

A couple weeks ago, Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club, Choke, Survivor) was in D.C. for a book signing, reading, interview, and Q&A. It was a ticketed event, which allowed the author to (a) have the event last about 2 hours, (b) give away tons of free stuff, and (c) tell all the vile, offensive stories he’d like to without fear of upsetting the normal afternoon crowd at Barnes & Noble. Considering he was visiting in support of his most recent book, Snuff, which revolves around a pornstar trying to break the world gangbang record, you might understand why his P.R. team might want a little… exclusivity for this tour. I went because my brother got me a ticket as a birthday present, which included a signed book to be picked up that night.

The event itself was incredibly entertaining. Palahniuk wrote a short story called Loser specifically for the tour, written in second person perspective about a frat boy who drops acid and ends up on The Price is Right. It was clever and pretty damn funny, as the feverish college kid recalls being a feverish grade school kid, since the only time he’d watch the show was when he’d stay home sick. Other parts of the evening included games like “first one to fill up a blow-up doll gets a free book!” and other non-fiction anecdotes involving a guy snapping a finger off in a conveyor belt and a pug dog having an HIV scare. The interviewer wasn’t very good (First question: “Do you ever get tired of people asking you about Fight Club?” Really, who cares?) but that’s really my only complaint about the event itself.

The book on the other hand…
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This is the final review in a set of reviews of the latest Star Wars novel series, Legacy of the Force. For a final time, if these sort of things are not for you then preseed no further! There are other things here for you.

As always, spoilers.

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Here’s something I wrote a little while ago, I think the title is pretty self-explanatory, not unlike Charles Bukowski’s “Peanuts.” This is probably going to be more amusing if you’ve read “Blood Meridian.” But hey, if people like it, maybe I’ll follow it up with something like Chuck Palahniuk’s “Goodnight Moon.”

***

The sun did not shine. Shrouded in cold darkness, Heaven let forth her torrential wetness and all hopes for play suffered a drowning death. They sat in the house.

The boy sat with Sally. Wish we had somethin to do said the boy. I reckon it’s too wet to go out and too cold for playin ball.

Sally spat. Sally and the boy sat in the house and did nothing at all.
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Books, dating, and attraction from the New York Times:

James Collins, whose new novel, “Beginner’s Greek,” is about a man who falls for a woman he sees reading “The Magic Mountain” on a plane, recalled that after college, he was “infatuated” with a woman who had a copy of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” on her bedside table. “I basically knew nothing about Kundera, but I remember thinking, ‘Uh-oh; trendy, bogus metaphysics, sex involving a bowler hat,’ and I never did think about the person the same way (and nothing ever happened),” he wrote in an e-mail message. “I know there were occasions when I just wrote people off completely because of what they were reading long before it ever got near the point of falling in or out of love: Baudrillard (way too pretentious), John Irving (way too middlebrow), Virginia Woolf (way too Virginia Woolf).” Come to think of it, Collins added, “I do know people who almost broke up” over “The Corrections” by Jonathan Franzen: “‘Overrated!’ ‘Brilliant!’ ‘Overrated!’ ‘Brilliant!’”

Submitted more or less without comment… except to say that I now know, thanks to this article, that if I was to ever reenter the dating world at this point I would be pretty doomed; what with bookshelves filled with history books, comics, and Star Wars novels.

Eric Alterman was on the Colbert Report last night. It was a nice little segment.

You can read my review of Alterman’s new book here.

I can’t seem to get the video to embed, so it looks like you’re going to have to go the Comedy Central site to check it out.

To say that I am a huge fan of the work of Eric Alterman is a bit of an understatement. I’ve been following his work since I read “What Liberal Media?” in my senior year of high school. Since then I’ve read most of his books and read his daily work over at Altercation. Alterman is one of my idols, he manages to combine historical scholarship, political/media journalism, and public intellectualism into one nice, attractive package.

So, yeah, it’s an understatement to say I was excited to buy his newest book “Why We’re Liberals” last week. Sadly, though, it was a bit of a disappointment.

The book is broken into two parts (after a very good & lengthy introduction). The first (about 1/4 to 1/3 of the book) lays out just what exactly American liberalism is and the problems it faces. The second (from 3/4s to 2/3s of the book) argues that everything conservatives have said about American liberalism for the last 40 years is wrong.
Alterman seems to have four central arguments in his book: (1) that liberalism is not some aberration (like Ann Coulter or Mike Savage would have you believe) but a natural part of American politics; (2) that liberalism needs (for lack of a better term) to “grow a pair” and really begin to combat conservatives and articulate what they believe; (3) that liberalism needs to reclaim its label in a positive way; (4) that modern conservatism has been lying about what liberalism stands for to cover up their own problems as a governing ideology.

All of these arguments are well taken. I think the problem is that the first 2 or 3 get very little space in the book, as they are mostly covered by the too short first part of the book. Most of the book seems to be about conservatism more than liberalism, in that for the largest portion  Alterman takes to task conservatives and corrects their lies and distortions instead of promoting liberalism. Basically, the book is too negative for a book titled “Why Were Liberals”. Alterman doesn’t spend enough time answering that question. He fails really, to lay out a positive case for liberalism on its own. I wish the content ratio had been flipped with 2/3s of the book laying out a positive case for liberalism and what it stands for and only 1/3 dealing with conservatives distortion of liberalism.

Perhaps I feel that way because I’ve seen Alterman go after conservative distortions  before in his blog and his previous books and was hoping for something fresher.

Now, this is not to say that “Why We’re Liberals” is a bad book. It is not. It is very good book. As always Alterman’s prose is clear and accessible. He does a great job of articulating his ideas and has a great eye for the telling anecdote. And, most of all, the man is a genuine funny writer, several of his quips caused me to laugh out loud. There is some great media criticism here to, which one can always expect from Eric Alterman.

Essentially I can recommend anyone interested in a good political book for the 2008 election season. Especially if you’re not a frequent Alterman reader. Big Alterman fans like myself may find the book a bit disappointing. That disappointment is less with the book than what it could have been.

Of course, I continue to wait for Alterman’s sure to be excellent study of post-war liberalism. From the bits of it we got in “Why We’re Liberals”, I’m sure it will be fantastic.

Today I am going to the bookstore to buy a book, with money that I don’t really have. It is a book I’ve been waiting for for awhile. As long time readers and my girlfriend (apologies V, I know I’ve been talking about this book book a lot) I’m a huge fan of Eric Alterman and have been waiting with baited breath for a new book by him for quite awhile.

For of course reading his new book “Why We’re Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Book America” breaks my don’t read ‘hot new’ election themed books rule (I read enough of those in 2004 for a lifetime) but it looks like there will be plenty of history in it so I can give myself a pass.

I may also buy this book today. I have a bit of an ambivilent relationship with Gordon Wood’s work. The man is clearly a great historian, what with his producing one of the “standard” texts of early American intellectual history, and a great, clear writer. He also managed to write a book directly about the Founding Fathers that was not complete a complete a total lovefest. But the man is too much in love with old fashioned political history and too dismissive of other ways of looking at early American political concerns (re: gender). But, you know, it is always good to read smart people you disagree with. So we’ll see.

Whatever I do buy today, expect reviews soon.

 UPDATE: I bought both books. Reviews to follow me reading them.

To say that I am a fan of the work of Adam Langer is an understatement. I picked up his first novel, Crossing California, on a lark at Border’s four years ago (I liked the cover). It didn’t take me long to completely fall in love with the novel, its characters and its setting (Chicago).

Langer’s follow up, Washington Story, was great as well. It was a perfect sequel, taking the characters of Crossing California in interesting new directions while remaining true to their original characterizations.

Langer’s newest book, Ellington Boulevard, is different. It’s not set in the same “world” as his previous two books (though there are a few cloy references to them) and the setting is New York, not Chicago. 

Yet as Langer branches out as an author, what dazzled me about his previous two outings remains: his sharp character work that even makes assholes seem sympathetic or at least understandable; his fluid dialogue that comes very close to capturing the way people actually talk; the way every character is subtly (and unsubtly) interconnected; the way his plot often seem like controlled chaos.

Thus Ellington Boulevard is a great novel and a great successor to Langer’s previous work. Anyone interested in a character centered, funny novel should check it out. You won’t be disappointed.