REVIEW: Hornby’s ‘How To Be Good’

I really thought that I was going to be joining the Nick Hornby fan club when I picked up How To Be Good. I’ve never read anything by him, but from what I’ve heard, I thought that he was going to be someone I would read thoroughly and often.  Instead, I think that this book should be re-named to How to Waste a Week Of Your Life.  I was really disappointed.  After all of the to-do about About a Boy and High Fidelity I was expecting so much more out of this.

This book started out with promise.  What happens when the crankiest man in the world becomes generous, caring and kind?  Spoiler alert…nothing, because Hornby was too lazy to write an adequate ending.

It’s a story of annoying characters that just get more and more annoying you get deeper and deeper into the book.  Do not waste your time.

If I never read another Nick Hornby book, fine by me.

How to be good?  More like How to be bored.

Grisham writes for kids

Legal-novelist John Grisham sold a two-book series for children to Penguin Young Readers Group, according to Publisher’s Weekly.

The first book is titled Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer and is about a 13-year-old that gets involved in a big murder trial in his town.  It will be released on May 25th here in the U.S.

The second book is scheduled for release sometime in 2011.
KidsLit has always been a money maker, and it’s interesting to see how authors like James Patterson and John Grisham do in this new market.

A Million Little Pen-Names

James Frey was having trouble publishing anything after his “memoir” was exposed as a fraud.  So it looks like he’s turning to a pen-name…or two.  According to the New York Post, James Frey may be the never-in-public author John Twelve Hawks – who is already writing the six-part Sci-Fi series under the pen name Pittacus Lore.

Confused yet?

Fry told Page Six:

“I will neither confirm nor deny that I am John Twelve Hawks, Pittacus Lore, or anyone else … I will say that I have done, and I am continuing to do, projects that will come out anonymously or with invented names on them.”

What’s interesting is that James Patterson, Steven King and Michael Chabon have all been rumored to be Hawks as well.

Frank Anthony Polito’s ‘Drama Queers!’

We first met Bradley Dayton in Frank Anthony Polito’s first novel Band Fags, which I read and wrote about here.   This book isn’t exactly a sequel to Band Fags because the two main characters (the Band Fag and the Drama Queer) have a b.f.f. breakup and these books take place during that time when they weren’t super close and involved in one anothers lives.

When I read Marc Acito’s How I Paid For College and the “sequel” Attack of the Theater People I found myself bored and tempted to skip sections at a time.  “I don’t need to know all of Character A’s backstory…I just read it in your other book,” I thought to myself.

And to be honest, if Daniel hadn’t bought me Drama Queers for Christmas, the fear of repeat boring backstory might have stopped me from picking this book up.  Luckily, Polito was wise enough to write Drama Queers as a stand-alone that compliments or supplements his first book.  Knowing what I know about Jack, Brad’s best friend since the 7th grade, only helped me enjoy the second book more.

High School isn’t really easy for anyone, and as Polito’s stories accurately point out, figuring out you’re a F-A-G just complicates things.  As a former Band Fag and Drama Queer, this book was a nice throw-back to those days that I’m so glad are over.

The pace of this book was much better than Band Fags, and Polito seemed to get a lot of his impress-them-with-vast-early-80s-pop-culture-knowledge out of the way in the first book.

While I only slightly recommend Band Fags, I’d fully recommend you read Drama Queers.

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Kensington; 1 edition (June 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0758231644
• Amazon Link

Were you a drama queer or band fag? Read this.

Generation-Google Goes Paperless?

Regina Brooks wrote an interesting piece for The Huffington Post on the future of the book.  Will e-books take over?  Are we witnessing the death of the paper book?  From the article:

All of the above — successful or not — are pioneers in what is sure to become the norm in YA publishing: interactive, multi-platform stories. Most of today’s teens are online, and that’s where publishing has to go if they want to reach them. Blog and book trailers are well and good, but why not take advantage of the rich storytelling opportunities that multimedia has to offer? It’s going to be very exciting to see how publishers tap into those opportunities, and how it will change the reading experience for today’s teen readers.

Read the entire thing here.

New Palahniuk Coming

Amazon just notified me that a new Chuck Palahniuk is coming out sometime around in early May.  If you asked me three years ago who my favorite author’s are, Palahniuk would have been high on the list, but ever since Rant I’ve had the hardest time finishing his stuff…let alone enjoying it.

I think Palahniuk’s publishers are aware of this problem.  The publisher’s review of Tell-All says that this book is “Marinated in the world of vintage Hollywood.”  And it’s “wild, wicked, it’s bold-faced–it’s vintage Chuck.”

So they are promising readers like me some good old-fashioned Chuck.  We’ll see in May.

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday (May 4, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385526350
• Amazon Link

A Streetcar Named Desire

I love New Orleans.  Seriously, if someone wrote a shitty cliched novel about a soldier sent off to war and the letters he wrote to his wife back in the states, I’d read it…as long as the wife lived in New Orleans.

Luckily, A Streetcar Named Desire wasn’t shitty and cliched, but it does take place in NOLA.  Blanche DuBois is down on her luck and moves in with her sister Stella and Stella’s husband Stanley.  Blanche has grown accustomed to living the high life, and isn’t too comfortable slumming it in Stella’s apartment in the city where men gather to drink and gamble.  The tension between the three rise – fueld by Blanche’s arrogant attitude, her demands, and mild flirtations.  And Stanley is a Polish man with a short fuse.

It was rather clever of Tennessee Williams to start this novel with Blanche’s arrival and end it with her departure.  We never get to see what is normal for Stella and Stanley.  We’re left wondering if Stanley is a violent man, sexually predatory and ruthlessley dominate or does his behavior begin as a response to Blanche’s presence?

While I was reading this play, I kept thinking I’ve seen this on stage or I’ve read this before, but it turns out I was just remembering The Simpsons episode where there was a Springfield production of a cheesy musical version of A Streetcar Named Desire in which Marge plays Blanche and Ned Flanders plays Stanley.  I love the final song “You Can Always Depend on the Kindness of Strangers.”  Ha!

Read this.  It’s short, but super-complex and culturally significant.

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: New Directions (September 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811216020
• Amazon Link

Adventures In Bookselling

Over at The Book Lady’s Blog there’s a pretty entertaining series called “Adventures in Book Selling” where Melissa from Scuffed Slippers and Wormy Books writes about her adventures working in a book store.

Any regular old book snob, like myself would get a kick out of this.  I particularly liked this one:

The “I-can’t-believe-I-just-heard-that-lemme-collect-my-jaw-from-the-floor” scenario

(right after J.D. Salinger’s death)

Says one ditzy teenage girl to another: “So this Saliva guy who wrote a book about baseball died this week…everyone’s talking about it.  I have no idea who that is.” [must….restrain….fist….of….death]

Read them all here.

Kristy’s Great Idea – Baby-Sitters Club

This book made me feel guilty.  As a little soon-to-be gay boy in the 1980s, I watched my older sister devour the Baby-Sitters Club series.  She just ate them up.  And I learned at a young age it wasn’t “appropriate” for young boys to like the same things as their sisters.

“Michael, take off those Madonna gloves!”

When I picked up the first of the super-popular Baby-Sitters Club series, I couldn’t help but feel a bit of guilt.  Kristy’s Great Idea is book #1, and about Krsity Thomas’ idea of forming a Baby-Sitters Union…only they call it a “club.”  They come together for pointless meetings, vote on matters, and collectively bargain for prices and advertising space.

It was pretty obvious to me why these books were popular.  They had everything a young-adult wants to see in a book: kids making money without relying on their parents, Kristy’s hate for her mother’s fiance, Stacey’s eating-disorder-that-turns-out-to-be-diabetes, Claudia and her frustrating older sister, Mary Anne’s over-protective father.

It was obvious from this first book that this is a series that many great kid’s series used as the prototype.

If I was going to complain about something, I might point out how each of these girls is a walking character-type, but I’ll see how that unfolds in the next 9 books (I’ve made a commitment to read the first ten in the series).

It feels really great to look at a book series like this one that brought my older sister so much joy and to finally be able to get excited about these books publicly.  The Corey Haim fascination I secretly shared with her 20 years ago, however, will never be acted upon.

• Reading level: Ages 9-12
• Paperback: 153 pages
• Publisher: Scholastic (September 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0590224735
• Amazon Link

I Eat Books Launches!

I don’t really eat books…fyi.  I just read a lot.

I’ve been blogging at WhatSomeWouldCallLies.com for quite some time, but decided to bring my book blogs to their own domain.  I found myself too often limiting my writing on literature because I didn’t want to bog down the story blog I had created over there.

I like all types of books, but read mostly fiction.  My list of favorite authors has changed in the last year.  The more you read, the more intricate your tastes become.

You’ll find that it’s tough to pin down my literary likes and dislikes.  I’ll read everything from a children’s book to a trashy crime novel to a Pulitzer Prize-winning work.

I’m not a meany that will tear a book apart; I can normally find some good in each book that I read…but I’m also not afraid to point out when a big author flops.

So, what should I read next?  Email me: MikeLawson@gmail.com