Shelfari

"You only learn by doing"

Shelfari's Josh Hug (CEO), Dave Hanley (VP of Marketing) and David Nudo (Director of Sales & Marketing) are currently attending BookExpo America in Los Angeles.  Today, Hanley was speaking on a panel with author Scott Sigler and publisher Derek Powazek, discussing how the publishing industry is adapting to Web 2.0. 

Publisher's Weekly reports:

[Hanley] urged publishers to engage with their customers. He himself regularly interacts with Shelfari members, offering and receiving book recommendations. “Just get out there and do it,” he said. “You only learn by doing.” (full story)

If you see Josh, Dave or David at BEA--introduce yourself!

Amanda

Update:

MediaBistro article: BookExpo: The Future Is Where You and I Will Spend the Rest of Our Lives

Marking our 140th Memorial Day

How sleep the brave, who sink to rest,
By all their country's wishes blest!
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to deck their hallow'd mould,
She there shall dress a sweeter sod
Than Fancy's feet have ever trod.
By fairy hands their knell is rung,
There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay;
And Freedom shall awhile repair,
To dwell, a weeping hermit, there.
~William Collins

 

God Bless America!

Amanda

 

Memorial Day Reading:

 

Names of the Fallen

 

*Note: Memorial Day is actually on May 30th (more history).

A Memoir of Africa

Shelfarian Review: When A Crocodile Eats the Sun

The Zulus and the Vendas of southern Africa believe that a solar eclipse occurs when a crocodile eats the sun. It is “the very worst of omen” explains Zimbabwean-born and raised author Peter Godwin. The prediction comes to pass and is recounted in this “white African’s” memories of Zimbabwe, an articulate, wrenching narrative of personal and political struggle that is both eloquent and tragic.

Godwin’s native Zimbabwe was once a land of promise and potential. Under the repressive regime of post-civil war dictator Robert Mugabe, the country becomes home of “the world’s fastest shrinking economy,” the politics of envy, reverse racism and “ethnic cleansing”. It’s a country where local “commanders” adopt names like “Hitler Hunzvi” and “Stalin Mau Mau.” It’s a country where Mugabe’s “farm seizure program” and “land redistribution” schemes are little more than government-sanctioned stealing. It’s a country of massacres, thievery and thuggery, hyperinflation, collapses in farm production, fuel and food shortfalls and a disintegrating, phantom infrastructure. It’s a mess. But it’s not the only thing that’s a mess.

Godwin writes, “This is what this vile president (Mugabe) has done to us – made scavengers of us all and stripped these grown men of their dignity as they fight over a worn bike tire. Reduced us all to desperadoes and thieves, made us small and bleak and old and tired. Made us lose our love of life itself. Split our families and left my parents impoverished, alone, afraid”. As the country disintegrates, so does Godwin’s family.

Beginning and ending with his father’s death, which parallels the country’s, Godwin chronicles the activities and excesses of the Mugabe government over eight years - July 1996 to February 2004. He reports on kangaroo courts, threats, intimidation, violence, extortion, massive voter fraud, mayhem, “Mugabe’s race-baiting stagecraft,” and marauding “war vets” and their effect on his family and friends. Godwin also details some of the desperate, often futile but courageous attempts of opposition parties and private citizens to stay the madness or aid their neighbors and friends.

Possibly the most wrenching portion of Godwin’s tome is chapter 17. Here the conflicted son and sibling narrates the deteriorating physical health of his parents, the reburial of his sister Jain, and the death throes of his home country. As Zimbabwe descends further into madness, Godwin’s elderly, frail parents resolutely refuse to leave, clinging to their farm and his mother’s clinic, where she’s served as a physician for decades. Godwin’s distant, aloof father, George, to whom the book is dedicated, reluctantly – and finally - reveals his own family secrets and the source of his “autobiographical amnesia.”

When a Crocodile Eats the Sun is a haunting, harrowing narrative of the disintegration of a family and a country. Exquisitely written with fascinating detail and occasional rough edges, Crocodile is a highly readable, heart-rending memoir brimming with panache, pathos, hope and despair. A modern tragedy too powerful to ignore.

~Kikero

Getting your book on shelf

From Daily Planet

Veteran bookseller and publisher David Unowsky offers no-nonsense advice on how to place your book on store shelves (and ensure that it doesn't just sit there). Read Article

Revisiting 1994: Eerie similarities

Review: In the Lake Of the Woods by Tim O'Brien

                           

“In September, after the primary, they rented an old yellow cottage in the timber at the edge of Lake of the Woods.” So begins Tim O’Brien's 1994 novel of suspense, In The Lake of the Woods.

When I taught freshman English there was a sure way to sort out the students who liked to think about possibilities from those who wanted definite answers. The ones who courted imagination and the ones who went after fact. It all depended on their reaction to the old short story by Frank Stockton, The Lady or the Tiger?

You remember the story, a king obsessed with order and power has a beautiful daughter. He also has a method of justice that is unique. People in his kingdom who are accused of a crime are put into a great arena where they are forced to choose between two doors. Behind one door crouches a terrible tiger, ready to rip the accused to bloody shreds; behind the other waits a blushing and trembling lady, one most suitable to the age and station of the accused. The accused holds his fate in his own hands, and is immediately either punished or rewarded, and the masses watching are entertained in either case.

So, one day a lowborn lad has the misfortune to fall in love with the daughter of the powerful king, and in accordance with law, is thrown into the arena.

A little background, the princess loves her young man with a semi-barbaric passion. Stockton tells the reader how the princess discovers the secret of the doors, which one conceals the ravenous tiger, which the lovely lady. Gold crosses palms and she learns that the lady is one she knows well, and she is not happy. The princess has to make a tough decision. Should she send her lover to certain death, or into the arms of another woman? Sleep is lost, tears are shed, but the inevitable day arrives and the princess decides.

The crowds wait in the arena. The king and the princess have prime seats. The lover is in the middle of it. He glances up and instantly he knows that she knows. She knows that he knows that she knows. The tension grows. Her hand twitches bit, and the lover walks confidently to a door and opens it.

That’s it. Stockton leaves the reader to decide if the lady or the tiger waits on the other side of the door. That is the title, after all.

The story is wonderful to discuss, but it causes howls of protest from students who don’t see the ending coming. But it happens that those who are interested in analyzing the psychology of the semi-barbaric princess begin to think and talk. Slowly it dawns upon them that the story is not so much about the princess as it is about the reader. What would the reader do in that impossible circumstance? Would love or barbarism prevail?

I suspect that the same people who hate the ambiguous ending of the classic short story will also be frustrated by Tim O’Brien’s book, but for me it is as compelling today as it was when it was first published. Today’s news is full of stories of campaigning, of politicians maneuvering to win the confidence of their constituents. We’ve seen it before, a slip of the tongue, a skeleton in the closet, and the game is over. The masses watch it all on television or read about it over morning coffee, and they wait to see who falls next. The other story that is unfolding before us is that of our military entanglements overseas, in Iraq and Afghanistan. We hear of soldiers maimed and killed in roadside bombs, of suicide bombers and of snipers. Stories emerge of women and children killed, and once again it is clear that nothing is really clear at all. Deja vu for those able to remember Vietnam. What will the future hold for those men and women who return home from the carnage they witness and participate in during wartime?

The reader of O’Brien’s novel is put in the same position as my hapless freshmen. He or she must decide what happened to Kathy Wade, wife of John Wade, defeated politician, former Vietnam soldier, magician and fatherless son. Did she run off to begin a new life, meet with a simple boating accident, or was she murdered by her husband? Was she an innocent whose life was violently taken, or did she take her fate into her own hands? Is Wade a murderer? Or is he a survivor who does whatever he must to live with what his life has handed him?

Some people will crave a resolution, but others will enjoy piecing together the whole story as it flips between the present the past, shifts point of view, and presents bits of evidence and hypothesis. In the end it will be up to you to decide what really happened In The Lake of the Woods.

                     ~sthurner~

Need a suspenseful read?

                              

Interested in finding a great thriller to read?  Look no further then the Suspense and Thriller group on Shelfari.  This month they have been busy discussing The Dollmaker with author Amanda Stevens. Readers describe the book as:

"The Dollmaker is satisfyingly creepy." --Cheryl Kaye Tardif

"Amanda Stevens led a group discussion about her book, THE DOLLMAKER, at the Suspense & Thrillers group and what a book it was...For me, it was hard to put this book down and I couldn’t read it fast enough. Some members felt the book ended too abruptly. I can see it. I thought the whole thing was perfect. Hands down, this book gets a five star rating." --J. Kaye

"This is an amazing thriller, which I found out after I got over the creepy cover." --iyamvixenbooks

Check out the discussion or view the book trailer.

Happy Reading,

Amanda

Chasing Bruce Chatwin

by Steve King at Today in Literature

On this day in 1940 Bruce Chatwin was born. Even leaving out the literary controversy and the personality cult, Chatwin's life has dramatic scope -- middle-class Birmingham teenager to Sotheby's clerk, to art-world star, to ultima thule by backpack, to a handful of best-sellers, a burst of fame, and death at forty-eight. Adding the debate over the books and the author back in might shift the drama closer to opera, but few since Hemingway have attracted such attention, or been credited with establishing "a new definition of the Writer as Hero." (more)

       

Happy Reading,

Amanda

The gift that keeps on giving

Sunday is Mother's Day.  I could go on and on about how much I love and appreciate my mother.  There is one everlasting gift I'd like to say "thank you" for this year.  It's something I am grateful for each day--the love of reading. 

Money may have been tight growing up, but library cards were free.  I couldn't wait for our weekly trips to the library.  I'd browse for hours before leaving with as many books as my little arms could carry.  I participated in summer reading competition and family vacations always included books on tape (from the library, of course). 

One of my fondest childhood memories was listening to mom read aloud.  With incredible patience and passion, she brought to life imaginary characters and flights of fancy. I could listen for hours without interrupting, except for the occasional encouragement to "keep reading, mom".  One more chapter was never enough.

My mother instilled ideas, values and a passion for reading into me and my two siblings.  What precious gifts these books! They contained fantastic tales, moral lessons, creative ideas, and enduring principals; allowing me to discover the world for myself. My mom has given me more then I deserve and I am truly blessed.  How can I repay such a gift?  The only way I know how, by sharing it. 

Thank you mom and Happy Mother's Day!

Amanda 

"For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon’s teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men."

~John Milton (1608–1674)

Are bibliophiles too sensitive? *gasp*

"Why is it, with bookish people especially, that taste (in books and film, and music, and other variables like visual art, food, wine, beer, architecture, interior design), is such a sensitive matter?" asks Emily Colette Wilkinson at The Millions.

Have you spent hours meticulously arranging the books on your shelf?  Does it seem convenient that books which convey something important about how [insert clever adjective] you are appear in the public spaces of your home?  Are there secret closets, hidden corners where you carefully place (hide) books that you enjoyed but wouldn't be caught dead reading?  Are books your favorite accessories?  If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, then you are a sensitive bibliophile.  Ms. Wilkinson at The Millions calls it competitive aesthetics. This sensitive snobbery even effects our dating according to The New York Times, who ran an article in March titled "It's Not You, It's Your Books".

I hate to admit it, but it's true.  I'm a bit of a snob (Webster's definition: one who has an offensive air of superiority in matters of knowledge or taste) when it comes to books.  I coyly peek over my book to see what the person sitting next to me on the bus or airplane is reading.  In a coffee shop, I'll conveniently need to "stretch" letting my eyes wander to the readers around me.  Books are a must have topic of conversation on a first date.  Why?  Because I'm judging. 

Is it fair to judge a person based on their books? I cringe when my musically inclined friends ask to see my iPod.  I always warn that "I haven't organized my music very well and there's stuff I NEVER listen to".  It doesn't stop the occasional smirk or giggle when they see that <you didn't really think I'd put the artists name here, did you?> was on my playlist.  Reality check, perhaps. 

So, are you ready to share your reading list?  You book snob, you :)

Amanda