The Book Babes

BABES, B&N AND THE BIG APPLE

ELLEN SAYS: Fear of flying -- not! When the Babes hit New York last week, we not only had a standing-room-only event at the Greenwich Village Barnes & Noble, but also two women writers who added glamor and good vibes to our trip. Our favorite member of the audience: the Jack Russell terrier who seemed to be hanging on our every word.

Sue Shapiro, author of "Five Men Who Broke My Heart" among other books (my homage will be entitled "Five Men Who Broke My Bed"), organized the Friday night reading as a benefit for the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen Writer's Workshop and proved there's no recession when she's around. The GV B&N sold $7,000 worth of books (including our beloved "Between the Covers") to benefit the workshop.

Erica Jong was gracious and forthright, praising the Babes for choosing her memoir "Fear of Fifty" to feature in "Between the Covers," rather than the book for which she is known by millions. "Do you know how many times I've had people say to me, 'I read your book!'" she lamented. Such are the travails of a writer who has  written 20 but only one that since being published in 1973 has sold 200 million copies...

The party following at Sue's apartment was standing room only, as well: writers, students, friends, and lots of sushi! It was very New York, with my husband Tim's favorite part the chance to talk to Sue's husband, who wrote some of the episodes for "Seinfeld," the TV series we raised our boys on in the '90s. Not that we really wanted either of them to turn into Kramer or George...

Saturday, as part of the National Book Critics Circle board, I participated in the selection of finalists for our 2008 awards, with winners to be selected March 11. A few personally gratifying picks: "Home" by Marilynne Robinson in fiction; "My Father's Paradise" by Ariel Sabar in memoir. (The subtitle, "A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq," makes this sound like a story of limited interest. But it turns out to be a fascinating and offbeat look at Mideastern culture and politics.)  And some sadness at the terrific books that were left on the cutting room floor. The John Muir and Wallace Stegner biographies are distinguished and, I predict, will be celebrated elsewhere (Los Angeles Times book awards?). Although they didn't make the NBCC finalists' list, Joseph O'Neill's "Netherland" and Toni Morrison's "A Mercy" are two of the best novels produced last year.

   
     

O'Nan, Obama, Oh Jimi

     Here are the books recommended by the Book Babes on their monthly radio show, which aired on WMNF-FM 88.5 Tampa on January 21. To listen to the entire show, go to wmnf.org, click on On Demand/Archives and then Book Babes on the calendar.

Ellen’s Pick (championing a veteran writer):

"Songs for the Missing," the latest novel from Stewart O'Nan.

It tells the story of a pretty young girl who goes missing, and how her parents, sister and friends react as the search and ultimate outcome unfold.

Margo’s Picks (in honor of Barack Obama’s inauguration):

“What Obama Means: For Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Future,” by Jabari Asim, editor of the NAACP magazine The Crisis and author of “The N Word”

Asim, whom the Babes met when he was an editor at the Washington Post, places the Obama phenomenon in a social and culture context.

“Rock Gods: Forty Years of Rock Photography,” by photographer Robert M. Knight, introduction by Slash, edited by Divina Infusino

When Hendrix, who graces the cover of this collection, used to tell Knight that his mom was Japanese, the photographer would think, “Okay, whatever you want to be, Jimi.” Then years later Knight found out a fact that puts Hendrix right into today's mulitcultural zeitgeist: Jimi’s mother had left early in his life and his father had remarried a Japanese woman.

“Let’s Talk About Race,” by Newbery Honor Book Author Julius Lester, illustrated by Karen Barbour.

This children’s book, filled with eye-popping illustrations, reminds kids: Race is only part of everyone’s story.

Also check out our interview with Janet Conner, author of “Writing Down Your Soul: How to Activate and Listen to the Extraordinary Voice Within”

Odes to Politicians: For Better or Verse

Here's the Book Babes' latest exchange that appeared on huffingtonpost.com:

Hey Margo,

The new year is starting right for at least one endangered species: people who love literature. First, of course, comes news from the National Endowment for the Arts that Johnny and Susie CAN read, after all. After years of survey showing a gradual decline in the nation's habit of reading fiction, a new study shows a glimmer of progress: Oprah's Book Club and "The Big Read" - by chance, an NEA initiative, but would I accuse the agency of patting itself on the back? - are among initiatives credited with helping reverse the trend. It's just a small upward blip, but in this economy, we need to celebrate anything that's pointed up.

Then comes another treat for us culture vultures: Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Although with that hair it's hard to think of Gov. B. as anything more than an Elvis impersonator, apparently he fancies himself a bard. And although the NEA study regretfully acknowledged no uptick in the appetite for poetry, maybe Blagojevich's habit of reciting poetry at his press conferences (Kipling, Tennyson) will push the public taste toward verse, as well. It beats spewing the expletives for which the guv is also known.

The prospect of mating poetry and public figures sent me to my book shelves. Why bother with a speechwriter when we have such time-honored turns of phrase as "the fog comes on little cat feet" or "the bell tolls for thee"?

For instance, here's how I'd dress up George Bush's final address to the nation this week:
No more be grieved at that which thou has done (in Iraq, particularly).
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud.
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud...
(William Shakespeare, Sonnet XXXV)

Hillary Clinton admitting she had even loftier aspirations during her confirmation hearings for Secretary of State:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both (especially the one that would have made ME president)
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could...
(Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken")

Gov. Bill Richardson, lamenting the fact that he will not be confirmed as Secretary of Commerce:
I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise...
(Jane Kenyon, "Otherwise")

As for Barack Obama, what better words than these for his inaugural address:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...
(W.B. Yeats, "The Second Coming")

Hey Ellen,

"You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose," Mario Cuomo once said. But what's a politico to do in defeat? Sarah Palin could ponder that other infamous line from Yeats' "The Second Coming":

"The best lack all convictions, while the worse/
Are full of passionate intensity."

And here are some more lyrical lines that her fellow Republicans would do well to contemplate during their years in opposition:

For Dick Cheney:
"If any question why we died
Tell them, because our fathers lied."
(Rudyard Kipling, "Common Form")

For Karl Rove:
"Oh, what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive!"
(Sir Walter Scott, "Marmion")

For John McCain:
"You and I are old; old age hath yet its honor and its toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men who strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wantes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world."
(Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses")

For Newt Gingrich:
"To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say,
is a keen observer of life,
The word 'Intellectual' suggests straight away
A man who's untrue to his wife."
(W.H. Auden, "New Year Letter")

For Jeb Bush
"They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you."
(Philip Larkin, "This Be the Verse")

For Larry Craig and Mark Foley:
"As I grow older and older,
And totter toward the tomb,
I find that I care less and less
Who goes to bed with whom."
(Attributed to Dorothy Sayers in Janet Hitchman's "Such a Strange Lady")

For James Dobson
"The old order changeth, yielding place to new.
And God fulfills himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world."
(Alfred Lord Tenneyson, "Idylls of the King")

For Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader John Boehner:
"They join in hand, brave Americans all.
By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall."
(John Dickenson, "The Liberty Song")

2008: READS TO REMEMBER

Ellen says:

A new year opens with cartons of books adorning my snowy doorstep. Jayne Anne Phillips' newest, "Lark & Termite" (due out this month), and an Aussie newcomer's first novel, "The Spare Room" (February), are already impinging on a stack of 2008 arrivals that I'm still working through (shall I wait for the paperback?). But before we say good-bye to all that:

Thanks to all who have supported our book,whether by attending our events or buying a copy of "BETWEEN THE COVERS: The Book Babes' Guide to a Woman's Reading Pleasures." If you're in the New York area, please join us (as well as Susan Shapiro and Erica Jong) January 23 at the Greenwich Village Barnes & Noble!

Meanwhile, here are 10 great reads I presented recently on "AM Northwest," the morning show of Portland's local ABC-TV affiliate, KATU. All great for wintry evenings as 2009 blusters in...

Happy reading! Happy new year! 

DOG DAYS: “Izzy and Lenore: Two Dogs, an Unexpected Journey and Me,” by Jon Katz. Well-known dog writer Katz tells a tear-jerking tale of adopting one mistreated border collie who has an instinct for comforting others and joins him as a hospice volunteer – and a golden retriever who helped him through a bout of depression. 

LINCOLN REVIVED:  “The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage,” by Daniel Mark Epstein. The bicentennial of Lincoln's birth has spawned a bevy of books on the sainted president, and this one will tug at your heartstrings. Poet Epstein frames an already familiar story with style in his well-told account of the relationship between the brooding president and his erratic wife. (And while we're talking about Lincoln, here's another the history buff will love: The coffee table-worthy "Looking for Lincoln: The Making of an American Icon," by Phillip B. Kunhardt III, Peter W. Kunhardt and Peter J. Kunhardt Jr." -- this a look at America in the 60 years AFTER Lincoln's death and assessment of how he was elevated from ordinary mortal to sainthood.)  

SWEET ROMANCE: “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society,” by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. This concoction of letters, many of them exchanged between a London writer named Juliet and a pig farmer in Guernsey, is pure fiction. But it gives a snapshot of Guernsey, an island off the British coast that the Nazis occupied during WWII. Romance included.       

GOOD GOSSIP: “Audition,” by Barbara Walters. The doyenne of TV interviewers turns the camera on herself and tells not just a good story, but also an honest and even self-reflective one. The book has received a lot of press for revealing her long-past affair with a black U.S. Senator. But there’s so much more – about her showbiz father, her disabled sister, her adopted daughter, three failed marriages – and what you sacrifice for fame and fortune.

BEST FROM THE NORTHWEST: “The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman’s Fight to Save the World’s Most Beautiful Bird,” by Bruce Barcott, a Seattle writer. Meet Sharon Matola, zookeeper of Belize. This is a woman who can hold a tarantula in her hand and used to wrestle big cats for a living. She’s also tough enough to take on the powers that be and try to stop a dam from being built in her tiny Central American country. Serious nonfiction made entertaining by this colorful character. (This book is recommended in "BETWEEN THE COVERS: The Book Babes' Guide to a Woman's Reading Pleasures.") 

COP SHOP: “The Given Day,” by Dennis Lehane. The author of “Mystic River” sets a novel about two families, one black and one white, against the backdrop of the Boston policeman’s strike of 1919.  The mystery writer’s first novel of historical fiction is his best yet. Babe Ruth, Calvin Coolidge and playwright Eugene O’Neill all have a role. Think of Doctorow’s novel “Ragtime,” only in Boston instead of New York.

BOOMER HEAVEN: “John Lennon: The Life,” by Philip Norman. OK, this book doesn’t go that far inside Lennon’s head. But it does a good job of capturing a man of so many gifts and such insecurity – not that unusual a package, actually. (Aren't most talented people plagued with self-doubt?) The only one in the family who calls 'em as she sees 'em is Yoko Ono, which may help explain why Lennon clung to her as his exit vehicle from the Beatles.

RIVETING AND SEXY: “The Garden of Last Days,” by Andre Dubus III. The handsome hunk who wrote “The House of Sand and Fog” produces another compelling novel by bringing together a Muslim terrorist and an exotic dancer on the eve of the 9/11 attack. Most of the story takes place in a Florida stripper’s club where you see how different the world looks to a lonely man holding a drink and some twenties and a naked woman who needs his money.  (This book is recommended in "BETWEEN THE COVERS: The Book Babes' Guide to a Woman's Reading Pleasures.")

SPIRIT QUENCHER: “Finding Beauty in a Broken World,” by Terry Tempest Williams. Nature lovers adore Williams for her ability to write about the landscape. Here she contemplates mosaics in Italy, prairie dogs in Utah, and the death of her brother in a search for the connectedness of all things. As one critic put it, “How a book could be simultaneously this heartbreaking and gentle, I don’t know.” (Williams' earlier  book, "Refuge," is recommended in "BETWEEN THE COVERS.")

“A MERCY,” by Toni Morrison. You don’t win the Nobel Prize for Literature unless you can write luminous prose and make a few political points at the same time, and that’s what Morrison does in her newest novel. It’s the story of the household of immigrant Jacob Vaark, circa 1690. Exploring the twin evils of sexism and racism, Morrison proves that therre’s a more poetic way of restating that old line: Follow the money!