Books

I missed the win by four points (damn you, spread prediction!), and congratulate Brockman and his lucky reader on taking the Book Bloggers’ Office Pool. Next year!

But hey, The Road won, and that makes me happy. (Wait, has the backlash started yet?)

And since I’m sure it won’t last long, I’m currently in second place in the Tourney of Books Book Bloggers’ Office Pool; this notable, since for most of the competition I’ve been proudly sporting the lanterne rouge.

This is based purely on my love of The Road, and thus The Sci-Fi comes through yet again. (I kid.) (But it is.) I suspect that Brockman, Condalmo or Max is going to end up with the big win, so I’m choosing to seize a little moment of baskery in which I do not feel guilty for completely letting Catherine Schneider of Austin down down down.

Updated: Wow, I never thought Oprah would co-opt my love of The Road. I guess this means everyone has to stop referring to her book club picks as "middle brow." I rub my hands together evilly in anticipation of discussion day.

…and doesn’t say the word scrotum. Simon and Schuster is launching a campaign for The Higher Power of Lucky, including a short video featuring words of support from various authors and an interview with Susan Patron. Check it out. Good on S&S. (Via Fusenumber8.)

Yes! I am officially "leader" in the race to be the Lanterne Rouge of the Tourney of Books Book Bloggers’ Office Pool.

It takes real skill to get this many wrong, folks.

Thanks to Jon Armstrong for stopping by here yesterday and providing content (while I did Other Things — I truly understand why guest bloggers are so fabulous now).

Back in November, I read Grey on an airplane (right after The End of Mr. Y) and thought it a completely distinctive debut. At the time, I said: "… it was an extremely pleasant surprise to read such a strange, elaborately written (but brief) science fiction novel." The star-crossed main characters of Grey obsessively follow a fashion magazine called Pure H — recreating its surreal, bizarre scenes in their "looks"; Pure H feels like a real magazine but could never really exist (think The Library television show from Kelly Link’s "Magic for Beginners"). Like a phantom magazine ad, Grey lingered in my thoughts, coming back to me at odd moments. I highly recommend giving it a try.

AND, I might add, the book’s publisher Night Shade Books (home of the one and only zoot-suited Jeremy Lassen) just had a great article written about them in Publishers Weekly.

So, yesterday Jon proposed a contest and you can win a copy of Grey:

Get a Free signed copy of my novel, Grey! –Yes, we’ve come to the shameless self-promotion part of this post. I’m announcing a book giveaway. You can find Chapter 1 here. The contest is: write the first sentence of Chapter 2 and leave it in the comments (be sure there’s a way for me to reach you). Best one wins a copy of Grey. Plus, I’ll sign it however you wish, including the always useful: Congratulations ebay Highest Bidder!

He’ll announce the winner next week, so get cracking.

Packet finished a day early and the advance copy of Nicola Griffith’s Always (an Aud novel!) to read. A snippet from an early chapter:

Self-defense is not just a skill, it’s a worldview. Like the scientific method–or religion, or motherhood, for that matter–once you accept its precepts you see things differently. I didn’t intend to tell my students this. Just as you don’t try to interest six-year-olds in natural history by discussing physiology and adaptive evolution–but take them, instead, to a pond to watch tadpoles turn into frogs–on the first day of class you don’t tell grown women to change their lives. You show them how to punch a bag.

So good and so full of moments that make me want to stop and read them to whoever is nearby.

The New York Times engages in full-page gushery about my favorite novel of the year thus far: Ysabeau‘s Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog:

Ysabeau S. Wilce’s name already sounds like something the infinitely inventive Terry Pratchett might have concocted — he has an Ysabell, Death’s adopted daughter, in his Discworld series, though he’s been known to lampoon middle initials (in “Maskerade,” a character gives herself an “X” — which stands for “someone who has a cool and exciting middle initial”).

But the test of course is in the tale and its telling. “You think things have to be possible?” Will Parry cried in Pullman’s “Subtle Knife.” “Things have to be true!” A fitting motto for the writer of fantasy, who must create a believable young hero or heroine in a memorable alternate world. Otherwise readers, especially young ones, will eject right out of it.

Not to worry: Wilce has matters well in hand in this, her first novel. Thirteen-year-old Flora Segunda is a charming narrator, and her domain — the city of Califa — is an intriguing mix of the preindustrial and the post-multicultural, with a bracing dose of magic, martial life, time travel and family drama mixed in.

Yay! Read it!

Looks like NONE of us correctly predicted the outcome of today’s round of the book tourney. And Mark’s slip yesterday (I don’t think the books are still up there, but they were) leads me to believe I incorrectly guessed one of the next ones too. YEE-OUCH.

I still believe The Road will win, though. But we’ll see.

Paul Rudnick serves up the best take on the scrotum controversy that I’ve seen in this week’s New Yorker. Or at least the funniest. An excerpt:

"Betsy Barstow, Colonial Girl"

One fine morning, as Betsy went to the village well in the Olde Massachusetts Baye colony, she ran into her best friend, feisty Katey Karmody.

"Oh, Katey," said Betsy, "I have such news! My father and my brothers are joining up with the militia to fight the British, so that we may all be free!"

"Oh, Betsy, that is news!" cried Katey. "My nipples are like muskets!"

There’s more.

Okay, so no points for me in today’s Tourney of Books pool. (Sorry to Catherine Schneider of Austin, TX, who I’m playing for!) I feared I might blow this one, but I just couldn’t go against Absurdistan. Max and Condalmo take an early lead with 1 point each, but we ladies and Brockman are still in this. I’m feeling good about the next round.

(I should totally have asked Dan Chaon who he was picking for the round he’s judging when I met him last weekend. Not that it would have mattered at this point, but I’d KNOW.)

::cue Rocky theme music::