Don't Wait for Prince Charming

I used to think a heavenly apparatus would come along and save me from my multiple gadgets. I mostly thought about it when I was packing for vacation and had to make sure I had every cord I needed. It would be my prince charming. One gorgeous instrument with a phone, music player, camera, ebook reader, video player, and web browser. It would be so wonderful, I could wear it around my neck.

I’ve grown up a little. I’m not waiting for my prince charming handheld anymore. Nope. For the foreseeable future, I am stuck carrying all my needs in separate gadgets. I am referring to the Kindle and iPad, of course.

When the iPad was released this past April, foolish me, imagined the iPad and Kindle in a boxing ring, with oversized boxing gloves, going at each other. It was war. Which fancy reading device would Americans choose? Which little machine would prove victorious? I held my breath in anticipation. Publishers were in a frenzy.

Then both devices started selling rapidly. Apple has sold roughly 8.25 million iPads (the number varies) and while Amazon is mysteriously vague about their sales figures (they say they’ve sold millions but won’t say exactly how many)—it doesn’t matter. I don’t need any official sales reports telling me, I can just see it. Kindles and iPads are here to stay.

Americans, it seems, are not choosing between an iPad and Kindle. They are buying both because they are vastly different products. If we are choosing anything, we are choosing between reading devices (the new color Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, or the Kindle?) or between a new laptop or iPad. As I wrote in a post last summer, the iPad isn’t about ebooks. (There’s a reason why iPad owners tend to be young and male. More than half of apps downloaded are games.) And the Kindle keeps getting better at what they are designed to do as ereaders.

My minimalist dream of having one device isn’t here yet because it hasn’t been invented it yet and because I am not willing to give up the pleasantness of reading on the Kindle or the iPad’s web browsing and apps. We are spoiled kids in the candy store—we want, no, we need both.

The Haunting of the Submission

I’d been lugging around this five pound manuscript for almost a week. It was a submission from a first-time author—an adventure and love story set in a far-off magical world. Not my usual cup of tea.

It came in last week. Once I was asked to read it, I dutifully printed it out and set it on my desk. And then I ignored it.

After a day or two, the manuscript began staring at me and appeared to grow in size. But I just couldn’t get to it.

I finally took a chunk of pages home with me, stuffing it in my bag. I pulled it out on the subway, like a rabbit out of a hat, in a row of tightly packed passengers.

I wanted the submission to be bad. Really bad. As in, I didn’t have to read more than ten pages to dismiss it and type up a report about how I wasn’t won over by the writing. (An editor here says he knows by page thirty whether he likes something or not—a good rule to follow.) But of course—cause lately nothing is simple—the novel was pretty good.

Crap. Now I had to read the whole thing, cause if you plan on writing a glowing report, well, you better know what happens in the end.

I figured I’d finish the manuscript at work. I didn’t want to bring it home again. I had other things I was reading and enjoying in a much more convenient size. But things got busy and reading the 400 page novel was not going to happen anytime soon at my desk. And I was running out of time.

When a submission comes in, and you are asked to read it, you have to read it fast. You want to avoid the agent following up on it, and the editor asking you about it and having to confess that you haven’t read it yet. It's a bad feeling.

Every time I looked, it was as if the manuscript had a time bomb strapped to it. Finish me. Finish me.

I started carrying the manuscript everywhere; anywhere I could get a few pages in. The novel’s protagonist became my little buddy. Always there, at Duane Reade, waiting for the light to change.

I thought, surely, in all my wandering around the city with the manuscript, the man who wrote it would recognize the words on the page and accost me. You are reading my manuscript? Did you finish it? Did you like it?

Well, brothers and sisters, I did finally finish it last night in the comfort of my bedroom. And I typed up a report before anyone asked about it. Phew, disaster avoided. The thing is, I doubt we will publish it. But maybe in a year or two, I’ll see a review of the novel in the pages of PW, maybe with a new title, but I’ll recognize the author’s name, and I’ll think, wow, you and me once had quite the week together.

Where the Cool Kids Shop

Last week I wrote about the sad state of Barnes & Noble but I’ve always been partial to the other chain.

The first Borders store opened in Ann Arbor in 1971. It’s an unobtrusive two-storey building with Borders Books & Music stamped on its brick façade. In college, I’d sit in the store, touch the book jackets, flip through the new releases and try to stick to the back of the store. I didn’t want to be seen there.



Borders wasn’t where the English majors were supposed to go. The independent bookstore—Shaman Drum―was where the real literary junkies hung out. The store held book readings; the staff was tattooed and punctured; they showcased high quality literary magazines in the store windows. It was a pretty cool place, I’d admit. And I spent some money there on overpriced textbooks. But the store didn’t give me that breezy, everyman feel of Borders.

To be clear, the Borders in Ann Arbor didn’t look like some corporate chain store―it wasn’t very big or surrounded by a concrete sea of parking lot. But when I wanted to take a break from dusty academic life, I went to Borders to look at what shiny things the rest of the country was buying and check out which books were marked down with a “20 percent off” sticker. I wanted to feel like a regular person out shopping, not an undergrad sleeping on the top bunk, trying to catch up on last week’s reading of Moll Flanders.

Shaman Drum just didn’t give me the comfort I wanted. Looks like I should have browsed at Borders but bought at the hip independent store. Shaman Drum went out of business last summer after almost thirty years and I hear a Five Guys Burgers and Fries is opening in its place.

I’ve moved beyond ramen noodles and library stacks, and that cool little independent store is looking pretty good about now.

The Good News

It’s a changing industry. People are just not buying books anymore. Pretty soon we won’t need publishers.

It’s like listening to an annoying song that’s constantly played on the radio. And then we have the publisher’s lament that usually goes along with it: Books used to matter to people (stamp feet and cross arms). I don’t know what’s worse.

But sometimes bad news hits me like a punch in the stomach. Last week, amid news that Barnes and Nobles was putting itself on sale, I came across this quote on why the store was having such a hard time competing with stores like Wal-Mart or Costco:

“[Consumers] might pick up a book when they’re buying hand sanitizer or Band-Aids, rather than actually seeking out a bookstore as a destination and then buying a book at that point,” said Michael Norris, senior analyst at Simba Information, which provides research and advice to publishers.

People are now picking up books stacked next to antiseptic and adhesive bandages? It seems that buying a book is like grabbing a pack of gum while waiting at the checkout. People are purchasing books by accident.

The only thing that helps against this constant onslaught of bad news, is good news. A writer—Jonathan Franzen—on the cover of Time magazine (the first time an author has graced the cover in a decade). And that the casting of Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander, everyone’s favorite book character, was important enough to make it in the top news round-up on the morning shows. I dare say it, books do matter to people, at least this week.

The Subtitle That Changed The World

Ah, the poor subtitle. Even its name implies second class.

I’ve been thinking about subtitles as I’ve typed them up for my reviews (check out the subtitle for the last book I reviewed, it’s 23 words long).

The title is big and splashy on a book jacket. The title is supposedly born from divine inspiration. Meanwhile, the subtitle is placed somewhere below the title, in small mouse dropping font. It’s the subtitle that tells you what the book is about. The subtitle is the title’s right-hand man, you know, the one doing all the work with little fanfare.

But lately I’ve noticed that subtitles are doing it for themselves. I decided to read Fifth Ave, 5 AM because of its subtitle: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman. It was the ‘dawn of the modern woman’ part that hooked me. It sounded so grand. So important. Something I had to read. While I enjoyed the book immensely, I don’t know whether you can call the light 256 page read really about the dawn of the modern woman.

These subtitles sometimes read like headlines snatched off a magazine cover. Like the ones that read, The One Thing Your Man Wants To Hear From You Every Night . . . and you furiously flip to page 48 where its revealed in a boring article with pictures of a generic couple that that your man just wants to hear that you care about him.

Bold statements seem to be the mark of a good subtitle. For example, Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century.

Marriage of the century? Wow. A century is a really long time.

I was looking at the subtitles of non-fiction best sellers and noticed a few words kept popping up in subtitles: hidden, inside, story, everything… For example, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything and One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia (subtitle for Eat, Pray, Love).

There are subtitles that just try to be cheeky (Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook) and ones that try to explain everything about the book (The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun). Whoa that was a mouth-full.

And then sometimes, the title is self-explanatory and the book doesn’t need a subtitle at all, like, Justin Halpern’s Sh*t My Dad Says. Well said.

The Spark

This has probably happened to you before: You hear about a new book—someone tells you the premise—and you think, why didn’t I think of that?

I remember reading Jurassic Park not long after the movie came out and thinking, that Michael Crichton has quite a brain. Mosquitoes carrying dinosaur blood? An amusement park of dinosaurs? Brilliant. The idea is only the beginning of a good novel—you still have to write the thing—but still, a good idea will take you far.

This past weekend, I was thinking a lot about ideas while sitting through two and half hours of Christopher Nolan’s new movie Inception. In the film, Leonardo DiCaprio is a dream thief—someone who steals valuable secrets hidden in the unconscious mind while his victims slumber. DiCaprio is given a task of embedding an idea in someone’s head while they dream and making them believe the idea is their own.

The movie is a beautiful maze. You see a city roll up like an old newspaper, you see the mysterious world of dreams, but what I really wanted to see was something you can never see: an idea forming in someone’s head.

Like a dream, a good idea develops on its own. It seems the best ideas for novels are the ones that come easiest. In fact, that’s how the idea for Inception came to Nolan while in college—lucid dreaming after a long night out.

J.K. Rowling was on a delayed train traveling from Manchester to London when the idea of a “black-haired, bespectacled boy named Harry Potter” popped in her head. For hours, she sat on the train as the story unraveled itself, a world floating around her head. And with no pen or paper, she just let the idea develop in her thoughts.

E.B. White was in his barn when he saw a spider spinning a giant web when the idea of Charlotte’s Web came to him.

It seems to have good ideas, you have to open your brain to outside inspirations. You have to be alert to the possiblity of getting a new idea.

Then, in other instances, it just seems a good idea is just a manifestation of sheer talent. Victor Hugo wrote that his inspiration for The Hunchback of Notre-Dame came from a carving of the word “fatality” in Greek that he had found in the cathedral. One word was enough.

My Holiday Trip

I decided to bring along Bret Easton Ellis’s Less Than Zero over the fourth of July holiday weekend. I figured I should read it if I wanted to get to it’s sequel, Imperial Bedrooms.

Big Mistake.

It’s not that I wasn’t gripped by Ellis’s book. I was gripped. It’s just that for two days, while the rest of the country was in happy-patriotic mode, I was down in the depths of an overdose.

Less Than Zero, published twenty-five years ago, is about a college freshman named Clay who comes back to L.A. for Christmas break. We quickly see that Clay is a drug addict and so are most of his wealthy friends. He lives a life of privilege—the cars, the mansions, the parties. . . But most disturbing is Clay’s empty approach to life. He recounts the hazy days and nights with such passivity, simply recording the day’s events. There is no remorse, no feeling. It’s haunting.

I was trying to keep my jaw from dropping after every page, while others were happily splashing in the pool. I kept waiting for the characters in the book to turn a corner, to make it all stop, for something to be gained. Someone to at least say, hey, our lifestyle is really bad.

I was melting in the sun, and started to believe, that maybe I was feeling like someone who was on drugs might feel—dehydrated, hallucinating, a little tired. I began to wonder myself, am I just like Clay?

Soon enough, everyone around me was on drugs. They had to be. The overly tan guy that kept saying “brah” to his friend—definitely has a dealer and does cocaine. The conversations I heard around me—ah, so disconnected from reality—just like the people in the book.

Bret Easton Ellis pulled me in. The book altered my state of reality. I may look like I’m being social, around family and friends during a holiday—look I’m sitting right next to them—but really I’m in Ellis’s world.

On the train back to the city, I got through the book’s most disturbing parts of sexual violence, while a cute two-year-old jumped up and down in the row in front of me. I felt a little sick. At one point, my boyfriend turned to look at the page I was reading, and I instinctively covered the page with my hand. I didn’t want him to see the exact words I was reading—he’d think I was sadistic.

Maybe there's never a good time to read a depressing novel. Or maybe you should read it when you’re actually doing something fun. Just remember to come up for air. Now, with a few days off, I guess I’m ready for some more Ellis. I'll let you know where I end up.

Paper Hoarder

Last week I boxed up several old drafts of a manuscript and sent them back to the author. The book was finished now—in the bookstores—and we didn’t have any use for the various versions.

The pages were worn down and bound by heavy rubber bands. Notes from the editor, copyeditor, and author went every which way on the pages. Pencil marks were smudged. The manuscripts were pounds of work put into the book. I wondered where this box of bundled paper would end up. The author’s attic or basement? Either way, it was a rarity – most authors are fine with me recycling or shredding the pages. It’s the finished book that really counts.

Now I’m not so sure. Earlier this week, Sam Tanenhaus in The New York Times described John Updike’s meticulous habit of keeping all of his writing drafts, correspondence, and notes. Updike set aside a record of everything, and organized it all in his house in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts. A year and a half after his death, the archive will now be housed at the Houghton Library at Harvard. The library archivists predict it will take two years to catalog almost 170 boxes. Tanenhaus spent a few days looking over the material and discovered that the highly prolific writer was constantly rewriting, reworking, and researching his material. For Updike, who spent most of his life in that house near the Massachusetts shore, the archives document his life. They say writers live in their heads. It is just the writer and the page. Is this sentence right? Will this make sense to anyone else? Those scratched out notes, the handwriting on the sheet of paper, tells us a lot about a person, especially when that person is mostly alone all day long.

Most authors are happy for me to throw out their old manuscripts. If anything, it’s a sign that the work on the book is truly complete. They may be out on publicity tours or waiting for reviews, but the writing—the real work—is done. A box of old drafts will just sit in that same box it arrived in and gather dust in a corner. But after learning about Updike’s archive, it seems ideally all authors would keep their manuscripts. To be sure, most writers don’t expect their material to be archived anywhere. And who has the space for all of it? But even if nobody ever went through the drafts, even if no library ever wanted it, you could at least know it’s there. I’ve never written a book before, but I imagine, going over your old notes and drafts would be like going through an old photo album or yearbook. It seems you’d remember every cross out, every error, every thought and be glad you finished it.

My New Pad

At first it seemed I was the only person with it. But a couple of weeks ago, while waiting for my flight to board at La Guardia, I spotted a twenty-something guy tapping away on his ipad. I could tell he was a pro by the way he blocked out the crowded airport terminal around him. Just tap, tap, tapping on the screen… He didn’t even notice the people around him looking over his shoulder.

I’ve had an ipad for several weeks now and it feels like my little sidekick. I walk around my apartment with it tucked under my arm. It’s my secret weapon. Want to randomly search online for shoe sales? I can do that. Want to read every Slate piece posted this week? Let’s do it. But the ipad is not what I expected.

With the massive amount of attention the publishing industry has given to the ipad, I figured it was just a jazzed-up ebook reader. I quickly found out that the ipad is not about ebooks. The ipad is a small, light laptop. It’s great for reading blogs, websites, news sites, and checking email. It just makes you slightly neurotic.

The difference between reading on an ipad and reading on your laptop is that the ipad is like holding a magic mirror and as you stare into it, you want more and more. It’s a toy that you keep poking. While reading articles and blogs on the device, I suffer from what Nicholas Carr writes about in The Shallows—constantly clicking through hyperlinks, finding it hard to focus on one long piece. I’d stay up late because there was always one more blog to check out. Gone were the days when reading calmed me down at the end of a day.

I found myself checking out a million different apps before I ever thought to download the free ibooks app that allows you to buy books. I tried to read the free Pride and Prejudice ebook but my email was just a click away! I’ve attempted to read ibooks in bed, but you can’t cuddle with an ipad. The screen flips the wrong way when you’re on your side. There’s no I’m-lying-in-bed mode. Plus, you’re reading on a screen, after a while your eyes just get tired.

Despite my new frantic reading habits, reading on a device makes so much sense. And the ipad is impressive enough for the flock to follow. It bothers me that Apple has such a power over us, controlling every app and the way publishers profit from ebook sales, but Amazon’s less flashy Kindle feels too plastic and slow.

The ipad doesn’t give me that same let’s-take-it-slow feeling I get from opening a new hardcover. It doesn’t inspire me to take a break and just read for a long stretch of time. It makes me hyper and needy. But at this point, I’m okay with having that split personality. My night stand has room for both.

Book Rules

I was sitting at home on Saturday writing my friend’s online dating profile.

I’d say a successful profile is 60 percent: good profile picture (cute, flattering, not overly trying) and 40 percent: self-description and responses to questions (smart, sensitive, try to be witty).

I was going through the questions quickly. Describe yourself (my friend): People person. Compassionate. Down to earth.

It was easy to describe my friend. I’d rather describe her than myself.

What do you want to do with your life? Easy! I want to make a positive impact in the world.

What would you be doing on a typical Friday night? Dinner with friends. Plenty of good food and wine.

Then I got to a stumper. What are your favorite movies, songs, and books?

My hands came to a screeching halt.

What were my friend’s favorite books? I had lost touch with what she was reading lately. She used to read Barbara Kingsolver and she’s read most of Michael Pollan’s books, but was, probably, mostly reading The Wall Street Journal now.

I could go into the other room and ask her (she had no idea I was beefing up her profile)
but the question reminded me of the many conversations I’ve had about how our favorite books reflect who we are.

My colleagues talk about books being a factor in the men they choose to date. If he doesn’t read—that’s a deal-breaker for most women in this building. I get why it matters. If your relationship works out, you’re going to hear a whole lot about what they’re reading. Do you really want to know what happens in the last chapter of every Clive Cussler book? And I understand that men are increasingly turned off by women who read Elizabeth Gilbert and Julie Powell.

In fact, a couple of years ago The New York Book Times Review ran an essay about a woman breaking up with man over his failure to get a Pushkin reference. But this book-branding concern had never jumped out at me until now.

I wondered—of all the many books my friend has read and liked, what books would portray her in the best way? How will her favorite books brand her to the online community of date seekers?

In real life, if you don’t like a guy because he doesn’t pick up on a nineteenth century Russian literature reference, it’s because you simply don’t like the guy. And what woman wants a man who can’t handle a memoir about a female’s journey in life? In the end, putting a lot of weight on what your partner reads is taking yourself a tad too seriously. On the other hand, in the online world of dating, first impressions matter, a lot.

So, in good fun, I’d like to suggest some titles to keep off your list—even if they are your faves—to avoid having potential soul mates cringe at the sight of your profile:

Are You There Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea by Chelsea Handler (poor title, even if the book isn’t half-bad)

The Invaders Plan by L. Ron Hubbard (too frightening)

The Anarchist’s Cookbook by William Powell (we don’t want him think you’re cooking up firebombs)

The Rules: Time Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right by Ellen Fein, Sherrie Schneider (these are secrets for a reason!)

Overcoming Compulsive Hoarding: Why You Save & How You Can Stop by Fugen Neziroglu, Jerome, Ph.D. Bubrick, Jose A. Yaryura-Tobias, and Patricia Perkins (no need to mention this on your first date)

Naturally Thin: Unleash Your SkinnyGirl and Free Yourself from a Lifetime of Dieting by Bethenny Frankel (there are other people who can tell you how to lose weight)

It’s Not That I’m Bitter . . .: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Visible Panty Lines and Conquered the World by Gina Barreca (although I’m usually keen on the term panty lines in book titles, this is a bit overwhelming)

How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter by Ann Coulter (if you’re going to be conservative, you don’t need to be so mean about it)

LA Candy By Lauren Conrad (stick to clothes, Lauren!)

Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough by Lori Gottlieb (he’ll never get it, too complicated)

Oh, there are so many more. What am I missing, dear blog reader?

Match me a book, find me a find

The thought of blogging sort of gives me the creeps.

Someone told me you should write blogs like you’re talking to a friend but when I talk to my friends, I see their faces, their reaction, and they answer back. Blogging is like writing a letter, rolling it up in a bottle, and throwing it in the ocean. Your thoughts are exposed but you don’t know who will read it. Too bad blogging is not as romantic as a letter in a floating bottle.

I should just get with it. Everyone does it. Put hesitations aside and just write what I want to write about.

Well, last week my younger sister asked me for a book recommendation. I sat at my desk and began to brainstorm what new book she might like. I had to keep up my good track record with her.

She had been staying with me for a few weeks in New York. The first night, when I noticed she was going to bed without a book, I gave her a copy of Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld. It’s about a prep school. My sister attended a prep school. I figured she might like it. That night, the light stayed on much longer than I wanted, as she paged through the book.

A few days later, I asked her if she liked the book. She said yes. She said yes! It’s like successfully matching up your single friends.

When you work in publishing, people ask you for book suggestions. And I enjoy pairing up a book with a person but along with it, comes a grave responsibility. Recommending a book is not like recommending a song, where the track lasts four minutes and it’s over. A book is commitment, it’s a nightly dialogue between you and this thing propped up on your lap.

I had recently read Alice Munro’s beautiful collection of stories, Too Much Happiness. I enjoyed listening to the sound of her sentences in my head. Her words echoed with truth and simplicity. So, when my friend, an overworked grad student, asked for a recommendation I thought of Alice Munro. I had loved it and I figured short stories were perfect for her—ideal for someone with limited reading time.

A couple of months later, she came to visit and there was the small book, shoved in her backpack. I almost forgot that I had ever given it to her.

It wasn’t a good sign. After a couple of months, books you haven’t finished go stale. In fact, they should come with an expiration date, or else it becomes the homework assignment you keep avoiding.

I meekly asked her if she was enjoying the book.

She smiled, and said yes, but said, she didn’t really get the stories. They were a little arcane and a little weird.

I couldn’t help but feel bad. She was carrying the book around because she felt she owed it to me to finish it. But the book just wasn’t her thing. She likes a well-written book with a strong plot and relatable characters. She doesn’t want to guess what the author is trying to say, or try to find some hidden meaning—that’s too fussy and useless. It was a good reminder that there are different kinds of readers. A good recommendation has the reader in mind, and I forgot that.

I felt bad because when a busy person seeks your advice, and finds the time to begin a new book, you want them to be reading something they quickly connect with… or else they’ll just turn to their iPod the next time they have a few minutes to spare.

Anyone can toss a book aside if it’s not their cup of tea but like any good match-maker, you want minimal mismatches, or else you’ll end up with no patronage.