Video Games for Book Nerds

Yesterday’s Galley Cat post about a hilarious Great Gatsby-inspired 1985-style platformer had me thinking about which other classics I’d most want to see get the Nintendo treatment. Leave your ideas in the comments!


Dead Souls: Instead of gold coins, your character collects the papers of dead serfs.

Portnoy’s Complaint: Instead of gold coins, your character collects pieces of liver.

Moby-Dick: Obvious final boss. Unfortunately, your boat goes under no matter what. (Would make a better arcade game than console game.)

Clarissa: Replay the same failed seduction scene for 1,500+ levels.

100 Years of Solitude: Each player can be a different Buendía. See if you can tell them apart.

Henry James (this works for any of the novels): Play as an American abroad. Nothing happens, and everyone grows increasingly uncomfortable.

Anna Karenina: In the bonus level, you get to harvest wheat.

Infinite Jest: Eschaton!

Disgrace: I would like to see somebody attempt the most depressing video game ever made, in which you helplessly fend off home invasions and euthanize stray dogs.

Literary Valentines!

I know, I know, people who think of Valentine’s Day as a fake, Hallmark-created holiday are in good company. I, however, stand solidly in the camp of those who jump at any excuse to celebrate, and while any day should be a good day to tell someone you love that you love them, it’s nice to have an excuse to spoil your nearest and dearest. For those of you still not convinced, why not add some depth to this cheese-fest by giving your lovies a book? Below are a few suggestions. Most of them don’t even have cartoon candy hearts on the jacket, I swear!

Love is a Mixed Tape by Rob Sheffield

While this one is as much about death, music, and the process of grieving a spouse as it is a love story, Sheffield does the nearly impossible in the anecdotes that fill the book—he brings his deceased wife back to life. She lives and breathes on nearly every page as Sheffield pays tribute to her short life, and I can’t think of anything more romantic than that. Their partners-in-crime approach to the world and their quirky, fun loving dispositions won’t soon be forgotten, nor will Sheffield’s prose. It’s a tearjerker worth the cost of the tissues.

Selected Poems by Frank O’Hara

This wordsmith makes even the simple delight of “Having a Coke With You” feel like the loveliest activity on the planet.

The Gift of The Magi by O Henry

This may be a Christmas tale, but I think Valentine’s Day needs to get in on the action. Has there ever been a more heartwarming look at the self-sacrifices we make in love?

Dumped edited by B. Delores Max

For all those groups of single girlfriends who get together to suffer through the couplefest aspect of the holiday in solidarity. (I know you’re out there because I used to do this every year with one of my nearest and dearest friends, Meghan Luby. Eating fried rice and a flame lit punch bowl of vodka while taking in drag queen karaoke with her in ’07 is still one of my all time favorite Valentine’s Days.) Dumped is a delightful anthology interested in the dark side of love—the moment when it ends. With stories from contemporary greats like Lorrie Moore and classic narrative weavers like Dorothy Parker, this collection will prove that sometimes having a beau isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

For the truly selfless people in your life! I love this one because it’s appropriate not only for romantic love, but parents, siblings, and friends as well.

The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan

Admittedly, I haven’t read this one from start to finish yet, but when I went to read the opening at Barnes and Noble to decide if it was worth buying in hardcover I spent an hour engrossed in its first half. Through alphabetical (as opposed to chronological) dictionary entries defining what various concepts mean to the couple in question (breathtaking, ineffable, etc.), the author spins a picture of a couple as unique and noteworthy as this unusual format. On his Amazon page, the author says that the idea for the book came from a 23 year tradition of writing a Valentine’s Day story for friends every year, so this one feels particularly appropriate!

Moonface by Angela Balcita

I know I just did a book bite on this one, but it’s too appropriate for a holiday based on love to not mention it here. While they’re both singular memoirs, this one is kind of like Love is a Mixed tape with a happy ending. Both are about couples whose whole is worth more than the sum of their parts.

A Pigeon and a Boy by Meir Shalev

As epic and heavy as Romeo and Juliet but set in our time, this unforgettable literary tale is another one sure to elicit water works. In prose that practically sings, it proves in strictly un-cliché fashion that time and even war are no match for true love.

Valentines by Rob McKuen

I know, it’s a little obvious, but beyond its title, this book of poetry finds new and unforgettable ways to say “I love you.” Plus, my mom gave me her copy from when she was in college for my 21st birthday and it was one of the most memorable gifts I’ve received, so it seems in keeping with the spirit of giving books as gifts!

A Little Love for the D

I found myself feeling a rush of civic pride for the city of Detroit while watching the Super Bowl last weekend. Between bites of chips and cookies, I suddenly saw flashes of Detroit on the big screen TV—the Spirit of Detroit statue, the mighty 24-foot bronze fist of heavyweight champion, Joe Louis, and the magnificent Fox Theatre. I thought I was back home in Michigan watching the local news.

The ad was announcing the new Chrysler 200 but in reality it was a commercial for Detroit—“What does a town that’s been to hell and back know about luxury?” touted the ad. It felt good. Finally, a car commercial that promoted the auto industry's birthplace. Chrysler is not just an American car company—it’s a Detroit car company.

This is the city that’s been in a depression for the last thirty years. It’s the city that was on the cover of Time Magazine last year as part of a year-long series to chronicle “the most challenged large city in America.” It’s the city usually described as crumbling, decaying, shrinking… Detroit is a shell of what it once was, and yet, it’s still there. It’s still the Motor City.

My dad works downtown. My sister chose a historic mansion in the city for her wedding reception. I spent a summer interning at the Detroit Free Press. Many of my relatives are employed by GM. No, I’ve never lived below 8 mile but my ears perk up whenever the city is mentioned. Pride for Detroit never really went away among people from the area, even as its mayor was sentenced to prison for perjury and obstruction of justice. The city’s cultural history is too strong to be forgotten. It’s the home of Motown, after all. But now it seems Detroit has a new kind of pride for enduring hell.

In this spirit of pride, I’d like to point out a few Detroit writers. Jeffrey Eugenides’s 2002 novel, Middlesex, was called “the Detroit novel,” partially set during the 1967 riots. Poets Philip Levine and Robert Hayden were both born in Detroit, and attended Wayne State University. The prolific Elmore Leonard, author of Get Shorty and Out of Sight, still lives in the area. Novelist and essayist Marge Piercy was born in the city during the Great Depression and attended Detroit public schools. There are more Detroit writers out there, but not really enough.

I live in New York now but I’ll never be a New Yorker. And I can’t legitimately call myself a Detroiter but I’ll always be an avid fan. For now, I think I’ll try to read some more Detroit talent.

What's In a Book Trailer?

Recently I took a writing class with a debut novelist whose first book is scheduled to publish next month. Half of the fun of the class was to hear the little bits of what the process leading up to the book’s publication entailed. (By chance, most of the class worked in publishing, but as wannabe writers it was more the other side of the equation—the writer’s experience in the months approaching the big day—that we were interested in.) As one session was drawing to a close and we were packing up for the day, our fearless leader mentioned in passing that the topic of his book trailer had just been broached by his publisher, and—here’s where he got a dramatic reaction from his class—that they had a five thousand dollar budget to work with. I suspect I was in good company when I say that, though I had worked in the trenches of book publishing for about four and a half years at that point, I could count on one hand the number of book trailers I’d seen for any book, from any house. Because they don’t play a huge part in the typical marketing campaign of a book, I was shocked to hear how much this publisher was planning to spend.

In theory, I can understand the appeal of a book trailer. Their second cousin, and only real counterpart—the movie trailer—has long been an art form in its own right, and I’ve heard dozens of people say that they enjoyed the preview for a given movie a whole helluva lot more than the film itself. It’s now a common feature of DVDs to include the movie’s official theatrical trailer.

My own fondness for a well executed movie trailer, paired with my teacher’s announcement, inspired me to have a look at the book trailers that are out there—who is making them, for which books, and perhaps most importantly, how many people are watching them.

I decided to start the process by watching the book trailers for the sixty-three books that TK has reviewed in its nine issues. Excited to take in a vast range of styles on a variety of subjects, I was more than a little surprised to discover that only five of the sixty-three books we’ve reviewed have a trailer. Remembering the small but steady buzz that the trailer for Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story created, I thought perhaps trailers might be reserved for younger, “hipper” writers with a younger fan base. Following this lead, I looked for trailers for the 20 under 40 writers singled out by the New Yorker. With a considerably higher turn out, four out the twenty writers had a trailer for their most recent book (a 20% trailer rate, compared the 7% rate for the sixty-three TK books). I also looked for trailers for the National Book Award’s 2009 and 2010 “5 Under 35” winners. There was one for each year’s set of five (so again, a 20% rate). While young, debut novelists do seem to have trailers more often, by no means do all of them.

Looking at the breakdown between fiction and non fiction for the trailers I did find, there seems to be only a small lead in the number of fiction trailers over those for non-fiction trailers (though it’s difficult to give an exact break down since all of the 20 Under 40 and 5 Under 35 National Book Award winners are fiction writers). The success of or anticipation leading up to a book’s publication also seems to have little to do with the likelihood that a trailer will be made for it: Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom (arguable the biggest book of 2010) didn’t have an official trailer. A non-book-related celebrity doesn’t seem to matter either: Roseanne Cash’s Composed was also trailer-less.

Looking at the number of hits that the book trailers I was able to find shed some light on why so few books are publicized trailer-style. Even books by prominent, big-sellers often got only a few hundred hits. (Chuck Palahniuk’s Tell-All had only 127 views on You Tube.) The highest number of hits for a single book trailer was for Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters with 275,943 (the trailer is as whacky and fun as the book’s title would imply, which I suspect is the reason).

Perhaps the most surprising finding in all of this research when all was said and done, was how professionally and impressively done some of the trailers I did find were, given how infrequently the marketing device is used, and how few people see them. Though they certainly don’t rival movie trailers in their star power or air time, some of them were as compelling and artful. Though I wouldn’t recommend you watch the three dozen or so book trailers I did to find the gems, there are worst ways to spend a slow afternoon than checking out the best in the bunch. So, below, the ten best book trailers I came across (in random order) and the particular charms of each:


Most Likely to Inspire Wanderlust:
Joshua Ferris’s The Unnamed

Best Use of Noire:
Eleanor Catton’s The Rehearsal

Funniest/Best Cameos:
Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story

Most Likely to be Used as a Montage Meant to Indicate a Drug Trip in a Full-Length Film (well, the second half at least, and in the best way possible!):
Sloane Crosley’s How Did You Get This Number

Best Animal Attack:
Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters's Sense and Sensibility and Seas Monsters

Most Reminiscent of an Indie Film Trailer (I kept waiting to see Greta Gerwig’s Chuck Taylor and jegging-clad legs go running down those grocery store aisles!):
Grace Krilanovich’s The Orange Eats Creeps

Best Art/Animation:
Rivka Galchen’s Atmospheric Disturbances

Most Hanuting/Eeriest
Mira Bartok’s The Memory Place

Most Likely to Invite Involuntary Knee-Tapping and a Craving for Funnel Cake and Cotton Candy
Lydia Peelle’s Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing

Most Likely to Foster Nostalgia for First Grade Story Hour:
Wells Towers’s Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned

The Times and the New Social Reader

On Monday, I had a great idea for a blog post. So good, in fact, that I almost asked Caroline to switch days. But then I remembered how devoted Caroline is to her Monday posts, polishing drafts over the weekend, thinking about subjects for weeks in advance.

No one gets between that girl and Mondays.

Well, that’s fine, I thought, it can wait until Friday. Except now Friday is here and, as you’ve probably already guessed, I’ve forgotten the topic that so inspired me. After thinking about it, hard, I thought of something that could have been my great idea—but I’m not sure. The one feeling worse than not remembering a great idea: possibly remembering it, but not having that sense of conviction, not hearing that little snick as it clicks into place.

Anyway, here’s what I was thinking about. I’m currently in a master’s program, and this semester, I’m taking a class on readers and reading. In our first session, our professor had us share our thoughts on that subject—remembering Katie’s beautifully written post from a few months ago, I brought up the question of professionalizing reading (something Jess touched on yesterday as well). That was fine, but a more interesting point was made a few minutes later, when a classmate mentioned the historical shift from communal reading (the family gathered around a father and the fire) to private reading, from the oral to the silent. Now, this woman said, we seem to be swinging back to a more social form of reading with the proliferation of comments, Twitter, and email, with all of the ways of discussing reading material as a group and sharing pieces you find interesting.

The conversation quickly switched topics again, but I stayed with her observation for a while, because it just seemed so true to me. Some of the recent articles in The New York Times on "Why Criticism Matters" also mentioned the socializing effect of internet commentary, where everyone's a critic, but—I thought in class—isn’t the truly strange part how much we share? Looking at the Times’s home page, under “Most Popular,” we find this:

Most E-mailed
Most Blogged
Most Searched
Most Viewed

That, my friends, is peculiar. First of all, it’s peculiar that these forms of sharing (e-mailing, blogging, even searching) are so prominent. When “Most Popular” means “Most E-mailed,” it does not mean “Most Read.” That, one would assume, corresponds to “Most Viewed.” Instead, “Most E-mailed” means those articles readers feel most compelled to give to friends and family. Perhaps unsurprisingly, at this moment, the subjects of those articles are not incredibly serious:

1. Record Level of Stress Found in College Freshmen
2. Nicholas D. Kristof: Tussling Over Jesus
3. Diner's Journal: The Minimalist Chooses 25 of His Favorites
4. Paul Krugman: Their Own Private Europe
5. Personal Health: Long and Short of Calcium and Vitamin D
6. State of the Art: Ins and Outs of Calling via the Net
7. The Great Deflation: In Japan, Young Face Generational Roadblocks
8. Well: How Meditation May Change the Brain
9. Ugandan Who Spoke Up for Gays Is Beaten to Death
10. Skin Deep: Full-Service Gyms Feel a Bit Flabby

“Most E-mailed” is to “Most Popular,” I would contest, as the Thursday Styles section is to the rest of the Times (and in fact you’ll see Styles articles on the list frequently). The articles are a little bit more embarrassing, more about wacky health trends and shocking diet discoveries and, well, the shortcomings of gyms. By contrast, here's "Most Viewed" at the same moment:

1. Egypt Calls In Army as Protesters Rage
2. Paul Krugman: Their Own Private Europe
3. Seizing a Moment, Al Jazeera Galvanizes Arab Frustration
4. A Car Sale Gone Wrong, Then a Grim Discovery
5. David Brooks: Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Burke
6. The Great Deflation: In Japan, Young Face Generational Roadblocks
7. The Minimalist Chooses 25 of His Favorites
8. Court Allows Emanuel on Ballot for Chicago Mayor
9. Ford Shares Tumble as Fourth Quarter Misses Forecast
10. Record Level of Stress Found in College Freshmen

OK. There’s some overlap. Japan, Bittman, stressed freshmen. But really, doesn’t this second list give you some sense of pride? Readers of the Times may be sharing articles about calcium and meditation, but they’re reading about the protests in Egypt and domestic economics and politics. They’re more internationally and nationally engaged than “Most E-mailed” might lead you to believe.

Bu in the publishing world, it’s “Most E-mailed” that matters. When a first serial piece makes it there, we’re delighted. When a particularly smart Sunday magazine article is up, we take notice, and you can bet that writer’s agent will be getting a few calls. But friends: what’s being emailed is not necessarily what’s being read. If that were the case, wouldn’t you expect the two lists to match exactly, or almost exactly? People seem to be reading the news they seek out on their own more than the news that their friends send them. And yet—books don’t work that way, do they? What seems to breed a bestseller is a combination of quality and word of mouth. You need it to be shared.

I’m not sure yet what to make of these thoughts, but it seems to me that the Times’s structuring of their “Most Popular” articles says something about how we should think about buying and selling books in publishing. Americans—or those who are reading the Times, anyway—seem to be interested in the tough topics, although we have to dig a little for that information. So my question is this: how do we make our “Most E-mailed” list look more like the “Most Viewed”? How do we make our readers buy and share the books it seems they just might want to read? How do we make the private reader of the past translate into this new (old) social reader?

What Do You Do with a BA in English?

Last night, I saw a post on Twitter that made me shudder. It came from the illustrious Ron Charles, the book critic for the Washington Post and quite possibly the most entertaining reviewer working today (his video reviews are enough to make him the first person worth consulting on a book's merit, not counting the lovely folks at TK.) @RonCharles had tweeted, "Fascinating & depressing story in @Wired (Feb) about sex workers in NYC. 9% of the prostitutes work in publishing during the day...." (The story is on stands today, and hits the web in February.) Feeling snarky and put out by that statistic, I responded to him, "If that's the case, then why don't we have better wardrobes?" He responded by citing a specific sex worker's $2000-per-month shoe budget, proof positive that if you want fantastic (expensive) options in your closet, you should seek out supplemental income, and not just from freelance proofreaading. I wept for the future, tweeting, "What do you do with a BA in English, anyway?" His response: "Use that BA to get an MA in English. Then teach. Good life. Best job I ever had."

I get emails all the time from aspiring publishing folks--sometimes soon-to-be-graduates from my high school or college--who have steeped themselves in a love of literature. They want to know about publishing, if it really entails sitting around all day reading to your heart's content, if you're discovering the next Toni Morrison around every corner. We've discussed this several times on TK, and I think we've pretty much dashed our readers' hopes on that one: no, not every manuscript you read is a gem. You spend far more time understanding the mechanics of publishing, of promotion of an author, of the ways in which readers are fickle and particular and easily turned off, than you do reveling in a deep love for the written word. That's not to say that you won't be satisfied or even thrilled in your work, and many people develop a passion for the ways pursuing literature through publishing is different than pursuing literature through an academic or critical setting. But it is definitely not just the life of curling up in an armchair with a good book, and no one should paint it as such.

I've only recently discovered that I was an anomaly among my fellow college graduates in that my English (and Sociology) degree led me into a field directly related to the process of reading and evaluating. Looking through Facebook and my college alumni association, I see some of my fellow English majors are in law school, some are business school, some are in banking and film and media studies and photojournalism. A few of them are doing ground-breaking journalism, though not on the subject of Jane Austen and Herman Melville. Not all of them went on to be writers, editors, or even teachers. And very few are pursuing advanced (MAs and beyond) in the study of literature. The musical Avenue Q asked the question, "What do you do with a BA in English?" and the answer seems to be "Don't guarantee that your career will involve reading for fun."

But it seems that the skills you learn with an English degree have less to do with a very detailed skill set, but instead the inculcation of a love of reading and conversation. With the proliferation of blogs and social forums for reading, if the way you make your money doesn't involve good books, you have a multitude of ways of staying in the cultural conversation. The great beauty behind Goodreads is not just that it's like a Netflix queue for books, but also that it becomes a dialogue, a viral syllabus of what's worth reading. The community of informal book critics out there is just as thrilling to read as the legitimate critics in print publications today, and surely Charles knows that as he churns out yet another insightful, hilarious video review. (And when he took time to live-tweet his reading of Snooki's A Shore Thing, it seemed the only way worth reading the book at all.)

So yes, a BA in English guarantees you...four years of reading good books. And maybe, if you end up being part of that 9% of sex workers that spend their free time reading manuscripts, you get a really nice big shoe budget as a bonus. But either way, you carry with you passion for the written word. Whether that's how you make your money is up to you. As for me... I'll stick with proofreading for the extra bread, thanks.

In with the New

For a long time—the last three years—we had only one real bookcase in our apartment. (A bedside table holds my textbooks and a regular rotation of novels I’m hoping to read next.) This is irregular among editorial assistants, as you might expect: we tend to accumulate a lot of books. (So foreign is it to publishing friends, in fact, that upon entering our apartment a guest once asked, “Where are the rest of your books?”)

But when I moved to New York, I had to fit everything I wanted to bring with me in the trunk and backseat of an economy-sized car. My shoe collection was radically downsized. My various college furniture—microwave, mini-fridge, radio—stayed in California. And only the ten books I cared for most came with me. Moby-Dick. Two beloved Austen novels, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. The books on which I wrote my senior thesis: A Confederacy of Dunces, The Moviegoer, Edisto.

Luckily, one of the first items of furniture we bought in New York was our bookcase. And actually, that was the second bookcase we’d found on Craigslist, and the second that we’d picked up. The difference? This one we paid for, and, more importantly, this one we moved in a car. We’d been less clever with the first, free bookcase, which we thought we’d be able to carry together for thirty-five mostly uphill blocks. We left it on the street no more than a block away from the apartment where we picked it up, and felt terrible about it.

This new bookcase was a monster, though, so even though we had a car, it hung precariously out of the trunk while I clung to it in the backseat. We drove very, very slowly down Broadway, passed by every other car as we cruised along at ten miles an hour.

The bookcase has served us well, but it’s always been a vaguely threatening, somewhat homely presence in our apartment. Gaps show between the shelves and the frame of the bookcase. It’s slightly lopsided. It’s clearly handmade, and wouldn’t match any other bookcase. And, worrying me most of all, we store an enormous, elaborate pot on top of the case. With something this roughhewn and precarious-looking, my constant fear is that it will just collapse one day, leaving the shattered pot amidst the mismatched boards.


The fact is, though, that my initial collection of ten books has grown rapidly since I moved to New York. This bookcase filled quickly, and since then I’ve had to store the extra books I acquire in trades and various book piles in boxes under my desk. It takes up valuable space, and more importantly, it makes these lovely books harder to access. I tried to keep a list of which books were in which box, but it got hopelessly confused at a certain point.

So two weekends ago, when we went through a burst of home improvement enthusiasm, we bought a new bookcase. It’s Ikea, once-removed through Craigslist. This means a) that it was cheap and b) it’s absolutely the wrong color for our living room. It is black, which doesn’t really work with the various other light wood furniture in the room. So we decided to paint it. White. This led to a slight nervous breakdown last weekend, when I realized that the second can of paint I’d bought was a slightly different color than the first (although the label was the same, I swear!) and the freshly painted bookcase sported a distinctly mismatched look.

But the bookcase is finally starting to come together—it just needs one more coat of paint, and then we’ll actually build the thing. So I’ve started to bring books home, box after box. On Wednesday night, I lugged the first (cookbooks!) onto the train. The box was small, but heavy. The train was full. An elderly lady took the only seat left—until her husband gestured to me, and she stood.

“No, no!” I said. I stepped away.

“Yes,” she said.

“That box looks heavy,” said her husband.

Well, I took the seat. And I could swear everyone was looking at me with the disdain I myself felt—I couldn’t believe I’d just deprived an older woman of her seat (and even more, that the young man next to me didn’t offer his).

I think there are about twenty boxes left to go. That’s a lot of guilty train rides to endure.

Ultimately, though, it’s exciting to be opening these boxes and discovering books I didn’t remember owning, and to anticipate arranging them on the shelves of the new bookcase. I’ve culled a few, leaving them in my building’s lobby for others to pick up, and it makes me genuinely happy to see them gone the next morning—to know that they’ve found new owners. The old bookcase will be moved to our bedroom, alongside the bedside table, and the books languishing beneath my desk will come home at last.