Emerging Writers Network

NOOK Daily Find - The Consequence of Skating by Steven Gillis

Today Barnes & Noble's NOOK Daily Find selection is The Consequence of Skating by Steven Gillis (Black Lawrence Press, 2010), which can be purchased at the following link for the very low price of $3.50:

 

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/ebook-nook-daily-find-bargain-deal/379003102/

 

The Consequence of Skating was named the 2010 Silver Medalist for literary fiction in the IPPY Awards.

"The moments (in The Consequence of Skating)  are small and detailed and probably the best compliment that can be given Gillis is that, as we move through them with (the protagonist) Mick, we really get a sense for what it might feel like to be an actor who is suddenly scriptless, an obsessed boyfriend who finds himself without a partner, a broken man forced to put his life back together.  'Everything is recovery,'  Mick says.  'Think.  Act. Redo...  The cause and effect causes cause and effect, the link inexorable...  I take one step and then another, until I am across the floor and in my kitchen.  In my kitchen I turn on the machine for coffee.  Once I have turned on the coffee, I go and rinse my cup.'"--Dave Housley, American Book Review 

 

"Steven Gillis possesses that rarest of gifts, the voice that seems to flow effortlessly. This guy makes it look easy. Read the first three pages of The Consequence of Skating and if you're not hooked, go see a doctor."--Jonathan Evison, author of  All About Lulu and West of Here

 

"I enjoyed The Consequence Of Skating a great deal, it is a very human book... I am definitely planning of seeking out Steven Gillis' other books." -Simon Barrett, Blogger News Network 

 

As a thank you for purchasing The Consequence of Skating by Steven Gillis through today's B&N Nook Daily Find, you will also be eligible to receive any four Dzanc eBook titles for $15, a savings of over 50%.  You can choose your titles from any available in our regular catalog or our rEprint Series.  Simply forward your B&N receipt email to dan@dzancbooks.org  

All proceeds from the sales of Steven's book go direct to running Dzanc's charitable programs.

Source of Lit - The Quarterly - Summer 1987 - Paulette Jiles

I believe Paulette Jiles is the first (at least in the Table of Contents order) repeat Quarterly offender, as she had close to 40 pages of poetry in The Quarterly #1. This time around she tries her hand at fiction (though a peek at my review of those poems will find me wondering why I kept reading the poems in a prose fashion and ignoring the line breaks) with the short story, "Dune Trek."

Broken into seven sections over 10 pages, "Dune Trek" includes a fair amount of repetition and not in the simple idea of repetition of a single word, but instead the repetition of phrases or ideas:

"One of the men gets up, opens the door, and spits violently into the sand."

The idea that five miles out into the distance the curvature of the Earth kicks in and short items cannot be seen as they are below the site line of the person looking.

Fishbones, be they burned as fossils into the stone, or tattooed on ladies bodies.

These and more find themselves mentioned multiple times and in more than one of the seven sections. Jiles brings some aspect of rhythm to her writing beyond the above mentioned repetition and while I cannot be anywhere near sure what the story was really about, I'm not sure it mattered as I found myself caught up and enjoying it as I read it.

 

Surprise find--William Gay

While looking for something completely different, I stumbled upon a chapbook sized little booklet that i am assuming I picked up at BEA 2008 from the fine folks at MacAdam/Cage. The front cover states:

 

William Gay

A SAMPLE

INTRODUCING THREE CHARACTERS FROM THE NOVEL

THE LOST

COUNTRY

It's a 31 page chapbook with 3 sections, one each for the characters Edgewater, Yates, and Roosterfish. Reading through it is a sad reminder of what a great talent he was, but a great reminder to dig back into his material, and look forward to The Lost Country.

Book Review 2012-006: Don't Put Me in, Coach by Mark Titus

Book Review 2012-006
Don't Put Me In, Coach: My Incredible NCAA Journey from the End of the Bench to the End of the Bench by Mark Titus
2012 by Doubleday, 257 pages

(I purchased this book after having enjoyed Titus's postings at Grantland).

 

If only the cover was blue and the lettering maize and the final sentence read 'Ohio State sucks.' The author's obligatory shots at Michigan aside, this book is entertaining as hell. It helps greatly if you are a basketball fan, specficially a college basketball fan. It also helps to be a fan of your typical smart ass.

Mark Titus' career in basketball probably peaked when his AAU team (which by the way had Greg Oden--1st overall pick in the 2007 NBA Draft, and Mike Conley, Jr.--4th overall pick in the 2007 NBA Draft on it) won the national championship during his freshman year in high school. He was still his team's best player in high school the next three years and did score 9 career points during his four year stretch as a Buckeye and was drafted and tried out for the Harlem Globetrotters, but as an actual on-the-floor contributor to a great team it would be that AAU team.

Titus was smart enough to realize what his potential playing limitations were at the end of his sophomore year at Ohio State and he began to push the notion of what an end-of-the-bench player could be in terms of recognition. He began blogging, creating Club Trillion (On a fuly loaded score sheet, there are thirteen columns, the first being minutes played. If one got into a game and didn't do anything productive--score, rebound, assist, or detrimental--turnover, foul, their number on the stat sheet would be a trillion) and began giving his readers an insider view of being part of a Division 1, NCAA basketball team.

What most likely drove that blog, and definitely drives this book, is Titus' refusal to keep anything to himself. If there's a story about a teammate dribbling a basketball in the locker room in front of a mirror wearing nothing but shoes, male member swinging back and forth, Titus is not at all unwilling to both tell the story AND name the teammate (sorry, no spoilers here, buy the book). As the player seemingly designated to be the comic relief to help keep the team loose, there are a fairly amazing amount of incidents wherein a teammate throws punches in his direction.

Titus includes just enough self-deprication without going too far (if the guy truly sucked at basketball there's no way he'd be an 11th or 12th man on a Big Ten basketball team). While being more than willing to throw past teammates and coaches under the bus to get a laugh, he also makes sure to show explain their positive attributes (even the teammate he nicknamed The Villain). He slips in enough pop culture references to make certain middle aged men realize they still have a fair amount of immaturity within them. It's not a highly literary book (I should probably put in a mild warning--this book is most likely intended for the teen to early 30's male with the sexual and bathroom humor might one expect for such a crowd--if this really bothers you, you'll probably a) not love the book and b) question my maturity), nor one with any particular hard hitting message, but again, if you're a fan of the game, it's a well-done, extremely funny (I'm not one to slide LOL into any texting conversations but I did laugh out loud at least four times), quick and enjoyable read. If only a Wolverine walk-on had come up with the idea.

4 stars

Book Review 2012-005: Pure by Julianna Baggott

Book Review 2012-005
Pure by Julianna Baggott
2012 by Grand Central Publishing, 434 pages

(I purchased this book).

 

Pure, by Julianna Baggott, is in one way a new direction for the author--the novel has a post-apocalyptic setting. I'll start by saying this, Baggot writes about the future as well as she writes of the past (trust me when I suggest you also look for her novel, The Madam, it's fantstic).

Pure is given to the reader section by section, from the points of view of various individuals, but two of the most frequently used points are that of Partridge, referred to as a Pure, and Pressia, frequently referred to as a wretch. Prior to the beginning of the novel, known to those in this world as The Before, there were great explosions or The Detonations. Only those that were living inside a protective dome survived completely intact, hence, pure. Those poor wretches outside the dome survived with scars, burns, fused together with items (Pressia has the doll she was holding at the time in place of one of her hands).

Was there an attack on what used to be the United States? Was somebody inside the dome responsible in some sort of testing project? It's not really held as a mystery for too long, and isn't truly the driving force behind the novel (which I should note, is the first of a trilogy). The stories of Patridge and Pressia and some of those that they encounter: Bradwell, a young man who is off the grid, having believed to be dead from The Detonations, who has birds fused to his back; el Capitan, another young man with his younger brother fused to his back (they were on a motorcycle when The Detonations occurred), and Lyda, a young pure woman linked somewhat to Patridge.

Patridge believes his mother, supposedly dead, is in fact alive and a wretch. Pressia's 16th birthday is approaching and as a wretch, at that point, you get recruited to the OSR, an organization that is supposed to be planning to overtake those in the dome. He escapes the dome to search; she's on the run from the OSR. Not so surprisingly they run into each other. What I do think is surprising is how well Baggott has the reader ready for this event and the rest of the novel from that point.

The characters are all very well developed but not at the detriment of moving the book forward--it's close to being a page-turner (I moved through the last 250 pages in one sitting). Baggott includes interesting bits of science, sociology, and philosophy and creates a very believable world for her charactes to inhabit. I'll be honest, were it not by an author I already really liked, I probably would not have picked Pure up, so I'm really glad that it was indeed written by this poet/novelist whose prior works I enjoyed so much. It's worth your time.

4 stars

Deeeeee-Troit Poh-et-reeeee

Detroit Poetry is kicking a little rear end these days!

Today's Poem of the Day at Verse Daily was Terry Blackhawk's "The Burn," from her most recent collection, The Light Between.

The Light Between is also slotted as the 7th Best-Selling contemporary poetry collection for the week of March 4 according to the Poetry Foundation.

The number 1 Best-Selling contemporary poetry collection? 
Allegiance by Francine Harris.

What do these two books have in common up there among the collections published by FSG and Random House, Ecco, W.W.Norton and Random House; written by Billy Collins and Philip Levine, Mary Oliver and Patti Smith?

These two collections are both recently published by Wayne State University Press (Detroit, MI) and written by women in Detroit.

Two of Terry Blackhawk's previous collections have recently been contracted to join Dzanc Books rEprint Series as eBooks in the coming months (Body & Field, and Escape Artist).

Book Review 2012-004: Watergate by Thomas Mallon

Book Review 2012-004
Watergate by Thomas Mallon
2012 by Pantheon, 448 pages

(I purchased this book, as I do nearly every book published about Richard M. Nixon).

 

In what seems like a pretty large risk, Thomas Mallon chose to write fictionally about Watergate, a subject that one might have assumed was pretty wrung out. With that in mind, what Mallon has done might be just short of incredible. He's made the time period from the night before the break-in in 1972 through mid-August 1974 come absolutely alive with interest, creating a near page-turner.

One thing that Mallon has done is give a strong voice to a trio of women--Patricia Ryan Nixon, Rose Mary Woods and Alica Roosevelt Longworth, as well as a near leading role to Fred LaRue, a not so frequently discussed individual that served time for his actions regarding Watergate (bagman). In doing so, Mallon has maybe even more liberty with his fictions (who really knows what was going on in the minds of these people, it hasn't been documented like say the thoughts of Nixon, Kissinger, Erlichman, Haldeman, Hunt, Mitchell, Colson, Dean, etc., oftentimes in their own memoirs), and he takes them--spoiler alert here, skip ahead to next paragraph if you don't want to ruin the surprise--giving Pat Nixon a NY based love interest, and explaining just how Rose Mary Woods intentionally deleted those 18 1/2 minutes of taped conversation. The thing with these actions are, they feel extremely plausible. Nearly everything Mallon includes in Watergate seems plausible.

Fred LaRue is still the bagman in the novel, however we learn a great deal about him. We see true life meetings from his point of view. We get to hear a lot of crazy conversations with Mitchell and his wife, Hunt and his wife, and all because we've been given access to Fred's point of view. The reader even learns of why the plumbers were bugging that particular office in what I can only call both a stunning and hilarious revelation when it finally unrolls itself to the reader--complete surprise, but not an unearned one at all.

The other thing that I think Mallon is able to do is create a Nixon that Richard M. Nixon would be proud of yet messed up enough to prevent his reading detractors from throwing the book across the room in disgust. in Watergate, Nixon comes across as a bit tragic, a bit heroic, yet still holding onto the paranoid, the shifty and angry individual that many remember him as.

By only having the novel told from the point of view of Nixon and those of his family, friends, and staff, Mallon allows himself to get the reader to invest in them and their story, while also allowing himself to inject a fair amount of humor due to their bumbling natures, which is just enough for the reader to maybe remember that they most likely went into the reading of this novel with a certain mindset and why.

Watergate surpassed my expectations, maybe by as much as any book I can remember, and not because I had low expectations, but because Mallon was able to do so much with such a picked over subject. It's a book that is well worth your time, whether or not you are well-versed, or not versed at all, in Nixon or Watergate.

4.5 stars

Source of Lit - New England Review

I picked up the latest issue of the New England Review (Volume 32, Number 4) a couple of weeks ago. It was one of about 7 or 8  journals that B&N was carrying that evening and eventually wonout as the selected because the table of contents had Matthew Olzmann, Laura Kasischke, A. Van Jordan, Peter LaSalle, Gregory Spatz and Eileen Pollack listed among its authors.

It turned out to be a solid choice as all of the above hit right where (or higher) I thought they would (You can read one of Olzmann's two poems that were included: "The Tiny Men in the Horse's Mouth").

I also dipped into poetry by Adam Giannelli and Carrie Shipers and fiction by Zana Previti and Caedra Scott-Flaherty so far. Oh and Megan Staffel, and have yet to be disappointed.

I think the piece that is my favorite so far is Eileen Pollack's "Ranch House," a pretty fantastic essay. I'm looking forward to the day she publishes a collection of her recollection essays as the few I've read have all been standouts in the journals they were published in.

It's a solid read if you can find it, or maybe consider subscribing.

Book Review 2012-003: Nixon's Darkest Secrets by Don Fulsom

Book Review 2012-003
Nixon's Darkest Secrets by Don Fulsom
2012 byThomas Dunne Books, 292 pages

(I purchased this book, as I do nearly every book published about Richard M. Nixon).

 

I cannot remember the last time I was so disappointed in a book. One would think that a book with the title, Nixon's Darkest Secrets, and especially with the subtitle, The Inside Story of America's Most Troubled President, would have something new, something substantial, backing up its claims. Sadly, this is not even close to the case this time around.

Instead what Don Fulsom has given his readers is a mish-mash of previously whispered about questions about Nixon--was he tied to the Mob?, what were his sexual tendencies?, did he beat his wife, Pat?--with scarcely anything new to add to any of them. One  would expect some form of proof of some of these "secrets" with the title on that cover.

Instead, Fulsom proves his points by leading into his evidentiary statements with such words, or phrases, as "legend has it," "claims," "rumored," "believed," and "speculated." These are just from Chapter Three alone, but it's a consistency the book does maintain throughout. Another fine example of Fulsom's hammering home his points comes in Chapter Five, "Nixon's Sexuality:"

        Was Nixon's tough-guy attitude toward gays just a cover for his own homosexuality, bisexuality or asexuality? Was he shrouding some kind of subliminal or "unaddressed" issue? Well, he isn't still called Tricky Dick for nothing.

So, after approximately nine pages of wondering about Nixon's sexual tendencies, his big point, the final nail in the coffin to his argument is that Nixon's been known as Tricky Dick for nearly seventy years? Forgive this reader for not immediately agreeing with such hard hitting logic and evidence.

Beyond this simply abysmal retreading of old bits of information, the book does not seem to have had a thorough editing process either. Or perhaps I just am not a fan of the style the editor/author opted to run with. One person whose ideas are brought into the book over and over again is Anthony Summers, author of The Arrogance of Power (Viking, 2000), a Nixon biography. Within the first sixty pages, he, or his work, is quoted from frequently. That's all well and good, but the way that Fulsom introduces Summers each time simply becomes annoying as he cherry-picks aspects of Summers career to shoehorn him into that particular chapter/secret/rumor. He's introduced into various chapters as "a historian," a "JFK Assassination authority," an "investigative journalist," and a "Sinatra biographer." It just seemed to simply depend on what argument Fulsom was making at the time. Simply refer to Summers the first time around as a historian that also wrote a major Nixon biography and assume that your readers of what is supposed to be a thoroughly researched political non-fiction book just might be able to remember the name as it appears the next dozen times through the book.

The worst case of this is when Fulsom notes on page 59 that Summers is the "author of the best, most comprehensive book about Nixon," and then less than a page later notes him as a "Nixon biographer." I do not believe that my sixth grade son has an attention span so weary that he would have needed that reminder so quickly.

Needless to say this book nearly drove me nuts. I do not believe that I was wrong in expecting much more from the book with the title and especially the "Inside Story" bit of the subtitle. I won't at all be surprised if another journalist does indeed find proof of some of these "secrets," but Fulsom didn't come close, nor did he put together a compelling book.

1 star (I truly think I'm being generous here, but I like the cover of the book)