Dr. Ariel Glucklich, "Dying For Heaven"

Available November 3, 2009, from HarperOne:

Oh, baby!

Now this is the best way to greet Monday morning, ever. BabyCakes bakery in New York celebrates the publication of its new cookbook with a two-minute party!


BabyCakes, the Book of Recipes: It's Here (Almost)! from BabyCakes NYC on Vimeo.

Stop, yer makin' me HUNGRY!


News about the videos from Publisher's Weekly.

I love this book about academic writing

My "best book lately" award goes to the mercifully short and delightfully witty How to Write a Lot by Dr. Paul J. Silvia. This is not The Artist's Way. It is not therapy. It is not sensitive. It is a smart and usable guide for producing voluminous reams of scholarly writing without resorting to blather and jargon. Dr. Silvia has more sense than a dozen other would-be how-to-write authors, and he's funny, too. Here's a quote:

Always write during your scheduled time, but don't be dogmatic about writing only within this time. It's great if you keep writing after the period is over or if you do some writing on a nonwriting day -- I call this windfall writing. Once you harness the terrible power of habit, it'll be easier for you to sit down and write. Beware, however, of the temptation to usurp your writing schedule with windfall writing. It doesn't matter how much you wrote over spring break -- you committed to your scheduled time, and you're going to stick to it. If you find yourself saying absurdities like "I wrote a lot over the weekend, so I'll skip my scheduled period on Monday," this book can help: Close it, hold it between the thumb and index finger of your nondominant hand, and wave it menacingly in front of your face.

I'm laughing sooo hard at this, but perhaps to wring the true humor from this graf you have to be a veteran of a zillion how-to-write books that advise writing with the nondominant hand, writing with a blindfold, etc. Those things can help (I'm not a complete scoffer), but Dr. Silvia can help more.

NB: He writes for psychologists, with the attendant emphasis on journal publishing. This isn't so much about books, although he has smart things to say about them. You'll need to adapt his advice to suit your own situation unless you're in the sciences, but this is still an amazing book. Buy it, read it, tell your academic friends.

A book you must read if you love books

Oh, what a wonderful book this is. If you want to understand publishing history from an insider's point of view, then find and read the excellent The Time of Their Lives: The Golden Age of Great American Publishers, Their Editors, and Authors by Al Silverman. Here's a NYTimes book review. Milly Marmur suggested it, and as in all things, she was of course correct. Maybe I love it more because the first chapter is about my publisher for two books, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and FSG has gone through some very sad, even agonizing times this month, or maybe it makes me feel nostalgic for a publishing past I never had the privilege to know (also well-documented in At Random: The Reminiscences of Bennett Cerf and Another Life: A Memoir of Other People by Michael Korda), but this is a don't-miss-it gem. Seriously, drop everything.

Lincoln's doctor's dog (with a nod to Bennett Cerf)

Book groups can make the careers of some authors, and for a few years now it has been painfully obvious that many authors are writing specifically to pander to book clubs. When the book is a gem like The Guernsey Literary and Potato-Peel Pie Society, then fine... even though the title reads like a fawning bid for the book group business (the late author herself was encouraged by her book club to write it), it also happens to be an excellent little charmer, so no harm no foul (although I still chafe at the title, and I would object even more if I were in a book club).

But what about all those other books with book club code words in the title, such as "Knitting Society," or "Friday Night," or some other semaphore that screams "We're pandering to yooooooooou, book clubbers!" Many of them even include book club discussion questions at the end. Often you'll see the name of a famous author such as Jane Austen invoked to give the book gravitas, but it usually ends up being sacrilegious, akin to using God's name to sell used cars. Some howlers are on the way in future titles, and although I do not use this blog to put down any book by name, you can find some of the forthcoming ones if you go to Amazon and type in a few of the code words above. It's enough to make you run screaming from the bookstore. ;-)

Even Dickens tried self publishing

I have long maintained that there is nothing vain or historically new about the current trend toward self publishing. Although it often presents a rough road for authors, and considerable financial risk, it is both viable and honorable, and never to be sneered at. From the day the first printing press took the first bite of type on good, cotton paper, we have had self-published books. I have also shared the names of famous authors who self published, from Lord Byron to A. E. Housman to Marcel Proust.

But now there is another name to add to the roster: Charles Dickens. His scholars surely already have known this, but I only just learned from Jonathan Yardley's review of a new book that he paid to have A Christmas Carol published because his publishers were not interested. In Yardley's words quoting the author: His publisher, Chapman and Hall, expressed little enthusiasm for the book, so Dickens decided to have the firm bring it out "for publication on his own account." All the risk would be his own: "He would be responsible for the costs of the book's production, which would be deducted from its sales. He would also oversee the book's design, hire its illustrator, and consult on its advertising. In essence, his publishers -- which would receive a fixed commission tied to sales -- had become merely his printer. In contemporary terms, then, A Christmas Carol was to be an exercise in vanity publishing."

The book is The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford (Crown 2008).

Great Books, anyone? Or perhaps just coffee and the paper?

An engaging New York Times review looks at the concept of Great Books. Like so many useful links, I found this one on Arts and Letters Daily. It is a review of A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books by Alex Beam(PublicAffairs 2008). If you look up the book on Amazon, you'll find an interesting review by Max Weismann, co-founder of the Great Books Academy, who pointedly calls the work an ad hominem attack, which it may be (I won't opine until I read it).

I used to teach a literature course at Georgetown called "What It Means to be Well-Read," which tackled a similar topic -- how different eras and generations considered gentlemen and later ladies to be educated. Instead of doing what many of my fellows back in grad school did by picking apart the canon and finding things wrong with it (every canon is flawed, and so what?), instead we explored other eras' definitions of what constituted a must-read. We looked at times when Latin and Greek were required to be considered literate (albeit at fairly low levels bordering on the aphoristic), at the concept of a "lady's education," and we explored how different generations discarded their forebears' assumptions and replaced them with equally fragile ones of their own. Students loved it, and we had a lot of fun reading some of the required gems from the past that have now been lost (has anyone memorized Tennyson lately? Indeed does anyone memorize much of anything in school anymore? And why not?).

Reviews of the Beam book seem mixed, possibly because (as we discovered in our course together) many of us like the idea of Great Books, and someone has to help us figure out what to read. There is simply too much published in any generation not to take an educated approach and attempt to agree on certain works that endure beyond their moment. Great Books concepts may have their flaws (most notably: bowlderization, censorship, sexism and racism), but even worse is the opposite approach where all books are considered Equal, and where one discards all judgments and leaves young minds to wander without guide or historian. With 30,000 new books published every year in the U.S. alone, somebody has to figure out some way to make sense of it all.

Is anyone out there a public intellectual? Anyone?

Daniel Drezner has an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about whether the role of the public intellectual has truly waned. Personally I'm pessimistic, especially when it comes to women, but his piece interests me on a number of levels, not the least of which is his catalogue of who's writing, and his defense of blogs. The paperback of his book -- All Politics is Global -- arrived in September from Princeton University Press. Here's his bio from Cato Unbound, the blog from the Cato Institute.

And what about the Nobel prize?

Oh yes, and they announced the Nobel Prize for literature today. I'm not sure with which book of winner Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio to begin, so I'll ask for input.

Reading the OED like a novel

Oh I love stuff like this . . . bibliophile Ammon Shea, who collects dictionaries, decided to read all 137 pounds of the Oxford English Dictionary in a year. Then he wrote a book about it. Particularly interesting (to me) was the way he began to lose access to everyday words such as "milk." We say we want more powerful memories, but as this experiment demonstrates, do we really? Forgettories are useful, too.

The Book Babes have a new book!

Oh, I'm so intrigued by the Book Babes. These erstwhile Floridians are controversial, smart, and they've been writing about books long enough to have a lot to say. One little-known fact about your own Book Blogger is that besides being a Washingtonian passionately in love with Georgetown (both the university and the community in which I live), I'm also a Floridian. My family has lived on the Gulf Coast for decades, and I consider myself a citizen of that wonderful state where I have lived off and on, and where I visit at least six times a year to loll on the white sand beaches and sip the tasty margaritas. I have long admired the Book Babes and even once wrote a review of the book Lincoln and Whitman for The St. Petersburg Times before Book Babe Margo Hammond retired from her celebrated role as its book review editor.

Anyhoo, they have a forthcoming book-about-books with the unsurprisingly provocative title Between the Covers: The Book Babes' Guide to a Woman's Reading Pleasures.

Hey Book Babes! If you want to come to Book Fair at the National Press Club on November 18, we'd love to have you! We have an all-star lineup and you'd be perfect... drop me a note (I'm this year's chair), and we'll get you in.

Oxford Hears a Hugo

Oxford University Press launched a Hugo-award-winning book: Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction by Jeff Prucher.

Hugo awards look different every year. I've included the 2007 one because the design makes me smile. Here's a link to past designs. Hugo's trademark design proves that Kurt Vonnegut was right (if you need to ask, send e-mail).

Oscar Wilde's library

Via Arts and Letters Daily I found this engaging article in The Literary Review about Wilde's library... I'm now adding Oscar's Books by Thomas Wright to my reading list. At present it's only available in the U.K., and I've ordered a copy, but perhaps soon it will find its way across the briney.

James J. O'Donnell and "The Ruin of the Roman Empire" at Politics and Prose

Jim O'Donnell will be at Politics and Prose bookstore on Saturday, September 20 with his new book, The Ruin of the Roman Empire. The bestselling author of Augustine: A New Biography will discuss his fresh take on a not-so-well-known story, and sign books. 1 p.m. A map to Politics and Prose is here.

The political tome as a university press niche

Here's an interesting trend I've found at university presses -- many of them publish tomes from politicians in their home regions, whether memoirs or prescriptions for political change. The first time I noticed it was during a wonderful visit to the University of Arizona Press when Senator Dennis DeConcini: From the Center of the Aisle was in press, written with Jack L. August. Then this season, while I've been working as Chair of the 2008 Centennial Book Fair at the National Press Club, I was pitched Fritz Hollings's new book Making Government Work from the University of South Carolina Press, written with Kirk Victor. Ten years ago the University of Illinois Press published a recently discovered memoir by legendary Senator Everett Dirksen (the Dirksen Senate Office Building is named for him).

Late to the wine party

Well, after that last post I did a search on the University of California Press so that I could call an editor to talk about wine, and I found this L.A. Times article instead. It seems as though I stumbled on a story that has already been news... instead of taking down or editing the post, however, I'll let it stand and do a follow-up interview with the editors.

Making wine scholarly (or making the scholarly popular)

A new title from the University of California Press caught my eye this month, Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink. Cal has a small industry going with its wine titles, for this year it also offers a revised edition of The Wines of Burgundy by Clive Coates, and I counted at least 30 other wine titles from past years. (NB, many university presses have regional publishing specialties).

Wine seems to work for a number of other fine UPs: just this year alone Cambridge University Press offers Grape vs. Grain: A Historical, Technological and Social Comparison of Wine and Beer by Charles Bamforth; the University of Nebraska Press will bring us Corkscrewed: Adventures in the New French Wine Country by Robert V. Camuto in November; the University of Georgia Press will serve up Pioneering American Wine: Writings of Nicholas Herbemont, Master Viticulturist next February; and Oxford will pour the second edition of Wine and Conversation by Adrienne Lehrer that same month.

Dr. Laura Benedetti wins the Flaiano Prize!

Contratulations to Dr. Laura Benedetti of Georgetown's Italian Department for winning the Flaiano Prize for her latest book, The Tigress in the Snow (Toronto 2008). It is named for Italian playwright, poet, and screenwriter Ennio Flaiano, most famous to film lovers as the co-author of such Federico Fellini screen classics as La Strada and La Dolce Vita. Flaiano was also a prize-winning novelist, and a noted journalist.

The "Impact Academic Book"

I learned a new term while visiting Oxford University Press in New York two weeks ago. Books that successfully cross the line from purely academic to trade, and that do well in trade bookstores as well as in library and institutional sales, are sometimes known as "impact academic" titles. It sounds kinda slick, so of course it made me edgy, but I have to admit the term does sum up something I've been trying to say with more words. After all, how do you define a book that stands up to scholarly scrutiny, but that also speaks to a larger audience and sells well outside of the academy? "Impact academic" will do for now, I suppose.

So how doth one write an impact academic book? Answers vary, but one way is to examine the fate of other books that accomplished this feat. We discussed many during my visit, and I took some home, including Caroline P. Murphy's Murder of a Medici Princess. It's a beautiful book with a fetching, reader-friendly cover painting of Felice della Rovere, the princess in question. Oxford priced it at $24.95, not the usual hundred or so that so many university press publishers love to insist upon. "Murder" in the title is always good for a glance or two in a busy bookstore, and the book is written in accessible style, sans criticalese or unnecessarily complicated sentences. But it's not watered down, either. Endnotes carefully document everything, the prose is still a challenge (possibly too much so for readers who devoured books like Random House's huge hit Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire a few years ago), and it is quite comfortably an Oxfordly title, but it promises to sell far beyond the usual academic libraries.

Will Murder of a Medici Princess really be able to have it all -- that is, be taken seriously in academic circles while sustaining trade sales? It is just peeking out now along with the first spring blossoms, so it's hard to tell, but I'll watch this title with interest and report anything exciting that I may learn about its progress.

Bestselling author Thomas Moore comes to Booklab

Last fall Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm and A Death in Belmont came to Booklab for a faculty lunch and roundtable on nonfiction book publishing. Now we have another bestselling author on the way! On Tuesday, March 11, Thomas Moore -- author of The Care of the Soul among many others -- will be here to discuss his new book A Life at Work. This lunch and roundtable for Georgetown faculty will focus on publishing works of faith, and how authors who write about spiritual matters might think about their work for mainstream audiences. Moore will join us at the John Main Center for Meditation at 12:30, and then his talk will begin at 1:15 p.m. in the Provost's conference room on the 6th floor of ICC. RSVPs are an absolute must because of space limitations. This promises to be just as informative and one-on-one as the Junger event, so please reserve early.