The Book Shopper - Atlanta

What Would Donna Seaman Do?

Sometimes the book shopping life can be a little overwhelming and this week is one of them. First of all, it’s Abraham Lincoln month and I have nothing prepared, so either enjoy my little Lincoln bust or refer to last year's posting about our 16th President. 

As I write this, I’m debating whether to see Robert Pinsky at Emory later on today or T.C. Boyle at Margaret Mitchell on Tuesday, or Thomas Mullen on Wednesday, February 3rd  at the Decatur Public Library (I’m currently reading the Mullen book in preparation). It’s great to have so many choices, but frustrating that you can’t do it all and work a forty-hour week.

 Also worth mentioning was the nomination of book critic Donna Seaman for the National Book Critics Circle Award (a winner has already been announced). In this brief online interview from Chicago Public Radio, she talks about the importance of reviewing to the Chicago book community, which I think should provide food for thought to Atlanta literary community as well. 

Ms. Seaman is a personal favorite of mine. I have her book Writers on the Air: Conversations about Books (2005) from Paul Dry Books which has interviews with various writers including T.C. Boyle and Margaret Atwood (who is here on February 23rd at the Savannah College of Art and Design.) When I was working on my book for Paul Dry Books, Paul sent me Writers as a template of what a well-organized book looks like.

Join the MARTA Book Club #3

Even though new book clubs are sprouting up all the time such as the new Eddie’s Attic A-1 book club and the Better World/Whole Foods Book Club, the MARTA book club remains Atlanta’s book club of choice for individual readers.

For those unfamiliar with the club, the MARTA book club is a loose, very loose, confederation of people who read while riding the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority’s public transportation.  There are no meeting times, no organization, no t-shirts, and no special fares.  Very convenient. The only requirement to be a member of the MARTA Book Club is to read a book while riding public transportation. Newspapers do not qualify. Those with Kindles are not welcome (because how in the hell am I supposed to figure out what you’re reading if I can’t see the book cover!)

What We Are Reading: Of course, we have no way of knowing what EVERYONE is reading, but here’s a sample of what I have observed since last month's posting.

 The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

The Stranger by Albert Camus

Encyclopedia of Major Saints and Fathers of the Orthodox Church by Basil E. Eleftheriou. Amazon is waiting for its first customer review on this one.

Heaven is a Playground by Rick Telander. This is my contribution to the club. Considered a sports book classic, this 1974 book chronicles life on the several young teenage basketball players as they struggle to move from the mean playgrounds of Brooklyn to college and possibly the pros.  

2001 by Arthur C. Clarke

White Is a  State Of Mind by Melba Pattillo Beals. (courtesy of Inga Long)

The Host by Stephenie Meyer. Twilight Series author’s first adult novel. (courtesy of Inga Long)

Them by Nathan McCall. A book about the gentrification in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward.

Unfinished Business by Brenda Jackson

How Starbucks Saved My Life by Michael Gates Gill. Coincidently, I saw someone reading this (and talking about his appearance in Atlanta), the day after I posted my blog review of his followup book (See January 17th posting). No harsh words were exchanged as all opinions are welcome.

Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne

I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight by Margaret Cho

Googled: The End of the World as We Know It by Ken Auletta

 

Michael Gates Gill in Atlanta: A Preview

 

 Michael Gates Gill, author of the bestselling How Starbucks Saved My Life will be in Atlanta on Monday, January 18th. Gill is on tour to promote his new book How to Save Your Own Life: 15 Lessons on Finding Hope in Unexpected Places.

Gill’s New York publisher Gotham Books/Penguin has been so proactive in promoting his new book that they’ve even supplied small-tater bloggers such as myself with advance copies of the book. Always a sucker for a free book, I obliged.

Gill’s new book picks up where I assume (no one gave me a complimentary Starbucks book) where his last book left off, with Gill at retirement age happily working as a coffee barista. He’s apparently much more satisfied serving people 20 ounce Starbucks Venti White Chocolate Mochas (580 calories and 15 grams of saturated fat) than he was as a corporate advertising executive at J. Walter Thompson, his former life of wealth and prestige that he reminds us of many, many times.

Gill’s new book is a response to the thousands (yes, thousands) of people who have sought his advice (including the actor Michael J. Fox). Thus inspired, Gill has boiled down his advice into 15 lessons/chapters of wisdom that he has gleaned over the past couple of years. Some came from his family like his famous writer-father Brendan Gill of The New Yorker.

In each chapter, Gill keeps his teachings simple with a lot of one-sentence paragraphs.

But if the topic is complicated ---such as what it means to be a late bloomer -- he might expand his thoughts to two or even three sentences. A good example is when he explains that the term late bloomers originates from “the garden term used to describe flowers that bloom late in the season.”

If you still can’t get the message, Gill drops in a few helpful adages at the end of each chapter such as “Your life is like the weather: You can talk about it a lot, but in the most profound way, you can never completely control it.”

Gill has a kitchen-sink, percolating writing style as he tosses in passages from the Bible, verses of songs, verses of songs that he wrote himself, the poetry of William Butler Yeats, lines from James Joyce’s Ulysses,  and proverbial clichés such as “laughter is the best medicine.” I am guessing his scattershot prose style can partially be attributed to his taking advantage of one of his employee “perks” (his quotes, not mine) that include a weekly free pound of high octane coffee.

Noteworthy

A few notes on the Atlanta-Decatur scene:

Tom Mullen

The January issue of Atlanta Magazine ran a preview of Decatur novelist Thomas Mullen’s upcoming The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers along with a brief interview with the author. You can download the whole issue on the magazine’s website for under a dollar or you can see Mullen’s book tour opener at the Decatur Public Library on Wednesday, February 3rd. Mullen also keeps a blog on some of his activities. I am still waiting on his follow-up response to the Atlanta Magazine interview or perhaps read his thoughts about Boston Red Sox revamping the left side of their infield (he’s big fan of the BoSox since he grew up in Rhode Island). I’ve heard Mullen at the library before and he has kind of dry Yankee wit, which can be entertaining.

Kymaerica

While pounding through the backlog of my Believer magazines, I read a fine article entitled “Discover Kymaerica”  in the November-December Art issue by Emory University’s Michael A. Elliott. Kymaerica is a mythical parallel universe that intersects our planet at various locations. Elliot begins his article about an Kymaerican historical marker located on the Atlanta industrial West side, but the feature story evolves into an essay on the timelessness of past civilizations (real and fictitious). Elliot is a professor of English and author of Custerology: The Enduring Legacy of the Indian Wars and George Armstrong Custer.

Gilbert vs. Phillips

And finally, The Battle of the Big Name Authors is set for Monday, January 11th in Decatur.  Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray and Love fame makes a tour stop for her new book Committed at Agnes Scott College while National Book Award Finalist Jayne Anne Phillips, is at the Decatur Public Library at approximately the same time. Again, a kind of intersection of two universes. These collisions are bound to happen once in a while, I guess, especially when the orbits of some writers are so big.