Vote YES for BookTithe

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: March 10, 2010

I can’t be the only lover contemplating sneaking out on my beloved.

Some of you other book-lovers share my guilty fantasizing about getting a Kindle. Right?

Like you, I’m sold on the technology, which I could get either as the Kindle proper or as an iPhone ap. What could be cooler than deciding I want a book and being able to get it instantly?

I’m hesitating only because of Powell’s Books–the country’s best bookstore which has its huge mothership on the edge of downtown Portland, and is the destination for a significant chunk of my disposable income. Anything that could wound or shorten the life of this great company worries me.

Sooner or later, though, I’m going to give in. I’ll be just like my friends who so proudly declared “I don’t own a cellphone,” only to find themselves late for something important while stuck behind one of Portland’s raised bridges during its leisurely upppppp and downnnnnnn to let a ship pass under.

Technology has a way of twining itself around your legs like kudzu, no matter how determinedly you swing the scythe.

So, here’s my idea: Create a BookTithe option on each digital book purchase. It can work just like that Presidential election campaign question on the 1040 tax form. Do you want to contribute to your favorite independent bookstore? Check this box.

Now, true, this contribution is real, out-of-the-wallet dough, not the seemingly abstract money to the Presidential election fund.  And also true that the ten percent I send to Powell’s is not going to make up for the $10 or $25 I didn’t spend on a book there. But it’s better than nothing. And if I spend the usual $9.99 for the Kindle book (typically a lower price than a new actual book)  I can surely afford kicking in some of the savings to a bricks-and-mortar store of my choosing. Plus, it’s no threat to Amazon, B&N and the other giants of the electronic-book world.

No matter how many bells and whistles they put on electronic readers, we still need real stores. Browsing, buying and selling old books is vital activity. How else can I find that treasure of a new, unknown author? No amount of clicking through lists is every going to have the soothing properties of wandering Powell’s aisles. I’d love to be able to buy a book in the middle of some insomniac night…but the ability to do so shouldn’t replace the bookstore.

It can’t be too hard to set this up. The person who built the Kindle must be looking for work by now, surely.

--Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett, TypeLikeTheWind.com

Posted in Books, Business, Publishing, Shopping, Wishful Thinking | Leave a comment

But, enough about you…

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: March 8, 2010

I noticed that the stars who stood on stage at the Oscars last night and delivered their allegedly original and personal thoughts about the nominees for best actors were almost all talking more about themselves than the nominated person.

Now, that puzzled me. I would never selfishly commandeer a moment like that. In fact, all during the Oscar pre-season I kept quiet about the fact that I was way ahead of this sudden Hollywood interest in explosives. The makers of The Hurt Locker (winner for Best Picture; Directing, Film Editing; Sound Editing; Sound Mixing and Original Screenplay) are not the only people who know from bomb squads. But did I rub anyone’s nose in that? No, I did not.

Did I use my influence and power as a blogger to remind everyone that I spent quality time with the Bomb & Arson squad of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department four years ago, and wrote 8,151 words on the experience for the San Diego Reader? No, I did not.

Did I post any sample paragraphs from my story? No, I did not. If you read the following you will notice that it has never before appeared on this blog:

This is the first absolute truth of being a good bomb tech: You must have an abiding respect for every device you face down. There is nothing static about this respectfulness; it is fed by obsessive training, reading, tinkering, and shop-talking. That’s where the second absolute truth comes in: You can have surgeon-steady hands and a pair of solid-brass cojones, but without a brain crammed full of the chemistry, physics, history, sociology, and weaponry specs that make up bomb-smarts, you’re just a guy leaning over a pile of antsy gunpowder, hoping for a spell of good luck. -

-excerpted from “Things that go BOOM,” by Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett, San Diego Reader, April 2006.

Last night wasn’t about me; it was the big night for the folks who brought you The Hurt Locker, and I respected that.

Posted in Autobiography, Heroes, Online time-wasters, Real People, Shameless self-promotion | Leave a comment

A gift

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: March 7, 2010

Patricia Travers was a violin prodigy who disappeared in her twenties, leaving behind a distinguished recording and performance history.

I’d never heard of Travers until I read her obituary in The New York Times.  (Given that a month went by between Travers’ death and the Times obit, I’m apparently not the only one ignorant of her existence.) She died at age 82, nearly 60 years since she quietly left the concert stage without explanation, returned home to live with her parents in New Jersey, and rarely mentioned her musical past, even to friends.

Travers began playing the violin before age 4 and was performing with world-class orchestras by age 10. She appeared in at least one Hollywood film, and I found this wonderful YouTube clip of her as a young girl, performing in that long-forgotten comedy about a music camp for kids. (It can take a second to start rolling, be patient.)

Experts who study the lives of musical prodigies have theorized that Travers cut her career short when reviews became less than stellar. Apparently there is a very predictable curve in the life of such a young musical genius, which takes a downturn as the performer grows into young adulthood. Very few continue on as performers.

The obituaries written about Travers are cloaked in sadness, as if she had just died a second time; the first being the day she retreated from the concert stage.

For some reason, I doubt that was so. There is no way to know, of course, but I wonder if that young woman might have had two gifts: her musical genius and her innate sense of self-preservation.

Posted in Art, Death, Music | Leave a comment

Front window: the Mustang

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: March 4, 2010

Every weekday morning my street fills up with cars. Most of the drivers who park here work inside a large, beige Art Deco building a couple of blocks away. I’m not sure of the nature of the work there; something combining consulting-advertising-financial advising. I’ve not bothered to find out anything more.

I usually start my day with a cup of coffee and something to read in front of the big second-story window that gives me a wide-angle view of the street. Several regulars park right in front, a pristine white 1964-1/2 Mustang (yes, there is such a thing); green Subaru wagon; bronze-metallic Jeep; a very battered bright-blue Toyota with its entire nose ripped off, leaving the headlights poking out like frightened bug-eyes.  I don’t often see the people themselves; they swoop in, park, and hurry off.

This morning, though, the baritone growl of the Mustang pulled me away from my reading. Good, I thought, I’ll finally get to see who drives that car.  I love those V-8 ‘Stangs because they were everything, good and bad, that cars can’t be anymore. Big engine in an absurdly small package; the cockpit bristling with dangerously pointy stuff, like that Boy-am-I-hot-shit floor shifter. Motown blasting on AM radio in one of these cars is pretty much what heaven will be like.

I watched while the driver climbed out, and even before I saw her face, I knew she was young, in her 20s. She slid out of the low-slung bucket seat and stood in one smooth motion. She didn’t heft herself up with a hand or hold onto the door. In fact, both hands were full: silver thermal coffee mug in one, canvas tote bag in the other.  Her long brown hair was still wet.

As I watch, she locks the Mustang’s door—the old-fashioned way, by pushing the button down and slamming the door–hefts the tote bag higher on her shoulder, and heads down the street.

I take in the details of her outfit. She’s wearing an above-the-knee green-print skirt, sheer stockings, black shoes with a high, but not perilous heel.  Her tan trench coat (brand-new, looks like) is shorter than the skirt by a few inches, a fashion trend that decisively separates her generation from mine. She looks nice.

It reminds me of how long it’s been since I worked in an office; a place where things like new coat lengths were filed in my brain without my even realizing it.

I wonder how many of her co-workers know she drives that cool car.

Posted in Front window, Real People, Spying | Leave a comment

Reviewing the reviewer

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: March 2, 2010

Michiko Kakutani is a powerful book reviewer, whose work in The New York Times can kill book sales or torpedo an author’s career in a few column inches. I’ve been reading Kakutani’s reviews more closely these days, considering the pieces’ success as essays rather than endorsements or rejections of new books.

I now picture Kakutani sitting alone in a small office, a room that no editor ever dares enter. I imagine that the critic’s copy goes directly from keyboard to the newspaper’s website or printed page with nary a word questioned or touched. (She provides no end of speculation along these lines. See her Wikipedia entry and a good piece by Ben Yagoda for Slate.) Salman Rushdie supposedly called her “a weird woman who seems to feel the need to alternately praise and spank,” a description that hits uncomfortably close to home for just about any critic, truth be told.

Few reviewers can match Kakutani’s heat-seeking-missile style:

“Unfortunately for the reader, “Fun With Problems” is a grab-bag collection that’s full of Mr. Stone’s liabilities as a writer, with only a glimpse here and there of his strengths.”

And even fewer get away with so many overly chewy phrases:

“This description might suggest that Ms. Shriver has constructed a didactic or lugubrious novel, willfully topical and laboriously relevant. She hasn’t.” (From a review of “So Much for That” by Lionel Shriver.)

And probably no one else writing for a large audience wrote seven such reviews in a month, as Kakutani did in January.


Posted in Authors, Books, Publishing, The Press | Leave a comment

New book review: “Reality Hunger: A Manifesto” by David Shields

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: February 28, 2010

(Published first by The Seattle Times, Feb. 28, 2010)

As I work my way through a review book, I often stop and picture the sort of people who will fall in love with it. By the end I’ve assembled a roomful of imaginary party guests. Sometimes it’s festive; other times I just want them the hell out of my living room.

The folks conjured up by the writings of Seattle author David Shields are always a smart bunch — funny, tolerably neurotic, well-read. We all like sports, love language and are traditionalists who nonetheless enjoy journalism and other nonfiction that reveal the writer’s opinions. I’ve assumed this crowd to be middle-aged, like me.

When I finished his new book, “Reality Hunger: A Manifesto,” the group defied easy literary profiling: That young rapper in deep conversation with an old guy whose life was revolutionized by Allen Ginsberg and the Beats. A gaggle of elbow-patched Proustniks trading insights with novelists who are grafting paragraphs together on their iPhones.

I figure they share Shields’ fascinations: the evolution of literary genre; curiosity (or skepticism) about the canon that sets down boundaries between memoir and fiction; biography and literary nonfiction; poetry and photo captions. This book doesn’t call for reshaping writing conventions; it insists that they’ve always been protean…

Read the rest of my review in The Seattle Times, here.

(Need more Shields? I was fortunate to also review his last book, “The Thing About Life is That One Day You’ll Be Dead.” Click here. And his website is here.)

Note to readers: In the case of paid reviews written for The Seattle Times or any other newspaper, the copy of the review book is provided by the book-page editor. I do not chose the books I review for newspapers; review opportunities are offered to me and I can accept or reject the assignments. Other reviews (unpaid, alas) I write for this blog might result from discovering a book in the library or from a friend’s recommendation. If I know the author personally, I will say so.


Posted in Authors, Books, Writing | 1 Comment

Bobsleds over the cliff

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: February 25, 2010

Cities want to host Olympic events for the same reasons they crave pro sports teams:

(1) People come and spend money; and

(2) It’s cool.

But the spenders never seem to cover all the costs, and now those practical Canadians are wondering if the cool factor is worth it. Folks, here’s your answer: No, it’s not.

Your suspicions are correct; the winter games are going to leave you with a pile of bills. Every tourist on the planet would need to show up for a night out on the town and a souvenir $30 maple leaf t-shirt to pay for this spectacle.

Ian Austin of The New York Times writes a concise, very readable and sobering piece on this very thing. He points out that the Olympic Village, a development project so ballsy that Donald Trump might not try it, is a tsunami of red ink:

“But cost overruns, combined with the credit crisis in 2008, destroyed the financing. Once in office, [Vancouver, B.C.'s mayor] Mr. Robertson had to obtain special permission from the province to borrow $434 million to complete the village. In all, the city is responsible for about $1 billion in development costs, a situation that lowered its credit rating.”

Remember, this is a city of fewer than 600,000 people who are responsible for that $1 billion debt. And it’s not like things were really solid before Bob Costas showed up.  As Austin points out, the resort hosting Alpine events (Whistler Blackcomb) is set to go on the auction block after the events. The repo guy is probably standing by right now, waiting to tow those courtesy vans with the Olympic logo on the sides.

Other Canadian taxpayers and various Olympic emergency funds can come into play, but the responsibility pretty much sticks to locals.

The notion of permanent Olympic Villages (which gets floated every few years and is now being pushed by some as a greener alternative) seems smart. Building anew each time was never a solid financial move, and the jingoistic pleasure that comes from hosting the games is an expensive indulgence in 21st century economies. Maybe we could even turn this into an urban bail-out strategy. They could get some snow-making equipment in Detroit, couldn’t they?

Posted in Business, Sports | Leave a comment

Gimme five so I can blog faster

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: February 24, 2010

Human touch is a powerful language, says a study written about by Ben Carey of The New York Times. The story says a range of emotions can be shown, or triggered, by the most casual interactions, such as a slap on the back or a high-five.

Touch makes people feel better and even excel at things they do. I think back to that boss who often gave me an encouraging shoulder whack on deadline.  I probably worked harder in that job, or at least rose above the chaos with some success.  (I’m not talking about the creepy grabber-boss here, mind you.)

Read Carey’s story; he’s a fine reporter and always a strong writer. This time he slipped in a clever last paragraph, so pay attention.

Posted in Health, Human nature, Science | 1 Comment

More less-than-best business practices

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: February 23, 2010

I’ve got a new trick to add to the piece I wrote a short time ago, “Businesses behaving badly,” about employers using tough times to take advantage of employees.

The new practice: Instead of typical 30, 60 or even 90-day probationary periods, some employers are trying on six-month probation. This makes it easier to let someone go without documenting any reasons.

Maybe they should just hand the new employee a note that says: Don’t get too comfortable.

Posted in Business, Ethics, Money | Leave a comment

I’m proud of him

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: February 21, 2010

Many years ago when James was five, his mother asked him what he wanted for Christmas.  He drew himself up, lifted his chin, and answered:

“I would like a striped bathrobe. ” (Long pause.) “With a hood.”

By then we were already used to his dramatic presentation and his affinity for things difficult to obtain.  We tended to ignore the former and acquiesce to the latter. That year my sister scoured the retail landscape  until she found the requested article of clothing.

Christmas Day dawned and James was soon sweeping through the house in his hooded robe looking like a small, self-assured Bedouin.

Now nearly 20 years later, he’s a man; one with a past full of roadblocks skirted, challenges faced down, painful losses mourned.  He spends his days doing mysterious things to the faces of women and men who are pursing the Holy Grail of perfect skin. He sells them expensive potions full of botanical rarities and sheep placenta. He’s very good at it all. He hasn’t given up his dream of being an actor; his clients are just audience members lying down with cucumber slices on their eyes. Imagine a deep-cleansing facial from Rex Harrison and you’ve just about got it.

When the poor economy and a layoff swept James into sudden unemployment, he took his salesmanship to the street, in his case, Madison Avenue, and promptly landed another position with an even more exclusive house of epidermis-worship.

He was excited when he called to tell me about his new job. In his telling the interview became a soliloquy, the job-offer a love scene. Knowing there were a hundred more applicants ready to pounce, he coolly requested a bump in salary.  I’m guessing he will get it sooner rather than later.

When we hung up, I sat there for a long time, remembering the small boy standing in that living room, describing exactly what he wanted, confident it would come to him.

Posted in Ruminations | Leave a comment

A man for all, some, and no seasons

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: February 20, 2010

General Alexander Haig was a man of immense contradictions.

The former Secretary of State, who kept the home fires burning while Nixon went down, was an intelligent speaker who fractured the English language; a soldier who eschewed chain-of-command behavior. He was a statesman who alarmed presidents with his Papal devotion and naked ambition to assume the highest secular role in America.

The New York Times obit by Tim Weiner does a masterful job of fitting a biography in a small space. Read it here.

Posted in Death, Politics | Leave a comment

Ears like a dog

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: February 19, 2010

As an inveterate eavesdropper, one who likes to eat breakfast or lunch alone in restaurants while hiding behind a book, I hear some good stuff.

The trick is to practice self-control.  To know when to stop listening. When you overhear a particularly good line, time to bail. Whatever follows rarely delivers the promise hinted at by the first sentence.

Recent exception to this rule: Sunny window booth in the pleasantly shabby Cup & Saucer Cafe in Portland’s Hawthorne neighborhood. Hevuos Rancheros, hold the sour cream. Several pages into “Olive Kitteridge” by Elizabeth Strout.

The man sitting in the booth behind me says this:

“I had some dreams last night I wasn’t happy with.”

Now, admit it. When a companion begins a sentence about a recent dream, your heart sinks, doesn’t it? Dream narratives are second in tedium only to looking through photos of someone’s trip to the Holy Land. (If something Messianic happens, I’ll catch it on YouTube, thanks.) But this sentence made me want to set the fork and book down, turn around and ask him exactly what he meant.

Alas, the waiter appeared with the couple’s check, she remembered they were due elsewhere, and his next paragraph went out the door with them. Drat.

“Olive Kitteridge,” by the way, is a very, very good book, richly deserving of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize it won for fiction. Thirteen essays about small-town folks, all connected through the title character. Olive is an intelligent, cantankerous, retired math teacher who sees life around her in Crosby, Maine, in sharp–if dark–relief. She was a bad mother, a harsh wife, a scary teacher and now she’s a disgruntled retiree. It’s Strout’s genius that makes us cheer for Olive in spite of all these flaws.

The novel is largely about connections, especially long marriages, and the way they change over time. Strout loves exploring new friendships that sprout in old age. When two of her senior characters begin to get close, they talk of their favorite things:

“She told him about the morning she took a pear from the front yard of Mrs. Kettleworth, and her mother made her take it back, how embarrassed she’d been. He told her about finding the quarter in the mud puddle…She told him her favorite song was “Whenever I Feel Afraid”…He said the first time he heard Elvis on the radio singing “Fools Rush In,” it made him feel like he and Elvis were friends.”

Two gifts in one morning; this engrossing book and the tantalizing, unfinished thought of the dreamer in the next booth. The eggs were good too.

Posted in Books, Overheard | Leave a comment

Eight minutes of art

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: February 16, 2010

Find the time to watch this until the end. It’s about eight and a half minutes long. You won’t feel the same about sand after you see it.

Posted in Art | Leave a comment

Brothers under the skin

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: February 10, 2010

I’ve just finished two books chosen with my patented speed-browsing library technique (see earlier post) and it was a gratifying, if odd, mix.

One is the autobiography “Black is the New White” by Paul Mooney, a groundbreaking stand-up comedian in his own right, who wrote and inspired much of the late Richard Pryor’s comedic work. The other is “Cheever: A Life” by Blake Bailey, about writer John Cheever. The latter is usually called something along the lines of “the foremost…” or “the defining…” writer of post-World War II America. (Both books were published in 2009.)

On the face of it, these men could not be more different. Yet, as it turns out, there are some real and remarkable similarities.

Mooney is a man of color who refused to knuckle under to white Hollywood and who bulldozed barriers that opened the way for Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappelle, Wanda Sykes and countless other smart, hilarious, definitely-not-Caucasian performers. Cheever was the ultra-WASP; the suburban family man who went on to craft fiction that won every coveted prize available, and whose novels and short stories changed the way readers read, teachers taught, editors edited and writers wrote.

Both men were ground-breakers, originals. Both were fueled by powerful anger at the so-called ruling class: Mooney versus white America; Cheever against the established squires of society and the educated men of letters he so envied.

Mooney found a way to make his otherness matter; Cheever did the same, although through a much more tortured route. He wrote to keep his demons at bay, hiding behind a Brooks Brothers facade, terrified that his closet bisexuality, alcoholism and various self-identified failings would come to light and ruin him.

I moved between the books depending on my mood. I like to keep a serious book and a lighter one going at the same time. As it turns out, they are both serious books. They are both about men who shaped the culture in ways never imagined before their work came along.

*********************************************************************

Order these or other books from Powell’s using these icons and Type Like The Wind gets a small credit. Which enables me to buy more books. And write about them. We all win.

Simon Spotlight Entertainment., 264 pages, ISBN: 9781416587958

Knopf, 770 pages; ISBN: 9781400043941

Posted in Authors, Autobiography, Biography, Books, Race | Leave a comment

Listening in the ‘hood

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: February 8, 2010

There’s a woman walking along the sidewalk out front, and she’s yowling. She sounds exactly like an angry tomcat.

I’ve heard her many times before: squeaking, repeating the same odd phrase over and over. One day last month she was cawing like a crow.

In my head I call this woman Maeve, a name I’m shy of trying to pronounce out loud, but one that I’ve always thought looks quite smart in print. Words with an a next to an e have a whiff of the classics. I wonder: Do they still teach students “agricola, agricolae” as the first vocabulary word in Intro Latin? Or maybe someone with pull in the world of language arts has realized that “farmer” is a non-starter as a new noun.

But, back to Maeve.

She’s in her 50s probably. Her light-brown ponytail looks like a clump of dry weeds hanging midway down her back. She’s not heavy, but big-boned and broad of beam. Her face is gaunt in a way that doesn’t match the rest of her. She’s dressed in the same grey-brown-green palette worn by nearly everyone else in Portland. She never carries anything. The first inking that something is off-center about Maeve is the way she holds her arms: stiffly pressed to her sides, fists rapidly opening and closing.

Today I realized something about Maeve’s soundtrack. Hours ago, very early this morning, I heard a cat carrying on–I know it was an actual cat because I could see it, scolding some other animal hiding under the neighbor’s front porch. By afternoon Maeve was replaying the cat’s monologue, pitch-perfect. When I think about it, I recollect crows visiting the street too. Two sets of real sounds recorded in Maeve’s brain and played back.

I’m wondering where the human phrases come from. I’ve not often been able to make them out completely, but these one-liners always seem to end in exclamation points and involve breaches of etiquette: “She didn’t say you could come over today!”

I’m working up the nerve to lean out the window and call out a hello. Then, maybe sometime later, I’ll hear exactly what I sound like.

Posted in Overheard, Real People, Spying | Leave a comment

  • Who’s in charge around here?

    Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett is the author of Type Like The Wind. A former daily newspaper journalist in the Pacific Northwest and New England, Marlowe Hartnett is a book reviewer, writer, editor, iMac user. She founded Rich Litho Media, which provides writing/editing and publishing services for authors and small businesses.
  • Share |