Category: Books

Judging books by their covers…it works

February 2nd, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Authors, Books, Race & Class No comments

My local library branch shelves the newly acquired books on a long bookcase right inside the front door. The books are divided into fiction and nonfiction, but otherwise no distinctions are made.

I’ve developed the habit of zipping through the section, picking a few books for late-night recreational reading based on such deep thinking as liking the cover design, typeface, title and story blurb inside the front cover.

I quickly reject any book:

–touted as the tale of a family “torn apart” by a tragic accident;

–about women who triumph after being dumped by their dirtbag husbands; or

–set in the future.

Some things get grabbed without hesitation:

–trashy novels or history set in Great Britain, past or present;

–Cop stories and military memoirs;

–New takes on race relations or the 1960s Civil Rights era;

–Stuff on FDR, Lyndon Johnson or Muhammad Ali.

I confess, and here I reveal myself to be even more…well, mercurial would be kind: I also tend to pull out novels with (1) good titles; and (2) author names that appear to be Jewish or Irish.

The latest great score to come out of this imperfect approach is “Hold Love Strong,” a novel by Matthew Aaron Goodman and published in 2009 by Simon & Schuster. Goodman’s book met a number of my criteria–grabby cover, arresting blurb, likely Jewish author name, good title, race-relations subject matter.

This is a wonderful novel about an African American boy named Abraham Singleton who must navigate his blighted neighborhood, skirt the crackheads, cops and other dangerous types, and sort out the complicated feelings and demands woven into that thing we call family.

The book opens this way:

“The first pain came at noon but she didn’t tell anybody about it. My mother was thirteen and she went about the afternoon being every part of such a precarious age. She watched TV. She popped pimples and studied her face in the bathroom mirror. She listened to the radio, sang along with songs, and laughed along with the afternoon DJs. She wrote in her diary, ‘I still can’t Believe! I’m pregnant…’ “

The word “lyrical” is ubiquitous in blurb copy on new fiction. In this case, it’s accurate. Goodman has a very rare gift for telling harsh truths in beautiful language–without losing veracity, without being sentimental, without straining to take on the voice of a young boy using a strictly vernacular style.

The nimble young human brain, and heart, are capable of such rapid, wild swings and shockingly wise insights. Capturing them is something of a miracle. Goodman does it.

My rec-reading selection system may be a little flimsy, but it worked this time. Check this one out.

Food tips made funny

January 9th, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Authors, Books, Food No comments

It’s conventional wisdom that most of us have less-than-great eating habits. But a New York Times Q&A with food guru Michael Pollan, author of “Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual,” reminds us that we know more than we think about healthy knoshing.

Pollan, a calm voice in the babble over nutrition and health, compiled 64 pithy bits of folksy and funny food advice, such as:  “Don’t buy cereals that change the color of the milk,” and ““The whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead,” a gem from his own childhood.

My favorite is the tip urging us to eat all the junk food we want — if we make it ourselves. As Pollan points out, if you had to go through the work to make your own French fries, you’d have them once a month at most, which is just about right. And Twinkees? Forgetaboutit.

77 Words: “Food Matters” by Mark Bittman

January 1st, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · 77 Words, Authors, Books, Food, Health No comments

For more 77 Words tiny book reviews, click here.

“Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating” by Mark Bittman (Simon & Schuster, 2009) –

This NYTimes foodie’s niche is healthy eating without the heavy lifting, and his timing is impeccable. What better time to urge people away from McNuggets or faux organic junk-food and in the direction of quinoa wheat bread and blueberry smoothies? His arguments for being a Lessmeatatarian for the sake of one’s health and that of the Earth are compelling, not preachy. Recipes are terrific, especially the very, very easy breads. Food-safety worriers will like his approach too.

(For book reviews with more words, see my archive at The Seattle Times, where I worked for some years. I freelance for the paper as a reviewer and over the years have been assigned some terrific books.)

77 Words: “Natural Elements” by Richard Mason

January 1st, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · 77 Words, Authors, Books No comments

For a collection of 77 Words reviews, click here.

“Natural Elements” by Richard Mason (Knopf, 2008) –

The impulse to read this slowly and savor belies its plot: A mother and daughter in contemporary London, each adjusting in her own way to the older woman’s move to a nursing home. Mason has a bold, uncanny ability to hijack the brainwaves of a driven middle-aged daughter; a mother with a complex past and other well-shaped characters, from a nerdish young man to a devoted South African taxi driver.

–Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett, April 2010

(For book reviews with more words, see my archive at The Seattle Times, where I worked for some years. I freelance for the paper as a reviewer and over the years have been assigned some terrific books.)

77 Words: “Cleopatra’s Daughter” by Michelle Moran

January 1st, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · 77 Words, Authors, Books No comments

For more 77 Words, click here.

“Cleopatra’s Daughter,” by Michelle Moran (2009, Crown) –

With lots of ancient history and just a touch of trash, this is a fine escapist novel. Moran’s research is broad and deep; her storytelling engaging. She steadily spins the story of Selene and Alexander, the twin offspring of Marc Antony and Cleopatra. (The twins are kidnapped after their parents take their own lives rather than satisfy their rival leader, Octavian.)  Delectable copious material-culture detail–clothing, food and furnishings—is used to chronicle the twins’ Roman lives.

–Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett, April 2010

(For book reviews with more words, see my archive at The Seattle Times, where I worked for some years. I freelance for the paper as a reviewer and over the years have been assigned some terrific books.)

77 Words: “Olive Kitteridge” by Elizabeth Stout

January 1st, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · 77 Words, Authors, Books No comments

For more 77 Words, click here.

“Olive Kitteridge” by Elizabeth Strout (Random House, 2008) –

The title character is well-suited to her fictional hometown on Maine’s rocky coast. Olive Kitteridge is flinty, sometimes cold, solid yet full of surprises. The 13 interwoven stories are polished to perfection, managing to plot the arc of age as the funny, ironic, searing and unpredictable journey it is.  The Pulitzer for this work was well deserved; Strout writes brilliantly about the evolution of long marriages, and ably blends the dark and light ingredients of small-town life.

–Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett, April 2010

(For book reviews with more words, see my archive at The Seattle Times, where I worked for some years. I freelance for the paper as a reviewer and over the years have been assigned some terrific books.)

77 Words: “Mockingbird” by Charles J. Shields

January 1st, 2010 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · 77 Words, Authors, Books No comments

For more 77 Words, click here.

“Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee” by Charles J. Shields (Holt, 2006) –

The author of the 1960 Pulitzer-winning novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” donated no archive, did no interviews; and gave no quarter to her biographer, leaving him without some of the usual tools. He succeeds nonetheless. Readers enamored of Lee’s lifelong friend, Truman Capote, will be gratified by the detailed descriptions of the two writers’ unusual collaboration on Capote’s famous literary nonfiction work, “In Cold Blood.” [Update: Shields is now at work on a bio of Kurt Vonnegut.]

–Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett, April 2010

(For book reviews with more words, see my archive at The Seattle Times, where I worked for some years. I freelance for the paper as a reviewer and over the years have been assigned some terrific books.)

e-ponderings

December 17th, 2009 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Books, Ethics, Publishing, Shopping & Necessities, Tech No comments

David Pogue, possibly the only person on the planet who can write about using the shift key on your iMac and make it sound fun, raises provocative stuff in a recent blog post. Pogue of course is the genius behind the books, blogs, articles and podcasts on Apple products and other goods in the computer world.

In “Should e-books be copy protected?” he mulls the rising storm around Kindles, Nooks, and the like. If you have a Kindle library of books, should you be able to switch to another e-book gadget and drag all your literary luggage along with you? And, what about passing that book to a buddy who then doesn’t have to pay for it?

I’m fine with moving an e-book from one e-reader to another. It’s like moving a book to a new shelf. Should I be able to pass it on to a friend without paying again? Well, yes. How is that different from lending a printed book to a buddy?

But what about the enterprising folks who pirate and sell the book online for a fraction of the “official” price? Those people we need to send to the electronic woodshed for sure. Of course, we all learned some lessons from the music-piracy mess. Controlling media sharing is pretty much a joke. It’s like catching a greased pig–possible, but laughably difficult.

Here’s what I’m waiting for: Some big macher in this debate to jump up and yell, “Hey! A lot of book-loving, round-the-clock readers are willing to pay for titles! Let’s ask some of them how they’d like to do it!” We rabid readers will rise to the occasion.

I imagine a future in which I make regular PayPal-like payments for increments of reading material — a kind of electronic punch card. Yes, the impoverished student next door will still download pirated stuff for free, but so what? She’s been standing in the aisles at Powell’s reading the stuff without buying it anyway.

Bookworms turn and unite! Pay for your pleasure!

In my opinion…

November 11th, 2009 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Authors, Books, Writing & Words No comments

Something author John Irving said at a reading here in Portland last week stuck in my mind.

During the Q&A, Irving was asked how he handles a “poor review.” The questioner could have been referencing any one of several critiques of Irving’s latest novel, “Last Night in Twisted River.”

Irving answered with some venom, in itself a not uncommon attitude for a prolific author exasperated by years of dealing with reviewers. In effect he said, “After 12 novels, it is possible that I am much better at what I do than a reviewer is at what he does.”

It got me thinking about reviewing; what makes a good one, good. And a bad one, bad.

I’ve turned this question over in my mind for a long time. I started reviewing for daily and weekly newspapers back about 1990. The books are almost always assigned to me by an editor; I don’t pick them. I do a fair amount of fiction, especially regional writers, but my strengths as a reviewer tend to nonfiction: religion, American history, biography.

(I’ve also been called on to review a lot of work on mental illness and self-help topics, which probably doesn’t reflect too favorably on how editors see me, but whatever. God knows there’s a lot written that falls under those headings, so you won’t hear any whining from me.)

An accomplished journalist I know has been ranting to me for years about the need for reviewers to be highly critical, not just point readers to new not-to-be-missed books. Not only does that keep readers engaged, he says, it gives the reviewer more credence.

He’s not wrong, but I don’t fully agree. Too often book reviewers do what I call the Reviewer Waltz: Step forward with one compliment, then back. Some sideways praise, then step away briskly. They so fear being considered soft that they opt for brittle. Or worse, they bury their opinion in such dense lecturing that the reader is too exhausted to go find the actual book and see for herself.

My own rules for reviews go something like this:

1 – If it stinks, I don’t review it.
One exception: If the author is someone so talented that this new-and-awful book is going to make fans feel deeply betrayed.

2 – Consumer protection is part of my job.
Literary quality aside, sometimes I need to provide a heads-up that will save a book buyer from misstep…or mortification. A novel by pop writer Eric Jerome Dickey was such a case when it veered from his usual frank treatment of sexuality to good ol’ fashioned porn. Not the best gift book for a conservative mother-in-law. Likewise, a nonfiction book packaged as a feminist treatment of women’s careers was really a right-wing wolf in hip-sheep’s clothing — and needed to be labeled as such.

2 – Read at least some of the author’s earlier work before writing about the new book.

3 – Aim for historical, cultural and literary references that result in I-feel-smarter! for the reader, rather than that Damn, I’m smart! feeling for me.

4 – Resist the cheap one-liner for a laugh. (I fail at this one sometimes.)

5 – When the review is done, ask myself this question out loud:

“How does this serve the reader?”

If my answer sounds like waffly bullshit, it is. Start over.

Oh, and for what it’s worth: Irving is right, he is better at what he does than most reviewers are at what we do.

More to say about Anne Frank

October 12th, 2009 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Books, History No comments

The Diary of Anne Frank is one of the most revisited and analyzed books of our time. It turns out that there is much left to learn and say about it.

Author Francine Prose was working on a novel with a teenage character, and turned to the famous diary as background for the writing habits of a 13-year-old girl. What she found was a much more nuanced memoir that was the work of a surprisingly mature writer. The result is her book Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, the Afterlife (Harper), which examines Frank’s work with a literary eye. This is about Anne Frank, author, not Anne Frank, icon.

In the years since Frank’s diary first appeared, new versions have appeared, welcomed by critics as more authentic than the version first published by Otto Frank, the young author’s father. In fact, as Prose explains, Anne Frank herself undertook a deliberate and careful editing of the diary while still in hiding. Otto Frank had actually reinstated portions his daughter had cut, including personal sections in which the young woman meditated on her parents’ marriage and her own sexuality.

A very good interview with the author can be heard on the site of Tablet, billed accurately as “a new read on Jewish life,” and created by Nextbook, a leading publisher of Jewish books.

The publication of Prose’s book is bringing forth other new information about Frank–new to me, at least. A review on SFGate by Sara Houghteling answered my question about how Frank came to keep such a diary in the first place:


“On March 29, 1944, on the BBC program “Radio Oranje,” Gerrit Bolkestein, a Dutch minister in the exiled government of Prime Minister Gerbrandy, called for all Dutch citizens living under the Nazi occupation to save everyday documents – in particular, letters and diaries – for eventual collection in a national wartime archive…Among those listening to the broadcast, on a contraband radio, was 14-year-old Anne Frank.

In 1942, when Anne’s sister Margot received her summons for deportation to Westerbork, the family feigned flight to Switzerland and sequestered themselves, along with [four others] in the maze of rooms above Otto Frank’s former Opekta fruit canning company. Anne brought along the checkered journal given to her a month earlier by her father, in which she would famously recount her life in hiding… …The BBC broadcast awoke Anne to the possibility that her diary could be read by an audience outside of herself …”

The passages I’ve read that are quoted from Prose’s book are irresistible; the minute Powell’s World of Books has a used copy, I’ll embark on it. Stay tuned.

Kennedy book is a keeper

October 11th, 2009 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Books, Heroes, History, Politics No comments


I just finished True Compass, Ted Kennedy’s autobiography, which was hurried to print following his death last month. It’s an engrossing read with good capsule histories of some of the biggest events of our time. It has one of the better concise treatments of the Vietnam war and the LBJ years that I’ve read in recent years.

It isn’t an historian’s work, although Kennedy provides a lot of new detail about his own campaigns and big moments in the Senate: civil rights debates, health care during the Clinton years, Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas hearings, to name a few.

It’s personal, but not tell-all. Most of the people Kennedy remembers with detail and skill are dead, but there is little or nothing in the 500-plus pages that would cause any spinning-in-their-graves. Think about that and ask yourself how often it happens. Answer: Not often. Most “celebrity” bios and autobios exist to set the record straight…from the author’s point of view, of course. The treatment of the Chappaquiddick disaster offers no new facts; it is convincing and sorrowful.

Kennedy wrote with the pride of a long-serving public servant, the gratitude of one looking back at a much-chronicled and very privileged life; and the deep regrets of a man who is taking his own measure with death just around the next corner.

Publish: yes. Perish: no

October 9th, 2009 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Books, Business No comments

There’s a book titled Gus the Great that I re-read every few years. Published in 1947, the novel was written by Thomas W. Duncan, who Time magazine called “a down-and-out ex-Harvard man.”

It’s the very engaging tale of a likable con man who runs a circus, and it made the author a dazzling $250,000 when it sold 750,000 copies and became a Book of the Month Club selection and a movie. The first thing the down-and-out Duncan bought was a new land-yacht of a Chrysler convertible, which is reason enough to admire him.

I’ve owned a few copies of Gus the Great over the years–they tend to wander off–and I buy them from Powell’s World of Books or search for a copy online. So far, I’ve been able to find a copy when I want one.

I thought of that book today when I read “A Library to Last Forever,” the op-ed piece in The New York Times by Google exec Sergey Brin. He’s not gloating, but Brin is clearly enjoying the fact that it looks like there will finally be an agreement between his company and the various groups of angry authors who challenged Google’s book digitizing project. (For a brief news story updating the lawsuit progress, click here.)

I’ve been inclined to buy into the image of Google-as-Goliath. The argument that the books would otherwise remain out of print (and hard for average readers to find) wasn’t quite persuading me that this monster-sized digitizing project was a good thing.

But now I’m converted. In the end, I think, readers will be the real winners. The way this has played out–helped by the noisy lawsuits by the Author’s Guild and the Association of American Publishers–means that authors and their heirs will get a piece of the action, and books now available only in academic or private collections will be within reach of regular folks. Even out-of-work, ex-Harvard men.

The (book)worm turns

September 1st, 2009 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Books No comments

There’s a vibrant educational movement growing up around the idea that kids need more cajoling and more choices in order to turn into avid readers.

The New York Times tracks which stories get emailed the most, and a recent one headlined, “A New Assignment: Pick Books You Like,” has been zooming between readers. These educators say forcing a kid to read “Huckleberry Finn” is not necessarily going to make her beg for more. In fact, it may even sour her on People magazine.

Allowing youngsters to chose reading material can work much better, which doesn’t surprise those of us who spent eighth-grade with a dog-eared copy of “Valley of the Dolls” hidden inside a math book.

The NYT story got me wondering what books are being crammed down kids’ throats these days in those unenlightened schools that still do things the old-fashioned way. The summer-reading lists I found online surprised me. The dustiest classics I found are Rebecca by Daphne DuMarier and Agatha Christies’ Murder on the Orient Express–not easy reads, but still pretty juicy stuff. (And, let’s be honest, available in film versions, which makes it possible for the non-reader to fake it quite convincingly.) Most of the other titles are contemporary, ranging from sci fi to biography and narrative viewpoints from kid-with-two-mommies to brave war orphan.

Still, some kids resist those reading lists, which worries parents and teachers. I’m all for raising more bookworms, but I can see some flaws in the new approach.

The first is the persistent myth that a precocious reader is going to be a good student, or is automatically smarter than a non-reader. As a person who read Hemingway’s The Old Man and The Sea while still in elementary school, but could never memorize all the multiplication tables or stay awake during science class, I’m here to tell you that a bookworm does not an egghead make.

Another faulty assumption is that a group of kids reading and talking about a book is a socializing process that will help turn them into well-adjusted adults. I’d venture that some kids will be more likely to fall in love with reading if it is promoted as a solitary activity–far away from cliques, warring parents and other annoying adults. I learned early on that I could disappear into a book like a reverse magic trick in which the rabbit ducks into the hat. It remains my drug of choice. If a martini could put me in the same place that a good novel does, I’d be flat as a haddock most days.

It is also unwise to assume that faster reading is always better. Pushing a kid (or an adult) to hurry through a book is like rushing someone through a fine meal. Some of us gobble, some like to chew that meatball more thoroughly.

All of these things aside, it is a very good thing that educators are thinking outside the box about ways to introduce kids to the joy of reading, one of the few pastimes that is completely portable, legal, inexpensive, safe and fun at any age. And, when done in a certain fashion, need not be accompanied by custom-generated ads off to the side of the text.

Personally, I think any movement that gets educators focused on reading versus multiplication tables seems like a fine thing.

The airport beat

August 19th, 2009 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Authors, Books No comments

Heathrow Airport has a writer-in-residence.

The New York Times reports that Author Alain de Botton is roaming the London airport for a week, chatting up passengers and employees, then perching at a desk smack in the middle of a terminal. As he enters notes into a laptop, they appear on a nearby large screen. After a week of this, de Botton will head home to craft his thoughts into a book to be called “A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary.”

Much of the news coverage of this thoroughly brilliant idea (thought up by a London PR agency) flogs two themes:

(1) Won’t it be awful if the author is a shill for the airport?
(2) Isn’t it terribly brave to allow an uncensored writer such access?

I’ll save you some time and answer those queries:

(1) No.
(2) No.

Of course he’s a shill. But even such confederates can be funny, sharp, observant and entertaining. de Button writes about an enormous range of topics, from architecture to Proust. His popular book, “The Art of Travel,” is promoted this way: “Unlike existing guidebooks on travel, it dares to ask what the point of travel might be – and modestly suggests how we could learn to be less silently and guiltily miserable on our journeys.”

Clearly this is a man who will manage to tell the truth without seriously wounding the folks who gave him the keys to the place.

As for the palaver about Heathrow officials’ bravery, consider this: Millions of people pass through this and every other international airport every day. Most of them are cranky. All of them have friends and family and co-workers with whom they share stories of how ill served they were while flying, retrieving baggage, being searched, paying $11 in local currency for a sandwich made 2 days earlier.

One writer on the loose is not such a big threat.

Book review: “That Old Cape Magic”

August 9th, 2009 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Books No comments


I reviewed “That Old Cape Magic” for The Seattle Times. See the review here.

You know those biographical lines at the end of reviews, the ones that usually tout a writer’s recent accomplishments? Well, sometimes we have to stretch a little for something to brag about:

“Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett is a Portland writer and native New Englander who has had both bad rentals and soul-restoring moments on Cape Cod.”

(Review of the book from the Los Angeles Times here, with nice overview of both the Cape’s history and Russo’s. The Washington Post here, with a very funny lede. The Pittsburgh Post- Gazette writer took the time to explain the title. NPR lets Russo answer the inevitable, “Is this about your marriage?” question, here.)

Paranoia & Heartbreak

July 25th, 2009 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Books No comments

I’m still on hospital duty, but does that mean you won’t have anything to read? Certainly not.

Here’s a review I was lucky enough to write for this week’s Seattle Times:

“Paranoia & Heartbreak: Fifteen Years in a Juvenile Facility” by Jerome Gold

(Seven Stories Press, 344 pp., $19.95)

Jerome Gold has been in danger most of his adult life, in ways both visible and hidden.

As a soldier in Vietnam and later a rehabilitation counselor in a Washington state juvenile-detention facility, his survival hung on luck and intelligent caution, some days in equal measure. As a writer, he seems to live with the same ratio of risk and careful craft.

Reading “Paranoia & Heartbreak,” a journal of Gold’s years in what amounts to a prison for kids is like waking up in one of those Hieronymus Bosch paintings full of punishment and predatory reveling. First the horror overwhelms; over time it comes into focus as familiar surroundings. Evil becomes almost normal.

Read the rest here.

Watch your hat and coat. And your book.

July 18th, 2009 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Books, Publishing No comments

I was just about ready to admit that maybe the Kindle wasn’t so bad. As much as I love real, honest-to-God paper pages and covers, the idea of being able to get a zillion books on a portable electronic tablet was seeming more appealing.

Now, though, as our New York relatives like to say: forgetaboutit.

Once I read the story about Amazon recalling George Orwell’s 1984 from Kindle owners who had already purchased and downloaded the novel, I came back to the fold. If it plugs in and lights up, it ain’t a book. Period.

Like everyone else who read the story, I’m loving the irony of Orwell’s famous big-brother-bashing book being the one that got taken away from the little people. Now that wireless giveth us e-books, it turns out it can also be used to taketh them away. Who knew?

Amazon took the book back when it became clear that a particular digital-publishing company selling 1984 for Kindle use did not have the legal right to do so. That seems appropriately respectful of copyright law, something that a lot of authors will appreciate. It just came a little late. You have to pay for a title search when you buy a house, but apparently the other kind of title searching got a little sloppy somewhere along the pipeline.

And, of course, the method of retrieval was unnerving. Thank God I didn’t buy my knock-off designer jeans by wireless.

I’m imagining that somewhere deep in the bowels of Amazon’s underground bunker, there’s a poor guy who had to take a deep breath, click on the RECALL icon, knowing he was about to become the online-bookseller equivalent of that perv who hangs around the laundromat and filches underwear out of the dryer.

It’s okay, buddy. You were just following orders. Mr. Orwell would understand.

Bowling alone, reading together

July 14th, 2009 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Books No comments


I used to own a knitted book cover, just the right size to slip over a paperback. I got it at the same crafts fair where I found the homely yellow-and-orange teapot cozy that makes the pot look just like a severed head wearing a winter cap.

(Still, it does keep the tea nice and warm.)

The book cover instantly turned the trashiest novel into something mysterious. Or at least less obviously trashy. I used it often on airplanes, back when I cared what strangers thought of me.

These days my reading, like most of my opinions, is right out there. Take it or leave it; roll your eyes or agree with enthusiasm. Whatever.

This open-book policy has a real upside, and a recent wonderful post in the UK’s Guardian Book Blog captures it. Lively writer Molly Flatt talks about public encounters in which strangers comment on the book she’s reading:

“Novels aren’t just sources of solitary cogitation. They are social objects, and we use them to brandish our identities, mark our allegiances and broker our relationships.”

Well said. I’d add that books provide one of the last safe and polite ways to engage a stranger. I’ve arrived at the point in life where my saying “What a great purse!” to a younger woman is not much of a compliment. Who wants accessory admiration from someone carrying her stuff around in a Trader Joe’s canvas sack?

But saying “I love Randy Sue Coburn! She’s from Seattle! Have you read her other books?” is not only a welcome comment, it usually leads to a conversation well worth having. Sometimes it leads to a more lasting bond, as it did two summers ago when a tourist on the Portland streetcar asked me about the Doris Kearns Goodwin biography I was carrying. Our chatting led to coffee, dinner, and we’ve been emailing cross-country since.

As with any social intercourse, there are some partners one should avoid. I’ve learned that it is a very bad idea to try to engage over anything by Dan Brown. That may be because I’ve never been able to say anything except, “You like The Da Vinci Code? You’re kidding me, right?” Likewise, any book with “Conscience-driven” or “Chicken Soup” in the title just gets me into trouble.

Oh, and the old dude in the park reading that library copy of Tropic of Cancer? Just keep on walking right past him, trust me.

Retooling journalism

July 1st, 2009 · Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett · Books, The Press No comments

A friend sent me the URL for Malcolm Gladwell’s book review in The New Yorker. (A magazine I get in print form, and which I read about two weeks after it arrives.)

Gladwell comments on Chris Anderson’s new book, “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” (Hyperion; $26.99),

The book makes the case, as Gladwell paraphrases, that “newspapers need to accept that content is never again going to be worth what they want it to be worth, and reinvent their business.” As author Anderson writes: “Out of the bloodbath will come a new role for professional journalists.”

Well, that’s certainly true. I think “a new role” is a much nicer way to say “broke, uninsured, compromised.” Gladwell quotes from Anderson’s book:

“There may be more of them, not fewer, as the ability to participate in journalism extends beyond the credentialed halls of traditional media. But they may be paid far less, and for many it won’t be a full time job at all. Journalism as a profession will share the stage with journalism as an avocation. Meanwhile, others may use their skills to teach and organize amateurs to do a better job covering their own communities, becoming more editor/coach than writer. If so, leveraging the Free—paying people to get other people to write for non-monetary rewards—may not be the enemy of professional journalists. Instead, it may be their salvation.”

Gladwell goes on to take this view apart. I won’t steal the rest of the review here…buy the magazine and enjoy.

I’ll just say this: At some point we’ll all need to quit shaping this discussion along the lines of “Is this good or bad for journalists?” and concentrate strictly on what this means for readers, especially young ones who won’t be comparing the New Journalism as done by part-time, non-specialists to the stuff we haggard veterans are defending.

In the meantime, I took the online multiple-choice test for the Oregon Food Handlers Permit, which will allow me to wait tables should my freelance life go up in smoke someday. I also can now ascertain if meat is safely refrigerated. (Won’t I be the compelling party conversationalist this weekend?)

Anyone need a cranky middle-aged waitress with no math skills and a poor short-term memory?

No, I don’t know if the damn risotto has cilantro. Just have the burger, well done. And get your elbows off the table.