books

In tomorrow's paper, I review — in a roundabout, bowled over kind of way — Ursula K. Le Guin's new novel, Lavinia. I had to write swiftly, and I kept thinking how, given about 1200 words, I'd have a million things to say — things that have since flown out of my head. But, er, the point is, I left out one very pertinent thing: the book doesn't officially come out until Monday, April 21.

So stop by your local independent bookstore then! (Or now, as it appears to be available, at least on Amazon, despite the not-here-yet release date.)

Lately, I've developed a knack for opening books to random pages and finding upon those pages sentences which, taken out of context, are truly funny. OK, so maybe a two-time occurrence isn't quite a knack. And it's entirely possible that only Suzi and I find these things funny. But I'm going to practice this apparent talent (my boyfriend has a variation of this talent; he can open to the smut in any given title) and see if I can't keep coming across delicious things like these:

"Have you ever fucked a Bulgarian?"

— from Tom Perrotta's pretty excellent The Abstinence Teacher
(Confession: The first Bulgarian that came to mind as I read this was Viktor Krum. I ... yeah. Not sure how I feel about that.)

"The forces of the status quo don't want this reading!" she announced through a blare of feedback.

— from Andrew Foster Altschul's just-arrived-and-thus-as-yet-unread-by-me Lady Lazarus, which has such over-the-top flap copy it begs to be read aloud. (A snippet: "Together they chronicle her story, from her silent childhood to her first tortured public statements about her father; from her publication of a wildly popular book of poetry to her mysterious disappearance; from her return as the mute leader of a cultlike brigade known as The Muse to her last, terrifying crusade." Phew.)

Anyway, I know there are others out there with this talent. Please, open your books at random (no, this isn't that blog meme involving the 17th line on the 123rd page of the third book on seventh shelf on your smallest bookshelf) and tell me what you find! Rejoice in the random!

(I can't tell if I need more or less coffee...)

As someone who has purchased or rated books by C.S. Lewis, you might like to know that Outlaws of Poplar Creek / Bowdrie Follows a Cold Trail / His Brother's Debt will be released on February 12, 2008.

Actually, no, and not just because I totally fail to see what having rated or purchased books by C.S. Lewis has to do with books by LOUIS FRICKING L'AMOUR.

You fail, Amazon.

The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association announced the winners of their 2008 awards today; six titles were chosen from the almost 200 nominees:

• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
by Sherman Alexie of Seattle, WA (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
Alexie's book has already won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature and looks like at least an honor book, if not the winner, for the American Library Association's Printz Award. Suzi Steffen reviewed Alexie's novel in our Winter Reading issue.

• Returning To Earth
by Jim Harrison, who spends part of his year in Paradise Valley, Montana (Grove Press)

• Tree of Smoke
by Denis Johnson of Northern Idaho (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Hey, I didn't know Denis Johnson was a Northwest writer! That's pretty cool. For Chuck Adams' take on Johnson's National Book Award-winning novel, see our Winter Reading issue.

• Dancing With Rose: Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer's
by Lauren Kessler of Eugene, OR (Viking)
UO professor Kessler's book was reviewed by Lois Wadsworth when it came out in May.

• The God of Animals
by Aryn Kyle of Missoula, MT (Scribner)

• Bad Monkeys
by Matt Ruff of Seattle, WA (HarperCollins)
Now where did my copy of this one go?

I majored in history. (And art history, but that was a different story, one you can read about in my viz arts column this week.)

I wrote my senior thesis on how the religious right of the 1980s stole civil disobedience tactics of the civil rights movements of the 1960s. I studied Students for a Democratic Society (including the amazing Port Huron Statement); the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Richard Viguerie and his tactics; Operation Rescue and the Christian Coalition etc. ( I even interlibrary-loan-requested and read Jerry Falwell's dissertation). Sometimes I was elated, sometimes I was sickened. But it was one of the more intellectually demanding times of my life, which means some of it is seared into my brain.

Also? I like graphic novels.

So today, when Molly opened some of the pile o' packages waiting for her and we got Harvey Pekar's new Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History AND Rick Geary's new J. Edgar Hoover: A Graphic Biography, I about swooned with joy.

History! Comix! Wowzers!

I need to read Perry Moore's Hero first, and then I can get to these two. Hm, YA gay superhero novel or comic-book depiction of the Weathermen? Damn, it's hard to decide.

Of course, this may trouble my vow not to review in 2008 anything written by a straight white American man. Or perhaps I meant "not review in the print version of the paper anything in 2008 written by etc."

That reminds me: First book review of the year will be on Jan. 17 (for me; Molly has a review Jan. 3), and I'm planning to review Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun. The publisher says, "A masterly, haunting new novel from a writer heralded by the Washington Post Book World as 'the 21st-century daughter of Chinua Achebe,' Half of a Yellow Sun re-creates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra's impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria in the 1960s, and the chilling violence that followed."

Hm. I seem to be back to history. Awesome.