Christian Bauman on Amazon Rankings

So here's something: of course I look at Amazon. I've been published long enough now to have the Amazon ranking not matter so much to me, but there is something else I find addictive about Amazon: what books are offered at a discount if you buy it with one of mine. There is an algorithm to this, I'm sure. Or something. Clearly the decisions aren't being made by actual people (I'm guessing) because Christ you'd need an army. But I'm not sure what it's based on. Always fascinating to me, though. Sometimes it's easy: sometimes Amazon offers one of my books with another of my books. Boring (but encouraged, from a college-fund-for-my-daughters standpoint). Other times the selection is just way too predictable (offering The Ice Beneath You with something by Tim O'Brien, for instance. Not that I don't love O'Brien, I do, but you know what I'm saying). Other times I'm stymied to find the connection, and it's at those times that I get most excited. About a month ago, Amazon was offering Voodoo Lounge with the novel Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. I'd heard good things about this first novel, so I jumped and picked up a copy. What a great read! I lived in India for a year at a very impressionable age (I was 13), at about the time the novel was set. A wonderful and subtle voice, Desai has.

My brother-in-law gave me a copy of DeKooning: An American Master, by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, which won the Pulitzer for biography not too long ago. Big book, and an endlessly fascinating read. I have zero ability in the visual arts, so am always very curious as to the inner workings of those who do. I found a lot to like and identify with in DeKooning, as well.

Two by Roth, recently: The Plot Against America and Everyman. Plot started very strong, but disappointed me somewhat in the end. Everyman I thought better than the bad reviews it got.

A People's History, The Dark Materials, Becoming Jane Austen

Very recently I began a journey that many others were already on. Person after person kept mentioning the same book to me that they were very hungrily reading. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, you ask? No, indeed not. (Besides, I read that the night it came out like the crazy, sleep-deprived maniac I was.) No, instead it is Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. I decided to fully understand the history madness, I needed to read it immediately, albeit it in very slow, sporadically read pieces. To be blatantly honest, I'm only on chapter three and so easily distracted by all the books I have to read, the books I want read, and the books that aren't even published yet that I'm reading, to read it all in one gulp like I usually prefer...but I will prevail!

In the meantime, I've read The Dark Materials trilogy, which I recommend completely to anyone looking to escape into another world. I'm actually very much surprised it did so well due to the questioning nature of it towards the Church and Heaven that rose throughout. But perhaps there was hoopla and I just missed it during the original publication. But it was phenomenal and addictive. Not addictive in that manic Harry Potter sort of way, but you definitely wanted to find out what happens and really feel for the characters...even the somewhat evil ones.

Meanwhile I'm very excited at the moment about Tin House's Issue 32, "Hot and Bothered" has a veritable feast of fiction, non-fiction, and randomness going on right now. I especially suggest checking out the New Voice Fiction from Daniel Menasche, "We Just Came up from San Francisco" and Irina Reyn's piece on Anastasya Verbitskaya...but these are only to start...really you should read the whole issue.

Also, I recently read Becoming Jane Austen after falling completely in love with the film. Until reading it I didn't know much of her life though I knew she was unmarried and had read all of her completed novels and some of her unfinished. It's kind of sad that really most of her work was published during such a short interlude in her life, shortly before her death. It makes you wonder in her case as well as many other writers of the time, what else they might have been creating in their minds that never made it to paper.

And in other news, I tried and failed miserably at reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and the Damned. Really, I will just always love The Great Gatsby best.

--Vicki Lame

Natasha's Dance

I just started Orlando Figes' excellent Natasha's Dance: The Cultural History of Russia. In addition to serious commentary and new perspectives on Russian social history, the reader is treated to facts like the following:

"Serfs were essential to the Sheremetev palaces and their arts . . . Many of these serfs were sent abroad or assigned to the court to learn their craft. But where skill was lacking, much could be achieved through sheer numbers. At Kuskovo there was a horn band in which, to save time on the training of players, each musician was taught to play just one note. The number of players depended on the number of different notes in a tune; their sole skill lay in playing their note at the appropriate moment." [pg.27]

-Summer Block