Texas Pages

Columbus, Ohio-based author Carla Buckley, whose debut novel The Things That Keep Us Here was reviewed by us (well, me actually) in last Sunday's GuideDaily, will be in town for a book signing next Tuesday. She'll appear at 7 p.m. March 9 at Borders, 10720 Preston Road at Royal Lane. 214-363-1977.

I'm about halfway through Sherlock Holmes: The American Years. It features 10 original stories about Sherlock Holmes' years in the U.S.

So far, my favorite story is "My Silk Umbrella." It's an account by Mark Twain of his meeting with Holmes. I don't know much about Mark Twain the man, though, I read his novels and stories in grade school. About the man himself, I knew he had a quick wit and was eminently quotable.

Ah, the joys of the meaningless best/worst list. So trivial. So irresistible.

Case in point: The current American Book Review, published by the University of Houston-Victoria, has contributors from across the country weighing in on the "Top 40 Bad Books."

Among those slapped with the label: Colson Whitehead's Sag Harbor, ("fails to live up to high expectations," says Walter R. Jacobs of the
University of Minnesota); All The Pretty Horses ("I think of it as a romance novel for men ... like all good romance novel writers, McCarthy uses clichés and derivative characters to sell millions of copies," says Christine Granados) and F. Scott Fitzgerald ("If badness is related to perceived greatness, then I offer The Great Gatsby (1925) as the worst novel in American literature. I haven't read it for many years, since the only time I used it in a Modern American Fiction class, but I remember it as incredibly smug about its relationship to the traditional realistic novel," says Tom LeClair at the University of Cincinnati -- remind me never to take his class.)

Eyal Amiran of the University of California, Irvine declares that "Ian Fleming's novels consist entirely of clichés, coordinating conjunctions, and appositives." But The Da Vinci Code gets this mixed observation from Bonnie Wheeler of
Southern Methodist University:

"This formulaic knock-off of fascistic conspiracy theories is a trite study for a film script--and no wonder the movie was also bad. I love the chapters that are only a couple of lines long. ... Yet for many of my students, it is the book that brought them into the English major. For others, it is the only book they've ever enjoyed reading. IS it possible that even a Bad Book can do Good?"

These types of observations are perhaps the critical and intellectual equivalent of standing up in an Austin bar and singing "Boomer Sooner." But hold my beer -- I'm diving in.

Missy Buchanan of Rockwall is the author of the new book "Talking with God in Old Age: Meditations and Psalms," and it's been favorably reviewed by Publishers Weekly. Click here, and scroll down a bit.

Buchanan says this about her book: "Many times people want to know how a Boomer like me got involved in writing for seniors. In a nutshell, my books and columns were born out of real life experiences with my own elderly parents. Though my folks are no longer living, I still visit a number of older adult friends each week at several different senior residence centers in the Dallas area. They are my inspiriation. In a culture that values youth, it is important that the spiritual needs of our older adults be addressed."

On a day that has featured news about Karl Rove, Laura Bush, possible fraud in Hiroshima and video game literature, it seems only fitting to add video of best-selling author Ozzy Osbourne, from his Saturday appearance at Barnes & Noble.

The store reported no problems from the crowd at 2,000.

To answer the question posed by the enthusiastic gentleman in the video: Sarah Palin signed for 1,000, although I believe the crowd was actually larger than that, and her time limit was strictly capped.

Karl Rove, who will be speaking with the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth about his pending autobiography, Courage and Consequences, My Life as a Conservative in the Fight, has added a Plano event to his itinerary.

He'll be at Legacy Books, 7300 Dallas Parkway, 4 p.m. March 15 for a three-hour event.

Full details on how to get your book signed are after the jump.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Publication has been halted for a disputed book about the atomic bombing of Japan that Avatar director James Cameron had optioned for a possible film, The Associated Press has learned.
Publisher Henry Holt and Company, responding to questions from the AP, said Monday that author Charles Pellegrino "was not able to answer" concerns about The Last Train from Hiroshima, including whether two men mentioned in the book actually existed.
"It is with deep regret that Henry Holt and Company announces that we will not print, correct or ship copies of Charles Pellegrino's The Last Train from Hiroshima, '" the publisher said in a statement issued to the AP.
Doubts were first raised about the book a week ago after Pellegrino acknowledged that one of his interview subjects had falsely claimed to be on one of the planes accompanying the Enola Gay, from which an atom bomb was dropped by the United States on Hiroshima in 1945. Holt had initially promised to send a corrected edition.
But further doubts about the book emerged. The publisher was unable to determine the existence of a Father Mattias (the first name is not given) who supposedly lived in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing, and John MacQuitty, identified as a Jesuit scholar presiding over Mattias' funeral
"I read a number of books on this period of time and none of them mentioned Mattias or MacQuitty. I knew there was no way those people could have been omitted if they were real," said history professor Barton Bernstein of Stanford University.
Pellegrino's own background was also questioned. He sometimes refers to himself as Dr. Pellegrino, and his Web site lists him as receiving a Ph.D. in 1982 from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. But in response to a query from the AP, the school said it had no proof that Pellegrino had such a degree.

And she'll be speaking at Arts & Letters Live May 7:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Former first lady Laura Bush's memoir is coming out in early May.
"Spoken From the Heart" is scheduled for release May 4 from Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. It released a cover image Monday showing a smiling close-up with her light brown hair brushed to the side.
A memoir by her husband, former President George W. Bush, is due in the fall.

I should have seen this coming.

First, there was the fan fiction based on "Pong" that I showed you last year.

Then there was "Dante's Inferno," the video game.

Followed by what I thought was a post-in-jest a friend sent me about plans to develop the arcade classic "Missile Command" into a movie.

(My proposed screenplay:

FADE IN

CITIZEN: Watch out for that missile!

FX: BOOM!

ROLL CREDITS )

But now, things are getting serious. The Wall Street Journal (tip: Shelf Awareness) reports that Random House is putting writers to work on storylines for video games.

Around 15 employees are involved in the new venture. Several, including Mr. Clayton, have been involved in adapting videogames into books, and were responsible for building the "Star Wars" book franchise in partnership with Lucasfilm Ltd.

Random House plans to tap its stable of authors to help write storylines for the games, as well as write books based on them.

I think the key to their success will be whether they can get the price down to, say, a quarter.

But the question of the day is: Do we consider this to be the clearest sign yet of our pending cultural Apocalypse? Or does it just mean that publishers are running out of ideas for books about well-meaning lawyers who stumble onto corporate malfeasance?

Or should we celebrate because somewhere, a writer is being employed to turn video games into something literary?

Cnn.com reports: Angelina as Kay Scarpetta angers Cornwell book fans.

Long story short: Cornwell is excited, but some fans are not. My mom is a big Scarpetta fan. She's excited. But I've read a few Scarpetta books, and I see her as more of a Glenn Close character. The story says the role was originally offered to Jodie Foster, whom I think would be a perfect fit.

What do you think?

I've been meaning to write about two of my favorite books from last year: Pops, the Louis Armstrong bio by Terry Teachout, and The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece, by Eric Silbin. The brewing iPad hype gives me an excuse.

The books don't have much in common, besides music and overall excellence. Pops is a straight-out biography, one that challenged and changed the way I think about my favorite performing artist. Armstrong comes across as great as ever -- and, for the first time in my readings about him, fully human as well. We're at least a generation past the period where thinking people viewed the trumpeter as an Uncle Tom who stopped doing serious work in the 1920s; Teachout's work should help bury that image by portraying Armstrong as an intense artist who was, in contrast to his always-clowning stage persona, "given to inexplicable explosions of anger that came and went like summer storms."

Teachout's portrayal, gleaned in part from previously inaccessible records, hardly tarnishes the legend, though. As Armstrong told a doctor late in life after being warned that he might drop dead if he went through with a planned series of concerts: "Doc, that's all right, I don't care. My whole life, my whole soul, my whole spirit is to bloooow that hooorn." Teachout adds welcome depth to our understanding of that lovely soul and the music that expressed it.

The Cello Suites is a blend of criticism, musical history, personal essay and biography -- or rather, biographies, because I learned just as much about J.S. Bach as I did about Casals. It's the story of how the remarkable Cello Suites came to be -- or at least, how they are thought to have come about. Because it turns out that the music, which today is accepted as timeless, had been virtually forgotten until Casals stumbled across the sheet music at a shop in Barcelona in 1890 and eventually led them from obscurity to ubiquity.

It's a rich story, one that is infused with Siblin's sense of obsession (the pop music critic at one point takes cello lessons to understand Bach better) but never overtaken by it. A serious music scholar might be bored by his journey. I was enthralled.

The two books had one one other thing in common, which is where Steve Jobs comes in.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Sherman Alexie and Barbara Kingsolver are among this year's finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award.
The nominees for the fiction prize worth $15,000 were announced Tuesday. Alexie was nominated for the story collection War Dances and Kingsolver for the novel The Lacuna.
Other nominees are Colson Whitehead's Sag Harbor, Lorrie Moore's A Gate at the Stairs and Lorraine N. Lopez's Homicide Survivors Picnic and Other Stories.
The winner will be announced March 23. Previous recipients include Philip Roth, John Updike and E.L. Doctorow.

Last month, we ran a short review of Last Train From Hiroshima, by Charles Pellegrino. The book had been generally acclaimed, although this reviewer (Jeffrey Burke of Bloomberg News) noted: "The extent of the details his subjects recall sometimes strains plausibility. Yet it's hard to see how the writer could possibly overstate such horrors."

Unfortunately, one of the subjects apparently did some overstating. A New York Times report (carried in the print edition of the Dallas Morning News) says that author Charles Pellegrino "now concedes that he was probably duped" by one Joseph Fuoco, who is described as a last-minute substitute on one of the two observation planes that escorted the Enola Gay.

"I'm stunned," Mr. Pellegrino said. "I liked and admired the guy. He had loads and loads of papers, and photographs of everything."

The public record has to be repaired, he added. "You can't have wrong history going out," he said. "It's got to be corrected."

A movie version by James Cameron had been planned. At the moment, the author's Web site still carries a large promotion for Avatar, so perhaps the two remain on good terms. But in the discussion area of the site, the author says,

I am trying to reach out now to [veterans'] families and get the rest of the story, and will begin at once to rewrite the few chapters that have Joseph Fuoco in them, replacing them with the story of the man who actually sat in the seat claimed by Joe Fuoco.

The bottom line is that I cannot have wrong history going out there - repeatedly, in future editions. These pages will be corrected, at once.

[UPDATE: Macmillan has issued a press release about the book; it's posted after the jump.]

That's not entirely accurate since I read a big book o' 37 Sherlock Holmes mysteries, which also included two novels.

Somehow I'd gone though high school and college without ever reading a Holmes mystery, and admittedly, it was Robert Downey Jr.'s turn as the famous Baker Street detective piqued that my interest in the books. But it was definitely worth the wait.

Tobias Wolff will be speaking tonight as part of the Highland Park Literary Festival. The free event takes place 7 p.m. at Highland Park High School.

Can't make it? Organizers have posted some audio from a prior reading. You can also catch him in the 1 p.m. segment of Think on KERA-FM (90.1).

EW.com has a list of guest editors for this year's "Best American" collections.

Among them:

The Best American Short Stories 2010: Richard Russo

The Best American Essays 2010: Christopher Hitchens

The Best American Comics: Neil Gaiman

The Best American Nonrequired Reading: Dave Eggers (guest introducer: David Sedaris)

The whole list is here.

(Spotted on the Twitter feed of Cristina Henriquez)

Rockwall writer Mary DeMuth, will be offering an "instructive free evening ... teaching the elements of writing a memoir" and signing her new book, Thin Places 7 p.m. Thursday at Legacy Books, 7300 Dallas Parkway, Plano.

Her publisher, Zondervan, says that Thin Places "is about her journey to find hope and healing from the traumatic events of her childhood. According to DeMuth, thin places are 'snatches of time, moments really, when we sense God intersecting our world in tangible, unmistakable ways.' DeMuth shares her own story of being raised in a broken home and the loss of her biological father when she was ten. She was stripped of her innocence growing up in an unstable environment but learns to overcome through faith and writing."

Sam Hodges has full details over on the Religion blog.

I know that a lot of you books blog readers are big fans of Ozzy Osbourne. After all, he is sitting at No. 2 on The New York Times Best-Sellers List.

So here are full details of the rules for his book signing on Feb. 27 at Barnes & Noble on Northwest Highway. Note that the time has just been moved to 3 p.m.

Barnes & Noble says:

· Book signing only, no memorabilia

· No personalization

· Photos allowed from the line

· Wristbands will be available on a first come, first serve basis

· Wristbands will be available starting at 9:00 AM 2/27

· Wristbands will be organized in letter groups of 50.

· I Am Ozzy must be purchased from Barnes & Noble to receive a wristband (bring receipt if purchased prior to 2/27)

· No more than 4 people in a group per wristband (only the person with the wristband will interact with Ozzy)

· Limit 4 books per person to be signed

· Line up for signing starts at 1:00 PM 2/27.

I'm told that previous events have drawn more than 3,000 people. The Orange County Register did a lengthy interview and has video of what the scene was like there. Dallas, you have been warned.

American Short Fiction, an Austin-based literary magazine, will be honoring the late J.D. Salinger with a lineup that includes literary stars and the author's own work.

The event, 7 p.m. Feb. 26 in the Prothro Theater at the
Harry Ransom Center, will feature: ZZ Packer (Drinking Coffee Elsewhere), Nick Flynn (Another Bullsh-t Night in Suck City) John Pipkin (Woodsburner ), Elizabeth McCracken (The Giant's House) and more.

The press release says they'll be "reading excerpts from his book-length publications as well as selections from the Ransom Center's archive of the author's unpublished correspondence." A small display of Salinger manuscripts, letters, and inscribed books will go on display as well. They'll remain on view until March 12.

Speaking of his letters, another stash is about to go on display in New York. According to The New York Times:

The letters furnish what may be the most specific description yet of Mr. Salinger's writing habits in the years after 1965, when he stopped publishing. Even in the 1980s, he describes a highly disciplined writing regimen, starting each morning at 6, never later than 7, and not brooking interruption, "unless absolutely necessary or convenient." This in-his-own-words account may bolster the conviction and hope of some that he left additional works behind.

I'm sure there is some cosmic connection to the fact that the NBA All-Star Game is being played in D-FW this weekend at the very moment that an NBA owner is riding to the rescue of Kirkus Reviews.

As per the LA Times' Jacket Copy, Kirkus' hero is Herb Simon, owner of the Indiana Pacers and onetime savior of a bookstore in Montecito, Calif. The new enterprise is to be called Kirkus Media.

The New York Times Media Decoder blog quotes him as saying, "With the growth of e-books and e-reading devices, no one can really see the future of publishing. But turmoil like this creates opportunities. At a time when even the definition of a book is changing, my love of books makes me want to be part of the solution for the book publishing industry."