FOOD, Fabulous food

Niagara on the Lake. Our landlady, cuddling one of the brown ones, informed us what happened when they stop laying eggs. Eek!

The Detroit Free Press ran a feature Sunday on some of the more popular Detroit foods. This were the five I associate most with Detroit.


Paczkis (Polish donuts-full of cream or jelly, especially popular on the Tuesday before Lent begins);

A Coney-a hotdog with onions and chili


Vernor's Ginger Ale (very different from what you are used to-medicinal to me)

Buddy's Pizza-very thick, doughy, cheesy

Sander's Hot Fudge Cream Puff Sundaes-my favorite.
and sweetish (not my kind of pizza)

What food items do you associate with your hometown or the town in which you now live?

First Wedneday's Book Review Club

THE THINGS THEY CARRIED, Tim O'Brien

This is the third time I've read this book and each time I've liked it more. As we get further from those years--the ones of the war in Vietnam, this book reminds me of what sacrifices young men made and also how a group of ragtag protesters were able to end it. Eventually.

My book group chose it for their July selection hence the third read.
TTTC is actually a series of stories based on O'Brien's tour of duty in Vietnam. The first and title story is about the actual things found in soldier's packs, pockets, hearts. Other stories consider various issues faced by soldiers--often very young soldiers--most of whom have not even had a real girlfriend to leave behind.

My favorite story tells of a girl who came to Vietnam to be with her boyfriend and how the experience changed her--even her body becomes soldier-like as she goes further and further in country. Another heart-breaking tale details how the author was on his way to Canada when a man, near the border, put him up while he thought it over. The simple days they spent together convinced the author he could only live with himself if he went to Vietnam despite his hatred of the war.

These are strong, wonderfully written stories and if you want to understand a soldier's life especially during the war in Vietnam, this is a great place to start.

For more reviews, go to Barrie Summy's blog.

TUESDAY NIGHT MUSIC

DAMN NEAR DEAD 2

DAMN NEAR DEAD 2's table of contents!

Behold, the table of contents from this November's Damn Near Dead 2: Live Noir or Die Trying! (trade paperback original; 978-1-935415-40-4; $18)...

Take a stroll down the boulevard of broken hips...
DAMN NEAR DEAD 2

Edited by Bill Crider
Introduction by Charlaine Harris

“Sleep, Creep, Leap” (by Patti Abbott)
“El Conejo” (by Ace Atkins)
“Stiffs” (by Neal Barrett, Jr.)
“The End of Jim and Ezra” (by C. J. Box)
“Out Stealing Buddha” (by Declan Burke)
“Love Story” (by Scott Cupp)
“All About Eden” (by Christa Faust)
“Flying Solo” (by Ed Gorman)
“Neighborhood Watch” (by Carolyn Haines)
“Memory Sketch” (by David Handler)
“Some Things You Never Forget” (by Gar Anthony Haywood)
“The War Zone” (by Cameron Pierce Hughes)
“You’re Only Dead Once” (by Dean James)
“The Sleeping Detective” (by Jennifer Jordan)
“Kids Today” (by Toni L.P. Kelner)
“The Old Man in the Motorized Chair” (by Joe R. Lansdale)
“Angel of Mercy” (by Russel McLean)
“Miss Hartly and the Cocksucker” (by Denise Mina)
“Sometimes You Can’t Retire” (by Marcia Muller)
“The Investor” (by Gary Phillips)
“Bill in Idaho” (by Scott Phillips)
“Zypho the Tentacled Brainsucker from Outer Space vs. the Mob” (by Tom Piccirilli)
“Trade Secret” (by Bill Pronzini)
“The Summer Place” (by Cornelia Read)
“Warning Shot” (by James Reasoner)
“Cutlass” (by Kat Richardson)
“Chin Yong-Yun Takes the Case” (by S. J. Rozan)
“Granny Pussy” (by Anthony Neil Smith)
“Old Men and Old Boards” (by Don Winslow)

DND 1, they listed contributors by age. Alphabetical order is so much better and I'm not talking about coming first. But rather last.

Monday Mailbox

Books bought over the weekend with George, the Tempter. The John Mortimer one was a gift from the evil one. Phil got fewer books but with higher price tags.

Two of these came earlier in the week.

(The first one is NO ORCHIDS FOR MRS. BLANDISH)


I probably won't get to these until 202o or so.

Is so-called genre fiction as good as so-called literary fiction?

Niagara on the Lake


A discussion has popped up here and there since TRUTH, a crime fiction book by Peter Temple, received the Australian prize for the best novel of the year. Some people regard this as a breakthrough for so-called genre fiction. But others see the win as an anomaly, contending that "genre" fiction, which always seems to have it eye on the market more than literary fiction, (although this may come more from publishers than authors) will never produce work as original or as beautifully crafted as some literary novels. The writing isn't as good; the stakes are too low plot-wise, originality is wanting.

Craig McDonald, in Crimespree Magazine, wrote that of the many hundreds of books he read for the Hammett Prize this year only about 15 became contenders. He said the vast majority of books mimic other writers, other series already in place.

Declan Burke wrote on his blog that he reads crime fiction out of a sense of duty more than any desire lately. Literary novels excite him. Only three recent crime fiction novels overcame the formulaic for Burke.

Is the bar set too low in so-called genre writing? Do we ask less from its writers than we do from say Julie Orringer, Joshua Ferris, James Hynes, Jeffrey Eugenides, Alice Munro, Lorrie Moore, Zadie Smith? Do we crave the familiar, the easy read, a book that does not examine important issues? When a new writer is compared (on the cover of a book) to more mature writers, is that labeling really a good thing" Wouldn't the better thing to hear be: "You have never read a writer like this one. You have never read a story like this." (I do notice that literary fiction does this far less). Do so-called genre readers need to know what they're buying more than other readers.

I don't know the answer to these questions, but I do think I'd be hard-pressed to find a so-called literary writer as good as Daniel Woodrell or George Pelecanos, both who examine society through their own lens. I'd also be hard=pressed to find a so-called genre novel as good as NEXT--which is not driven to have a murder in it by page 10 as someone once told me I must.

What do you think?

THINGS YOU WOULD LIKE TO DO HAD YOU AN IOTA OF TALENT TO DO IT

Check out my review of Please Give on Crimespree Cinema.


I would like to create the soundtrack for a movie. How much fun would it be to ramble through all those recordings.

What about you?

Amazon Reviews

I read this on Hilary Davidson's blog last week. She wrote:

"I’m dubbing July my own personal Amazon Review Month. Each day, I will write one review of a book I truly enjoyed. My only criteria is this: would I recommend the book to a friend? If so, it’s worthy of a review on Amazon. I’m not planning to write epic reviews detailing the book’s content, just three or four lines about what I found so engaging about it.

What I’d like to suggest is that you make July your own personal Amazon Review Month, too. I suspect that if enough of us review books we loved, we can entice others to read them, too. Who’s in?"

I'm in. I've posted half a dozen already, A lot of the books I've enjoyed this year have very few reviews on Amazon. Only certain kinds of people post reviews. And only certain kinds of books draw reviews. In a time of diminishing print reviews, it seems like a good thing to do.

I am not sure if it matters though. Do you take amazon reviews seriously? Do they influence your reading choices at all?

Bad Guys in B movies

I'm working on a story where I'd like to use some B movie villains or A movie second banana bad guys. Now dead. Can anyone remind me of a few?
My thinking cap went missing. Thanks!

DISGRACE

DISGRACE, by J.M Coetzee was a book I greatly admired. It's the story of a disgraced English professor in South Africa, whose humiliation only begins with his near rape of a student. He is unable to protect either himself or his daughter in the story that follows. It is a marvelously complex and brave novel that puts an unlikable person in harm's way and watches him squirm--and yet conveys some humanity in him. His daughter is complicated, too, and her decisions are not easy to understand. The situation in South Africa is likewise enigmatic to us. I didn't see how all this "complexity" could be captured on film.

And yet it is and by an actor I have no great liking for. Only someone like John Malkovich could bring the preposterous level of arrogance necessary to the story to the screen. It is beautifully, if bleakly, filmed.

Sometimes a film is as good as the book. What ones are the best?

NEXT, James Hynes

I have a review of SPLICE up at Crimespree Cinema.


I finished James Hynes' NEXT a few days ago. My husband read it first. We were drawn to it because of its fine reviews, its setting (Ann Arbor, MI-down the road), its milieu (academia-sort of), and because its editor's publishing Megan's next book. (I wanted to see what sort of book interested her.)

NEXT is an unusual and highly original book. Much like in MRS. DALLOWAY (although in NEXT we are only privy to just one person's interior thoughts), we spend a single day inside our narrator's head, watching him go about his often prosaic business. (How many of any of our days are anything but ordinary and yet we find it unusual in a novel)

In this case, Kevin Quinn has traveled from Ann Arbor to Austin on a job interview. He has a prestigious but rather dull-- and sometimes humiliating--job back in Michigan and is interviewing for a similar one. It's the kind of job one finds on the fringes of academia--for people who can't quite cut loose from their college town--underpaid and under-respected.

Kevin's fifty years old but seldom thinks about much other than the women he's loved. He's a bit pathetic, and what happens to him over the course of this half-day in the Texas heat emphasizes this.(And oh, how well Hynes captures Austin in the summer). We pity Kevin, we despair for him, we're bored by him, we're embarrassed for him, but mostly we identify with him. His thoughts are the sort we might have on a day when our future might be about to begin in a new place .

The final quarter of the book makes what has gone before it resonate. It also shatters our idea of what all of it meant. It's a shocking conclusion (although the foreshadowing is there).

At one point, a cab driver tells our hero,"You need to pay attention, man." Kevin does need to pay attention and so do we. Or what happens "next" for all of us might come too early or too late.

Highly recommended.

What's the last book you read that still had you thinking a few days later?

THE SUMMING UP, Friday, June 25, 2010

REMINDER-Next week is an offweek. Happy Fourth!





THE SUMMING UP, Friday, June 25, 2010

Patti Abbott, The Church of the Dead Girls, Stephen Dobyns
Joe Barone, The Man Who Went Up in Smoke, Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo
Paul Bishop, The Miracle of Castel di Sangro, Joe McGinnis, Dynamo: Triumph & Tragedy in Nazi Occupied Kiev, Andy Dougan
Bill Crider, Maracaibo, Stirling Silliphant
Scott Cupp, A Vampire Named Fred, Bill Crider
Martin Edwards, The Crime of the Century, Kingsley Amis
Ed Gorman, The Killer, Devil on Two Sticks, Wade Miller
Glenn Harper, The End of Lieutenant Boruvka, Josef Skvorecky
Maxim Jakubowski, Tony & Susan, Austin Wright
Randy Johnson, Star Surgeon, Alan E. Nourse
George Kelley, The Leavenworth Case, Ann Kathering Green
Evan Lewis, Cold Death (Doc Savage) Laurence Donavan
Steve Lewis & Curt J. Evans, The Problem of the Green Capsule, John Dickson Carr
Brian Lindenmuth, Four Corners of the Night, Craig Holden
Todd Mason, Dames, Danger, Death, edited (probably) by Leo Marguiles
Laurie Powers, Sandhill Boy, Elmer Kelton
James Reasoner, The Crime Spectacularist, Lester Dent
Richard Robinson, In Kensington Gardens Once, H.R.F. Keating
Kerrie Smith, FORGOTTEN AUTHOR: Joan Fleming
Steve Weddle, The Boys on the Bus, Tim Crouse

Friday's Forgotten Books, June 25, 2010

Goodis writing.


REMINDER-Next week is an offweek. Happy Fourth!


Steve Weddle (steveweddle.com) blogs about crime fiction at DoSomeDamage. Weddle also works with John Hornor Jacobs on NEEDLE. This year his short fiction has appeared at Beat To A Pulp, Crime Factory, and A Twist of Noir.

BOYS ON THE BUS, Tim Crouse

The US Presidential campaigns of 1968 and 1972 provided for some great journalism. Norman Mailer had a nice one about the Miami/Chicago conventions in 1968. Hunter S Thompson went gonzo for next campaign with his FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL ’72. And Jules Witcover was all over everything, of course. And then there was that Watergate book.

A book that isn’t read much anymore, but should be, is THE BOYS ON THE BUS by Tim Crouse, who was covering the campaign for ROLLING STONE magazine. Crouse was in his mid-20s and decided to cover the coverage. The conversations between journalists are great. The race for deadlines. The inside details. Crouse had a good eye and a better ear, knowing that the untold story of the people writing the stories was as entertaining as anything. Hunter S. Thompson, R.W. "Johnny" Apple, Jules Witcover, Robert Novak, Haynes Johnson, and many others come and go and the reader gets to see how stories develop and how the coverage met or didn’t meet up with things.

From Crouse’s book: "The fact that [some reporters] thought that McGovern had a chance to win showed the folly of trying to call an election from 30,000 feet in the air. . . . The reporters attached to George McGovern had a very limited usefulness as political observers, by and large, for what they knew best was not the American electorate but the tiny community of the press plane, a totally abnormal world that combined the incestuousness of a New England hamlet with the giddiness of a mid-ocean gala and the physical rigors of the Long March."

One things that’s nice about the book is that you get to see how these reporters riding along with the campaign work as a team. Crouse calls it “pack journalism,” a term we still use. "The press likes to demonstrate its power by destroying lightweights, and pack journalism is never more doughty and complacent than when the pack has tacitly agreed that a candidate is a joke."

Crouse never loses touch with the readers or the writers, seeming to appreciate all sides. THE BOYS ON THE BUS is a great story for those interested in politics, campaigns, journalism, and the inside looks you get when someone dives into something full force. A great read, still in print.

Patti Abbott

Church of the Dead Girls, Stephen Dobyns

CHURCH OF THE DEAD GIRLS takes place in one of those little towns in the Finger Lakes section of New York State near Utica. The town has been losing jobs and people for half a century. But disappearances suddenly are not due to a lack or jobs or a desire for more cultural offerings. Janice McNeal, a woman of ill repute, is murdered in her own home, her arm amputated. Her son, though seemingly bereft, arouses suspicion when he bites off a classmate's ear. Next three young girls vanish inexplicably, bundles of their clothes later turning up.

A Marxist study group at the local college and a vigilante squad of rednecks also comes under suspicion. The unnamed narrator, a high-school biology teacher, secretly keeps a collection of nasty objects submerged in formaldehyde. No one here is beyond or above suspicion. Some sort of mass hysteria has come about, reminding the reader of WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP.

This book examines the sort of hysteria that can overtake a small isolated community. Despite its title, it's a horror story-- a vivid and scary tale from the author of the Charlie Bradshaw Saratoga Springs crime fiction novels. Dobyns is also a poet. This is, no doubt, his darkest book.

Ed Gorman is the author of TICKET TO RIDE and many other wonderful novels. You can find him here. Wade Miller was of course Bob Wade and Bill Miller. They collaborated on a few dozen novels until Miller died of a heart attack in the office they shared. He was forty-one.

Much of their finest work was done for Gold Medal. The Killer is a fine example. A rich man named Stennis owns a number of banks. His son works in one of them. During a robbery his son is killed. Stennis hires a big game hunter named Farrow to find the notorious bank robber Clel Bocock and his gang. When Farrow locates them he is to call Stennis who wants to be there to watch them die. Farrow is a unique character and not just because of the big game angle. He's middle-aged and feeling it, something rare in that era of crime fiction.

The search for Stennis--and the love story that involves Bocock's wife--takes Farrow from the swamps to Iowa (including, yes, Cedar Rapids) to Wisconsin to Colorado. The place description is extraordinary. Probably too much for today's readers but the Miller books are filled with strong cunning writing. Same for twists and turns. For the length of the first act you can never be sure who anybody is. They're all traveling under assumed names and with shadowy motives. The only thing that binds them is Clel Bocock.

For anybody who thinks that Gold Medals were largely routine crime stories, this is the noel you should pick up. Stark House published this a few years back (still available) along with Devil On Two Sticks, one of the most original mob novels I've ever read. There's also an excellent David Laurence Wilson introduction on the careers of the two writers.

Wade Miller got lost in the shuffle of bringing back the writers of the fifties and sixties. This book, so strong on character and place and plot turns, will demonstrate why more of their books should be in print.


Joe Barone
Paul Bishop
Bill Crider
Scott Cupp
Martin Edwards
Glenn Harper
Maxim Jakubowski.
Randy Johnson
George Kelley
Evan Lewis
Steve Lewis and Curt J. Evans
Brian Lindenmuth
Todd Mason
Laurie Powers
James Reasoner
Richard Robinson
Kerrie Smith

Creative Writing Class Assignment

Subject: FW: Creative Writing assignment

A Creative Writing professor told his class one day: "Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting next to his or her desk.

As homework tonight, one of you will write the first paragraph of a short story. You will e-mail your partner that paragraph and send another copy to me. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story and send it back, also sending another copy to me. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back-and-forth.


Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. There is to be absolutely NO talking outside of the e-mails and anything you wish to say must be written in the e-mail. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached."


The following was actually turned in by two of his English students:


Rebecca (PINK)

Bill (BLUE).



THE STORY:

(first paragraph by Rebecca)

At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the question.

(second paragraph by Bill )

Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A.S. Harris to Geostation 17," he said into his transgalactic communicator. " Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.

(Rebecca)

He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. "Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel," Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth, when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspaper to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her.

"Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.



( Bill )

Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live.

Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dimwitted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace disarmament Treaty through the Congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam , felt the inconceivably massive explosion, which vaporized even poor, stupid Laurie.

(Rebecca)

This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic semi-literate adolescent.

( Bill )

Yeah? Well, my writing partner is a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. " Oh, shall I have chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of F--KING TEA??? Oh no, what am I to do? I'm such an air headed bimbo. I guess I've read too many Danielle Steele novels!"

(Rebecca)

A$$h@le.

( Bill )

B*tch!

(Rebecca)

F*** YOU - YOU NEANDERTHAL!!

( Bill )

In your dreams, Ho. Go drink some tea.

(TEACHER)


A+ - I really liked this one.

Forgotten Music, June 24, 2010

Doesn't seem to be a way to cut the size of the font. Sorry.



REALLY ROSIE, Music by written and sung by Carole King, story by Maurice Sendak based on his books.

Perhaps because I was already a Carole King fan, and this came along at the moment when my kids were ready for it, this is one of my favorite all-time albums. (Yes they were still albums then). This was from an era when children's movies, TV shows, and music was scant.

REALLY ROSIE was a musical, a TV show, an album, but first of a series of books.

The musical is based on Sendak's books: Chicken Soup with Rice, Pierre, One was Johnny, Alligators All Around (which comprise The Nutshell Library: The Sign on Rosie's Door (1960). Sendak based the story on a theatrical little girl he knew as a child.

The story takes place on a summer day in the life of a group of several neighborhood friends, including Pierre, Alligator, Johnny, and Chicken Soup (from the Nutshell Library books), and Rosie and Kathy from The Sign on Rosie' s Door. Rosie who loves on Brooklyn's Avenue P, directs and stars in an movie based on her life. The quality of Sendak's illustrations and story and King's music made this a winner at the time.

A half-hour television special (animated) aired in February 1975. It was directed by Maurice Sendak, with Carole King voicing the title character. An album based on the songs by King and lyrics by Sendak is still around. A production, directed opened on October 14, 1980. It ran for 274 performances. But it is the music that reverberates for me. Both King and Sendak are still alive. King is on tour with James Taylor. Sendak, now 82, published his first pop-up book in 2006.

We knew all the songs from Really Rosie by heart. I still do.

Check out Scott Parker's blog for more forgotten music.

THE GLASS ROOM

THE GLASS ROOM by Simon Mawer (Man Booker short-listed) was a fine novel. I highly recommend it. It's about the various inhabitants of an architecturally significant house in Czechoslovakia from 1929 until quite a while after the war.

But what I want to talk about here is the wonder of finding a book that you can read effortlessly. A book where the writing or story or characters--something-- just keeps you turning the page. I am not even sure whether it was the subject, the prose, the time of day-who knows. But this book boosted me out of a reading funk. It certainly wasn't the traditional page-turner.

Do you ever find yourself enjoying a book without knowing quite why? A book that isn't your usual thing? Maybe that's it. I needed to read a book about evil Nazis yet again. They never get old.

The greatest actor

in Westerns. We've talked about the greatest westerns of them all, but who was the most believable cowboy. Enlighten me. Who would star in the Western to end all Westerns--living or dead? I guess John Wayne portrayed cowboys most often, but I kind of favor Gary Cooper myself.

("Dad was a true Westerner, and I take after him", Gary Cooper told people who wanted to know more about his life before Hollywood. Dad was Charles Henry Cooper, who left his native England at 19, became a lawyer and later a Montana State Supreme Court justice. In 1906, when Gary was 5, his dad bought the Seven-Bar-Nine, a 600-acre ranch that had originally been a land grant to the builders of the railroad through that part of Montana.)

My Town Monday, Detroit Passport to the Arts

Come on over to Crimespree Cinema and tell me what your favorite summer movies are.


Phil's Clematis.

Great Lakes Chamber Music Program for June 19, 2010

Schumann Andante and Variations in B-flat major, Op. 46
Chopin Selected Songs
Barber Capricorn Concerto, Op. 21
Hummel Septet in D minor, Op. 74

This concert was part of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival and the last performance on our Detroit Passport to the Arts ticket-the greatest bargain in cultural offerings today.

If you live in the Detroit area, seek it out. Next year's schedule is now posted. And for $109 you can go to a play, an opera, two classical music concerts, a dance performance and a film festival. You even get a reception afterwards. Sometimes you get a behind the scenes tour. My goodness, what are you waiting for.

We are already signed up for next year. We are not the target audience here, but the nicest thing about this program was seeing some dark heads amidst the gray. I am excited that in these times, some wonderful people in Detroit found a way to bring youth into these theater. Yay, Natalie. Yay, sponsors.

******

Okay, nothing to do with either DP2A or the terrific music we heard last night but here's a little gripe.
I am happy to go early to a classical music concert and hear the pre-concert talk. I heard one last night about the composer (Barber) and it was interesting. It even gave me an idea for a story.

However, a new trend is taking hold. For the third time lately, one of the musicians or the conductor, gave a few minutes' lecture before the piece began--right as the lights went down. This is a really bad idea as far as I'm concerned. When those lights go down, I need to be transported by the music, not the pianist or conductor talking. Do your 'splaining before the concert begins. If people don't come to the talk, they will still enjoy the music. The music should be enough. No explanation necessary.

It's as if a director came out on the stage before a play began and said, "Now in this act, Arthur Miller is trying to demonstrate the shallow nature...." Bad idea right?

Is it just me that finds this annoying? I know pop musicians talk to their audience (except for Bob Dylan) but the atmosphere is very different. Let it just be me and the music.

What Makes a Good Book Title?

I have a new story "At the Café Sabarsky" at Beat to a Pulp. Thanks to David and Elaine once again.

Charles Gramlich is wrestling with various ideas for a title for his new book. I am always wrestling with titles, too. What makes a good book or story title? Is a title even important? What is the best book title you've ever heard? Was the book as good as the title? Or did the quality of the book enhance the title?

I prefer titles that describe the book and are short. I am too old to remember titles like: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.


I also like place names for titles: Gorky Park, Starvation Lake, L.A. Confidential, Miami Blues, Shelter Island, Mystic River, Fargo. Setting is important.

What do you think about titles? Did a title alone ever make you buy a book? Did a poor title put you off?

THE SUMMING UP, Friday,June 18, 2010

Writers writing. Guess who?

I'm going to have to take a week off on Friday, July 2. You can all probably use a week off for the holiday weekend, too.




THE SUMMING UP, Friday, June 18, 2010

Joe Barone, Ceremony, Robert B. Parker
Paul Bishop, Red Coat, Richard Hoyt
Bill Crider, Malay Woman, A.S. Fleischman
Scott Cupp, Blind Voices, Tom Reamy
Ed Gorman, The So-Blue Marble, Dorothy B. Hughes
Glenn Harper, Violetta, Pieke Biermann
Randy Johnson, Davy, Edgar Pangborn
George Kelley, The Prisoner, Thomas M. Disch
Chris La Tray, The Real Cool Killers, Chester Himes
B.V. Lawson, Death Watch, Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
Evan Lewis, Mike Hammer, The Comic Strip, Mickey Spillane
Steve Lewis/Art Scott, Trinity in Violence, Henry Kane
Todd Mason, My Name is Aram, William Saroyan, Ride With the Sun, Harold Courlander, The Storytelling Stone, Susan Feldman
Terrie Moran, Friday, the Rabbi Slept Late, Harry Kemmelman
James Reasoner, Brand of the Black Bat, G. Wayman Jones (Norman A. Daniels)
Mark Terry, Out on the Rim, Ross Thomas
Stanley Trollip, The Song Dog, James McClure
Kerrie Smith, The Secret of Hanging Rock, Joan Lindsay