Dominick Dunne, Too Much Money Jonathan Dee, The Privileges Adam Haslett, Union Atlantic Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love T. C. Boyle, Wild Child
We do try to stick to three books, but it is hard. Especially when we get gifts like the gift of money. Or rather, books about money. I called up Alan Cheuse, with the intention of covering just four books — only one over our usual goal. But naturally, the literary world has some different ideas.
We started by drowning ourselves in the rich-ass world of the late Dominick Dunne, whose all-too-juicy 'Too Much Money' (Crown / Random House ; December 15, 2009 ; $26), which brings back Augustus "Gus" Bailey as Dunne's alter-ego to dish the goods. And they are good, even if those of us who are not so rich might hope for trucks to fall from the sky on these sorts of people in real life.
Then we moved on to the slightly-less insanely rich world of Jonathan Dee's 'The Privileges,' (Random House ; January 15, 2010 ; $25), where good intentions and bad decisions result in money that's not exactly earned. Dee focuses on the giddy sense of risk, and the addictive nature thereof. Readers may or may not like this family, but these people do seem like the sort who lead a life off the page.
Then there's 'Union Atlantic,' (Nan A. Talese / Random House ; February 9, 2010 ; $26), by Adam Haslett, who managed the difficult feaat of getting a Pulitzer Prize nomination and becoming a National Book Award finalist for his collection of short stories, 'You Are Not a Stranger Here.' Suffice it to say the well-to-do are not quite so appealing in this novel. As they deserve, often.
Elif Shafak's first novel was 'The Bastard of Istanbul,' and she returns with the nicely-twisty 'The Forty Rules of Love' (Viking / Penguin Putnam ; February 18, 2010 ; $25.95). You get the bored suburban housewife who finds herself immersed in the novel she's reading for a literary agent, The novel-within-a-novel, "Sweet Blasphemy" a novel of Rumi, explores the life of the Sufi mystic and creates a nice hall-of-mirrors effect. It's a device I particularly enjoy.
And finally, just because we needed to go way over the speed limit, so to speak, we talked about the latest from T. C. Boyle, 'Wild Child' (Viking / Penguin Putnam ; January 21, 2010 ; $25.95). Cheuse pointed out that it was not so long ago that a 'Collected Stories' by Boyle came out; and yet this is his fourth collection since. He may be prolific, but he manages to be evergreen in terms of quality.
"It was a really amazing testament to the power of small-town America and to the power of organized religion at its best." —Josh Sundquist
I had my doubts.
Tamera at the Capitola Book Café told me that I was going to be amazed at the kind of show that Josh Sundquist would be able to throw when he appeared. She's seen a You Tube video and I had just come of a day that could best be called "challenging." I was tired and not in the mood to interview anyone. But it took about 30 seconds for me to catch a very different mood once I sat down with Sundquist. He gives the occupation of "motivational speaker" a good name.
Josh Sundquist got his start in motivational speaking early — in high school. At the age of nine he was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer, but he was skiing before he even finished chemotherapy — after his left leg was amputated. He talked about not just the personal aspects of this, but also the financial costs of disease.
But mostly what Josh Sundquist brought to the tiny back-office of Capitola Book Café was enthusiasm, and you can sure as heck hear it in every answer. It's the sort of enthusiasm that actually motivates and inspires listeners to get up and do something about their lives.
I get bees in my bonnet sometimes and let them drive me — sometimes literally — to do strange things. For example, apropos of nothing, last summer, I decided that I would take a spin down to Pismo, spend a couple of days in a hotel reading and justify the whole thing by seeing if I could get an interview with Kage Baker. It was a glorious day; a slight wind, but the sun was warm and Pacific Ocean was a suitable backdrop to my exploration of Baker's life and writing.
Now, I don’t often do this sort of thing, but this time I'm making an exception, because the interview with Baker seems like ... such a perfect way for those who have not read her work, or those who have, but have not heard her speak, to get to know this wonderful writer.
She left us behind on Sunday morning, but left us, the readers, her readers, books that we can read — and re-read. The re- is incredibly important. Baker created characters we really loved to read about, even if we didn't always love the characters. In fact, one of the reasons that her books are re-readable is that her characters have that prickly feeling of real people. They inhabit our worlds and our minds as surely as memories. We can add Baker to their legion in our memories. Hear her speak; read her books; celebrate her life and work..
02-02-10: SF in SF, January 16, 2010 :
A Panel Discussion with Terry Bisson, Jeff Carlson and Nancy Etchemendy
Having heard, I hope, the interviews and reading that lead up to this panel discussion; Jeff Carlson's reading and interview, and Nancy Etchemendy's reading and interview, I trust my listeners can imagine that things got lively when they sat down to talk. But even I was surprised how well this particular discussion lived up to Terry Bisson's oft-promised "bitch and moan." It was well-informed, but science fiction and literature were pretty-well wrung out and hung out to dry.
Of course, when you mention science fiction and literature, then eventually somebody is going to bring up the Big Bad, in this case, Margaret Atwood. Now as listeners to this podcast know, I found Atwood to be rather a different person than the Big Bad we often hear about when science fiction readers breathlessly quote "space squids" and "talking cabbages." And so, dear listeners, I actually contributed to this little discussion, which you can hear near the end of this MP3 audio file.
Charlie Huston
02-01-10: A 2010 Interview with Charlie Huston
"The prospect of things becoming deeply unhinged seemed very, very immediate" Charlie Huston
Charlie Huston's new novel is not an attempt to predict the future, even if it is set in a future that has the feel of tomorrow's headlines. Suicidal Christians blowing themselves up in an America that is (still) descending into chaos, a prion plague that turns its victims into shambling insomniacs, traffic nightmares — not a place to bring up a baby. But then, a couple of years ago, the outlook didn't seem much better. And things have not improved, though we haven't gone over the cliff edge. Yet.
I drove down to the Los Angeles of 2010 to talk with Huston about his novel 'Sleepless,' and to tell the truth, found it to be a pretty pleasant drive. When you live in a city like Los Angeles, it's hard to remember that most of coastal California at least, is still pretty damn beautiful. And LA itself didn't seem quite so dystopian as I expected it to be in comparison. Of course, I don't live there any more, and Huston does.
It shows in the gritty, complex structure of 'Sleepless,' which is an impressive science fiction genre debut; if you want to call it science fiction, and even Huston agrees that it is certainly set in the future and does involve some, to my mind, well researched and entertainingly-imagined speculative elements. But I think any of Huston's mystery fans could enjoy this novel, as well as a lot of science fiction readers. To my mind, it is a book best experienced cold, no prep, just dive in. Sort of like time itself. It's not like you can read a review of the year 2012 and then decide whether or not go to there. You just go, no review required. You can hear Huston talk about 'Sleepless' by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
New to the Agony Column
07-30-10: Commentary : Subterranean Press and Robert R. McCammon Wake at 'The Wolf's Hour' : The Time Before Cheese
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Three Books with Alan Cheus : Allegra Goodman, 'The Cookbook Collector,' Noam Shpancer's 'The Good Psychologist' and Elie Wiesel 'The Sonderberg Case'
07-28-10: Commentary : Rule Britannia, In Space 2 : En Route, RJ Frith and Peter F. Hamilton
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Brian and Wendy Froud at SF in SF on Monday, July 19, 2010: Q & A : "The people you deal with at the publishers ... if they last the end of the week, you're lucky."
07-27-10: Commentary : Rule Britannia, In Space : UK Space Opera Demonstrates Excess is Not Enough (Part one, the Arrived)
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Brian and Wendy Froud at SF in SF on Monday, July 19, 2010 : "Well, I thought if I do faeries then nobody's going to say that I've got it wrong."
07-26-10: Commentary : Brian and Wendy Froud Seek 'The Heart of Faerie Oracle' : Cards, Books and a New Perspective
07-20-10: Commentary : Adam Elenbaas is Caught by 'Fishers of Men' : The Gospel of an Ayahuasca Vision Quest
Agony Column Podcast News Report : The Agony Column Live, July 10, 2010 : Alan Cheuse and Peter S. Beagle : "There are certain phrases I'm leery of using; one's "the creative process" and the other is "inspiration." ” Peter S. Beagle "Habit is the best thing for you if you're trying to write prose." ” Alan Cheuse
07-19-10: Commentary : Phil Cousineau is the 'Wordcatcher' : A Selectionary for Curious Mind
07-09-10: Commentary : Harlan Ellison's 'Deathbird Stories' : Back from the Dead and Ready to Party
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Three Books With Alan Cheuse : Everything by Kevin Canty, The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson by Kim Stanley Robinson, and Glorious by Bernice McFadden
07-07-10: Commentary : Kitchen Testing 'The New Vegetarian Epicure' and 'Get Cooking' : Lentil Power
Agony Column Podcast News Report : The Agony Column Live, June 26, 2010 : Mollie Katzen and Anna Thomas, Part Two : "'You should really write a cookbook,' and I thought, 'Yeah, that's a good idea...'"
07-06-10: Commentary : Anna Thomas Cooks Up 'Love Soup' : Recipes, Menus and Meals
Agony Column Podcast News Report : The Agony Column Live, June 26, 2010 : Mollie Katzen and Anna Thomas, Part One : Time to Get Cooking Because You Love Soup : "It makes a huge difference really, really, it does, to completely clean up when you're done."
07-05-10: Commentary : Abraham Verghese Will Not Be 'Cutting for Stone' : Stories of Spirit and Words of Comfort
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Abraham Verghese : "Literature has a wonderful ability to restore your imagination for the suffering of others."
07-02-10: Commentary : Sloane Crosley Asks 'How Did Get This Number' : Excellent Essays for the Short of Temper
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Live Interview With Sloane Crosley : We Did Not Mention the Title of Her Essay 'Fuck You, Columbus'
06-30-10: Commentary : Mark Charan Newton Enters 'City of Ruin' : Inspector Jeryd Rides Again
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Panel Discussion at SF in SF on June 12, 2010, with Seanan McGuire, Deborah Grabien and Terry Bisson : "Coke Black was just a horrible thing unleashed on an unsuspecting world."
06-29-10: Commentary : 'Twelve,' 'Thirteen,' Tongues of Serpents,' and 'The Strange Affair of Spring-Heeled Jack' : Historical SF & Horror Makes Rousing Summer Reading
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Seanan McGuire Interviewed at SF in SF, June 12, 2010 : "If I have my unbreakables, I can set my conditionals."
06-28-10: Commentary : Jennifer Egan Gets 'A Visit from the Goon Squad' : Revisiting the Novel Genre
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Conversation with Jennifer Egan : "The characters and the action led the way... I was led into the future not so much because I was thinking, 'I want to write about the future,' but more because I wanted to re-visit this particular person."
06-23-10: Commentary : Adam Langer Corrals 'The Thieves of Manhattan' : Lies, Balderdash and the Absolute, Unvarnished Truth
06-21-10: Commentary : Linda Greenlaw is 'Seaworthy' : Back to the Grand Banks in Not-So-Grand Style
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Linda Greenlaw : "Well, I call him up and tell him I'm going to the Grand Banks and he pretty much signs himself right up."
06-17-10: Commentary : Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud Lives 'A Life on Paper' : Translating the Ineffable
06-15-10: Commentary : Donald R. Burleson Whispers 'Wait for the Thunder' : Stories for a Stormy Night
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Three Books With Alan Cheuse : Lucyby Laurence Gonzalez, Spies of the Balkansby Alan Furst, A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
06-14-10: Commentary : James P. Othmer Drinks the 'Holy Water' : Backing Into the Future
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2009 Interview with Juliet Schor : "...We need to move to much more open, collaborative, sharing knowledge systems."
06-10-10: Commentary : Brett Easton Ellis Peers Inside 'Imperial Bedrooms' : Panic After the Year Zero
06-09-10: Commentary : Dan Dion and Paul Provenza Free the '!Satiristas!' : Bleeding the Comedians
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Conversation with Paul Provenza and Dan Dion : "I was raised to respect the printed word so much, when I was in school, I couldn't highlight books..."
06-08-10: Commentary : China Miéville Unleashes 'Kraken' : Comedy of Tentacles
06-03-10: Commentary : Justin Cronin Enters 'The Passage' : A girl who saves the world
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Three Books With Alan Cheuse : The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson, The Nearest Exit by Olen Steinhauer, The Passage by Justin Cronin
06-02-10: Commentary : 'Animythical Tales' by Sarah Totton and 'Metrophilias' by Brendan Connell : Better Seeds
06-01-10: Commentary : The Return of The Agony Column : Logic, License and Habit
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Karl Marlantes : "..these are common human foibles and failings, it's just that they get magnified in a combat, war situation..."
