About Last Year

2009 was a singular year for me. When I say singular I mean it in the Sherlock Holmes way, not the opposite-of-plural way. I've always had the habit of adopting certain words or speech patterns from the books I read, and I'm currently on a Sherlock Holmes bender. It could be worse. It has been worse. Like the time I tried to read The Canterbury Tales in Middle English.

If you don't count all the baby books and manuscripts I read last year, I didn't read a whole lot. Which partially explains the on-line silence. In truth, I was so busy figuring out how to balance my career and my new son and the death twitches of my social life that I didn't make time for pleasure reading, or blogging. That was 2009. This is 2010. I've recovered from the shock of parenthood, am moderately well-rested, and have resumed my old habits and ticks. I have goals. One of them is to update this blog at least every other week. I know, it's a big jump from twice annually. But here goes.

Another thing that got overlooked in 2009? Queries. Because when agents are crunched for time, that's one of the first things that gets pushed to the side. Queries don't seem as urgent or important as a pending translation deal, or a film contract, or submitting an author's manuscript, and for the most part, they aren't. However, for someone like me, who has found so many clients in the so called slush, I can't afford to let them go unread. I've recommitted myself to my query pile. I've vowed to do what it takes to read them within four weeks (as our website promises). Even if "what it takes" means late nights and overcaffeination and... (I'm loath to admit to this)... interns.

I've come to think of interns as publishing's dirty little secret. Sometimes I wonder if the industry would run without them. I've had interns in the past, but always to assist with the more mechanical and administrative aspects of my job. I've never trusted anyone to read my queries because, well, they're my queries and I feel absurdly protective of them. No one has quite my taste, so how will they be able to weed out what I'll like? What if they miss something? And don't I owe it to every author to personally read their query, since they personally chose to write to me? All valid concerns. But the reality was that I couldn't create enough time to read them. Interns have their drawbacks, but without one there was no way I'd be able to manage my queries efficiently give every author the response they deserve in something resembling a timely fashion.

With the help of two brilliant interns I've now read everything that was sent to me in January, and most of what came in December and November. However, with so much new material coming in daily I've decided to focus my attention on the most recent queries. From here on out, I will not continue to read old e-mail queries: so much of the material is no longer available, or is being revised, and as you can imagine, authors aren't all that pleased to hear from me after such a delay, and are not shy about expressing their displeasure. So, if you sent me a query before November and have not heard back, please feel free to resubmit. I will do my best to respond within four weeks.

On most days there is a lot to do that is more immediately lucrative reading my queries. But something keeps bringing me back to them, day after day. It's that little thing called hope. Hope that the next query you read will transport you and give you that thrill of discovery. It's not dissimilar to the hope I imagine that writers feel when they send their query off into the ether. Most days I won't find anything. But one day I will. And it will make all the other days worth it.

Declaration

This weekend Amazon removed all of Macmillan's books, both print and electronic editions, from their store. What that means is that only used copies of these books are available on Amazon, so the author has no chance of making any money from any sales off Amazon. Amazon accounts for such a large percentage of overall book sales that removing these books, even just for a weekend, could be crippling.

What happened? Briefly, Macmillan wants electronic versions of hardcover new releases to be priced somewhere between $12 and $15, instead of Amazon's ubiquitous $9.99. When Amazon wouldn't budge on the price, Macmillan said they would delay the release of e-book editions 7 months after hardcover release. Maybe this was the point where Amazon went ape shit and pulled all of Macmillan's books, in a knee jerk show of anger and power.

Macmillan is the parent company to St. Martin's Press, Holt, FSG, Tor, Picador, and others. Our agency has quite a lot of authors with Macmillan, particularly with Tor and St. Martin's Press. Obviously, our authors are deeply impacted. They are puzzled over how quickly their books were taken hostage in this sudden corporate war. And they are pissed.

What really gets me is Amazon's school yard bully response. The debate is over e-book pricing, so if they had to flex their muscles and beat their chests why not just remove the electronic editions? Why extend this to print editions, when there is no issue with that format? It seems petty and mean. What could Amazon possibly gain? Not any sales, and not any good publicity. See John Scalzi's post for a play by play on how they've taken every opportunity to forfeit business and alienate customers.

Sunday afternoon Amazon caved and offered this explanation to its customers (though as of this posting none of the Macmillan titles I've checked are available of purchase). Here's the relevant part of the letter:

We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books.

This made me laugh. I don't have a business degree or anything, but saying that Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, isn't that like complaining that Crest Toothpaste has a monopoly over Crest Toothpaste? In other words, can you really call having control over your own products a monopoly? It seems like Amazon is really trying to paint a picture where they're just some small honest retailer trying their damnedest to give their customers the best deal they can, but are being undermined by big bad Macmillan and their "monopoly." Give me a break. The relationship between publishers and retailers has been ludicrously lopsided for as long as I've been in the industry, with the lion's share of the power residing with the retailer. More and more books are packaged and repackaged to please Barnes & Noble, and an outdated returns systems protects retailers and guarantees that publishers foot the bill for any unsold stock. In this environment, publishers (even Macmillan), are the little guys. It's refreshing to see one of them stand up to a retailer, and win.

Which isn't to say that I'm happy with Macmillan. They recently rewrote their publishing contracts to stipulate that authors receive 20% of net for all e-books sold. This is significantly below what has been emerging as industry standard, and so far John Sargent has been unapologetic about such low-balling. I find his reasoning infuriating, and it's somewhat gratifying to see Amazon fall victim to his stubbornness. Also, it's possible that despite the price hike, the author's share may end up being less under this new model. No, I'm not normally disposed to take Macmillan's side, but it's an easy call here.

This latest Amazon stunt has pushed me over the edge. I can no longer in good conscious buy any more stuff from them. I've had this thought before, but hesitated to make such a declarative statement, not wanting to take it back later (and I can just spend hours reading Amazon's reader reviews). But this time it's personal. Amazon has just cost me money, and not in the I-can't-believe-I-actually-ordered-these-red-glitter-grips way. Not that they will miss my business. But I'm betting a lot of other authors (particularly Macmillan authors) feel the same way as I do. And the thing about authors? They buy a lot of books.

Queries

I must take a moment to talk about Queries.  Because the internet is big and wide and endless and there is conflicting information about whether or not I respond to e-queries that I'm not interested in.  I wish I could blame this inconsistency on someone else, but it's my fault.  In a blog post from a year ago I wrote:

"I don't respond to e-queries that I'm not interested in. This is because at least 1 in every 5 writers e-mails me back to argue with my form letter, or to ask indignantly, "did you actually read my query?" and I have this stupid urge to write back and say something like "Read it? Your query and I have run off and joined the circus together. We are very happy. I hope you find similar fulfillment." Clearly, this is a vicious cycle that must be avoided, and I can't always trust my professionalism to win out over my idiotic creative impulses."

This was true at one time.  But not anymore.  I have been responding to every e-query I receive since last summer or so.  Because it makes me feel better about myself.  Really, I don't want to be that person who doesn't respond; I don't want to leave people hanging.   But there are rules.  You have to address the e-query to me.  And the e-query has to be for a book.  Simple rules, but they disqualify about 10% of the e-queries I receive.

Our agency website is and always has been up-to-date when it comes to what we do with e-queries.  But I want to be consistent, hence this post.

Writers have pointed out that I have exceeded the 4 week response time as stated on our agency website.  Sadly, this is true.  As the astute blog reader will have guessed from my previous post, I have a baby.  For the time being, I am no longer working nights and weekends. This has really cut into my Time for Queries.  My response time is currently closer to 10 weeks, but I am catching up.  There is some really great stuff in my inbox. If you are a writer who has sent me a query letter, or is considering it, I ask for your patience for the next month or two.

If you are a reader and wondering if I'll ever post about a book you want to read again, (i.e., a book that has nothing to do with pregnancy or babies), I will, and in the meantime, I promise not to say a damn word about The Happiest Baby on the Block.  

Baby Books

I'm not really sure why or how people come to this blog, but I'll bet it has nothing to do with an unplanned pregnancy. That's about to change. Lets say you suddenly find yourself "with child" and know nothing about pregnancy and childbirth except what you've picked up from novels like Chris Bohjalian's Midwives, and movies like Juno and Knocked Up. What do you do? Once you've overcome the fits of nervous/manic laughter you do the only truly comforting thing you can think of, and surround yourself with Baby Books.

The Baby Books section of the book store is really frightening for the first time browser. Which books do you chose? They all seem so bulky, and there are millions - all this at a time when you're not supposed to carry heavy loads. Can someone just give it to you straight? I'm going to try.  Here's a breakdown of my most memorable reads:

What to Expect When You're Expecting, by Heidi Murkoff, Arlene Eisenberg, and Sandee Hathaway.

These ladies have something like seven kids between the three of them, and seem to really know what they are talking about. The book itself is nearly 15 years old (first published in 1984), but it's revised every few years, and the edition I bought is from 2002. This was the first pregnancy book I read, and it was very helpful, since I knew practically nothing about pregnancy or babies.  For example, I learned that a baby's first dump is honored with a special name: meconium. Who says that the Right of Passage is dead in American culture?

So many people have since said to me, "I've heard that What to Expect is the worse book to read, really alarmist and it will make you so scared to be pregnant and give birth." I'm not sure why people say this. It just seems like something that's out there in the zeitgeist that people hear and repeat almost mindlessly (but with total conviction), like, "I heard Dennis Lehane's new book was disappointing," when they haven't even read it, or "Jane Eyre is my favorite book of all time."

True, some parts of What to Expect can be alarming. It's organized by month, and each month has a section called "What You May Be Concerned About." Topics for concern include some fairly hardcore concerns, like Venus Changes, Foot Problems, Skin Discoloration, Dental Problems (Bleeding Gums), Faintness and Dizziness, Pain and Numbness in the Hands, Rectal Bleeding and Hemorrhoids, Clogged Milk Duct, and my personal favorite concern, The Reality of Pregnancy. Sure, there is a lot to be concerned about. But I just skipped all the parts that didn't apply to me, which made this 500+ page book a real breeze. In any event, What to Expect has the same reassuring answer for every concern: every woman is different, and what you are experiencing is normal. These mothers are unflappable. They tell stories of doing belly plants at eight months, getting drunk and taking oral contraceptives during those early weeks before you know you're pregnant, and hey, their babies turned out fine.

Actually, what's alarming to me is how nothing seems to alarm these authors. They talk about truly frightening medical interventions in such a blase I'm Okay You're Okay tone that the reader really starts to wonder, "does anything get to them?" It's like how chronically calm people really start to get on your nerves after a while, and you start looking for ways to provoke them. I hope to someday come up with a Concern that makes Heidi, Arlene, and Sandee gasp in unison.

Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy, edited by Roger W. Harms, M.D.

My husband bought this book as a medical companion to What to Expect, but actually, it's not as medical as I had hoped. Really, I was hoping for lots of text book-like illustrations of internal organs, and where they go as the baby bullies them out of the way (I'm still not clear on that). This book is also broken down by month, and within that, by week, but the week-by-week information is really skimpy. The most interesting parts are the baby sketches that open each section and are labeled "thirty percent of actual size" or whatever, so if you wanted to spend way too much time teaching your photocopier percentages you could copy it, cut it out, and tape it to your stomach and feel like you know what's going on in there. But even so, I mean seriously Mayo Clinic, sketches? Disappointingly non-medical. I was hoping for real ultrasound photos, or those hideous 3-D photos.

There are other chapters in the Mayo Clinic book that prepare you for Your Newborn, Taking Your Baby Home, and Postpartum Care. There is also 100 pages devoted to Complications of pregnancy and childbirth. The whole tone of the book is very clinical and detached, which makes you think you're reading a text book, but without any of the illustrations. I would skip this one.

The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth, by Henci Goer.

Finally, we've got a handle on the basics and are getting to the good stuff. The Thinking Woman - that's me! When I first saw this book I sensed that Henci and I had a lot in common. Take the cover art - I could immediately see how the Thinking Woman would need to cut loose every now and then, get naked, wrap herself in toilet paper, and take some profile shots. I mean, I could write an entire post about this cover art, but I'll control myself and stick to the point.

I read this book on the heels of watching the documentary The Business of Being Born, or, as my husband refers to the experience: Watching Ricki Lake Give Birth in her Bathtub. It was an affecting documentary for me - overwrought and Michael Mooreish in places - but I knew I needed to get educated about all the drugs and procedures used on women in labor. And I sensed that Henci was seriously pissed off about them, which was a welcome change from Heidi, Arlene, and Sandee's complacency.

Henci has a serious axe to grind with the medical establishment, and western medicine in general. She, like Ricki Lake, wants to know why women give birth attended by surgeons, when the vast majority of births require no surgical intervention. The problem, as Henci sees it, is that "the typical obstetrician is trained to view pregnant and laboring women as a series of potential problems.... Obstetric belief tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It has been said that a healthy person is someone who hasn't undergone enough testing by specialists." As someone who avoids doctors and hospitals at all costs, I see her point. Whenever I enter a doctor's office or hospital, I'm driven by one simple goal - to get out as soon as possible, at whatever cost. 

But Henci takes things a bit too far, even for me. The book is organized by issue, with chapter headings like "The Cesarean Epidemic: Obstetrics on the Cutting Edge," "Induction of Labor: Mother Nature Knows Best," and "Episiotomy: The Unkindest Cut." I learned a lot from reading this book, but I could have done without all the mistrust she has for doctors, which sets up a very us-against-them type of dichotomy. At one point, she warns readers to keep a sharp eye on their doctor, who may perform an Amniotomy (breaking the water with this long crochet hook like thing) without even consulting the patient! Lets picture this one - you're in labor, and the doctor's there, you look the other way for a moment (or maybe the doctor distracts you with one of those, "hey, what's that behind you?!") and before you can protest he swoops in with a sneak-Amniotomy!

In Henci's defense, she is very upfront about her prejudices. Also, she's great at citing her sources and backing up her arguments - she makes a very persuasive case for having a low tech birth.

Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay, and Other Things I Had To Learn as a New Mom, by Stefanie Wilder-Taylor.

My friend Maria sent me this book. She's not pregnant or a mom, she's just a voracious reader of chick lit, and when she can't find any she grabs up hen lit, grief lit, and mom lit. I don't know what inspired her to read this, but I'm glad she sent it to me when she did, because it provided an excellent counterbalance to The Thinking Woman's Guide. This book is light and fun and humorous and about half as thick. And Stefanie breaks all The Thinking Woman's rules. She has a C-section. She's a bottle-feeder, and describes some very awkward and funny confrontation with "lactivists," - "if these people could breast-feed other people's babies, believe me, they would," and "stopping breast-feeding is like getting out of your Columbia Record and Tape Club membership; there are sinister forces at work that don't want to let this happen." She makes fun of all the questions you're supposed to ask when interviewing possible pediatricians (and you are supposed to interview dozens). I especially liked what she had to say about postpartum depression:

"Women experience postpartum depression in varying degrees. Mine was a pretty rough experience. A percentage of new moms don't get any depression at all. These are the same women who never suffer cramps with their periods, never experience the blinding pain of a migraine, and never had someone break up with them through e-mail. These are the sort of women who enjoyed junior high school. Feel free to resent them, everyone else does."

Another highlight was when Stefanie classified all the different kinds of moms that you will meet in the park while strollering your baby around: "Gossipy Mom," "Safety Patrol Mom," "Crunchy Mom," and "Burnout Mom" are among the categories. I also enjoyed the chapter on babysitter poaching. I didn't learn much from this book, but it was very entertaining, and just what I needed at the time.

Ina May's Guide to Childbirth, by Ina May Gaskin.
This was my favorite pregnancy read.  It's pretty crunchy (which I'm sort of into), but not as angry or combative as The Thinking Woman's Guide.  Ina May is a midwife who lives on a farm in Tennessee called The Farm, and has been catching babies with her fellow midwives for 20 plus years.  The first half of the book is all birth stories.  I loved reading these, and probably went through this part of the book three or four times.  It's annoying how non-specific everyone seems to be about their labor, like they can't really remember it, or don't want to tell you - and every woman begins or ends their labor stories with the ubiquitous Every Woman is Different mantra, so it's hard to get a handle on what really goes on.  That's probably why I latched onto these stories, especially the really long and detailed ones.  Some are recent, but others are from the 70s and 80s, and it seemed like whenever any of  these women go into labor the first thing they do is go on a hike with their husbands.  Seriously.  They walk through the woods and see trees and hills and animals rutting and their contractions (which are called "rushes") get stronger.  The hiking phase of labor must have really made an impression on me, because at some point during my own labor I made my husband take a walk down 23rd Street with me.  Like the women on The Farm, my "rushes" got so out of control that I started freaking out the homeless people - and I didn't even see a rat or squirrel.

The second half of the book talks about the phases of labor, and how your surroundings and emotional and psychological factors affect your progress.  Ina May also addresses hospital procedure, and all the devices you're likely to encounter; close to 99% of American women deliver their babies in hospitals, and the vast majority of these babies are caught by obstetricians instead of the midwives.  Henci had already done a thorough job of preparing me for all the nefarious hospital devices, so what I got out of this chapter was how to make myself as comfortable as possible in the hospital setting.  She makes an excellent point:  the cervix, like the anus, is a spincter muscle, and you have to be relaxed for it to open.  Case in point - people like their privacy when they take a dump.  So why are pregnant women expected to give birth in such brightly lit public places, surrounded by and hooked up to beeping machines, with nurses and doctors (and in some cases, survey takers) coming in and out?

Ina May is absolutely a proponent of natural birth ("natural" meaning unmedicated), but she's practical enough to know that most women in this country don't have that kind of birth experience, and so tailors her advice to a wider audience.

Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way, by Susan McCutcheon.

This is one of those books that's so bad it's good.  Every time the word "Bradley" appears on the page (approximately 100 times per page), there's a registered trademark after it, like this: Bradley(R), or this:  Bradley Method(R), which I found really amusing, and eventually really annoying.  The author is adamant that childbirth doesn't have to be painful, and that for some women, herself included, it is orgasmic.  (Which makes you wonder what exactly constitutes an orgasm for these women...).  The primary way to have an orgasmic labor is to get your husband to massage your back just so.  This is what I love about this book: it takes all the pressure off you and puts it on your husband.  If he can only master the Bradley(R) massage technique, you'll climax your way through childbirth.  No pressure honey!

Here's some typical advice for husbands which I'm guessing hints at Susan's husband's learning curve, and gives you an idea of the tone of  the book:

"Have your hand in place before the contraction starts.  Don't wait for her to tell you the contraction is under way and then try to put your hand on her back.  That's sloppy.  It is exactly what the untrained husband does when trying to help his wife, and it's exactly why she tells him to leave her alone."

I'm not recommending this book, but if you see it in the bookstore, you should flip through and check out the illustrations, which sketch out the Bradley(R) exercises you should be doing with your husband.  Notice that the pregnant partner always performs these excises naked, while the non-pregnant partner always wears 70s style athletic shorts.

From the Hips: a Comprehensive, Open-minded, Uncensored, Totally Honest Guide to Pregnancy, Birth, and Becoming a Parent, by Rebecca Odes and Ceridwen Morris.

My neighbor lent me this book pretty late in the game, when I was pretty burned out on Baby Books and pretty much thought I knew everything there was to know.  But I had fun skimming through it and reading the belly shaped bubbles that have quotes from "anonymoms".  I'm very glad I read it, because it was the only book of the bunch that talked about postpartum physical stuff.  Like, it's normal for women to lose a lot of hair after they give birth, so much that their hairline might recede.  And you bleed for six weeks and can't take a bath.  And most women still look pregnant for the first couple of weeks, so don't lose your shit when the delivery guy smiles and wants to know when you are due.  

I wish I had read this book earlier.  When it comes to pregnancy, it's almost as comprehensive as What to Expect, and more fun to read.  It feels more current and fresh.  The authors address all the big controversies without pushing any side too hard (which is nice, but at that point I wanted to read someone with an opinion, and I wished the authors would have told their birth stories).  What else can I say?  The subtitle pretty much has it covered.

Be Prepared: A Practical Handbook for New Dads,  by Gary Greenberg and Jeannie Hayden.

I shouldn't admit this, but this is the only book I read during my pregnancy about what to do once the pregnancy is over, i.e., what to do with the resulting baby.  I had been given Dr. Sears' Baby Book, (aka the attachment parenting bible), and the American Academy of Pediatrics' Your Baby's First Year, but for some reason I never made it very far into these books.  I blame this on the one lesson I took away from my birthing class - that early labor would be very long, and I should STAY HOME DURING EARLY LABOR.  I had big plans for Early Labor, which I'd heard could last around 18 hours.  In addition to taking my nature walk down 23rd Street, I was going to pack my bag, make a Labor Mix for my iPod, call my Mom, compose an Out Of the Office Autoreply and set a Maternity Leave message on my work phone, and oh, I don't know, power through some books about what it's like to have a baby around.  I don't know what was wrong with me.  Perhaps, as the ladies from What To Expect might have suggested, I was still coming to grips with The Reality of Pregnancy, or at least the reality of how pregnancy generally leads to an infant.

This book is great.  Since it's written for Dads, it assumes that the reader knows nothing about babies, lacks the elusive maternal instinct, bores easily, and needs accompanying illustrations.  The back of the book promises to help you MacGyver your way through your baby's first year, by teaching you how to turn old socks into a diapers, and "create a decoy drawer full of old wallets, remote controls, and cell phones to throw  baby off the scent of your real gear."  There are some really helpful suggestions and DIY tips, all told succinctly and with humor.  For example:

"If you have an aversion to the breast pump, it's completely understandable.  After all, it's a bit unnerving watching a mechanical device mercilessly slurping at your partner's bare chest.  You can't help but think, "If robots made pornography, this is what it would look like.""

And:

" Never, ever wake your partner for sex.  It's like taking food away from a wild animal."

I've learned why babies are so impressed with Peek-A-Boo (they think your head literally disappears when you hide it), to prolong the life of pajamas that baby's grown out of by cutting off the feet, and the delicate art of transferring a sleeping baby from your arms to a crib (allowing me to finish off this post with two hands).  To celebrate my increased typing speed, let's have another quote, on the necessity of babyproofing:

"As soon as your baby becomes mobile, you come to realization that she doesn't possess the greatest survival instincts.  If anything, it seems like she's bent on self-destruction.  If there is a staircase, she will attempt to fling herself down it; if there is an outlet, she will try to stick something into it; and if there's an inch of water anywhere, she will try to lie in it, facedown.  It's like she's auditioning for some baby version of Jackass."

This is where I'll call it quits.  There are only eight books reviewed here, which isn't anywhere near the number of books I originally wanted to write about, but when you have a baby around, you learn very quickly to set such  grandiose goals aside, and take a damn nap.

City of Thieves by David Benioff

David Benioff is probably best known for writing The 25th Hour, a gritty crime novel which he then adapted into a Spike Lee film starring Edward Norton. He also wrote the screenplay for Troy (which I won't hold against him), and adapted Khalid Hosseini's The Kite Runner (which I haven't yet seen). However, my first introduction to David Benioff was a few years ago when someone handed me his second book, a short story collection entitled When the Nines Roll Over. It's a wonderful collection, and even now, years later, two of the stories, "The Devil Comes to Orekhovo" and the last story, "Merde for Luck," (which struck me so hard that I photocopied it and mailed it to a dozen of my friends) are still floating around in my head.

But what I really want to talk about is Benioff's latest novel, City of Thieves, which was published in May and I read recently on a rather harrowing plane ride. I seem to have this bad habit of never reading the book that an author is best known for; for example: in college I read almost everything Kurt Vonnegut wrote except for Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five; I've read some Philip Roth, but not American Pastoral or Portnoy's Complaint; and just yesterday, when deciding which Connie Willis book to read, I chose To Say Nothing of the Dog over Doomsday Book, in part because I was told that she's best known for Doomsday Book. This list could go on and on. And with David Benioff - I've read two of his books, neither of which are The 25th Hour. I have every intention to read it, seriously, I do. I want to read it. But a part of me has resigned myself to the fact that it might never happen, due to whatever odd bit of psychology has kept me from reading Slaughterhouse Five all these years, despite owning two perfectly good copies. One of the many reasons I'll never be a real book reviewer or critic.

City of Thieves takes place during the siege of Leningrad, when two young men (strangers) accused of desertion are given a ludicrous mission: they have five days to steal a dozen eggs for the colonel's daughter's wedding cake. Of course, if you know your history, you'll remember that everyone in Leningrad is starving. There are no eggs. People are eating dirt. Hell, people are selling dirt to other people as food! Also for sale as food: the glue that holds books together (called Library Candy). And this colonel wants eggs to bake a cake? The concept alone felt like love at first site.

And check out the first line: "You have never been so hungry; you have never been so cold." A great opening line. But technically, this isn't really the first line - the novel has a framing story (basically a prologue) to set things up. Readers of this blog know that I'm no great lover of prologues, but this one works. In it we are introduced to David, who is writing a piece about his grandparents' experiences during the siege of Leningrad. He tells us that his grandfather talked most about one week in January 1942, when "he met my grandmother, made his best friend, and killed two Germans." This is a promise to the reader of what's to come, and it really adds a lot of fun and tension to the story. At times, reading City of Thieves reminded me of watching that bad CBS show with Neil Patrick Harris, How I Met Your Mother, because every time Lev (the grandfather) meets a woman you think, "ooh, could this be the grandmother?" You also wonder how the hell Lev, a scrawny 17-year-old and self-confessed coward, is ever going to kill two Germans.

Here's how it begins: Lev Beniov is caught out after curfew by Red Army soldiers and accused of theft and desertion. He's thrown in a cell with another boy/man, Kolya, who is also accused of desertion. Kolya is Lev's polar opposite - he's tall, blond, handsome, and charismatic, where Lev is short, scrawny, and chronically terrified. Both boys expect to be shot in the morning, and nearly are, but they are saved by the colonel who wants the eggs. They have five days to bring back a dozen eggs, and the colonel confiscates their ration cards, so they can't simply disappear.

The next five days are full of everything I look for in a story: adventure and danger and mystery, some absurdity, some emotional moments, an "ah-ha" moment or two (for the characters, not me), and good writing. I loved this book, and heartily recommend it.

Go With Me by Castle Freeman Jr.

This book was recommended to me by an editor whose recommendations I've come to take seriously. The last book he sent my way was Don Winslow's The Death and the Life of Bobby Z, which is a fast read and a lot of fun. Go With Me was published earlier this year by Steerforth Press, an independent publisher in New Hampshire. I decided to take a chance and spring for it in hardcover. It's very nicely packaged as literary fiction, though the plot and pacing have more in common with genre fiction - suspense in particular. It's definitely worth the $21.95.

The plot is very straightforward - in a small rural New England town, a young woman named Lillian is being stalked by the local villain, Blackway. Her boyfriend Kevin left town in fear. When Blackway kills Lillian's cat, she goes to the Sheriff for help. The novel opens the morning after her cat's death. Lillian has slept in her car, curled up with a paring knife for protection, parked outside the Sheriff's office.

The Sheriff says he can't help her - that he can't arrest a man for what he intends to do, but hasn't done yet. But he tells her to go ask for Whizzer at the old mill, that he might be able to do something. At the mill, long defunct, Whizzer is drinking beer with a half dozen other guys. Nate the Great, a young, strong, and brash young man, and Les, who's really old but knows a lot of tricks, volunteer to help Lillian. The trio sets off to find Blackway.

From here, the narrative alternates between the search for Blackway, and Whizzer and the guys at the mill, drinking and shooting the shit and filling in the background information.

The great thing about this novel (or novella rather - it's a slim 160 pages, and easily read in one sitting) is how Freeman Jr. develops the villain, Blackway. First of all, Blackway is a classic name for a bad guy, summoning up fairy tales and old style quest stories. But the most brilliant thing is how we don't meet or see Blackway until the very end of the novel, during the final confrontation scene. We hear that he's been terrorizing Lillian, and we get a series of what seem like tall tales surrounding Blackway from Whizzer and the group of men drinking at the mill. Nate the Great repeats his answer of "I ain't afraid of Blackway," to most questions Lillian asks, and somehow, the more you hear this mantra, the more you get the impression that he really should be afraid; deeply afraid. We have no idea what Blackway looks like - tall, short, light or heavy build - or even how old he is. All we know is that everyone except Nate is scared shitless of him, including the local Sheriff. Blackway ran Lillian's boyfriend out of town with just a few words. It's a subtle, suspenseful, and effective building of a bad guy that definitely had me afraid of Blackway and thinking that if I were Lillian, I'd turn tail and get the hell out of town.

Nate the Great and Les play off each other perfectly. Nate's the young pup always ready to start a fight and prove himself, and Les is crafty enough to get them out of some really sticky situations relying solely on his wits and the surroundings (like a MacGyver of whorehouses and bar fights). They are a classic quest couple, as different and complimentary as Don Quixote and Sancho. The tension and violence increase the closer they get to Blackway, and meanwhile, the conversation among Whizzer and co. hints at new information that puts their quest in a new light. As the sun sets the trio moves toward the final confrontation. At this point I was really nervous and anxious to finally meet Blackway. And he didn't disappoint.

The whole novel takes place in the span of 24 hours. It's smart, concise, well-plotted, well-written, and very engaging. I'd recommend it to just about everyone.

Thirteen by Richard Morgan

I'm a big Philip K. Dick fan - or at least I was in college, when I read most of his books - and I've been meaning to read Altered Carbon for years, but I decided to pick up Thirteen (or Th1rte3n) first. It was initially published in the UK as Black Man, (with that lovely British lack of racial sensitivity) because the main character, Carl Marsalis, is black. He's also a thirteen, which is a genetically altered male trained from birth for combat, and just general violence and aggression. The idea is that civilized society has been overly feminized, since the true alpha males (I pictured them as the cave men from those Geico commercials) have been slowly bred out. Thirteens were part of a genetic engineering experiment to bring these traits back. But thirteens are hated and feared by society, and not allowed to breed. They live on the fringes, either in hiding or trying to "pass," work as covert operatives, or have immigrated to colonial Mars.

The book is set primarily in a future America, which isn't that different from today. Civil war has split the nation in thirds - the Midwest and South are now Jesusland, governed by fundamental Christians. The West Coast succeeded and is known as the Rim States, and the North East seems to closely resemble the secularism and internationalism that New York City shoots for. Carl Marsalis works for UN, hunting down rogue thirteens. He's totally alone - normal humans are terrified of him, and other thirteens consider him a traitor. On the way back from his latest mission he gets stuck in Florida, picked up on a vice charge, and thrown into a Jesusland prison. After four months he's finally offered a way out - if he agrees to hunt down a thirteen who has somehow escaped from Mars and is killing seemingly random people all over the former US.

His partners are Tom Norton and Sevgi Ertekin. Sevgi is a former NYPD cop, who now works for COLIN, the CIA type organization that busted Marsalis out of jail. She's a great character - her parents are Turkish immigrants, she grew up Muslim and does her best to hold on to her faith in the face of scientific evidence to the contrary, and in spite of being a modern woman. She previously dated a thirteen who was "passing," so is no stranger to the type of prejudice and alienation they experience. There's an immediate attraction between her and Marsalis which leads to lots of great arguments and high-minded dialog, and eventually a deep friendship.

As a side note, I think it's worth mentioning that thirteens have a certain sex appeal, some je ne sais quoi that harks back to those primitive days when men were men and women were thrown over their shoulders or dragged off by their hair to be ravished up against the wall of some cave. Maybe it's because I live in a gay neighborhood, or because I see my fair share of underfed metrosexual hipster boys wherever I go, but the whole idea of a world that's swung too far toward the feminine really interested me. Check out this bit of dialog, which comes about halfway through the book, in a conversation between Sevgi and some Turkish guy:

"We index how civilized a nation is by the level of female participation it enjoys. We fear those societies where women are still not empowered, and with good cause. Investigating violent crime, we assume, correctly, that the perpetrator will most likely be male. We use male dominance as a predictor of trouble, and of suffering, because when all is said and done males are the problem."

It's a nice bit of stereotyping, but like the best stereotypes, it also has a ring of truth. Thirteen is full of great side issues like this, which are developed primarily through the characters' dialog, and give you some cool themes to chew on between reading sessions (because at 544 pages in hardcover, you probably won't breeze through this one in a single night). There's the whole way that the United States has split in three parts, the genetic engineering of humans (in addition to thirteens they've created bonobos, which are "primitive" women with amped up sex drives), and the way that Carl sees himself in relation to the rest of humanity, which could be read as a racial allegory.

As much as I liked this book, I did have some gripes. It begins with a very short prologue, and you don't figure out how that prologue relates to anything until at least 100 pages in (maybe more). This is a pet peeve of mine - I'm really not a fan of what I call the short cliff hanger prologue, where the author attempts to build suspense and tension by making the reader wonder, hey, what the hell was that prologue all about? And how does it relate to the main character, or chapters 1, 2, and 3, or, um, anything? When I have to ask these questions, my instinct is not to read the book with intensity and attention to detail, because I'm just burning for answers. My instinct is to be annoyed.

Also, though the story starts with Carl Marsalis, and this great fight/action scene, we only stay with him for two chapters, and then we bounce around between a bunch of other characters all over the former US. Again, not a technique that I'm fond of, especially so early in a book. We don't get back in Carl until page 110. I suppose the author makes it work, because eventually, all these characters are woven back into the story, even the very minor ones. However, I'm not sure if the satisfaction of seeing these (mostly minor) characters come back around, and the sense of recognition I got from that, was really worth the disorientation I felt in the beginning. I wasn't hooked into this story easily, or quickly.

However, once we get back to Carl the plot really takes off, and I was hooked. It's a dystopian noir crime novel, but when Carl wraps up the primary plot earlier than you'd expect, the story takes a deeper and sharper turn that I really liked. Some people complained about this early denouement, and I can see their point, because some of the danger and urgency gets sucked out of the story with 150 pages left to go, but this actually worked for me. I won't go into detail here, because I don't want to spoil the book for anyone. Suffice it to say that there are larger forces at work than the characters (or the reader) had imagined (mwah-hah-hah!).

Though the pacing feels uneven at times, I think Morgan hits a great balance between on-the-edge-of-your-seat action scenes, and long stretches of dialog, which he uses to develop and strenghthen the characters, and do some world-building. There's a know-it-all character, who is prone to lecturing and answering simple questions with long-winded rants that explain how the state of the world got from where it is now to where it is in the book. This character reminded me a bit of Jubal Harshaw from Heinlein's Stranger In a Strange Land. I liked him, and hey, there are worse ways to world-build, but I also found it gratifying when Carl, at one point, kicks his articulate ass for not getting to the point fast enough.

All things considered, this is a great book that I'm happy to recommend. Even if you have to push yourself through the first 100 pages or so, and a some pretty slow stretches (like when Sevgi's in the hospital), it's well worth the read.

Also, I read an interview with Richard Morgan where he says some smart things about dystopias and heroes and anti-heroes. Here's a blurb that I liked:

"Well, it’s really not that hard to write dystopias – you only have to take a look around at what’s going on in the real world, and then extrapolate with pessimistic intent. Human beings have a habit of fucking things up, no matter what technological advances are made available, and the worst aspects of human nature never seem to be far from emerging in all their malicious glory. None of the manifest scientific, social or cultural progress of the last century was able to prevent a catastrophic invasion of Iraq for small-minded corporate and geopolitical gain, or to bring Palestine any closer to a peaceful settlement than it was nearly sixty years ago in 1948. Greed and fear continue to dominate our political landscape despite everything we've achieved, and the hard won rationalism of the Enlightenment is now under renewed attack from a ferocious array of slobbering religious and superstitious morons. To be honest, you have to be remarkably optimistic to look all that in the face, and then imagine a future that ISN’T dystopian."

And on that happy note, I'll take my leave. Read the full interview here.