Last night, David Mitchell gave a reading at my store. I was nervous about meeting him to be honest. Would I babble too much, what if he wasn’t cool at all, what if he looked down on ‘bookstore’ people (some authors do, trust me—not a good way to endear yourself to a store and get your book prominently displayed)? He turned out to be a most charming and friendly guy, looking very English in his grey ‘jumper’ and black pants. I had no idea how handsome he is! He read from 2 sections of Cloud Atlas: first the Cavendish section where he’s hiding in the hedge spying on the house, and second, from the Hawaii future section where Noah tells the story of the slaughter of his family. Then David took requests from the audience. A man, who may not have been paying attention, asked for more Cavendish and Mitchell obliged, reading the section where Timothy realizes where precisely his brother sent him to hide out.
After reading, David fielded questions from the audience, which had shown up in droves by the way, considering the terrible weather outside. Questions ranged from ‘how did the idea for 6 nested novellas come about’ to ‘how did he come up with the dialect in the Hawaii novella’. He lived in Japan for 8 years and cited the Japanese authors he read while there are huge influences on his writing. He named Mishima, Oe, and Murakami (duh!). And his favorite Beatles’ album is revolver. He considers Abbey Road ‘too embroidered’. What an intelligent and well-spoken man!
He signed books for everyone and chatted to each person waiting in line. After that, several of the booksellers, Mitchell, his driver and I went out for drinks. We went to a bar down the street and ordered some food. It was after 9 at this point and we were all famished. Topics ran amuk at the table. We went around and listed the most famous people we each had met (sounds like summer camp doesn’t it?). At the end, we played the game from the David Lodge book (I can’t remember which one) where you name a famous book you haven’t read and get points for each person who has read it.
All in all, the night was great. Mr. Bookdwarf had a wonderful dinner waiting for me when I got home. David Mitchell is not only a brilliant novelist, but a genuinely nice person to meet. The kind of guy you’d love grabbing beers with after work. I can’t help but hope he wins the Booker next month.
P.S. I took some pictures with my camera phone. They suck, but what are you going to do?

David Mitchell signing books

David Mitchell behind a giant pile of his book Cloud Atlas

As Galley Cat pointed out earlier today, the NYT Book Review reveals its new format this week. It is slightly different, but still covers more non-fiction than fiction. Some columns’ names have been changed (‘Paperback Row’ instead of ‘New and Noteworthy Paperbacks’, etc. Why they felt the need to change this I don’t know) and the look is slightly different as well. What is new this week is the thorough bashing Joe Queenan gives A.J. Jacobs book The Know-It-All. “Deluded into believing that his enterprise has made him smarter, Jacobs constantly seeks to bedazzle the reader with his latest shocking discoveries, unaware that things he perceives as riveting arcana are common knowledge in many quarters.” Ow. “Far from becoming the smartest man in the world, Jacobs, at the end of his foolish enterprise, wouldn’t even be the smartest person at Entertainment Weekly.” Wow, that’s a kick in the crotch.

According to this Guardian quiz I am a literary genius.

Born to be Wilde
Congratulations. You are a literary genius. You clearly have spent far too many warm summer days indoors writing frightening verse to a buck-toothed girl in Luxembourg. Go out and get some fresh air and buy a Gareth Gates record. (and if you don’t know what we’re talking about, you’re a lot less sad than us)

I have’t been updating the books I have been reading that much lately. I just keep coming across stuff that I will read too quickly to even mention. Last Friday I found a galley of a new book by Mary Doria Russell called A Thread of Grace, due out in February 2005. Honestly, it was just okay. It read a bit like a TV movie. Teh novel is set during the end of WWII in Italy. Apparently in real life Italian citizens formed a network to help save the lives of 43,000 Jews (this is from the back of the book. I do not know how they got such a specific number). She bases the book on this and creates an entire cast of characters. There are multiple people to keep track of—Clauette Blum and her father Albert Blum, refugees scrambling over the Alps, Renzo Leoni, an Italian Jew who seems like the bad boy with the good heart. And there are many others. But they seem all seem like typecast characters. The energy keeps you going through the book, but the whole time I kept wondering who they were going to cast for each character.
And yesterday I picked up a copy of Don Lee’s Country of Origin which has been sitting on my office shelf for a while. I have not finished it yet, but it’s good so far. This book follows the disappearance of Lisa Countryman, an American who came to Japan in search of herself. When she goes missing, her sister urges the U.S. Embassy and the Tokyo police into action. I will let you know when I finish what I think.

Sorry about the cheezy title, but I am very excited. On Wednesday evening, David Mitchell will be appearing at the Harvard Book Store. For those of you in the Boston/Cambridge area, come check it out. It starts at 6:30 and no tickets are needed. I can barely contain my glee about this event. Yay!

So after reading over my previous post, I decided it kind of sucked. LNR’s Sean has put up his second half of the ‘Judging the Booker by the Cover’ here. It’s too funny. He’s got better pictures of the covers, as does Max a the Millions. And the Guardian has a breakdown of all 6 books today, which is great since I hadn’t heard of several. Excuse me while I find some inspiration for some interesting posts.

Sean over at the LNR Books diary has a hilarious post today on judging books by their covers and the Booker Shortlist books. It’s a two part post and in the first one he dissects the covers of The Master, Cloud Atlas, and Bitter Fruit. I thought it might be a good idea to do the same to the American versions, as they most often change the covers completely. The problem I ran into was finding pictures of all the books. I’ll Go to Bed at Noon by Gerard Woodward and The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall remain elusive still.

The Master by Colm Toibin: Some sort of Turner picture on the cover here. Nice and bland as far as I am concerned.
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst: A nice simple cover picturing a street through a gate? I don’t know. My computer here sucks. It’s a pretty picture though.
Bitter Fruit by Achmat Dangor: I don’t know what the hell is going on in this cover. Like I mentioned before, crappy computer, but I imagine its some sort of fruit? Bitter perhaps? Who knows. The worst of the lot so far.
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell: As you can see, I could only find one rather smallish picture of Cloud Atlas. The pictures are either too small or too big. The American cover is way better than the UK edition. Ours has 6 images of clouds in various colors, the 6 referencing the story I imagine. It’s nice.
So far, I think The Line of Beauty has the best cover. Any opinions? My discussion is not nearly as creative as LNR’s I realize. Sorry, it’s Friday and I am lacking wit and verve today.

Max from The Millions left this comment the other day:

People are probably going to hate what I have to say about this, but I’m going to say it anyway. I love Maud’s blog and her article on blogging and its addictive qualities is right on the money, but I don’t understand why someone like Maud, who treats blogging like it’s her job and does it well enough that it should be, doesn’t try to *make it her job.* Or at least a part time job to stave off the guilt of spending so much time on it. There are a lot of great bloggers out there, and a lot of them are worried about selling out and concerned about promoting a certain behemoth internet book store, but the fact is that since thousands of people visit Maud’s blog every day, there are ways, unobtrusive ways, for her to make a little money off of that blog. And since when is it so bad to get paid for writing? We live in a world where associations with big, somewhat unsavory companies are a regular part of daily life, so would anybody really hold it against Maud, or any other blogger who delivers such outstanding daily nourishment, if he or she had an opportunistic relationship with the big A or laid a few unassuming text ads on us? I should hope not. Thoughts?

I agree with the sentiment that people like Maud provide a valuable service not to mention the entertainment. I wish she could get paid. I do this while at work as a lark. I don’t know how much my employers would appreciate the hours I spend trolling the internet, reading various blogs. Probably not much. But it does take a lot of time, posting and so forth even with such a small blog like mine. Maud’s is huge—she has an enormous amount of readers and tons of posts everyday. I wouldn’t mind a few ads or so. Most sites have them anyway. And I don’t think it would make her blog any less ‘real’ if she got some sort of financial reward for her work. Does anyone else have an opinon?