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By David Duhr, on April 26th, 2013  [Kevin Powers’ The Yellow Birds, a shamefully overhyped book (C4 review here), has just come out in paperback and continues to wail for attention: the book sports 11 full pages of laudatory front matter, including snippets from 27 reviews and several dozen blurbtastically purple and inane write-ups from novelists.
Many of these blurbs confuse C4 contributor Dave Duhr, so for the next couple of weeks he will be writing open letters to a few of these blurbers and we’ll run them in this space. Because we’re confused, too.
The first is addressed to Alice Sebold (The Lovely Bones), whose Yellow Birds blurb reads, “This is a novel I’ve been waiting for. The Yellow Birds is born from experience and rendered with compassion and intelligence. All of us owe Kevin Powers our heartfelt gratitude.”]
Dear Alice Sebold:
Hi!
I write to you today in the hopes that you’ll clarify for me the first line of your Yellow Birds blurb. When you said, “This is a novel I’ve been waiting for,” did you mean that when you wrote the blurb, you still had not received the manuscript? How long had you been waiting? Sometimes when I order a book the shipping takes nearly two weeks! So I understand your aggravation. But I wonder if it was really necessary to take a public potshot at Mr. Powers and/or his publicist for their tardiness in getting a copy to you.
It’s strange, too, that you would then write the rest of the blurb before receiving and reading the book. Unless you wrote the second and third lines days later, after the book arrived and after (I hope, though I’m not certain) reading it in its entirety? In which case—and this is solely for future reference, of course—I would have recommended expressing the passage of time in some manner. For example: “This is a novel I’ve been waiting for. (Dum dee dum dee dum.) Mail came today, no bird book. (Dum dee dum dee dum.) No mail on Saturdays now, WTF? (Dum dee dum dee dum.) Oh wow it came today! (Dum dee dum dee dum dee dum dee dum dee dum.) I have now read a few pages of The Yellow Birds and can confidently say that so far it seems born from experience and rendered with compassion and intelligence,” yada. …
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By C4 Staff, on April 11th, 2013  Our April podcast sessions are now up for free download, and we actually manage to stay sober and mostly on task this month. We cover a broad range of books, both new and old, chat about Amazon’s purchase of Goodreads, the accusations kerfuffle around Jane Goodall’s upcoming (maybe) book, and hope that if Jim Carrey does a book tour to promote his new book, he gives all his readings by pretending to talk with his butt cheeks.
No Drunk Review this month (you can look forward to Rob Zombie’s Lords of Salem in May), but we did play another round of of the surprisingly popular Kakutani game.
Subscribe on iTunes here. If you’d rather the direct RSS feed, here you go.
Have any topic or reading suggestions, or comments about the show? Please email them to info@chamberfour.com or shoot us a tweet.
By C4 Staff, on March 20th, 2013  The remainder of our AWP ‘casts are now up for your listening pleasure. Leading the docket: Marc’s drunk review of Newt Gingrich’s nearly indigestible historical novel about George Washington. He also recites some poetry, and teaches the suddenly-sonorous Aaron Block what shotgunning is.
Then, we cap off AWP 2013 by bringing in some friends for a special bonus episode. Eric took the liberty of going through the AWP panel schedule and picking out the dumbest names (“1963: 50 Years Later” / “Looking for Real-Life Humberts: The Unreliable Narrator in Creative Nonfiction”), and we, somewhat–sorry–sloppily, share them with you.
Subscribe on iTunes here. If you’d rather the direct RSS feed, here you go.
Have any topic or reading suggestions, or comments about the show? Please email them to info@chamberfour.com or shoot us a tweet.
By C4 Staff, on March 15th, 2013 
We had a great time at AWP last week, talking books with friends old and new. Thanks to everyone who stopped by to say hi. It did get a little boring behind that table at times, so we brought the Page Count on the road. This month’s episode is split between the 3 days of AWP. Check them out on iTunes, or stream them below. We cover tons of books, interview a number of interesting people, and of course get a little silly.
Stay tuned to our iTunes feed next week, as we have some special AWP After Hours episodes we’re going to release every few days, including the hotly anticipated Drunk Review of Newt Gingrich’s Victory at Yorktown. Poor Marcos had to suffer through that monstrosity, but Aaron rewards him by trying on mic to shotgun a beer for the very first time. #teamhardcore
Subscribe on iTunes here. If you’d rather the direct RSS feed, here you go.
Have any topic or reading suggestions, or comments about the show? Please email them to info@chamberfour.com or shoot us a tweet.
By Nico Vreeland, on March 6th, 2013  You haven’t heard much from us this week, and unfortunately that will continue, because we’re gearing up for and attending AWP, which is in Boston this year.
If you’re going to be there, stop by table Z-29 in the Bookfair and say hi. We’ll have some bookmarks (and some books) to give away, and we’ll be canvassing hard for submissions for the fourth issue of our lit mag.
If you’re not going, have a good week, and we’ll see you back here next Monday when regular programming resumes.
By Nico Vreeland, on February 25th, 2013  Ever since we first started this website, I’ve been staunchly anti-Kindle. I’ve disliked like Amazon’s DRM scheme, its reluctance to adopt library ebooks, its inhuman use of “Locations” instead of page numbers, its attempt to hardball Macmillan by refusing to sell Macmillan books, the list goes on.
When a Sony Reader was the only decent non-Kindle choice, I bought a Sony Reader. When the Nook Color came out, I got one of those. I’ve given my sister another Sony, and my mother a Kobo, and I’ve stayed firmly Kindle-less for more than four years now.
But that changed last week, when I broke down and ordered the Kindle Paperwhite ($120), which appeared (until that day) on our Ereader Comparison under the category “Those we don’t like.” We’d passed over it in favor of the Kindle Touch (which has been discontinued), and the Kobo Mini ($80, touch capable, more below).
Here’s why I did it. Some of these reasons might be more subjective than others, and some I’ve researched more thoroughly. And, because most of my reservations about the Kindle are philosophical ones, some of my understanding of its hardware and interface might be flat-out wrong. I’ll be updating and posting again when I actually start using it. …
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By Nico Vreeland, on February 25th, 2013  We’ve had the Nook ereader family on our Do Not Buy list for quite a while now, since the first ominous portents from B&N HQ. A year and a half ago, B&N announced they were no longer quite so interested in selling books, then they announced they’d be closing stores altogether—a lot of them over the next decade. We thought that sounded like an optimistic plan because it implied they would be around in a decade.
Now we can go ahead and cut the projected lifespan of B&N in half. News came out this weekend that Barnes & Noble wants to “move away” from its Nook business because the business is still not profitable. You know what’s even less profitable? A retail bookstore chain with no ebook strategy. Isn’t that right, Borders? …. Borders? Hello?
To make matters worse, B&N is considering selling off its retail bookstore business, severing it from the $250-million-loss-per-year Nook business and effectively destroying any chance of Nook survival. The only advantage the Nook has is prominent placement in physical stores.
The moral of this story for readers is simple: Do not buy a Nook. It is doomed, and there’s very little guarantee that your content will be safe (or your hardware will be tech-supported) after B&N dies.
For industry watchers, there’s still a question: When, exactly, will B&N, specifically the Nook division, kick the bucket? I was estimating 2020 before, but this greatly speeds up the clock. My new guess is 2015. I wouldn’t be so surprised if it lasted until 2016, but I don’t think it’ll last any longer than that.
By Eric Markowsky, on February 15th, 2013  Author: Jehanne Dubrow
2012, Triquarterly Books
Filed Under: Poetry
Find it on Goodreads.
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
8 |
| Entertainment..... |
6 |
| Depth..... |
7 |
Just after the Soviet Union collapsed, my family hosted a member of an exchange group visiting our small New Hampshire town from the nascent Russian Federation. His name was Vladimir. I don’t remember anything about him except that he was good at darts and he loved grocery shopping. We must have taken him to Shop’n’Save every other day to pick out a new variety of juice.
I hadn’t thought about Vladimir in years, and then I came across these lines in Jehanne Dubrow’s Red Army Red, from the poem “Bag ‘N Save”:
… We walk the aisles
of twenty kinds of paper towels, the display
of Reynolds plastic wrap, the perfect smiles
that gleam from every tube of crest. We’re lost.
Dubrow’s sonnet evokes an indulgent sense of awe I now recognize in my memories of Vladimir and his friends, overwhelmed by possibilities yet reveling in being overwhelmed, like someone finding satisfaction even in a stomach ache after a long anticipated meal. I was just a little kid when he visited, but Dubrow’s poem helped flesh out a character I could only vaguely recall.
For me, this was the most powerful aspect of Red Army Red, giving a shape, an expression, in some cases even a whole gangly adolescent body, to a not so distant chapter in history. If you have any memories of the last days of the Cold War and what that meant, no matter how young you might have been then–or if your family never hosted a shopping addict from Russia–you’ll find powerful echoes in Dubrow’s personal history in verse that help make history personal. …
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By Aaron Block, on February 11th, 2013 In November, things looked grim for comics and me; I was unemployed, and making weekly visits to the comic book store had become an irresponsible expenditure. So I bid comics farewell, promised I’d be back when I’d found work and gotten back on my feet, and walked away.
Now it’s February, two months later, and I…am still unemployed. Well, underemployed. And definitely not making enough to subsidize my monthly reading. But while I may not have a steady job, I do have incredible friends and family. My Christmas and birthday were fraught with gift certificates to Crescent City Comics and invitations to share Comixology accounts, gifts from loved ones who thought a little more Batman in my life might be just the thing I needed. They were, of course, 100% correct because more Batman makes everything better.
And if I’m reading comics, then naturally I also want to write about them. This won’t be a standard Pull List column because I’m not quite there yet. Instead, I want to run through the comics I’ve kept up with, highlight the good, and brush aside the bad (of which there is little – budgeting makes me a savvy reader.)
 Hawkeye #6 Hawkeye
My favorite comic of last year, Hawkeye, is already shaping up to be my favorite comic of this year, too. Javier Pulido filled in for regular artist David Aja for issues four and five, and the slight change in tone helped highlight exactly what makes this book so special. Pulido’s art is flatter, yet more expressive, than Aja’s, and reading his issues I was reminded of watching Ralph Bakshi’s Spider-Man cartoon from the late 60s. That looseness accentuated the humor beats of the story, while still allowing for exciting action sequences. Pulido, who doesn’t employ Aja’s bravura layouts, still connects us to the heart of the story, Clint and Kate’s relationship and the risks one is willing to take for the other.
Aja returned for issue six, which has Clint attempting to juggle his personal life, his responsibilities as a landlord, and his duties as an Avenger. This is easily writer Matt Fraction’s best issue so far – he fractures the narrative, juxtaposes absurdity with a serious threat, and ends the issue with a panel that’s almost a mission statement for the entire series.
In issue seven Fraction tells two stories, one each for Clint and Kate, about the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. He and editor Stephen Wacker assembled the story shortly after the storm hit, and tapped two fill-in artists – Steve Lieber and newcomer Jesse Hamm – to complete the issue. It’s sincere and heartfelt, in a way that almost no other mainstream comics even strive for. But this is Hawkeye, which hasn’t been like other mainstream comics since its first issue. …
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By Sean Clark, on January 31st, 2013 Hey everyone. The January episode is now available. We decided to learn our lesson from the 12 Podcasts of Christmas, and get the mic thing solved once and for all. So, when you listen to this latest episode, you can actually hear us, like we’re (semi-)professional or something. We’ll do our best to hold that New Year’s audio quality resolution through 2013 and beyond.
For the 275 (yowza!) of you that have hung in with us through all the technical difficulties, thanks so much. (And if we’ve lost you, we promise it’s listenable now, give us another shot.) Somebody please send us an email to read on the air. Better yet, send in a request for a song you’d like Marc to sing during his drunk review of Newt Gingrich’s Victory at Yorktown next month!
This month, we talk about a whole lot of books, as well as get into some high brow discussions about the revamping of the National Book Award format, our 2013 reading resolutions, and Al Roker shitting his pants at the White House.
We’ve once again got a bonus B-side too, wherein I get intoxicated and attempt to explain just what sucks so much about Jason Elam’s Monday Night Jihad.
You can either stream The Page Count from the player below, or you can subscribe for free on iTunes or your favorite podcast player by searching for “Page Count.” Links and show notes can be found here.
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