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By Ron Spalletta, on May 23rd, 2011 [Deserted Isle Books is our latest series in which our contributors discuss the one book they would choose if they were, well, stranded alone on a deserted isle forever. Read other installments of the series here, get your own copies at Powell's, and explore other series like this on our Special Features page.]
My choice for a deserted isle book was immediate, and so were my doubts. I read poetry every day. The bookshelves in my bedroom (not to mention the bedside tables and several stacks on the floor) are all poetry. I feel like a traitor to the cause at the mere thought of choosing a novel over Rilke’s Duino Elegies or Alan Dugan’s Poems 7. But there was no other choice; it had to be Gabriel García Márquez’s 100 Years Of Solitude.
Perhaps this is because I’m taking the premise literally. I’m not choosing a favorite book. I’m choosing the one book I think might best stave off madness and despair if I had nothing else to read (and little else to do) for the rest of my life. I would need intrigue, tragedy, politics, humor, mystery, romance, and violence. I would need memorable scenes, great dialogue, and some way to hang elements of my lost life and lost world on this one book.
An excellent book of poems will give you all of those things. But only the epics such as the Odyssey or the Aeneid (come on, David Ferry, we’re waiting!) give you a long, complex story with many characters to keep you company. And it is precisely those two things: company and a story, that are necessary. Left with nothing but the four walls of my mind to scratch against in an exile of unknowable, perhaps interminable, duration, I would need a sense of time passing, the this, then that of plot to give structure to my life. …
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By C4 Staff, on May 20th, 2011 Official C4: Issue #2 Call for Submissions
 Issue #1 is probably the best thing you'll ever read (until you find your own writing in Issue #2) After the success of our first issue, we’re excited for what’s to come in Issue #2 of our new literary magazine C4. We’re currently looking for more fiction, poetry, nonfiction, visual art, and almost anything else you might like to submit. As with the previous issue we’ll be publishing accepted pieces in a variety of formats: on a dedicated page, in an ebook available through several major ebookstores, and as a paperback version available from the Harvard Bookstore.
Issue #2 is planned for a fall launch, so we’re looking for submissions ASAP, and we’re giving special consideration to pieces submitted before July 1.
Read complete submission guidelines at ChamberFour.com/submit, then send us your stuff! You can either email it to us at submissions@chamberfour.com or you can submit through our Submishmash page.
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And hey, while we’re at it: in addition to our first issue, we also put together a pretty slick collection of some of the best fiction from around the web in 2009/2010. The Chamber Four Fiction Anthology is still available as a free ebook, or as a paperback.
By Kathleen Dacey, on May 20th, 2011  Author: Nora Roberts
1981, Silhouette Books
Filed under: Romance
Get a copy at Powell’s
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
4 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
0 |
Irish Thoroughbred is Nora Robert’s first novel. My book club chose it as a vacation from all the backbreakingly serious books (Townie, Just Kids) we’ve been mucking through. As expected, it’s an easy read, crushable in a single day. And although it’s a vapid book, it offers several steamy moments and a comfortably predictable plotline (much like a Lifetime Original movie).
We follow Adelia, a poor Irish orphan who immigrates to the US to work with her uncle, a hand on a horse ranch. Aside from the uncle, the only other character worth noting is the young boss, a wealthy landowner and horse breeder named Travis. Predictably enough, Travis and Adelia are beautiful, bull-headed, and destined to be together, just as soon as they overcome a few obstacles.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t only the love story that was predictable. Roberts’s characters embody every old-fashioned romance-novel stereotype possible. Adelia is the quintessential damsel in distress. She’s tiny, feisty, and rather dumb (it’s 1981 and, OK, she’s a country bumpkin, but still, she’s excessively impressed by the airport, a dishwasher, indoor fountains at the mall…). …
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By Sean Clark, on May 19th, 2011 Author: Scott Westerfeld
2010, Simon Pulse
Filed Under: Young Adult, Historical, Sci-Fi, Fantasy
Get a copy at Powell’s.
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
6 |
| Illustrations... |
8 |
My biggest gripe with Westerfeld’s Leviathan was that it was too much a set-up for a trilogy and not as satisfying a standalone story as the lead entry in a series ought to be. Seeing as Behemoth is the second entry of said planned trilogy, that problem is no longer as glaring. Still, this too acts as a build up for a larger conflict, but rather than leaving us at the precipice, it–as a good middle segment should–aligns the plot’s working pieces then sets things in motions for a hefty conflict in book three. All that aside, this novel features all the aspects that made the first book intriguing, as well as an arguably tighter story arc.
Behemoth picks up with Deryn, the girl posing as a male in order to be British midshipman, and Alek, the Hapsburg prince on the lam, aboard the great flying whale dirigible following the escape at the end of Leviathan. They head for Istanbul, where the majority of the story unfolds.
(I gave a breakdown of the basic conceits of the series in my review of Leviathan, so if you haven’t read it go check out that first–but in brief, this is a steampunk retelling of World War One, where the machinist “Clanker” Eastern Europeans are in conflict with the “Darwinist” Western Europeans’ army, which is built around giant creatures created by manipulating evolution into complex living vehicles and biological weapons. So by whale dirigible, I mean it’s literally a huge, floating, armored whale.)  …
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By Marc Velasquez, on May 18th, 2011  Author: Wilfred Santiago
2011, Fantagraphics Books
Filed under: Graphic Novel, Nonfiction, Biography
Get it at Powell’s
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
5 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
6 |
| Art Style... |
9 |
My father loved baseball. When I was young, he told me stories of his favorite players as if they were superheroes. He held none in higher esteem than Roberto Clemente. As a result, I believed Roberto Clemente had superpowers. I believed he floated through the outfield and flew between the base paths. I believed the ball exploded off of his bat and that he had a cannon for an arm.
In the years since, I have read as much about Clemente as possible. And while each article or book reinforced my belief that Clemente was both an incredible ballplayer and incredible human being, none of them seemed to satisfy the childhood fascination I had for him. I should have known, given the superhero aspects of the image in my head, that I needed a comic book. With his graphic novel, 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente, Wilfred Santiago delivered exactly what I’ve been waiting for.
Take, for instance, one of the book’s first pages: …
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By Nico Vreeland, on May 18th, 2011  Author: Justin Cronin
2010, Ballantine
Filed under: Fantasy, Sci-Fi (vampires)
Get The Passage, in paperback, at Powell’s
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
4 |
| Compared to Hype... |
2 |
[Minor spoiler alert: this book came out last year, and this review contains a few small details from relatively late in the book.]
I don’t know why I keep believing that a modern vampire book could be good. I believed it when The Strain came out, and I believed it about The Passage, too. Color me shamed, because that’s twice I’ve been fooled.
The Passage is not a good book. It’s a literary author’s attempt to write a genre novel without much experience or skill at writing plot. If plot holes or inconsistencies make you mad, avoid it. If however, you need a single book to get you through a weeklong vacation, it just came out in paperback and, at nearly 800 pages, it’ll give you some bang for your buck.
Let’s get into the details. …
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By Nico Vreeland, on May 17th, 2011 [In this feature, we highlight a handful of the best book reviews appearing over the weekend in major newspapers. Follow it here.]
 Zoo City, by Lauren Beukes, reviewed by Gwyneth Jones (Guardian)
Zoo City came out last year in America, and I missed it entirely, so tally another save for the Guardian. It’s about a fantastic Johannesburg, where murderers attract animal familiars, who both mark their humans as killers and give them powers. William Gibson recommends it, this review calls it great cyberpunk, and it just won the Arthur C. Clarke award. It’s on my list. [Get Zoo City (only 8 bucks, too!) at Powell's.]
Tabloid City, by Pete Hamill, reviewed by Susan Salter Reynolds (L.A. Times)
Continuing the “city” theme, Pete Hamill’s novel concerns the death of print journalism, and stars a character who evidently bemoans that death to no end. That premise doesn’t interest me, but the review has some poetry to it, and it sounds like the book might, too, despite its singularity of purpose. [Get Tabloid City at Powell's.]
The Floor of Heaven, by Howard Blum, reviewed by Dennis Drabelle (Washington Post)
Sounding more like a lost Charles Portis novel than the true story it is, Blum’s “rip-roaring” book follows three men who meet during the Yukon gold rush, America’s last gold gasp in the 1890s. The three are a con man, a Pinkerton detective, and a prospector, and their meeting revolves around a quarter-million dollars in gold. Worth a look. [Get The Floor of Heaven at Powell's.]
Lost in Shangri-la, by Mitchell Zuckoff, reviewed by Alex Spanko (Boston Globe)
Zuckoff’s latest book reconstructs the story of a trio of three soldiers who crash-land in a patch of nearly uncharted New Guinea jungle. Zuckoff buoys the main story with material gleaned from interviews with the native tribesmen who encountered the soldiers. The Globe doesn’t pull its punches, even for one of their own like Zuckoff, and this mixed review lands on recommendation. [Get Lost in Shangri-la at Powell's.]
In brief: Sean mentioned it briefly last week, but I think it bears repeating: if you were enthralled recently by the shrouded reports of Seal Team 6, keep an eye on the new book by the same name—it came out, with miraculous timing, last Tuesday. … What can we learn from Newt Gingrich’s many book reviews? Among other things, he thinks policymakers can learn from ridiculous “adventure novels.” In related news, should he be elected president, Newt has promised to bring dinosaurs back to life on a small, fateful island. … I’ve never been an Albert Brooks fan, but if you are, check out his new book.
By Michael Mejia, on May 16th, 2011 [Deserted Isle Books is our new series in which our contributors discuss the one book they would choose if they were, well, stranded alone on a deserted isle forever. Read other installments of the series here, get your own copies at Powell's, and explore other series like this on our Special Features page.]
 Of course, if you’re going to be stranded on a deserted island for the rest of your life, or if you know that such a catastrophe (or adventure) is about to occur—or has the potential to occur because the journey on which you’re about to embark is dangerous, probably foolish, and the crew looks somewhat sketchy, and the ship itself (or plane or zeppelin) is patched together from salvaged parts, and you’ve forgotten to tell anyone at home exactly where you’re going (I’ve done this twice already and I was underprepared both times: Hoyle’s was not a good choice, let me tell you)—you want to pack accordingly. I’d probably want to select the longest and most desirable read I haven’t read yet, Remembrance of Things Past, the whole damn thing, which, I think, would suit me just fine, and I can imagine myself living quite happily, actually, reclining with my Proust beneath a lone palm—please God let there be at least one palm—alternately reading and dozing, as I am wont to do, a shard of coconut serving as my own madeleine, my own catalyst for reflections on the past and time and memory and loss, of which there will be plenty. …
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By John Jarzemsky, on May 13th, 2011  Author: Patton Oswalt
2011, Scribner
Filed under: Memoir, Humor
Get it at Powell’s
| C4 Ratings...out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
7 |
| Entertainment..... |
10 |
| Depth..... |
9 |
Anybody familiar with Patton Oswalt’s stand-up comedy career knows the man can spin a good yarn. His act is peppered with seemingly unrehearsed tangents, thoughtful wordplay, and absurdist ramblings that could be cobbled together and written down to form, at the very least, a collection of cracked-out short stories.
Oswalt’s success as a comedian relies on his ability to acutely observe the human condition and his willingness to root around in his own neurotic life, but it’s always a question whether the funnyman’s gift can function within the confines of a page as well as atop the stage in a dimly lit club. Oswalt answers well: the man can write, and his debut book, Zombie Spaceship Wasteland is hopefully the first of many more to come. …
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By Nico Vreeland, on May 13th, 2011  About two weeks ago, Barnes & Noble released the first major Nook Color firmware update to minor fanfare, which included an app store and various other improvements.
The update was four months late, first scheduled for January, and those four months, frankly, didn’t help much. I’ve spent the past couple weeks tooling around with the new Nook Color, and while there are definite improvements, nothing has really changed. If you want to root it, you’ll still want to (and here’s how). If you’re not interested in the Nook Color, you still won’t be. And if you were mildly frustrated by its wasted potential (like me), you’ll still be frustrated.
It’s a great device and a great deal—especially compared to the oversized iPad and the overpriced every-Android-tablet-out-there. It’s still great fun to use, it still does movies, it still does books and magazines and Pandora. But, it could be so much more.
When the Nook Color came out, I wrote a post about what I’d like to see in it, or what I thought it had the potential to be. This firmware update addresses some of those issues, but not nearly enough of them; I’ll break it all down in bullet points, after the break. …
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