Category Archives: Book Column

Alabama, Authors, Birmingham, Book Column, Events

BIRMINGHAM BOOK EVENTS: JULY 17, 2015 – JULY 26, 2015

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I hope you find yourself this weekend with a book in hand a tall ice cold drink. And some air conditioning or maybe at least shady tree and a hammock.

If you do decide to get out and brave the heat, here are three Birmingham book events and author appearances that you may want to attend over the next 10 days:

Saturday, July 18th starting at 4:00pm – award-winning children’s book author Lou Anders will be signing Nightborn the newly released second book in the Thrones & Bones kids fantasy adventure series, at the Summit location of Barnes & Noble.

Sunday, July 26th at 2:00pm to 4:00pm – the Bessemer Hall of History will be hosting author Ken Boyd as part of a new exhibition. Boyd will be signing his book The Art of the Locomotive.

Monday, July 27th starting at 4:00pm – Carla Jean Whitley will be at the Alabama Booksmith signing her newest book Birmingham Beer: A Heady History of Brewing in the Magic City.

Book Column, Book Talk, New Releases, On the Web

Comparing Harper Lee’s Two Books

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Go Set a Watchman is out and in the hands of readers around the globe. It’s been interesting to see how people respond to the story in the book, but it’s been absolutely fascinating watching how people respond to the story of the book itself.

A quick snapshot of the evolution of the book:

Harper Lee wrote Go Set a Watchman first back in the 1950’s. Her editor said something like ‘I’m more interested in the backstory’. So Harper Lee wrote the prequel which became To Kill a Mockingbird published in 1960.

I’m not sure Lee ever expected Go Set a Watchman to ever be published.

Taking this path to life into account and realizing how books are written the folks at Quartz ran both books through their computers to compare the texts to see if there were any similarities. What author wouldn’t take awesome passages from a finished manuscript and re-use them in a newer, updated book of another title? Especially if they never thought the original had a shot of seeing the light of day.

You can click through and read the passages that Lee and her editor copied over verbatim and where the revisions are. What is interesting is that all of the ones Quartz shares appear later in To Kill a Mockingbird than they do in Go Set a Watchman. You begin to get a sense of how Lee constructs each story when you realize that so many descriptive and background passages appear up front on the newly released book, but appear much later in the earlier released novel. It sheds some light on what the priorities of each book are.

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Honestly, I was surprised there isn’t more recycling going on. Harper Lee truly did the work and created a new book back in the 1950’s.

Harper Lee’s new book is already a huge success commercially and people will be debating its authenticity and providence for years to come (so many conspiracy theories!).  But no matter how you feel about Atticus and Scout, this one (and any future books – conspiracy alert!) is a wonderful and rare look at Harper Lee’s methods for readers, researchers and students of storytelling.

Book Column, Book Covers, Book Design, Book Talk

Best Book Covers of 2014

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The learned and eagle eyed folks over at Design Observer have released their list of the 50 Best Book Covers of 2014. It’s quite a list! There are 50 of them, so click through to see them all.

Seeing this Chip Kidd cover for Murakami online doesn’t do it justice. The colors pop and the die-cut holes to the map below really make this cover. It’s a fun trim size too.

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It’s a fun ranking and worth scrolling through. It seems to be a great mix of ones seen often in shops and other lesser known ones that have it made it to the front-of-bookstore tables yet. I’m always glad Design Observer does these lists as I’d miss out on quite a few of these books.

This raised 3D slip cover is C-R-A-Z-Y.

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The Best Books ranking/competition goes back around 90 years. Here are the Best Book Covers from previous years as well:

Design Observer also compiles a list of the 50 Best Books of each year, where the whole design is judged and not just the cover. And it’s fun to see who made the list as well, but when online, I enjoy the covers more. Anyway, here’s their choices for 50 Best Books of 2014. To get an idea what this is about, the book ODD VOLUMES got a nod in both the cover competition and the book competition. The folds really show how the book is organized and speaks to the subject of the book which is book art.

I was glad to see The Martian on there as the paper used really made it glitter as if covered in martian dust. So you have 50 to choose from – which book cover is your favorite from last year?

Book Column, Book Reviews, Book Talk, New Releases

The Fold – Book Review

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Title: The Fold
Author: Peter Clines
Publisher: Random House, 2015
Where I heard about this book: I received this book directly from the publisher.

For years a government agency has been trying to get high school science teacher Leland “Mike” Erikson to come work for them. But he always turned them down until they asked him to investigate a secret physics installation in southern California. A place that “folds” the fabric of space/time, allowing people to walk across the universe in the blink of an eye. At least, that’s what they think it does.

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I really enjoyed the whole build up of The Fold as Mike, who has been assigned the task of figuring out what is going on and how it’s being done, is piecing clues together, grappling with the science and coming around to believing the impossible. And when the impossible happens, people start dying. Fast. And then things get weird. Fast.

Clines does a decent job with the science with this story, leaving just enough in the realm of WTF and fuzzy thinking to make it fun and plausible. Just make sure you’re reading with an open mind and you’ll enjoy.

If you’re a fan of Sherlock I think you’ll like The Fold as Mike (who, in the book, is compared to both Holmes brothers) has one hugely useful talent – his eidetic memory. He remembers everything as if he’s skimming through a DVD with time codes and everything. It makes piecing together crime scenes, looking for patterns and eliminating variables fast and easy. And he can sound like a jerk. But so did Sherlock at times.

While it all wraps up quickly, you can’t be sure how it’ll end or even who will be standing when it does.

I give Peter Clines’ The Fold three out of five stars and recommend it to fans of the Stargate series, time travel movies and anyone else who already realizes that there are some things mankind just shouldn’t mess with.