Category Archives: Book Talk

Book Column, Book Talk, library

Most Popular Library Books of 2015

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Last year was a great year for books. I hit a bland patch coming out of the summer, but finished out 2015 with some great reads. Now that 2016 is here, it’s fun to look back and see what other readers were doing.

Libraries around the country have been posting their “most requested” and “most borrowed” lists for a few weeks. So I thought I’d sample a few and see what the commonalities are.

Here in Birmingham, Alabama, John Grisham’s Gray Mountain and two David Baldacci books, The Memory Man and The Escape, make the “most popular” list.

The folks in South Florida favored Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train, but both Grisham and Baldacci made a Top 5 list from Miami Dade county also.

Paula Hawkins topped the lists in Boston as well as those up around Chicago as well. Interesting how there’s no Grisham or Baldacci there.

And patrons of the New York Public Library System prefer Jodi Picoult over everything else. Though Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train was second. But again, no Grisham or Baldacci.

There definitely seems to be a line, on the map, somewhere for what types of thrillers readers like in different parts of the country.

Hope you read some good books last year. And I hope you have many more ahead of you this year.

Happy New Year!

Book Column, Book Covers, Book Reviews, Book Talk

Armada by Ernest Cline

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Title: Armada
Author: Ernest Cline
Publisher: Crown, 2015
Where I heard about this book: I received this book directly from the publisher.

Armada blasts through the haze of the past couple of decades and gives us a look back to the sci-fi stories of the 1980s. Just about every page of Cline’s book drips with tropes, cliches and plot lines of well known movies and stories. You’ll find yourself smiling as characters in Armada quote lines and rally behind battle cries heard first from Activision and Atari games.

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Armada follows the plight of a soon-to-be high school graduate to the moon and back as he helps defend the Earth from alien invasion. An invasion that is the result of 40 years of US government secrets and black ops. An invasion that will end life on Earth. An invasion that can only be defeated by the best video gamers on the planet as the military has been secretly training Earth’s population on how to control military drones through video games.

The Last Starfighter was one of my favorite movies growing up, which this book certainly mirrors. The same can be said for Ender’s Game which matches pretty close plot-point to plot-point. So you’ll get a kick out of Armada if you enjoyed those two stories. But if you don’t then there’s not much else here for you.

While I really enjoyed Cline’s first book Ready Player One, this book, while making use of all the same vintage hooks, nods and winks that enjoy, lacks a freshness that RPO has. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but the characters in Armada spend too much time making fun of classic sci-fi plot holes and being aware of how their world mimics it all. It never quite goes all out “meta” but it’s darn close.

I’m giving this book two out of five stars, though if you’ve ever called yourself a sci-fi geek it’s one you’ll want to read just for all of the memories. And it’s also worth picking up, in the book store,  just to check out the cover.

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Will Staehle nailed it. Just like every good video game there is an easter egg even in the cover… open it up for schematics of the drones. Something every hardcore sci-fi fan appreciates. Kudos to Staehle and team.

 

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?