American Madness

Our friend Kate Torgovnick, over at CrucialMinutiae has a book coming out next month.

Cheer!: Three Teams on a Quest for College Cheerleading’s Ultimate Prize comes out March 11th. And wait, it gets better, the book even has a trailer (posted below).

For some more of Kate’s writing you can check out Generation What?: Dispatches from the Quarter-Life Crisis.

Also Kate will be reading from Cheer! on March 13th in NYC at the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle Border’s and then down at Duke in North Carolina on April 7th. I am sure we’ll go over all of this again as the date gets closer…

Some consider Charles Bukowski one of the greatest American authors of the the 20th century. In his 30 some odd years of writing he produced somewhere in the range of 100 books, including stories and poetry.

An article from LA Weekly discusses part of the legacy Bukowski left behind: Mostly his writing was about being down and out in and around LA. He also did a great deal of his writing in a little “bungalow” in LA. That same bungalow complex is not up for sale and will probably end up being torn down if not for the efforts of Richard Schave and Lauren Everett. They are working on getting the location recognized as a landmark, the home of Charles Bukowski, maybe even turned into a writers colony in the heart of Hollywood. The current owners have different ideas. They want to see the place purchased and torn down, they figure it is the perfect spot for new condos or a nice fast food restaurant.

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So, it is here, November is upon us. And while usually that means that fall is in full effect (just ignore the 60 degree temperatures outside), apparently it also means that it is National Novel Writing Month.

If you participate in NaNoWriMo (as those in the know call it), you are taking the month of November to attempt to write a 175 page novel (about 50,000 words). The idea is not to turn out the next great-American-novel, but rather just to write something, as they say on the site:

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

Which is totally my writing style. What works nicely is that this is totally deadline oriented, you have 30 days to pump out 175 pages, that comes to 5.83 pages a day, or 1666.67 words a day. You can take comfort in knowing that you are not alone in this endeavor though, in 2006 there were close to 80,000 participants, though only about 15% actually reached the finish line.

You can read about the history of NaNoWriMo on their site and also chat with others on their forum who might have the same writers block you are suffering (and it is only day one, tsk, tsk)… Just don’t end up like Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Hunter Thompson… Come to think of it, maybe writing isn’t such a great idea.

Each year some Nazi-like parents in the middle of the country feel that some fantastic book is offensive and should be banned from libraries. Pretty much it depends on the community to decide whether to follow through on this parents request and ban the book or to allow freedom of speech to prevail and make all books available to the masses.

Unfortunately there are a number of books that have been banned from public schools and libraries across the country. Last year the book at the top of the list for banning was “And Tango Makes Three” by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell about a pair of male penguins that raise a baby penguin.

Why do I bring this up now you ask (and I’m glad you did)? Well, this upcoming week, starting tomorrow (sept. 29th) and going through October 6th, is Banned Book Week, sponsored by the American Library Association. The motto for the week is “Free People Read Freely.” Accoridng to the website:

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, this annual ALA event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted. This year, 2007, marks BBW’s 26th anniversary (September 29 through October 6).

BBW celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.

To take part in banned book week all you need to do is pick up a banned or challenged book and read away. Do it in public, don’t be afraid to let people see you reading it, after all, that is the point, isn’t it?

Oh, also related, USA Today reports that the Federal government, after receiving enough pressure has decided to put banned religious books back into prison libraries.

For a list of banned books you can check out the ALA website, the site Banned Books, or just do a quick Google search for them. Or if you are too lazy for any of that you can just pick up Fahrenheit 451 or To Kill a Mocking Bird.or all the Harry Potter books, so, you’ve got some options.

In choosing a picture for this post there were so many good different images to choose from I decided to put a link to the Google Image Search here.

I know Matt is a big fan of GoodReads, but I have to say it’s pretty dorky to get these updates telling me about all the wonderful literary explorations of friends and colleagues.

It’s the same kind of dorkiness college Freshman demonstrate when they open their doors and blast the latest tunes to demonstrate their wonderful musical taste to the cutie down the hall.

I mean, I would never just broadcast that I had finished Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great, while also tackling David Foster Wallace’s collection of essays, Consider the Lobster, just shortly after polishing off Deathly Hallows, while slipping through Allan Kahane’s beachable (yet thought-provoking) Fire with Fire.

I would never do that. I’ve just been too busy laughing at John McPhee’s succulently reminiscent tale in the latest New Yorker, and brooding over Fred Thompson’s chops in the New York magazine review by Stephen Rodrick.

As frequent readers know, I went to Tokyo recently. Being completely unfamiliar with Tokyo and Japan as a whole I decided to check out a couple of guidebooks on the town. I checked out the usual big names for guidebooks: Rough Guide, Time Out, Fodors, Lonely Planet as well as a handful of others. In the end I settled on Time Out: Tokyo, Rough Guide Tokyo and a new guide that comes out later this month: Lonely Planet Tokyo Encounter. After less then a day in the city I closed Rough Guide Tokyo and ended up returning it which left me with Time Out: Tokyo and Lonely Planet Tokyo Encounter.

Now, before I say anything about either guidebook let me talk about Tokyo as a city: It is huge, it has no street names and only a couple of real tourist sites or identifiable landmarks. With (at my count) at least 4 different sets of trains (including the subway and monorail) owned by the government and various private companies it is not exactly the easiest city to get around.

Though coming from a city with a pretty complete and, supposedly, confusing subway system, I found navigating the Tokyo subways not nearly as difficult as you would think. Finding things on the street was a different story.

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Do you ever find yourself with a bunch of time on your hands, wishing you had something to do or something good to read? Checking your email on a regular basis, hoping for a well scribed note that gives you joy to read? Well, now there is a solution to these problems, well sort of…

DailyLit is a website inspired by serialized novels, the aim is to give you the time to catch-up on some of the classics you may have missed or have been meaning to get around to. Offering over 400 titles that are in the public domain, DailyLit breaks each one down into sections readable in about 5 minutes of time. ce you set up your account you can choose how often you get installments and at what time. Find yourself with a few extra minutes on your hand? Well, you can request the next installment immediately.

Books are easy to sort through and arranged by title, by author and even by category. So, what are you waiting for? Now is your chance to read War and Peace, broken down into 675 easy to read emails.

A friend just introduced me to Good Reads, a website for those of us who still read books and have lives off-line. Basically it is yet another social networking site, but this one is based off of your reading interests. Invite your friends and compare books you have read and books you have in common. See which of your friends like the types of book you like to read and which are into the newest economics books that just hit the shelves.

Though it takes a bit of time to set up, and you can spend hours going through books you have read and trying to remember and rate them all, once you get it all set up it is a neat way to track what you and your friends are reading and keep in touch with them and even trade books with them.

I just signed up and am working on getting my books listed (I actually have been keeping track of all the books I read this year so it might take me some time to list all of them). As I have just discovered the site I can’t fully comment on it, but it looks like it has a lot going on, you can even offer books up to trade or sell and create a book shelf of books you are planning on reading. Seems pretty interesting and looks like it is worth checking out.

I’m amazed to even be awake following last night’s bachelor party festivities for my friend Rob, an international man of mystery and sometime writer here at AM. The evening was a surprisingly classy affair given our trip to [redacted] and especially given the possibility that party planner [redacted] might have gotten his wish with a [redacted] while [redacted], another in our party, attempted to secure a freeby from an Israeli [redacted] after discovering she knew his cousin.

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Apparently it has become a food day around here, which works out just fine by me as I love to cook, eat and look at pictures of food. And on that last note, Time Magazine currently has a good Photo Essay called “What Makes Us Eat More” and a great Photo Essay up called “What the World Eats.”

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