The Family Book Club

This is one thing you can do with your nearest and dearest whether they're far away, down the road or gathered for a visit. Everybody reads the same title and then shares their opinions around the dinner table.

James McClintock

“A veteran of the extreme south, McClintock shares the otherworldly wonders unveiled by decades of research. The book is packed with joys.”--Nature

“A close look at the life of a scientist in a strange wilderness for months at a time, and a revelatory exploration of the region’s unique wildlife… McClintock is a determined, evenhanded guide.”—Smithsonian magazine

“A richly informative memoir from a veteran scientist who has devoted his career to Antarctica . . . Entertaining natural history.”--Kirkus Reviews

"An entertaining account."--The Austin-American Statesman

"With rare clarity, humor, high adventure and deep, sobering insight, gifted scientist-explorer-writer James McClintock shares decades of experience on, around and under the wildest ocean on Earth.  Every person alive should read- and heed- this riveting account of the swift  changes now sweeping Antarctica – and the world. If Indiana Jones were a marine biologist, he would aspire to be James McClintock."--Sylvia Earle, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and founder of Deep Search

“James B. McClintock’s Lost Antarctica is a disturbing distress signal about the traumas and strains of the South Pole in the Age of Global Warming. McClintock is a marvelous writer with a keen eye for the natural world. His knowledge of polar science is exemplary. Highly recommended!”--Douglas Brinkley author of The Quiet World and The Wilderness Warrior

"Lost Antarctica is a very original, readable, and authoritative introduction to a little known part of Earth's natural environment, and has increasing threat to its existence."— Edward O. Wilson

"Lost Antarctica is an intimate tour of a rapidly changing continent, led by one of the scientists who knows it best. James McClintock has written an important and timely book"-- Elizabeth Kolbert

"James McClintock shares his deep love of Antarctica vividly in this colorful narrative.  He issues a stark warning about the catastrophe facing this remarkable place - and our globe - from the twin dangers of climate change and ocean acidification.  Lost Antarctica reminds us of the urgency of finding new energy systems that do not use our atmosphere or oceans as a waste dump."-- Bill Gates

"Jim McClintock takes us with him on an extraordinary field trip to Antarctica, the frigid part of the Garden of Eden. With superb descriptions of the ice and biosphere of the great white continent, he carefully documents how climate change is having a big impact on the penguins, seals and other sea creatures that inhabit the polar waters."--Henry Pollack, Ph.D., author of A World without Ice

"Jim McClintock is a great scientist and explorer/naturalist in the tradition of Darwin and Wilson. The stories he tells are fascinating in their scientific detail and recollections, and cautionary in their implications."--Hugh Ducklow, PhD. Director of the Ecosystems Center at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) at Woods Hole, Massachusetts

Fall Preview

What: My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop
Who: 84 writers
When: November 13
Why: Ronald Rice has edited an anthology of writers on bookstores. So: Dave Eggers on Green Apple Books, Simon Winchester on The Bookloft, and Ann Patchett on Mclean & Eakin Booksellers, plus dozens of others. 

Sherman Alexie: The Value of Subverting Authority

Excerpt from article: 
So when The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Alexie’s multiple award-winning young adult novel, showed up on the ALA’s most-challenged list, coming in 2nd in 2010 and 5th in 2011, I was, to put it bluntly, pissed. Very pissed, but not surprised. Alexie has never shied away from alcoholism or sexuality, which are deemed pornographic and corruptive in all forms and treated as though they were secrets. Nor has he avoided the complexities of race, the history behind which revisionists find too knotty. Censors prefer the stale air of a stripped-down world. A world that is, even to eyes of children, false.

NATIONAL THEATRE LIVE

Mark Haddon’s celebrated, multi-award-winning novel is beautifully and imaginatively adapted into a stage play by Simon Stephens, directed by Marianne Elliot, co-director of the National Theatre’s acclaimed War Horse.

Literature and Lyrics

Taken from "10 of Music’s Most Literature-Obsessed Songwriters"

Nobody does poetic pretense quite so masterfully as Morrissey. Hands down, he represents contemporary music’s most notorious inheritor of 19th-century Romanticism’s metered flourishes and Oscar Wilde’s effete cynicism. Morrissey’s lyrics are also, perhaps, the most saturated of any artist’s in literary references. There are too many to mention, but “Cemetry Gates” is perhaps the most obvious, with explicit nods to Keats, Yeats, and Wilde. Also memorable are the opening lines to “How Soon Is Now,” which borrow from Middlemarch, and the numerous songs referencing A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney. Take a look at a compiled list of Morrissey’s various sources of lyrical inspiration for both The Smiths and his solo work here.

Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930. He is currently the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and professor of Africana studies at Brown University. Achebe has written over twenty books–novels, short stories, essays and collections of poetry–and has received numerous honors from around the world, including the Honorary Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as honorary doctorates from more than thirty colleges and universities. He is also the recipient of Nigeria’s highest award for intellectual achievement, the Nigerian National Merit Award. In 2007, he won the Man Booker International Prize for Fiction. “Those Who Answered to Abraham,” an excerpt of Achebe’s Chike and the River appeared in Guernica in August, 2011.

In an excerpt from his long-awaited memoir, the inventor of the post-colonial African novel in English discusses his origins as a writer and the seeds of revolt against the British Empire.

Samuel Beckett

10 Things That Should Never Stop You from Writing Your Story

A Tribute to Louise Glück

December 14, 2012, 7:00 PM

Theresa Lang Center, The New School, 

55 West 13th Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY

Free and open to the public (limited seating)In celebration of former Academy of American Poets Chancellor Louise Glück’s Poems 1962-2012, forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Ecco Press this fall, poets Frank Bidart, Dana Levin, Robert Pinsky, Peter Streckfus, and Ellen Bryant Voigt join Glück on stage to read selections of her work.Sponsored by Academy of American Poets, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Ecco Press, and The New School Creative Writing Program

Info:212-274-0343

academy@poets.orghttp://www.poets.org

HANG GLIDER & MUD MASK

Coming November 2012 from McSweeney's

One lives high in the sky. The other lives deep underground. Follow Hang Glider and Mud Mask as they fly down and climb up to meet each other halfway—on the surface of the earth and in the center of the book. Hang Glider & Mud Mask is uniquely constructed with two front covers, two spines, and a Z-shaped binding that links the two sides of the story. Will you begin from the Hang Glider side, or flip the book around and start from the Mud Mask side? It’s your choice. (And since one half’s finale becomes the other half’s front cover, it’s hard to stop and put the book down.)

The Orchardist By Amanda Coplin

At the turn of the twentieth century, in a rural stretch of the Pacific Northwest, a reclusive orchardist, William Talmadge, tends to apples and apricots as if they were loved ones. A gentle man, he's found solace in the sweetness of the fruit he grows and the quiet, beating heart of the land he cultivates. One day, two teenage girls appear and steal his fruit from the market; they later return to the outskirts of his orchard to see the man who gave them no chase. Feral, scared, and very pregnant, the girls take up on Talmadge's land and indulge in his deep reservoir of compassion. Just as the girls begin to trust him, men arrive in the orchard with guns, and the shattering tragedy that follows will set Talmadge on an irrevocable course not only to save and protect but also to reconcile the ghosts of his own troubled past.

The National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” Fiction, 2012

On the evening of Monday, November 12 at powerHouse Arena in DUMBO, Brooklyn, the National Book Foundation will kick off National Book Awards Week with a party to celebrate this year’s 5 Under 35 authors. Host for the evening will be musician Neko Case, with poet and photographer Thomas Sayers Ellis as DJ. Author Anya Ulinich, a 2007 5 Under 35 Honoree, will moderate a conversation between the young writers. Musician and author Alina Simone will interview all of the authors at the event, to be shared in clips on the Foundation’s website.

The 5 Under 35 program, now in its seventh year, honors five young fiction writers selected by past National Book Award Winners and Finalists. For the first time, thanks to the generous support of Amazon.com, the Foundation will offer the 5 Under 35 writers a cash award of one thousand dollars each.

Dzanc Books to Publish Zakhar Prilepin

Dzanc Books   5220 Dexter Ann Arbor Road, Ann Arbor,  MI 48103

(734) 756-5701   www.dzancbooks.org

Ann Arbor, MI—The Dzanc Books DISQUIET imprint is proud to announce that it will publish San’kya, the award-winning novel by controversial Russian author Zakhar Prilepin. 

San’kya is an examination of the elements of rebellion and protest. The novel, drawing on Prilepin’s own experiences, follows Sasha (whose grandmother calls him San’kya), a member of an extremist revolutionary group, as he tests the elemental force of the protest movement in Russia and in himself. San’kya faces a stark choice in the novel’s climax: whether to return to the villages (the unseen Russia) and accept the political fates or to engage the authorities in open rebellion. 

Originally published in 2006, San’kya is even more relevant today as a prism through which to view the recent large-scale actions against Putin. It is Prilepin’s first novel and is widely considered his best. San’kya was shortlisted for the Russian Booker and the National Bestseller Prize and won the Yasnaya Polyana Award and the Best Foreign Novel of the Year Award in China.

Zakhar Prilepin, born near Ryazan in 1975, lives in Nizhny Novgorod where he is the regional editor of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta. Prilepin had a varied life before dedicating himself to writing, spending time as a student, as a laborer, as a journalist and as a soldier, serving with the Special Forces in Chechnya. More recently Prilepin has come to the public attention not only as one of the best writers of his generation, but as a committed, and often controversial, political activist on behalf of the 'Other Russia' coalition. His website is one of the most popular author's sites in Russia. Prilepin's combination of lucid prose and social consciousness has made him one of the most popular and acclaimed writers in Russia today and drawn comparisons with the Russian classics.

San’kya will be translated from the Russian by Jeff Parker and Alina Ryabovolova and will be published in English in North America in both print and eBook form in January 2014.

Jeff Parker, Editor for the DISQUIET imprint of Dzanc Books, said of the acquisition: “Prilepin is a rabble-rouser and one hell of a writer. San’kya is his masterpiece, perfectly capturing a moment and a mood in Putin’s Russia like nothing else the English world has read.”

This signing was made through Zakhar Prilepin’s agent, B. Nibble of Nibble and Wieldling Literary agency.

About Disquiet

The DISQUIET imprint of Dzanc Books will publish contemporary works from around the world in English translation. The imprint comes out of the annual DISQUIET International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal www.disquietinternational.org, and it’s first title will be the novel A True Actor by Jacinto Lucas Pires to be published in September 2013 translated by Jaime Braz and Dean Ellis. All titles in the DISQUIET imprint will include introductions by leading figures contextualizing the authors and their stories for American audiences.

About Dzanc Books

Dzanc Books was created in 2006 to advance great writing and to impact communities nationally with our efforts to advance literary readership and advocacy of creative writing workshops and readings offered across the country. As a non-profit 501(c)3 organization, Dzanc publishes innovative fiction, supports several editorially independent imprints and literary journals, provides low-cost writing instruction to beginning and emerging writers by connecting them with accomplished authors through the innovative Dzanc Creative Writing Sessions, runs a writers-in-residence program that puts published authors in public schools, awards an annual prize to support a writer whose work shows literary excellence and who is engaged in community service, and organizes a writing conference held in Portugal. 

For more information on Dzanc Books and its mission, imprints, books, authors, awards, and programs, please visit www.dzancbooks.org.

Booklyn is an artist run non-profit dedicated to promoting artist books as an art form and an educational resource, through production, programming, and exhibitions.

Haunted Houses by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

All houses wherein men have lived and died

Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.

We meet them at the door-way, on the stair,
Along the passages they come and go,
Impalpable impressions on the air,
A sense of something moving to and fro.

There are more guests at table than the hosts
Invited; the illuminated hall
Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
As silent as the pictures on the wall.

The stranger at my fireside cannot see
The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;
He but perceives what is; while unto me
All that has been is visible and clear.

We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates.

The spirit-world around this world of sense
Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere
Wafts through these earthly mists and vapours dense
A vital breath of more ethereal air.

Our little lives are kept in equipoise
By opposite attractions and desires;
The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,
And the more noble instinct that aspires.

These perturbations, this perpetual jar
Of earthly wants and aspirations high,
Come from the influence of an unseen star
An undiscovered planet in our sky.

And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud
Throws o'er the sea a floating bridge of light,
Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd
Into the realm of mystery and night,—

So from the world of spirits there descends
A bridge of light, connecting it with this,
O'er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,
Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.

Famous Authors’ Funniest Responses to Their Books Being Banned

Harper Lee in a 1966 letter to the Hanover County School Board in Virginia after they banned To Kill a Mockingbird from school libraries state-wide:

“Surely it is plain to the simplest intelligence that To Kill a Mockingbirdspells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct, Christian in its ethic, that is the heritage of all Southerners. To hear that the novel is ‘immoral’ has made me count the years between now and 1984, for I have yet to come across a better example of doublethink. I feel, however, that the problem is one of illiteracy, not Marxism. Therefore I enclose a small contribution to the Beadle Bumble Fund that I hope will be used to enroll the Hanover County School Board in any first grade of its choice.”

Read the whole letter here.

Tell the Wolves I'm Home

By Carol Rifka Brunt 
368 pages; Dial
Available at: Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble | iBookstore | IndieBound


There's really one person who understands 14-year-old June Elbus—and it's not anybody at her suburban high school. Nor is it her benign but boring accountant parents or her older sister, Greta, who has recently "turned mean." The only one who "gets" June—who understands her need to wander the woods wearing Greta's old Gunne Saxe dress—is her mother's gay painter brother, Finn. And he's dying of a disease just starting to have a name. So begins Carol Rifka Brunt's Tell the Wolves I'm Home, a dazzling debut novel about a transformative relationship—first with Finn and then his partner, Toby, who's regarded by the rest of the family, in 1987, as a murderer. The book is also about sisters, art (Finn becomes posthumously famous for a painting of June and Greta), and loyalty. But mostly it's about a girl learning "that the past, present, and future are just one thing" and that sometimes it's all right to look for connections in all the "wrong" places.

— Sara Nelson