From Harry Potter-style mega-hits to controversy over banned books to hot competition for literary prizes, there is never a dull moment in the book world. Chapter & Verse keeps readers up-to-date on the latest in literary headlines. Check in with us daily to learn about books and their people - those who write them and those who love them.
Amanda Knox's new memoir was released April 30. (ABC/Reuters)
Amanda Knox's new memoir reveals a gentler side of the American student
Few figures are as polarizing as Amanda Knox, the American student originally convicted of the murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher, in Perugia, Italy, during a study abroad gone wrong. The murder conviction was ultimately overturned in Oct. 2011, after Knox had spent four years in prison.
Most folks long ago made up their minds about Knox’s guilt or innocence, casting her in their mind’s eye either as the “she-devil” seen in the tabloids or an angel-faced young girl entangled in a sordid affair of another’s doing.
“Waiting to be Heard,” Knox’s highly anticipated new memoir, which was published Tuesday, might actually change that.
According to early reviews of the book, “Waiting to be Heard” reveals a gentler side of Knox, one that just might shift readers’ views of the American student.
That’s because the book, a selection of memories from her time in Perugia, offers what might be the first real look at the figure at the center of this drama: Knox herself.
From her relationship with her divorced parents to her excitement over her trip to Italy to the harrowing years she spent in prison, the memoir paints the most comprehensive picture to date of Knox and invites readers to sympathize with her.
“Passages in which Knox contemplates suicide – and even how she would do it – will surely soften even her staunchest critics,” writes The Daily Beast. “Her scenes of sweltering in jail and the bullying and sexual advances by other inmates are also insights that few have heard before... Likewise, her description of how she felt at both verdicts – the first when she was convicted and the second when that conviction was overturned – finally add words and emotions to the pictures that ran across the world’s media.”
Reviewing the book for The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani writes of Knox: "She emerges from these pages less as a Jamesian heroine or Kafka-esque protagonist than as a naïve, impetuous, somewhat quirky girl who loved soccer and the Beatles and who suddenly found herself caught up in a Hitchcockian nightmare, with bad luck and some bad judgment calls leading her into a labyrinth seemingly without end."
By and large, the narrative Knox weaves is one of a naive and immature young girl whose traumatic experience in Italy was a cruel coming-of-age.
“I went in a naive, quirky 20-year-old and came out a mature, introspective woman,” she writes near the end of the book – a campaign of sorts, for asserting her innocence and mending her image.
Does it work?
The Daily Beast said it best. “Those who feel she is complicit will find it lacking. Those who feel she is innocent will agree with every word.”
Husna Haq is a Monitor correspondent.
New York governor Andrew Cuomo's memoir is scheduled for a 2014 release. (Mike Groll/AP)
NY governor Andrew Cuomo will write memoir for 2014
New York governor Andrew M. Cuomo will release a memoir in 2014 that will be published by HarperCollins.
Cuomo’s memoir will be “a full and frank look at his public and private life – from his formative years in Queens, New York, his long record of fighting for justice and championing government reform, his commitment to public service, and his election and service as the 56th Governor of New York State,” according to a statement from the publisher.
In the deal, Cuomo was represented by lawyer Robert Barnett. Barnett has also worked for politicians such as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama.
“He will reveal the story of his history and will share personal and private moments that shaped his life: his father's legacy, his personal trials and tribulations, and his role as a father to his three girls,” HarperCollins said of the book in a statement.
According to The New York Times, the publisher is trying to decide what to do about a planned biography of Cuomo that HarperCollins was going to release. New York Post columnist Fredric U. Dicker was going to pen a book about Cuomo to be released this year, but relations between Dicker and Cuomo have grown frosty, according to the Times.
HarperCollins representative Tina Andreadis said Dicker’s book is still under contract.
Cuomo’s memoir announcement comes as those in the political world speculate on whether he’ll try for a presidential run in 2016. A New York Post article reported that Cuomo would not run for president if Clinton decided to do so, but Cuomo refuted the article.
“There is no truth to the assertion that I am talking presidential politics and strategy and what Hillary Clinton should do or shouldn’t do or what I’m doing presidentially,” Cuomo said, according to the Associated Press. “The only discussions I’m having are how to help this state… and to the extent that I’m focusing on politics, it’s my race next year.”
Before the announcement that the title had won a 2013 Pulitzer Prize, the publisher of 'Devil in the Grove' was planning to liquidate the book due to low sales.
Pulitzer Prize: huge sales neither required nor guaranteed
It’s the gold standard, the highest honor, the single most important mark of excellence and prestige.
In the publishing world, there is no prize more coveted than the Pulitzer, a distinction that sets the cream of the book crop apart from the rest.
And with that distinction comes the so-called “Pulitzer bump,” a sharp increase in book sales that award winners and their publishers eagerly await.
At least, according to media reports.
Publishers Weekly calls it a “windfall.” The AP calls it a “sure way” of increasing sales. And the New Orleans Times-Picayune calls it a “big bump in sales.”
Two weeks after the 2013 Pulitzers were announced, all five winning books have, in fact, seen an increase in sales.
The numbers, however, are woefully underwhelming.
“Embers of War,” by Fredrik Logevall, saw 2013 sales increase from 40 (yes, you read that right) copies before the announcement to 353 after it, according to Nielsen BookScan and Publishers Weekly.
Sales of Tom Reiss’s “The Black Count,” inched up from 135 to 501 copies.
Sharon Old’s “Stag’s Leap” saw sales increase from 51 copies to 492.
And Fiction winner “The Orphan Master’s Son,” by Adam Johnson, saw sales increase from 413 copies to 2,477 after the award announcement.
Sales of 353, 492, 501? We’d hardly call that a windfall.
The most surprising case of all is nonfiction winner Gilbert King, whose book, “Devil in the Grove,” had been remaindered before his Pulitzer win.
That’s right, publisher HarperCollins had started liquidating the book – poised to become a Pulitzer-winner – at reduced price, due to extremely low sales.
This, in an industry where soft porn (“Fifty Shades”) and Snooki (“Shore Thing”) are runaway bestsellers.
It’s a peculiar phenomenon, that such highly acclaimed works (all of which had been well-reviewed in the press) are so poorly rewarded in the marketplace. But we can’t say we’re surprised. After all, film often suffers the same fate – fine work sometimes means low interest and sales.
Maybe the good news is that strong sales are not required to win a Pulitzer. And fortunately there are many authors willing to ignore the sales tickers and trends to continue to produce high-quality literature that earns accolades.
We only hope it earns readers and sales, too.
Husna Haq is a Monitor correspondent.
'The Hunger Games' movie adaptation stars Jennifer Lawrence (l.) and Josh Hutcherson (r.). (Murray Close/Lionsgate/AP)
'The Hunger Games' trilogy drives juvenile fiction sales up 13.1 percent for 2012
Children’s and young adult books experienced a spike in sales for 2012, and publishers have a teenage girl with a bow and arrow to thank.
According to a new report by the Association of American Publishers, young adult and children’s books experienced a 13.1 percent increase in sales from 2011. Publishers Weekly points to “The Hunger Games” trilogy by Suzanne Collins as the main reason for the jump, since “The Hunger Games” books were a large part of the reason that sales of children’s and YA hardcover books increased 11.2 percent for the year.
Children’s and young adult e-books also experienced a massive increase in sales, with e-books sales increasing by more than 120 percent in 2012. E-book sales of adult titles also increased for the year.
Paperbacks were the only category in the children’s and young adult books sector to fall slightly, experiencing a 4.5 percent decrease from 2011.
Other good news? According to the AAP report, American publishers’ net revenue increased by 6.2 percent for 2012.
It will be interesting to see the sales numbers this time next year for young adult and children’s books, as it seems that area of publishing often benefits from a success story like “The Hunger Games” trilogy, the "Twilight" series by Stephenie Meyer, or the "Harry Potter" books to drive their numbers. Will 2013 bring another smash hit series?
Poetry Out Loud contestant Aislinn Lowry recites a poem during the 2006 competition in Washington, D.C. (Andy Nelson)
Poetry Out Loud 2013 finals: students from all over the US will compete
April's observance of National Poetry Month ends with a bang tonight as students from around the United States gather in Washington, D.C. for the national finals of Poetry Out Loud, a national poetry recitation contest that encourages youth to learn about great poetry through memorization and performance.
The national Poetry Out Loud champion will be named during tonight's finals, which will be webcast at 7 p.m. EST. You can check out the live webcast here.
Poetry Out Loud was launched by the Poetry Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts in high schools nationwide in the spring of 2006. The competition continues to grow every year, with more than 365,000 students competing in the 2011-2012 school year. The program starts at the classroom level. Winners advance to a school-wide competition, then to a regional and/or state competition, and ultimately to the National Finals, where finalists can win scholarship money and books for their schools.
Poetry memorization has been a pretty hot educational topic recently, with the UK having launched Poetry by Heart. Canada, too, has introduced Poetry in Voice/Les voix de la poesie.
For a pre-game show of tonight's finals, check out clips of last year's finalists at Poetry Out Loud's YouTube channel.
Memorizing poems was a common classroom practice in the first half of the 20th century, but the learning exercise fell largely our of fashion in more recent times. Now, with poetry recitiation contests in the United States, Great Britain and Canada, the custom is making a comeback.
Although the national contenders recite poems from memory, there's nothing rote about their approaches. These poems aren't just offered aloud; they're performed, and the results can be powerful, as with national 2012 national champion Kristen Dupard's heartstopping take on "I'm a Fool to Love You" by Cornelius Eady. Last year's third-place winner, MarKaye Hassan, moved me to tears with her interpretation of Emily Dickinson's "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain."
"I've been fortunate enough to attend the National Finals for the past three years, and each time I'm amazed by the talent of these teenagers," said Kristin Gecan of the Chicago-based Poetry Foundation. "As our president, John Barr, has said, 'Once memorized by these students, great poems become their friends for life.'"
Danny Heitman, an author and a columnist for The Baton Rouge Advocate, is an adjunct professor at LSU's Manship School of Mass Communication.
'True Blood' stars Alexander Skarsgard (l.) and Stephen Moyer (r.). (John P. Johnson/HBO)
'Sookie Stackhouse' series will end this May
The story of Sookie Stackhouse and her supernatural friends is coming to a close.
The series by author Charlaine Harris – which is the basis for HBO’s “True Blood” TV show – will end with the publication of the 13th and final book, “Dead Ever After,” on May 7. According to the plot summary released by the book’s publisher, Penguin Group, Sookie will find herself under suspicion for murder as she tries to decide what to do about her relationship with vampire Eric.
The "Sookie Stackhouse" series began in 2001 with the book “Dead Until Dark,” and a book has been published every year since.
“Probably by the second book, I had an idea where I wanted the books to end,” Harris told USA Today. “I began to feel the creativity of the series was wearing thin and I hate to keep on writing characters when I've lost my love for them. So it seemed time to end the series while I was still happy with what I was doing.”
The author said she assumed there would be some fans of the books that wouldn’t be pleased with the ending, since various readers root for different couples to be together. Sookie has often been the subject of a love triangle between gallant Bill Compton and morally conflicted Eric Northman, two vampires.
“I just realized a few books ago that there was no way I could make everybody happy so I just had to settle on doing what I thought was right,” Harris said.
Dangling plotlines that weren’t addressed in “Ever After” will be wrapped up in a book that will be released in October, she said. It will be titled “After Dead: What Came Next in the World of Sookie Stackhouse.”
“There's just no way I could write a book with all the characters that people really care about and say what happened to them after the books ended,” she said.
The HBO series based on the novels first aired in 2008 and takes its name from the synthetic blood that vampires in Harris’s world drink to slake their craving for the real thing. The TV show centers on the same characters as the "Sookie Stackhouse" series, but stories often wildly differ from the narratives of the books. On the show, actress Anna Paquin plays Sookie, while actor Stephen Moyer portrays Bill and “Melancholia” actor Alexander Skarsgard plays Eric.
“True Blood” begins its sixth season June 16.
'Odds Against Tomorrow,' a novel by Nathaniel Rich, is an example of the emerging 'cli-fi' genre.
Climate change inspires a new literary genre: cli-fi
Talk about hot.
Climate change has been cited as the cause behind a raft of recent phenomena, from increasing turbulence on planes to rising rates of malaria, dengue, and even domestic abuse.
And now it’s hit the publishing world.
The next hot trend in books, it turns out isn’t Fifty Shades-esque erotica – it’s climate change.
That’s according to a fascinating report by NPR, “Has Climate Change Created a New Literary Genre?”
“Over the past decade, more and more writers have begun to set their novels and short stories in worlds, not unlike our own, where the Earth's systems are noticeably off-kilter,” reports Angela Evancie for NPR. “The genre has come to be called climate fiction – 'cli-fi,' for short.”
Among the titles in this emerging literary genre is “Odds Against Tomorrow,” by Nathaniel Rich, a novel about a futurist who calculates worst-case scenarios for corporations, including the very scenario that landed on the book’s cover: the Manhattan skyline, half-submerged in water. (We should note, the book, and cover, were created before Hurricane Sandy.)
Other books include Michael Crichton’s 2004 novel, “State of Fear,” about ecoterrorists; Ian McEwan’s “Solar,” about impending environmental disaster; and Barbara Kingsolver’s “Flight Behavior,” about a world turned upside down by climate change.
There are two key points to emphasize in this trend. Cli-fi describes a dystopian present, as opposed to a dystopian future, and it isn’t non-fiction or even science fiction: cli-fi is about literary fiction.
As interesting as this new development is, we shouldn’t be too surprised. After all, whether it’s the Industrial Revolution, the Cold War, or the tech bubble, cultural and environmental milestones have historically shaped the world we – and by extension, the characters we read about – live in.
In this case, literature might actually prove to be a surprise secret weapon of sorts, helping scientists convey the issue to disinterested – or dubious – audiences.
That’s because “when novelists tackle climate change in their writing, they reach people in a way that scientists can't,” says NPR.
"You know, scientists and other people are trying to get their message across about various aspects of the climate change issue," Judith Curry, professor and chair of Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, tells NPR. "And it seems like fiction is an untapped way of doing this – a way of smuggling some serious topics into the consciousness" of readers who may not be following the science.
We’re fascinated by this emerging genre and if one cli-fi writer is on the mark, we’ll be seeing a lot more of it in coming years.
Predicted Daniel Kramb, the cli-fi novelist behind “From Here,” the 2012 novel about climate change activists, “I think when [people] look back at this 21st century ... they will definitely see climate change as one of the major themes in literature, if not the major theme.”
Husna Haq is a Monitor correspondent.
Tolstoy's novel 'Hadji Murad' reflects the author's fascination with the East-West struggle between the Europeanized rulers of Russia and the Muslims of Chechnya.
Boston marathon bombing: how it connects Tolstoy, David Foster Wallace
The Boston Marathon bombing brought together two disparate worlds: Cambridge and Chechnya. And at the same time it reasserted a connection between two great writers: Leo Tolstoy and David Foster Wallace.
In the United States, many people became focused on the strife in Chechnya only last week. Tolstoy beat us by more than a century. His 1912 novel "Hadji Murad" (written years earlier) tells a story of violence between Chechens and Russians that was historic even then.
This slim novel – a sapling when compared to the oaks of "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" but with a theme as weighty – tells the tragic story of the eponymous Avar warrior, who, after a falling out with a Chechen chief, turns himself over to the Russians, escapes from them, only to find himself trapped like an animal in a ditch between the Russian militia and his own people. Finally, another tribesman cuts off his head. It is a brutal story but softened with touches of great tenderness and empathy, both for the ordinary Chechen as well as the ordinary Russian soldier.
Fast forward to the 21st century. Long before the Boston Marathon bombing, "Hadji Murad" seems to have left its imprint on the troubled and capacious mind of a writer who made Boston his home for three years: David Foster Wallace, author of the peculiarly brilliant novel "Infinite Jest." It is not in "Infinite Jest," however, that we see the striking influence of Tolstoy. Instead, it is found in Wallace's last work, "The Pale King" – an unfinished novel completed and published in 2011, three years after Wallace's 2008 suicide.
Theme-wise the two novels are completely different. ("The Pale King," set in Illinois in the 1980s, satirizes the Internal Revenue Service.) The similarity is found in the form and style of the first chapter. The opening paragraph of "The Pale King," in which the weeds and wild flowers in an Illinois field are described with a forensic clarity, is an unmistakable bow to the first page of "Hadji Murad," where the flowers and weeds of the Chechen mountains are evoked with the rustic lyricism that Tolstoy did so well.
Consider the opening of Tolstoy’s novel:
"I was returning home by the fields. It was midsummer, the hay harvest was over and they were just beginning to reap the rye. At that season of the year there is a delightful variety of flowers – red, white, and pink-scented tufty clover; milk-white ox-eye daisies with their bright yellow centers and pleasant spicy smell; yellow honey-scented rape blossoms; tall campanulas with white and lilac bells, tulip-shaped; creeping vetch; yellow, red, and pink scabious; faintly scented, neatly arranged purple plantains with blossoms slightly tinged with pink; cornflowers, the newly opened blossoms bright blue in the sunshine but growing paler and redder towards evening or when growing old; and delicate almond-scented dodder flowers that withered quickly."
And David Foster Wallace’s:
"Past the flannel plains and blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water downriver, to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the A.M. heat: shattercane, lamb’s‑quarter, cutgrass, sawbrier, nutgrass, jimsonweed, wild mint, dandelion, foxtail, muscadine, spinecabbage, goldenrod, creeping charlie, butter-print, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat, vetch, butcher grass, invaginate volunteer beans, all heads gently nodding in a morning breeze like a mother’s soft hand on your cheek."
"The similarity in the passages certainly is striking," notes D.T. Max, author of "Every Love Story is a Ghost Story," the first biography to be written of Wallace.
Both Tolstoy and Wallace use the floral setting as a metaphor for what will elapse in the novel. In Tolstoy’s novel, a particularly hardy red thistle called the Tatar, clearly a floral stand-in for the hardy Chechen tribe, catches the narrator’s attention. At the end of the novel, when Hadji Murad is slain, he falls on his face into the mud like a “scythed thistle”. The narrator tries his best to pluck the plant, but it pricks his fingers even through his handkerchief, making him admire its tenacity. He then comes across the plant again but this time it is badly damaged, leading him to pointedly anthropomorphize its mutilation:
“Evidently a cartwheel had passed over the plant but it had risen again, and that was why, though erect, it stood twisted to one side, as if a piece of its body had been torn from it, its bowels drawn out, an arm torn off, and one of its eyes plucked out. Yet it stood firm and did not surrender to man who had destroyed all its brothers around it….”
In Wallace’s case, the key to unlocking the metaphorical meaning lies in that first phrase “the flannel plains.” The use of the word ‘flannel’ is just superb. Flannel plains evoke an image of a grey and weed-filled tract of land, but closer scrutiny reveals a plain bursting with foliage that is medicinal, edible, poisonous, pretty, and, like that prickly Tatar thistle, sturdy. It is like the men in grey flannel suits who populate the IRS and the novel. Dull government types, they are in fact highly individualistic and even idealistic, including a former “wasteoid.” These taxmen who spend their lives handcuffed to boredom are civic heroes like policemen and firefighters but perhaps even more so given that "true heroism is a priori incompatible with audience or applause or even the bare notice of the common run of man.” There is something stirring in all that weediness because this is how Wallace ends that paragraph:
“Quart and chert and schist and chrondite iron scabs in granite. Very old land. Look around you. The horizon trembling, shapeless. We are all of us brothers.”
He is seemingly describing Midwestern American soil but in the burst of short and abruptly ancient sentences that follows, it’s clear that he is talking about Earth before there were countries. That last and unexpected observance – “We are all of us brothers” – takes the reader by surprise. It is nakedly sentimental, curiously so for a writer who had a terror of being sentimental, but also tellingly so, for a writer who fought against the tedium of fresh-faced irony.
In the wake of the Marathon bombing in which two terribly misguided young men wounded their adopted country and, in their uncle Ruslan Tsarni’s anguished words, brought shame on their family and community, it also has an inconsolable pathos.
"Hadji Murad" was Tolstoy’s last novel and one close to his heart. He understood why the Chechens, oppressed for years by Russian czars, hated his countrymen and called them dogs and swine and poisonous spiders, but he also did not underplay the ruthless violence they unleashed on the ordinary Russian soldier. The only time Wallace appears to have made a direct reference to Chechnya was in his essay on John McCain’s first presidential campaign. The senator, he wrote, got all kinds of questions including those by “Talmudically bearded guys asking about Chechnya.”
Although Wallace often spoke passionately about his admiration for the other great Russian, Dostoevsky – whom he called a writer with “balls” – he once declared in an interview that “I'm the only ‘postmodernist’ you’ll ever meet who absolutely worships Leo Tolstoy.” After poking fun at Tolstoy’s “wacko, fundamentalist Russian Orthodox Christian” world view, Wallace said that if one “edited out the heavenly Christian stuff," he agreed with Tolstoy that “the purpose of art was to communicate the idea of Christian brotherhood from man to man and to pass along some sort of message.”
It is the spirit of late Tolstoy – the late Talmudically bearded Tolstoy – that passes over that tragically childlike thought expressed in a flannel field: “We are all of us brothers.”
Nina Martyris is a Monitor contributor.
A new movie tie-in cover for 'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald is getting a chilly reception from some readers.
'The Great Gatsby' movie tie-in cover rankles some fans
Print copies of F. Scott Fitzgerald's “The Great Gatsby” are selling like hotcakes these days. But even as the novel enjoys a resurgence, a new cover has some fans steamed.
While the original cover (you remember it from high school – that blue backdrop and the two huge eyes) is still available, a new version of the book is also available with a movie tie-in image. That one has much of the cast of Baz Luhrmann’s upcoming adaptation – Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby; Carey Mulligan as his love interest Daisy; Joel Edgerton as Daisy’s husband, Tom; and Tobey Maguire as narrator Nick Carraway – all gracing the book's front. Actress Isla Fisher as Myrtle Wilson and Elizabeth Debicki as tennis player Jordan appear as well.
But some readers – and booksellers – aren’t happy with the new edition.
“It's just god-awful," Kevin Cassem, a bookseller at New York indie bookstore McNally Jackson, told The New York Times. McNally Jackson isn’t carrying the new version of the book. “'The Great Gatsby' is a pillar of American literature, and people don't want it messed with,” says Cassem.
Meanwhile, Cathy Langer, the lead book buyer at Denver’s Tattered Cover bookstore, said the two covers mean readers just have more options.
“It really depends who you are,” Langer told the Times. “If you think it's cool to have the movie star on the cover, then that's what you'll buy.”
“Gatsby” is currently number two on Amazon’s overall bestseller list (the original cover version holds the spot) and is also number two on the Trade Paperback Fiction IndieBound list for April 22. In addition, sales of “Gatsby” e-books have spiked sharply this year. According to the Times, 125,000 copies have been sold so far this year, compared with 80,000 in all of 2012.
Director Joss Whedon has filmed a new take on Shakespeare's comedy 'Much Ado About Nothing.' (John Shearer/Invision for MTV/AP)
Joss Whedon's 'Much Ado About Nothing' gets a new trailer (+video)
Seen any romantic comedy with two squabbling leads lately? Then you have William Shakespeare and his play, “Much Ado About Nothing,” to thank.
And director Joss Whedon’s take on the play – modern dress and setting, but original language and in black-and-white – recently got a new trailer, which debuted in the UK.
The film stars Alexis Denisof as playboy Benedick and Amy Acker as stubborn Beatrice. The two argue whenever they see each other until their friends hatch a plot to get them together. Actor Fran Kanz plays Benedick’s friend Claudio and Jillian Morgese is Hero, whose engagement to Claudio goes smoothly until bitter Don John (Sean Maher) interferes.
The cast is full of Whedon regulars and arguably the most recognizable name in it is actor Nathan Fillion, who will be portraying bumbling constable Dogberry. "Ado" has already played at several festivals and received positive reviews.
The trailer includes glimpses of Denisof and Acker each overhearing their friends discuss the love each supposedly has for the other (Acker is so startled she drops a basket of laundry and falls down a flight of stairs), the wedding where Claudio jilts Hero in the most public way possible, and the ultimate happy resolution to both relationships.
Check out the full video.
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