Boston Book Bums

“The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved”.  Surely Larry Ott, Tom Franklin’s main character in Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, would agree with Mother Theresa’s words.  Franklin introduces the reader to the deep South, where racial tensions still dictate friendships and reading makes you an outcast in his third book.

Larry Ott has prayed for the same thing his whole life, for a friend.  Twice, his prayers were almost answered to disastrous results. Same as an adult as he was a child, Larry spends his time with his head buried in a in horror novel.  In 1979, he met a black boy named Silas the same age and they secretly became friends.  As they approached high school, Larry continues reading his novels and admires the neighborhood girl from afar, and Silas becomes a star baseball player.

Their secret friendship may have been able to survive the racial divide but it can’t survive the high school divide.  Larry’s life goes from bad to worse when he finally gets a date with the pretty neighbor girl.  The night of their date, the girl goes missing and Larry is the one and only suspect.  He never confesses and without a body, murder is never proven.

Although Larry escapes prison, he is ostracized by the townspeople and twenty years later,  when another teenage girl goes missing, everyone is more than happy to looks his way.  Larry is again the one and only suspect, the difference in this investigation is his former friend Silas is now the constable.

Franklin knows that loneliness is buried in the details of life and develops his characters in its shadow.  Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is a study of the small mistakes in life and their big consequences.  The reader alternately wants to love and hate these characters for being dense, for being mean, for being desperate.  Franklin crafts a sad story in a backward place but just when the reader feels despondent, Franklin offers a glimmer of hope.

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter was received for free by Boston Book Bums

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter came out last month and you will see our review tomorrow of Tom Franklin’s fourth novel.  So here’s a primer of the author:

• Born and raised in rural Alabama
• Working his way through college at University of Southern Alabama, he did a stint cleaning hazardous materials
• Received his MFA and met his future wife at University of Arkansas
• After living in Pennsylvania and Illinois, Franklin and his family has settled in Oxford, Mississippi (the crooked letter state)
• Favorite TV show is The Wire
• Won 3rd prize in Playboy College Fiction Contest
• Has been compared to To Kill A Mockingbird’s author Harper Lee

• An effort to educate Israelis on the roots of Judaism will come via a book initiative being spearheaded by a Massachusetts philanthropy (via JPost)
• Now that e-readers are breaking big, technologists are already looking at making them disposable (via Fox News)
• The subject of boys not reading (which we opined on this spring) has a go around in New Zealand (via Stuff NZ)
• Bleak days for locally owned bookstores, like the recently closed Cornerstone Books, but the industry soldiers on (via Boston Globe)
• Cafe and book selling culture go hand-in-hand for South Koreans (via IHT)
• In case you missed it yesterday morning, CBS Sunday Morning profiled an absolutely heartwarming story of charity during the Great Depression and the discovery of its secret benefactor, now featured in a new book (via CBS)

With the holiday, most of the team spread to the winds to be with friends and family. Undeterred by the scatter, we marched on with another full week of reviews, news and features. In case you missed it, here is the B3 Week In Review.

Monday: Our book savvy newshounds ferreted out an early week BIR, while we profiled Tyger Tyger author Kersten Hamilton ahead of Tuesday’s review.

Tuesday: Celtic mythology turned on its ear resulted in the thoroughly entertaining Tyger Tyger.

Wednesday: Jack n Jill stopped by with another quartet of books that piqued our interest. We also found some more news for BIR.

Thursday: As many of you sat down for a Thanksgiving feast with family and friends, we reviewed Julia Child’s My Life In France.

Friday: As everyone slowly roused from their Turkey Day lethargy, we rolled out bookish news via BIR. And to really pep you all up, we launched week three of B3′s Best Book Tournament, featuring non-fiction works this time.

• In Canada there is a dust up over legislation that makes illegal jailbreaking any digital content, like e-books, illegal (via Montreal Gazette)
• Past few Fridays (including today) we’ve been asking what were the best books of 2010. Well, the Guardian wonders as well in a UK discussion (via the Guardian)
• Best way for local, unknown authors to connect with the regional buying base, meet and greets like this one in Buffalo (via Buffalo News)
• Great story on an iconic Led Zeppelin book that went to print in 1975 one way, but now the author/journalist found the tour notes from the groupie side of his brain (via MV Gazette)
• Ghost writers in the digital age (via Sydney Morning Herald)
• Q&A with a journalist’s tour through war zones, told not through combat viniettes but rather the meals with combatants (via SF Gate)

This week, round three of the Boston Book Bums Best Book Tournament, we bring out contenders The War Lovers and Securing the City for best non-fiction/history book read by the team 2010.

In The War Lovers, Newsweek Editor-at-Large Evan Thomas creates a Bayeux-like tapestry for the Spanish-American War by stitching together intimate vignettes and mini-biographies of the leading political, publishing and philosophical thinkers of the late 19th century.

Thomas, who could have easily dropped a dry biography-war history tome or banged loudly the drums of revisionist history, instead crafts an ambitious and perfectly rounded portrayal of the men, women and moments surrounding America’s first war of choice.

While Christopher Dickey, also a journalist,wrote Securing the City, a book about the NYPD counter-terrorist efforts after 9/11. Dickey describes layers of intelligence veterans,working with street cops and cutting edge technology to combat aggressors looking to topple America’s Babylon. Securing the City excels with its honest portrayal of NYPD rank and file-

Understanding the way police talk, think, feel and manage is key to understanding why Securing works, it is true to ‘cop think.’ Not black and white. Something more of a gray tinted blue. Working class in ethic, but expert behaviorists in thinking. Badguys, whether they build an ammonium nitrate bomb or shank someone for their wallet, are badguys.

It is so hard to pit these books against each other. Each excellent. Superb in detail, moral but not judgmental.  Thomas’ writes what could be the definitive broad popular history of the Spanish American War. And Dickey assembles an insightful portrait of the NYPDs ceaseless and dogged anti-terrorist work.

However, since we cannot walk away feeling good about a tie…we’ve concluded the best non-fiction/history book read in 2010 is… Christopher Dickey’s Securing the City.

Next week…non-fiction returns with a pair of memoirs, both enthralling, but for completely different reasons.

Bucolic Plague by Josh Kilmer-Purcell and Breaking Night by Liz Murray…next week on Boston Book Bums Best Book Tourney!

With food on the brain and in our stomachs, we can’t help but think of our favorite chef, Julia Child.  The BBB crew can be found on any given Sunday watching a Julia Child episode, partly for her wonderful recipes but mostly for her charm.

Julia’s charm shines through in her biography, co-written with her grandnephew, Alex Prud’homme.  The idea of a memoir was first thought of 1969 but it was more than 30 years later that Julia began to tell her story to Alex.  She died at the age of 92, before the book was completed.  Prud’homme continue the project and published the finished product in 2005, a year later.

My Life in France focuses on Julia and her husband, Paul’s time in France in the late forties and early fifties.  If you are familiar with her cooking show, you know that Julia is lovable and adventurous.  This holds true in the recalling of her arrival in France in their blue station wagon filled with their belongings and her valentine celebrations with her French friends.

The book is filled with these anecdotes but Child’s real passion shines through when she recalls her first cooking lessons and her collection of cookware.  Meeting Madame Simone Beck Fischbacher was a turning point in Julia’s life, Simone would become her writing partner in the epic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, a process revealed in her memoir filled with ups and downs.

Despite Julia’s joie de vivre, she offers insight into the politics of the day.  Even in France, the long arm of McCarthyism reached Julia, Paul and their American friends.

My Life in France will leave a smile on the reader’s face for Julia’s silliness, an urge to book your airline tickets to Paris and willingness to tackle an ambitious recipe.

My Life in France was purchased for review by the Boston Book Bums

Our favorite U.S. President is Theodore Roosevelt and we are happy to see two, count them, two, new books about our fav prez out this week.

Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris- Morris, the author of 2 of other Roosevelt books, focuses on T.R.’s life outside of politics, including his epic trip to Brazil.  Roosevelt led a life of vigor and Morris’ book promises to be rich in detail.

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt also by Edmund Morris was published thirty years ago and is being reprinted in hardcover and re-released this week to correspond with the Colonel Roosevelt release.  The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize.

An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin- Recalling Martin’s insights in Shopgirl, I’m looking forward to what observations he brings to the New York City art scene.   One of our favorite novels of the year is The Nightfall by Micheal Cunningham, also a look at the New York art world in an changing economy and we look forward to some drawing some comparisons.

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak- After Russian Winter and recent talk about Russian classics in the twitter world, we have to admit that maybe it is time read Doctor Zhivago.  As wonderful as the movie was, we are woeful of neglect to read the classic, and now we can read it on our Nook.

• It’s said that Arab Muslim scholars and scientists rescued the lost wisdom of the ancient Greeks when Europe was mired in the Dark Ages. Interestingly, Penguin is re-introducing classic literature to the Arabic speaking world (via WSJ)
• A boy’s good deed leads to a hospital library that’s grown to 10,000 titles (via Post & Courier)
• Think you know Thanksgiving? Know Thanksgiving in literature? Well the Guardian has a quiz for you (via Guardian)
• After 20 years of collecting books, one Turkish bibliophile decides instead of donating or selling the titles to a book store or library, he should open his own personally stocked book shop (via Todays Zaman)
• Books of the year for Christmas? But it’s not even Thanksgiving. Oh wait, this is a Brit list (via Telegraph)
• Near future fiction, no problem? Maybe not. Nice piece (via Irish Times)