A Human Face At The Beijing Olympics

From the New Yorker's Book Bench blog a notice of a cool photography volume coming out about the Olympic buildings in Beijing:

"Last December, the photographer Helen Couchman shot portraits of a hundred and forty-three Chinese laborers at the construction sites of the two most iconic buildings of the Beijing Olympics, the National Stadium (a.k.a. the Bird’s Nest) and the National Aquatics Center (a.k.a. the Water Cube). According to the publisher of her new book, “Gong Ren” (“Workers”), she was able to bypass the authorities and approach her subjects individually—a feat that seems extraordinary, given the government’s intense micro-management of what is essentially the nation’s global coming-out party.
As Paul Goldberger noted in a recent review, these new Olympic monuments were “made possible partly by the presence of huge numbers of low-paid migrant workers”; the construction crew for the Bird’s Nest alone “numbered nine thousand at its peak.” He expressed reservations about the price exacted for the sky line’s glory:
In both conception and execution, the best of Beijing’s Olympic architecture is unimpeachably brilliant. But the development also exemplifies traits—the reckless embrace of the fashionable and the global, the authoritarian planning heedless of human cost—that are elsewhere denaturing, even destroying, the fabric of the city."

Engulfed In What It Is, A Lush Choice of Books

Some fine options for the suitcase of your summer kick-off reads.


David Sedaris packs in smoking, Japan, and more sharp observations in hid latest take on the human condition with When You Are Engulfed in Flames. Sedaris will be visiting Tacoma's Pantages Theater in October. Don't leave your butts outside for this.

Lynda Barry has a wonderful new volume out about what it takes to be creative, What It Is. A "crazy book" destined for the "crazy book section". In typical Barry fashion she brings to light a great melding of art and memoir. There's a nice write up of her from Philly.com. I'm not surprised she'd end up living in a Wisconsin town named Footville fighting windmills.

Richard Price's latest novel, Lush Life, is a stunning tour de force examination of the lower east side of NYC and the vast array of humans trying to navigate life there. Part procedural, part sociological study, part tenement history, Price weaves all these elements in a timeless study of too many people fighting off too many demons.

Summer Reads, how about 411,422 choices

An intertesting post from the Boston Globe reporting from Bowker, the publisher of Books in Print, that the number of book titles printed last year by American publishers was 276,649, a slight increase from 274,416 the year before. This includes discrete titles; that is, books with separate ISBN numbers. Bowker further notes that if you include public domain titles and print on demand titles that number grows to 411,422.

And the death of books is when? There was talk of this more than 10 years ago with the introduction of the e-book and it still hasn't happened. But there is always new technologies and ways to try to interest the public to publisher's offerings.

From the LA Times an article about new publisher tactics in getting the word out in new formats:

"At Random House, publishers produced four "webisodes" telling an original, live-action story that bridges the time from the end of one Dean Koontz "Odd Thomas" book to the next. More such videos are planned, possibly for other, less well-known authors."

"Barnes & Noble, the nation's largest book chain, has created an online "studio" with more than 1,000 author videos, making it one of the largest such online sites. The goal is to link the ambience of a bookstore -- including author appearances, musical performances and other events -- with desktops and mobile devices."

Innovation is always important in any industry but I can't imagine getting the "ambience of a bookstore" through my desktop. It just doesn't compare to visiting any of the local bookstores near you.

50 Best Cult Books, Or What Haven't You Tossed Since College

The London Telegraph has a great article of the 50 best cult books. I'm a sucker for book lists and I particularly like the British take on things.

"Cult books include some of the most cringemaking collections of bilge ever collected between hard covers. But they also include many of the key texts of modern feminism; some of the best journalism and memoirs; some of the most entrancing and original novels in the canon."

Is there anything better in the book review world than a terse British take on a volume? And this list is full of them. Here's their view on Iron John: a Book About Men by Robert Bly which took the world by storm: "For decades, the cowed menfolk of the world ambled about in pinafores, dusting ornaments and saying "yes, dear". Then Robert Bly wrote Iron John, invented mythopoetic masculinity, and the daft creatures all rushed off into the woods together, hugged, bellowed, wept, painted their furry parts blue and felt re-empowered to wee standing up."

They also point out beautiful novels that defy time:

"TheMaster and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (1967) Satan

live and in person, a man sized black cat, a magician and his
helpmate, Pontius Pilate… Classic text of dissident magic realism, banned for years under Stalin: now you’ll struggle to find a Russian who hasn't read it. Essential stuff, and with the finest description of a headache yet committed to paper."

It interesting to note what's left off, they include Ann Rand's Fountainhead but leave off Adam Smith, both canons of Republican sway.


And I can't imagine anyone involved in the home birth revival of the 60s without a copy of Spiritual Midwifery by Ina Mae Gaskin by the bedside. But all in all, its a wonderful list to contemplate and to see if you still have many of these stashed beside all those colleges book you never tossed.

Candidate for UNESCO Post Theatens Book Burning?

An interesting post from the Israel News claims that the Egyptian culture minister, Farouk Hosni, said that he “would burn Israeli books himself if found in Egyptian libraries.” An interesting outlook for someone who's up for appointment for the cultural and education arm of the UN.

"The anger in Israel over Hosni’s statement is especially emphasized due to the fact that Hosni is Egypt’s candidate for the UNESCO position, as the United Nations’ education, science and cultural organization secretary-general, and he has good chances of being chosen."

The Botany of Farmers, Desired Again

Tacoma's downtown version of the Farmer's Market returns today and that's good news for anyone looking for healthy locally grown produce. I've been reading my way through Michael Pollan's great books about plants, farming, the follies of monoculture and the industrialization of the food chain. His trilogy of titles, In Defense of Food, The Omnivore's Dilemma and The Botany of Desire explore the gross misstep's of our government's handling of the U.S. food chain. The problems of Iowa's reliance on the monoculture farming of corn, the push by industry for seeds that can't reproduce naturally (thus insuring a ready market for next year's planting), pesticides and the vast cities of penned-up cattle, hogs and chickens are all looked at from several different angles by Pollan. The story of what we eat, when we eat it, and how it gets to us is mesmerizing. Its not often that books stop me in my tracks, but there I was looking at a box of crackers in the grocery store and was just struck dumb by the packaging and claims on the box. The information is correct but as Pollan points out it's the process of how the contents get there that matter most.
His premise is that grass is king and the underlying nexus of our food problems. He visits farm that respect grass, the process of the pasture, and plan accordingly. The grass grows, cattle eat, drop manure which chickens then peck apart and process starts over again. It's a process that harkens back to the tenants of Rodale's Organic Gardening. Pollan also brings up the thoughts and agricultural concerns of Wendell Berry. An early proponent of localized food sources and the relationship of sustenance, people, and the land, Berry explains the importance of the short food chain and how we're all interconnected. Intoxicating reads and worth considering as the farm season warms up.

Best of the Booker Prize Goes Public, Vote!

The short list was announced today for the Best of the Booker Prize Award to mark the 40th anniversary of the Booker Prize. The Man Booker Prize for Fiction, also known in short as the Booker Prize, is the literary prize awarded each year for authors of novels from England, the Commonweath, or Ireland written in English. It is considered one of the important literary awards of the year.

This year the Booker vote goes public as readers world-wide can cast a vote for the six novels on the short list, Pat Barker's The Ghost Road; Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda; J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace; JG Farrell's The Seige of Kishnapur; Nadine Gordimer's The Conservationist; and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children.

This is great list of novels and its interesting that the Booker Prize is allowing public votes. What better way than this to get the public involved and turning its attention to some of the best novels written in the last 40 years.