The Nimble Books Blog

A Boy Tells of Angels, Bethlehem and Family - New York Times:

The family in Anne Rice’s new novel has a secret. A really, really big one. These people have had a life-altering experience that they hide from their 7-year-old. When the boy raises questions - “But who were the men from the East, Mamma?” or “But what happened in Bethlehem?” - his relatives are mum.

But the boy begins to sense the truth. He notices he has unusual abilities. He can make it snow or raise the dead. He can sense the presence of angels. He also has dreams of terrible, fiery destruction and is visited by figure who calls himself the Prince of Chaos. By the end of “Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt,” this young boy knows that he himself is the Prince of Peace.

“Christ the Lord” is written in the first person. How dare Ms. Rice appropriate the voice of young Jesus? She is best known for maudlin, histrionic vampire tales, so the innocence of a 7-year-old would not seem to come naturally. But Ms. Rice makes the transition much more easily than might be expected. And she delivers the only shock effects still available to her, after a career-length cavalcade of kinks: piety and moderation.

“Christ the Lord” shares predilections with her other books. Even in biblical times and in the Holy Land, Ms. Rice retains her obsessions with ritual and purification, with lavish detail and gaudy d�cor. But she writes this book in a simpler, leaner style, giving it the slow but inexorable rhythm of an incantation. The restraint and prayerful beauty of “Christ the Lord” is apt to surprise her usual readers and attract new ones.

Tags: What's New for Book-Lovers by wfzimmerman
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From the Ingram distribution database:

Copies of AFFC “on hand” at theiir warehouses in:

IN 1391
OR 1310
PA 788
TN 438

Tags: A Feast for Crows by wfzimmerman
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O’Reilly Radar > The Long Fail of Books: “Andrew Odewahn from our Research group recently went to the Bookscan book summit. One of the presentations was on the state of the overall book market, and had this factoid: 93% of all ISBN’s sold fewer than 1,000 units and accounted for 13% of all sales. It’s tempting to think of that as ‘93% of all books are failures’, but that’s not the full story. This being the Third Age of Capitalism and all, success and failure aren’t measured by unit sales. They’re measured by greenbacks, baby: wampum, moolah, shekels, Benjamin Franklins. Cold hard cash (or warm soft cash, so long as it’s cash). Unit sales figures are only part of the equation: cover price and discount to the bookstore are the rest.

Those of you who haven’t dealt with the vagaries of the publishing world before may not know that all books aren’t created equal. Compare Perl Cookbook and Information Visualization: Perception for Design. The former has a cover price of $49.95, but you can buy it for $32.97 on Amazon. The latter has a cover price of $59.95 and you can buy it for $59.95 on Amazon. The difference is because general computer books like Perl Cookbook and textbooks like Information Visualization are sold to booksellers at different discounts. Big distributors like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders, etc. get the general books at around half-price but textbooks at about 80% of the cover price. The rationale is that publishers will make up the bigger discount on bigger volumes. Very rare are the textbooks that sell like Robert Ludlum mindcandy.

So without the discount and cover price information, you can’t figure out whether those sub-1,000 books were really failures.

…

These are the questions the tech publishing industry faces as book sales slowly establish a new (lower) equilibrium after the tech bust of the early 2000s: Do we make blogs our long tail of tech publishing and only do bestsellers? How do we balance inventory and demand? Do we price for balance or for opportunity?

This is an important perspective from the smartest company in publishing. Scary stuff for book-lovers. Blogs are great, but they aren’t books.

Tags: Borders, Store, What's New for Book-Lovers by wfzimmerman
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Defense Tech: Stryker Sighting

he Army’s new Stryker wheeled medium vehicle has been in a lot of crossfires — literal and figurative — since its introduction a couple of years ago. Critics say it’s too heavy, too big, too cramped inside, thin-skinned and expensive. Supporters tout its quietness, ease of maintenance and flashy new electronics.

Now that Ft. Lewis, Wash.-based Stryker brigades from the 2nd and 25th Infantry Divisions have finished tours in Iraq, there’s some real-life experience to help sort the truth from the vitriol, and the consensus is pretty good. National Defense Magazine quoted an observer in October:

The vehicle, designed to carry a nine-man squad and two-man crew, has shown that its survivability, agility, mobility and technology is effective in an urban combat zone where the enemy strikes at any time in numerous ways, said [Ft. Lewis general staffer Col. Michael] Peppers.
Stryker.jpg

Having accompanied the 25th ID’s Strykers on several combat missions in the town of Qayyarah, I’d like to add “adaptibility” to Peppers’ praise. Soldiers are learning to use the Stryker to do things it was never designed for.

Take for example the TOW-missile variant of the Stryker, which was meant to take out tanks but finds itself in Iraq with no tanks to fight. So soldiers have been using its TOW sights as a surveillance device, parking the Stryker on hilltops at night. The TOW Strykers can spot insurgent trucks from miles away.

As for the Stryker’s other amenities … riding in the back of a rattling, cramped M-2 Bradley always makes me sick to my stomach. But on one quiet night mission in a Stryker, I fell fast asleep.

There is some talk in Marine Corps circles about buying the Stryker to fill the gap between the new Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle and trucks. (Marine Maj. Craig Wonson advocates the Stryker in an excellent piece in this month’s Proceedings, which is not yet on-line.) The Air Force and the Canadian Army have already gotten into the Stryker game with small purchases in recent years.

Tags: Against A Dark Background, CTR, SF, YA by wfzimmerman
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Publishers Marketplace: The Latest Deals reports:

Bryan Harris’s untitled on Hypocritical “Compassionate Conservatives”: Chickenhawk Soup for the Conservative Soul, examining the policy, rhetoric, and acts of the so-called “compassionate conservatives,” revealing that hypocrisy is still job one in the Bush Administration and beyond, to Ashley Shelby at Tarcher, in a nice deal (world)

I don’t agree with the substance, but … great title!

Tags: What's New for Book-Lovers, YA by wfzimmerman
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The Man Who’s Riding Dan Brown’s ‘Code’ Tales:

All that’s known about the still-unscheduled Brown book is that when it’s finally published — perhaps in late 2006 or 2007 — it will involve the Freemasons, will be set at least partly in Washington and will be called “The Solomon Key.” …

Burstein says he got hooked on “Da Vinci” in June 2003, three months after Brown’s religio-historical thriller was published. (Thirty-six million hardback copies are now in print worldwide, according to Brown’s publisher, Doubleday.) He shelled out hundreds of dollars for books related to Brown’s narrative, in which the Gnostic Gospels and Mary Magdalene figure heavily, and started thinking about a guidebook that could help readers separate fact from fiction.

He and a friend started a small company, Squibnocket Partners, to pull “Secrets of the Code” together. They made contact with Barnes & Noble, which signaled significant interest. They signed up more than 40 contributors (with Burstein serving as editor) and by May 2004 the anthology was a New York Times bestseller. Later came a guide to an earlier Brown book, “Angels and Demons.”

…
Ah, but those books exist! How can you do a guide to a book that isn’t written ?

One of Burstein’s team, reporter David Shugarts, supplied the answer by checking out a rumor that there was a code embedded in the dust jacket flaps of “The Da Vinci Code.” Sure enough, some letters on the flaps were in a slightly bolder face and spelled out “Is there no hope for the widow’s son?” Researching that phrase led Shugarts first to the history of the Mormon church and eventually — the details are too complex to get into here — to a predicted Washington/Freemason backdrop for Brown’s next book.

Brown later confirmed as much in a rare public appearance.

So if you’re truly Brown-obsessed — or if you’re just dying to read about the conjunction of Freemasonry, the Founding Fathers and the nation’s capital — “Secrets of the Widow’s Son,” which Burstein commissioned Shugarts to write, is there for you.

Tags: Dan Brown, The Solomon Key and Beyond by wfzimmerman
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Anticipated Beatles Bio Comes Out Tuesday - Yahoo! News:

NEW YORK - Ten hours, 28 minutes. That was the sum of the music recorded and released by the Beatles before breaking up, a volume of work that changed lives, careers and the course of music history. Eight years, 2,792 pages. That was the effort author Bob Spitz put into telling their story, although editors whittled his manuscript down to 856 pages (minus the end notes).

How much overlap is there between the class of Beatles lovers and the class of doorstop biography lovers? I’m skeptical about the financial prospects of this title…

Tags: What's New for Book-Lovers, YA by wfzimmerman
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Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | Search for the soul of Antigone:

One consideration, however, was weighing heavily in favour of a new start. Early in 2003 we were watching a leader, a Creon figure if ever there was one: a law and order bossman trying to boss the nations of the world into uncritical agreement with his edicts in much the same way as Creon tries to boss the Chorus of compliant Thebans into conformity with his. With the White House and the Pentagon in cahoots, determined to bring the rest of us into line over Iraq, the passion and protest of an Antigone were all of a sudden as vital as oxygen masks.

…

Antigone is poetic drama, but commentary and analysis had turned it into political allegory. What I wanted to point up was the anthropological dimension of Sophocles’ work: I didn’t want the production to end up as just another opportunistic commentary on the Iraq adventure, and that was why I changed the title.

I called my version The Burial at Thebes partly because “burial” signals immediately to a new audience what the central concern of the play is going to be: a contest involving the rights of the dead and the laws of the land. But mainly I changed the title because “burial” is also a word that has not yet been divorced from primal reality. It still recalls to us our destiny as members of a mortal species and reminds us, however subliminally, of the need to acknowledge and allow the essential dignity of every human creature. It implies respect for the coffin, wherever it is being carried, whatever flag is draped over it, whatever community is crying out alongside it. It emphasises, in other words, what Hegel emphasised about Antigone, those “Instinctive Powers of Feeling, Love and Kinship” which authority must honour and obey if it is not to turn callous.

God save us from political poets! But I like the last paragraph.

Tags: Law, What's New for Book-Lovers by wfzimmerman
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The Seattle Times: Arts & Entertainment: Ordinary, yes, and far from heroic:

Scott Turow, best known for his courtroom thrillers, takes a sharp detour in his new novel, “Ordinary Heroes.” Rather than the typical murder potboiler, Turow offers a complex World War II novel, loosely based on his own father’s wartime experiences.

Famous for his fast-paced murder mysteries with shocking last-minute plot twists and thoughtful narratives, Turow instead offers a sentimental and ill-conceived war novel.

Representative of the mixed reviews this book has been getting. I don’t regard Turow as a must-read, but several of his books have been awfully good. I’m willing to give this one a chance.

Tags: What's New for Book-Lovers, World War II by wfzimmerman
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Britney Spears A Singer, A Mother, Next An Author? - November 2, 2005:

Los Angeles, California (AHN) - Pop star, Britney Spears, may be the latest star to write a Kabbalah children’s book.

After being “introduced” to the mystical Jewish faith by fellow singer Madonna, has been approached by representatives of Kabbalah to write a religiously themed story.

Madonna has already been the author of five books, including, ‘The English Roses’ and ‘Yakov and the Seven Thieves’, inspired by Kabbalah teachings.

According to BANG Showbiz, a source has revealed that “Britney is definitely interested,” in a book deal.

Tags: Books I Won't Be Reading, What's New for Book-Lovers, YA by wfzimmerman
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His Love of Words Rivals His Contempt for Critics - New York Times:

DUBLIN - Not everyone [including the Times's own Michiko Kakutani] was thrilled by the decision last month to give the Man Booker Prize, Britain’s most influential literary award, to “The Sea” by the Irish novelist John Banville. To begin with, two of the five Booker judges vehemently preferred another book, Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go.”

…
Meanwhile, booksellers at the prize dinner grumbled that the novel was the least commercial of the six finalists (only 3,721 hardback copies had been sold before Booker night on Oct. 10; the total has since risen to just over 9,100). Mr. Banville subsequently appeared on a radio arts program with three critics, who all, he said, hated his book.

But all this is grist for the mill to the author himself, who seems to relish a good literary dust-up, or at least not to mind being at the center of one.

So the Booker Prize is worth 6,000 books in 3 weeks, or roughly 9,000 books in a month. Not too impressive–one of Oprah’s sneezes sells 10,000 books.

Tags: SF, What's New for Book-Lovers by wfzimmerman
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A FEAST FOR CROWS sales ranks at Amazon.com through Nov. 2. Trending rapidly towards #1.

Tags: A Feast for Crows by wfzimmerman
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