Inside Jacket

Every two weeks over the past two years, author Yann Martel has been sending Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper an inscribed book, along with a personal letter. Martel has documented each of  the books sent and the letters he’s written on the web site, www.whatisstephenharperreading.ca and has vowed to do this for as long as Harper is Prime Minister.

Martel says he’s not trying to educate the Prime Minister, rather he’s seeking to “make suggestions to his [moments of] stillness”, an idea that came to him after feeling snubbed by Harper during an invited visit to the visitors’ gallery in the House of Commons.

“I know you’re very busy, Mr. Harper. We’re all busy. But every person has a space next to where they sleep, whether a patch of pavement or a fine bedside table. In that space, at night, a book can glow. And in those moments of docile wakefulness, when we begin to let go of the day, then is the perfect time to pick up a book and be someone else, somewhere else, for a few minutes, a few pages, before we fall asleep.”

Recent cuts to arts funding leads Martel to believe that the PM doesn’t read much literature and some people call Martel rude for his attempt to introduce more literature into the Canadian leader’s life. Martel insists that what an elected leader reads is extremely important.

“Once someone has power over me then, yes, their reading does matter to me, because in what they choose to read will be found what they think and what they will do.”

Whether or not Harper has actually read any of the books is not known but Martel has personally benefited, “It’s been a wonderful rediscovery of books for me…It’s forcing me to read things not for my own pleasure but for Mr. Harper’s potential pleasure. It means I’m reading quite widely.”

Martel’s letters and list of sent books have now also become a book published by Random House’s Vintage Canada, What is Stephen Harper Reading? Books gifted to the Prime Minister include titles such as To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee,  Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett,  Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes and Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

The book sent this week? What is Stephen Harper Reading? of course.

The Bookseller Magazine in the UK reports that Brits are more bookish than the Americans. A survey found “that 57% of British consumers purchased one or more books last year, compared with only 50% of Americans surveyed.”

The numbers are really meaningless but the thing that concerns me is that there are people in both countries who will go through an entire year without buying a book. Think about it. No books bought for birthday presents, no books bought for Christmas presents, no travel guides bought for holidays, no cookbooks bought for the kitchen, no textbooks bought for college, no Dan Browns or James Pattersons bought to enliven dull flights, no how-to guides to rebuild old chevys and, of course, no books bought for the sheer pleasure of reading.

I find this statistic rather scary.

There is a book about having sex every night for a year, there is a book about eating locally grown food for a year, there is a book where a Julia Child recipe is cooked every day for a year, and there is a book where life is lived according to the Bible’s rules for a year.

They are called annualism books and have been a publishing phenomenon for the best part of a decade. Check out more so called annualism books and our interview with AJ Jacobs, the author of The Year of Living Biblically.

1 Heat by Bill Buford
(learning to be a chef for a year – lots of cuts, burns and shouting. Also this is the best book on this list by a mile.)
2 The 100-Mile Diet by Alisa Dawn Smith & J.B. MacKinnon
(eating locally grown produce for a year – not very easy)
3 Julie & Julia by Julie Powell
(cooking a Julia Child recipe every day for a year – didn’t Julia have really complicated recipes?)
4 The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs
(obeying the Bible for a year – I really wouldn’t want to do this one)
5 365 Nights by Charla Muller; Betsy Thorpe
(having nookie every night for a year – it’s impossible, of course)
6 How I Lived a Year on Just a Pound a Day by Kath Kelly
(like it says on the cover….I was a student once and did, indeed, do this)
7 A Life Stripped Bare by Leo Hickman
(living ethically for a year – I feel guilty just looking at this book)
8 Chastened: No More Sex in the City by Hephzibah Anderson
(not having sex for a year – this one is easy)
9 Self-made Man by Norah Vincent
(a woman being a man for a year+ – don’t people do this all the time now, there’s a special operation)
10 My Jesus Year by Benyamin Cohen
(a Jew is a Christian for a year – this will never catch on)

The secret proceedings of book clubs in the city and beyond.

THE CLUB: One of the oldest clubs to be profiled in this column, this group of lawyers (including The New Yorker’s legal counsel, Lynn Oberlander), writers, independent financiers, a child psychologist, a pediatrician, and a college professor, are part of a club that formed around twenty years ago, though none of the original members remain.

THE MEMBERS: Attendance varies from four to fifteen men and women. Most of the members are in their late thirties to early forties; about half are married and a quarter have children.

THE SETTING: The group rotates between different apartments in New York City, with the exception of the college professor’s: “I have furniture from off the street and my place is grimy and small. The table place settings don’t match.” Table settings are important because the club doubles as a supper club.

THE MENU: Insalata caprese, prosciutto and salami, spaghetti with asparagus, vanilla cake, and lots and lots of wine.

DO SPOUSES AND CHILDREN ATTEND? Sometimes. Lynn: “My kids make a big deal about book club when we host and make a sign-in and welcome list and are generally around until we can get them to bed and start drinking.”

WHEN DID THE CLUB START? Michael: “Nobody really knows.”
Lynn: “I’ve been a member of this club since 1992, when I joined an already existing group of folks who (mostly) knew each other from Dalton. None of the original Daltonites are still in the club. It is a constantly evolving group, and some members have left and come back after five years.”

THE BOOK: “Lush Life,” by Richard Price.

THE VERDICT: Recommended.

ATTEMPT A REVIEW IN THREE SENTENCES OR LESS: Lynn: “New York City Police procedural, with some great stock characters. The dialogue is pretty snappy and it is a quick, engrossing read that feels familiar from all those years of ‘Law & Order.’ ”
Bob: “A Hollywood-ready version of poor African-American kids and a dogged detective that had great verbal inventiveness but dealt in clichés of plot and character redeemed with clever little twists. A police procedural for people who want wish to have some “sociological analysis and sense of place” thrown in.”

WHAT KIND OF BOOK MAKES FOR A GREAT DISCUSSION? Alice: “We read only fiction, no memoirs or non-fiction. I’ve found that books that emphasize writing style over plot, or that involve characters whose motivations are ambiguous, make for good discussion. We also enjoy books that introduce us to cultures very different from our own.”

WHY JOIN A BOOK CLUB? Alice: “To read books I would not otherwise pick up on my own. And to obtain relief from all of the bad writing I encounter on the job (I’m also a lawyer).”
Bob: “To meet women, of course. However. no one has met a lover in our book club throughout its long history.”

Does your club belong in Book-Club Confidential? E-mail us!

Once more America is shocked there is a literary world away from the land of Uncle Sam. The dismay at Herta Müller, a Romanian-born German citizen, being named this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature is clear and follows on from the dismay at Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio’s victory last year. Müller is very well respected in Germany – the nation that publishes more books than any other each year. Clearly, there are many folks who respect her work.

The Entertainment Weekly book blog did not hide its feelings after the Americans were snubbed once again….

“But does the Nobel imprimatur really compel me to pore through the works of Müller — or last year’s comparably unfamiliar laureate, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio? I think not. The Nobel ranks are cluttered with writers who’ve sunk into obscurity and irrelevance, sometimes deservedly so. Do Swedes still read the work of 1916 laureate Verner von Heidenstam? Does anyone think 1938 winner Pearl Buck was one of the top 100 writers of the 20th century?”

Obscurity is relative, of course.

I had to laugh when I saw this blog posting from The L Magazine – Herta Müller, Who Even People Who Had Heard of J.M.G. Le Clézio Have Never Heard of, Is This Year’s Nobel Laureate in Literature

The Baltimore Sun book blog said

Today’s award seems to reinforce the notion that the Nobel is a sort of literary archeological dig, in which judges scour the world’s libraries and academies for an obscure author, in the hopes of creating a broad, worldwide audience and righting wrongs. The judges liberally slather on their political values, as the winning authors often are known for social commentary that hits at authoritarianism and racism.

I’m sure there will be a lot more analysis and debate about the Nobel judges and whether they have an anti-American bias in the coming days.

The crazy thing is that there are lots of people who want English translations of Müller’s books. Since the announcement, Muller is the most searched for author on AbeBooks and translated copies are running very short. Forget about trying to find signed copies right now.

When Oprah announces a Book Club pick, the publisher is tipped off and there is plenty of stock when the announcement comes. Now publishers are scrambling to get Müller’s book republished and into the shops.