Sometimes the Books We Must Read Find Us

How do we find the books we must read if we don't even know they exist? Consider the play Boom by Jean Tay or classic Singaporean novels The Immolation by Goh Poh Seng and Glass Cathedral by Andrew Koh. These are all extraordinary reads that found me this spring because I happened to write a column about Booksactually, an indie bookseller in Singapore.

Shortly thereafter, Felicia Low, rights and marketing manager for Epigram Books, contacted me. "Like Books Actually, we are a local entity, often struggling against the grain to get literary titles published when so many out there are waiting for the next big celebrity biography," she wrote.

Epigram publishes fiction, plays, poetry and children's books (including Adeline Foo's popular Diary of Amos Lee series), and, its website notes, "as we are a Singapore publishing house, we also reflect our nation's mad obsession with food by publishing both recipe and food guides." This year Epigram also started the Wee Editions imprint to support Singapore designers, photographers and artists through a series of compact coffee table books.

Felicia and I exchanged a few e-mails. Some books eventually arrived at my office. I started reading them. That's how this ceremony begins, and now yet another vista in our larger-than-we-imagine-it-is book world has opened before me.

I liked the books I read so much that my curiosity was sparked regarding their source. Who better to ask than Edmund Wee, CEO and publisher of Epigram Books?

"Like most countries, the big book publishers in Singapore publish textbooks, educational and academic books," he observed. "Literary titles form only a small percentage of their total output. It is the independent publishers who take on the literary slack. The demand for novels and short stories is admittedly weak because of their less-than-sparkling quality. But it has to start somewhere. (In fact, in the late '60s and early '70s, there was the stirring of a literary movement. But in the rush for nation building, it was sidetracked and never really recovered.) Epigram Books believes it can be put back on track and needs to."

In addition to Singapore, Epigram sells books in Malaysia, Hong Kong and Dubai in their original editions. Wee said that Hachette India "bought the country rights for the Indian sub-continent for our Diary of Amos Lee titles. The translation rights for the Amos Lee series have also been sold to Indonesia and Mainland China. Before the sale to China (for 10,000 copies each for the first three Amos Lee titles), the best market outside Singapore was India. After our recent trip to Bologna, we have had interest from publishers in France, Canada, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Japan for our Amos Lee and Archibald titles."

Epigram's new Singapore distributor will take orders from bookshops in Malaysia, Brunei, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam. "We are in the process of finding distributors for other countries," Wee noted. "Meanwhile, we have outsourced our sales of foreign rights to a newly established literary agency based in France called Hen&ink."
 
Distribution is just one of the innumerable challenges indie publishers face all over the world. According to Wee, "Many of the independent publishers I have met from countries in Africa, the Middle East, South and Central America, eastern Europe and Asia face the same problem of having limited financing, reluctant external distributors and non-existent marketing budgets."

Other obstacles include "practically everything imaginable from start to end. It's difficult persuading established writers (including their out-of-print titles) to switch; it's hard finding experienced editors; it's costly (per unit) printing such small volumes; and it's tiresome having to keep accounts. But we know these challenges are only temporary. In a few years, we are confident of establishing ourselves and look to publishing the Great Singapore Novels."

Why does he do it? What's the reward? "When we uncover a gem of a novel and when we see our books become bestsellers. Ultimately, it is to develop a rich literary culture," Wee observed. "You will never truly know a country through its news reports but through its novels. Apart from the occasional in-depth feature, nearly all news coverage is superficial.

"For example, I would never have known about the link between the CIA and ISI if not for David Ignatius's Bloodmoney or of the straight-edge underground music scene in New York if not for Eleanor Henderson's Ten Thousand Saints or the social and ethnic conflicts in contemporary Los Angeles if not for Hector Tobar's The Barbarian Nurseries.

"Outside of the U.S., two recent novels by Pakistani and Ethiopian writers have given me an insight into the countries they wrote about. Daniyal Mueenuddin's In Other Rooms, Other Wonders gave a penetrating account of life among the servants and children of a landlord in Pakistan. Similarly, Sulaiman Addonia's The Consequences of Love opened my eyes to understanding how Saudi Arabia works."

Sometimes the books we must read find us, if we're paying attention.--Published by Shelf Awareness, issue #1742.

                                                                                                                                                                            photo: Nicholas Leong

Good Mothers Make Great Characters, Too

All fiction readers can easily--perhaps too easily--come up with a list of their favorite bad mother characters. There are hundreds of them on our bookshelves, dating back to ancient Greece.

Strangely enough, I can't ever recall a customer approaching me when I was a frontline bookseller and asking: "Can you recommend some great reads about really bad mothers?"

My all-time favorite bad fictional mom is tabloid journalist Hilary Winshaw in Jonathan Coe's malicious and delightful What a Carve Up! (released in the U.S. as The Winshaw Legacy). She's just one of the rotten limbs on a distinctly unscrupulous, Thatcher-era upper-class family tree.

In a great scene, Hilary is interviewed by a magazine about how she handles being a career woman and a new mother. She exults in public exclamations of maternal bliss ("But one glimpse of Josephine and it all seemed worthwhile. It was an amazing feeling.") for the reporter, but also has this brief exchange with her child's nanny:

Hilary stared malevolently at her daughter, watching her face crumple as she gathered breath for another scream.
"Now what's the matter with it?" she said.
"Just wind, I think," said the nanny.
Hilary fanned herself with the menu. "Well can't you take it outside for a while? It's showing us up in front of everybody."

As a maternal antidote to recollections of that scene, I've been monitoring my e-mail inbox for bookseller e-newsletters extolling the nicer side of motherhood, as well as a few intriguing gift options.

Green Apple Books, San Francisco, Calif., suggested buying a gift card for mom "and send her in to Green Apple this Sunday. Order online and we'll have the gift card waiting here. Further, we'll pour her a mimosa (on the house, of course), and help her pick out something good to read."

The Odyssey Bookshop, South Hadley, Mass., recommended giving "her something more interesting than your tweet updates to read."

Books & Company, Oconomowoc, Wis., noted that it had "received our first order of chocolate bars from Waukesha's own Indulgence Chocolatiers. Yummy! Just in time for Mother's Day. A few books and a bar of chocolate would make the perfect gift (moms, I think it is okay to forward this e-mail to those responsible for the gift giving in your life)."

What would your mother really like for her special day? Forbes reported that "what dads and kids think moms want for Mother's Day doesn't actually match up." A Harris Interactive survey in April found that 48% of women want a spa day, while 72% of men thought their moms wanted flowers.

My own choice was easier this year. Since my mother is allergic to flowers and chocolate, I opted for an e-reader (don't tell her!) because of the adjustable type sizes. My choice is apparently on the crest of a new, post-Hallmark mom tech-wave. The Harris survey discovered that technology is gaining serious ground on flora in the Mother's Day gift race, with 30% of women saying they'd prefer a smartphone or tablet.

The e-newsletter monitoring strategy worked, by the way. I was able to shed my fictional bad mother obsession, especially after reading this nice story from McLean & Eakin Bookstore, Petoskey Mich.:

Last week, there was a darling little boy in the store with his mother.  If he couldn't see her, he would say, "Mom?... Mom?... Mom?" until he could see her again. It was darling for about 5 minutes and darling ended when the volume of the question rose over a certain number of decibels... and until he had to show her every. single. thing. he. saw. regardless of the conversation she was having with a friend. After that, I started thinking, "How long is this kid going to depend on his mother? Seriously, he's like 5 already. Can't he grow up?" I really wanted to share the story with my mom and have a good laugh over it. She's the only one who really gets my humor about these situations... wait... How long am I going to depend on my mother? Seriously, I'm like 35 already. Can't I grow up? No, probably not. I am constantly trying to show my mother books too. She and the mother in our store had something in common: patience. I can't even count the number of times I've told my mother about a book I'm reading, and I'm sure she was bored stiff, but she has always acted interested. Just like dance recitals, cheerleading camp, band, and choir. My god. The choir recitals must have been the worst. In honor of my mom, I will list some of the books SHE'S loved lately.

Good mothers make great characters, too. Happy Mother's Day!--Published by Shelf Awareness, issue #1736.

Free Comic Book Day Is Much More than Bam! Pow!

Free Comic Book Day always makes me smile. I don't know why. Well, sure I do. Nostalgia plays a role, since I inherited my first stack of comics when I was about 11 from a kid who was a few years older. He was also smaller, despite the fact that his nickname was Moose.

Within a few years, I'd expanded that collection with issues featuring then-new superheroes like Spider-Man, Thor and Sgt. Fury & His Howling Commandos. Eventually, however, I passed all of them along to my younger brothers because that's just the way it worked then, a rite of passage I didn't question.

Every year since 2002, FCBD comes along again to remind me about all that. Why wouldn't I smile? But it's also serious business. I love to watch the momentum build as I read articles from local papers nationwide in which indie comic book retailers express their enthusiasm for a day during which they get to occupy center stage.

And it's certainly not a coincidence that the The Avengers opens today in multiplexes everywhere. Studios know a good thing when they see it, too, and a comics-themed movie released the day before FCBD is definitely well-timed.

Comics matter.

Forbes magazine noted that free comics are a revenue generator. "I'm told by a lot of retailers, and I'll bear that out in my own store, that Free Comic Book Day is one of the best days of the year in terms of business," said Joe Field, FCBD's founder and the owner of Flying Colors Comics, Concord, Calif. "We use Free Comic Book Day as a way to just get people ignited about comics... and to come back to the store week after week. It turns out, with the number of people who show up, it's no secret that it's become one of the best business days of the year."

The Gaithersburg Gazette observed that FCBD "may serve as an origin story for those who have not ventured far into the medium."

Chris Pobjecky, co-owner of Yancy Street Comics, Port Richey, Fla., confirmed this theory in the Suncoast News. He said his shop "has been growing as though it had been bombarded by gamma rays," expanding three times in 10 years. "I love the fact there's more people reading now, especially kids." He added that the myriad graphic options available have also played a role: "It isn't all just, 'Bam!' 'Pow!,' Spider-Man battling Dr. Octopus all the time."  

In the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Robert Lewis, owner of Wishing Well Comics, said, "Because it gets so much press, we get a lot of parents in who have never taken their kids to a comic shop before. Sometimes when they see that the books excite their kids and interest them in reading, they become regular customers and the kids become avid readers."

Terry Grant, owner of Third Coast Comics, Edgewater, Ill., told Gapers Block that FCBD "remains an event that is just awesome for families with small kids as well as long time fans, without being filled with speculators.... I think FCBD does a great job bringing new faces to shops and new readers to comics by virtue of the fact that I'm still having new people coming up to me from last year's FCBD and mentioning a book, artist, writer or publisher that I suggested for them."

Acme Comics has partnered with the Natural Science Center of Greensboro this year to offer a second location for handling the anticipated turnout of about 4,000 people, the News-Record reported. Recently the city council declared that on the first Saturday in May, Greensboro will be known as "Comic Books City, USA."

A couple of days ago, I saw Morgan Spurlock's documentary Comic-Con Part IV: A Fan's Hope. Then I watched it again because it also made me smile. I will never be part of this world, which is okay because I surrendered my comics cred long ago when I betrayed my collection of superheroes and sacrificed them to the most cruel and invincible of archvillains--younger brothers, armed to the teeth and dirty fingers with weapons like ice cream, cola and peanut butter.

FCBD is an annual reminder for the rest of us that maybe a little more Bam! Pow! in our lives wouldn’t be such a bad thing. In Spurlock's film, DC Comics writer Grant Morrison observed: "The superhero is a kind of last, small broken ideal of what we might all become one day if we'd just get it together and stop being assholes." And that's funny, too. So stop by an indie comic book retailer tomorrow. It's where all the best superheroes hang out.--Published by Shelf Awareness, issue #1731.

The Rattiest Book

Although this headline may appear to be the title of a very bad children's book, it actually refers to something we all have lurking on our shelves: the tattered volume that looks as if it should have been tossed out years ago, but still remains nearby. You might even have a little shrine for it between bookends on your desk.

More often, however, your rattiest book is lost in the stacks. It probably has a distinctive, if not always pleasant, scent; a missing dust jacket; boards that are, at best, cracked if not altogether shredded; a threadbare spine; dogeared pages awash in marginalia and highlighted passages; and mysterious stains from decades of proximity to food and beverages.

To qualify as a genuine rattiest book, it must be one you purchased new, kept with you much of your life and would never part with voluntarily. From its shelf perch, your rattiest book has witnessed changing relationships, houses, jobs and friends, not to mention the ongoing arrivals and departures of other, much nicer looking books--cooler books, bestsellers, autographed books or first editions that have slipped through your hands like water while the rattiest book held on.

Let me introduce you to my rattiest book: Walden and Other Writings of Henry David Thoreau, a Modern Library edition I bought new one summer during my college years--probably in 1969 or 1970. At the time, Thoreau mattered more to me than almost anyone, living or dead. I made pilgrimages to Concord, visited Walden Pond and tried to ignore the beachgoers; left a pebble at his grave in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. I carried Walden in my Army surplus knapsack every day then, opened it constantly like a holy book, and over a relatively brief period of time beat it to within an inch of its biblio-life.

My rattiest book is still here to tell the tale.

Reading this week about ancient texts from the Vatican and Oxford libraries going online, as well as Larry McMurtry's upcoming "Last Booksale," I couldn't help thinking about "value" because my rattiest book is the most valuable volume in my collection. Although I hadn’t opened it for a long time, yesterday I knew exactly where to find it.

Three years ago, I wrote in a column: "Hidden in an old, broken down Modern Library edition of Henry David Thoreau's Walden was a bookmark from the Hartford Bookshop, Rutland, Vt. Although the bookmark reassured me that the shop was 'est. 1835,' the sad truth is that the Hartford did not make it beyond the 1970s."

Now I open my copy of Walden to the same bookmarked page and wonder when I first put that marker there and why. I read a few lines: "I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." I liked to underline passages then. Here more of the page is highlighted than not. Guess I grew more selective over the years.

I flip pages back to the beginning. Scribbled on the flyleaf, half-title and title pages are what I can only call "poems in the manner of Thoreau," which I wrote in earnest then and scan now with no small measure of embarrassment. But that emotion isn't quite accurate. My rattiest book is a time machine. The poems are markers, too.

I think the patron saint of rattiest books must be the rodent protagonist of Sam Savage's brilliant novel Firmin (Coffee House Press), in which an intellectual rat with a literal as well as literary taste for good books lives in a bookshop where, at one point, he observes the proprietor examining recent purchases from an estate sale:

I hated most of all reading the inscriptions over his shoulder: "For my darling Peter on our fiftieth wedding anniversary" (in The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám).... Dozens of these in every carload. It was obscene. They should have buried the books with their owners, like the Egyptians, just so people couldn't paw over them afterward--give them something to read on the long ride through eternity.

The rat's suggestion makes sense, especially when I consider the chilling possibility of other people reading my at once awful and oddly precious Thoreauvian poetry. Leave it to my old buddy Firmin to come up with the perfect way to celebrate the true value of our rattiest books.--Published by Shelf Awareness, issue #1726.

Thinking Out Loud About Poetry at BEA

Sometimes you just find yourself thinking out loud, even if the "voice" manifests as words on a screen. Here's a question that has been rattling around my brain recently: What if BookExpo had an official poet-in-residence next year?

That notion was sparked by an e-mail I received a couple of weeks ago from Leslie Reiner, co-owner of Inkwood Books, Tampa, Fla., regarding a column about poetry readers. "I really wish ABA and BookExpo could get the poet laureate each year to do the bookseller equivalent of a benediction at a breakfast," she noted. "Wouldn't that be wonderful? Appropriate? Even essential? Let's start a movement."

I was intrigued by the idea and asked her to elaborate. "I love poetry, and for years we have tried to celebrate Poetry Month by giving a discount if a customer can recite a published poem, no songs or nursery rhymes or limericks allowed, to our sales staff at checkout," she said. "It is almost always delightful (won't go into the exception), and sparks conversation that otherwise would never have happened."

Although bookstore poetry sections tend to be diminutive, Reiner suggested that trade show and conference organizers might still "try to feature it more (who am I kidding... feature it at all!) at our gatherings. Booksellers are so often delighted and inspired by the writers who speak at breakfasts or keynotes, and I feel having a poet read a poem or two at BookExpo or the ABA Winter Institute would be a great way to bring new readers to poetry and educate us all as well."

She also recommended extending an invitation to the U.S. poet laureate (currently Philip Levine), who "would be a natural choice, and the recent ones (Billy Collins, Ted Kooser, Kay Ryan come immediately to mind) have done so much to encourage wider readerships with annotated anthologies and other programs. It would be great to have our nation's top poet say hello to us all in verse, and I am sure publishers would be behind this. In particular I fantasize the audience to be one of the large gatherings, where the topic may not be poetry, but the poet can start the event... like an invocation of sorts."

Reiner added that she loves what DIESEL bookstore "is doing on their website, and I am sure others would have great suggestions. But most importantly I would love to have all booksellers, especially those who may not read poetry, hear the poet. Separate panels of poetry related interests would be fine, but my dream is to have the poet laureate address us all."

Whenever I think about the magical combination of poetry, bookseller and publisher, San Francisco's legendary City Lights is the first place that comes to mind, so I asked Paul Yamazaki for his thoughts on the idea. "Poetry is notably absent from BookExpo," he agreed. "I recall that Jack Shoemaker hosted a breakfast at 7:30 a.m. for Gary Snyder in Chicago that must have been interesting, but there is very little that I can recollect. A greater awareness/celebration of poetry is an idea that I would warmly support. A 'benediction' at breakfast is something I would be a little leery of. First it is breakfast and secondly I always think of a 'benediction' that requires distilled spirits. Being in New York, with the resources of St. Marks Poetry Project, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Poets House, etc., there are a wealth of poets and organizations to collaborate with."

If New York is the city where poetry never sleeps, an official BEA poet-in-residence might just lend an air of, well, poetic justice to the show after all these years. 

I have seen poetry as the center of conference attention--and even business conversation--before and it can be a beautiful thing. During a "Shameless Book Promotion" panel at the 2010 AWP Conference & Bookfair in Denver, I heard poet Todd Boss say, "I want my poetry to reach a popular audience. I find it troublesome that I should be forced to admit such a thing as if it were shameful." At the Bookfair, people were eagerly buying poetry collections from Tattered Cover's display table. Later, I watched Gary Snyder mesmerize 600-plus people in the Colorado Convention Center, telling us: "Fortunately, my poetry is not that complicated. You don't need to be an architect to walk into a building." And speaking of buildings, he also joked, "This is one big hall. I came by earlier to see the room and couldn't see the end of it."

Imagine a poet center stage at the Javits Center's "big hall." I do like it, but I'm really just thinking out loud.--Published by Shelf Awareness, issue #1721.