David Quammen has the uncommon knack of turning arcane biological knowledge into intriguing narratives. But, alas, his newest book (The Long Follow: J. Michael Fay’s Epic Trek across the Last Great Forests of Central Africa) is AWOL. Chapters Indigo doesn’t list a publication date, and Booktopia lists it as March 2007. Unfortunately, the prognosis is rather grim, because the publisher, National Geographic Adventure Press, isn’t showing anything on their website written by David Quammen period, much less a book under that title.
It always astonishes me that some people are so naive they still unconsciously believe some impartial judge of literature carefully selected the panoply of books on the front tables at book chains. It’s probably this naivety that has caused publishers to shift their financial clout from newspaper ads to book tables – it’s more cost efficient. Book Nerd has an excerpt from Bookselling This Week that explains more.
Ah, the difficulties of the First Novel (and not even the writing part of it).
So Judith Freeman is publishing her first non-fiction come September, The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved, and it’s a genre blending book of research accompanied by personal narrative as she travels around Los Angeles to Chandler’s haunts. There’s nothing much about it online yet, but it’s something for Chandler fans to look forward to.
Chekhov’s Mistress has created the anti-novel-writing month title for April: National Slowetry Month.
Harper’s Magazine has a great new website, yes, but are they offering the articles online that I want to link to? No. Cynthia Ozick wrote a wonderful piece spring boarding off Jonathan Franzen’s famous Harper’s essay and the response by Ben Marcus in 2005, but it’s only available to subscribers. Sometimes I think that Harper’s is behind The New Yorker, at least in terms of online savvy and content, in the same way the LA Times lags behind the NY Times.
2 comments
Ah, but it’s anti-“poetry month” (not anti-novel) and not even really anti anything, just making fun of the concept of all those months that we’re supposed to focus on things – but still, thanks for the link!
-Bud
Yeah, I understood it was making fun of all the months that we’re supposed to be writing quickly – which is why your posts focus on writing slowly. The genre doesn’t matter as much as the pace.