Sixteen years ago, during the Superbowl, my husband noticed that I was bored by watching a football game, so he told me he'd help me start a "blog" about whatever I wanted on a new website he'd heard of called "Blogger." So to alleviate my boredom with organized sports on TV, this little book review blog was born! As today is Super Bowl Sunday, I thought I would wish my 753rd blog post a happy birthday, and make a wish for this blog to continue through to at least one thousand posts.
JK Rowling's Harry Potter series would be nowhere without the tenacious talents of Christopher Little, RIP.
Obituary Note: Christopher Little
Christopher Little http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz47289926, "who as a struggling literary agent took a chance on a scrappy submission about tween-age wizards--even though he once disdained children's fiction as a money-loser--and built it into the most successful literary empire in history on the strength of its lead character, Harry Potter," died January 7, the New York Times reported. He was 79.
"Christopher Little was the first person in the publishing industry to believe in me," Rowling said. "Being taken on by his agency was a huge break for an unknown writer. He represented me throughout the 10 years I published Harry Potter and, in doing so, changed my life."
Nicholson first became an agent in 1979 when a childhood friend asked him to help sell his first novel, a thriller written under the pen name A.J. Quinnell. The book, Man on Fire, ultimately sold 7.5 million copies and was twice adapted for film, most recently in 2004 with Denzel Washington. Little subsequently opened the Christopher Little Literary Agency, "though he maintained that selling manuscripts was just a 'hobby.' It soon became more than that," the Times wrote.
In 1995, Rowling, an unpublished, unemployed single mother in Edinburgh, sent Little the first three chapters of her book "after finding his name in a directory of literary agents. Knowing nothing about the business, she picked him because his name made him sound like a character from a children's book," the Times noted.
Little submitted the manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone to 12 publishers and received 12 rejections before selling it for 2,500 (about $3,420), "a meager amount, but his genius was in the details: He sold only the rights to publish it in Britain and the Commonwealth, and he asked for high royalties," the Times wrote. Little sold the U.S. rights for just over $100,000 and the film rights for $1.8 million.
In 2011, Rowling split with Little when his in-house lawyer, Neil Blair, left to establish his own agency. Although Little threatened to sue, he backed off after Rowling paid him an undisclosed sum.
Little went on to represent bestselling authors like Darren O'Shaughnessy and Janet Gleeson. In 2012 he merged his agency with Curtis Brown and continued to take on new clients, including Shiromi Pinto, author most recently of the novel Plastic Emotions. "It was because he took a chance with her, that he was able to take a chance on someone like me," Pinto said.
I am desperately looking forward to this adaptation of the Sandman graphic novels, which have spent decades in pre-production hell. Hopefully, now that it has been cast the project will move forward, and we'll see it on the small screen next year.
TV: Sandman; All Our Wrong Todays
Netflix has confirmed the casting choices for Netflix's upcoming adaptation of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz47289953, including Tom Sturridge, Gwendoline Christie, Vivienne Acheampong, Boyd Holbrook, Charles Dance, Asim Chaudhry and Sanjeem Bhaskar, IndieWire reported.
Gaiman is executive producing the series alongside David S. Goyer and Allan Heinberg. IndieWire noted that the creative team "has long attempted to bring The Sandman to the big screen, including a failed movie adaptation in 2013 with Joseph Gordon-Levitt attached to star." The new project was adapted by Gaiman and Heinberg.
"For the last 33 years, the Sandman characters have breathed and walked around and talked in my head," Gaiman said. "I'm unbelievably happy that now, finally, they get to step out of my head and into reality. I can't wait until the people out there get to see what we've been seeing as Dream, and the rest of them take flesh, and the flesh belongs to some of the finest actors out there.... This is astonishing, and I'm so grateful to the actors and to all of The Sandman collaborators--Netflix, Warner Bros., DC, to Allan Heinberg and David Goyer, and the legions of crafters and geniuses on the show--for making the wildest of all my dreams into reality."
My dear friend Jenny lives in Pasadena, and she will, once the pandemic is brought to heel, most certainly make a visit to the fabulous Vroman's, which has rightfully been named a Legacy Business in California. Kudos to this fantastic bookstore!
Vroman's Honored As Pasadena, Calif., 'Legacy Business'
Vroman's http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz47291800, Pasadena, Calif., is one of the two local businesses to be honored as part of the new Legacy Business Program instituted by the City of Pasadena, according to PasadenaNow.
Under the program, the city "honors businesses that have been in Pasadena for 50 years and contributed to the city in a unique way," PasadenaNow wrote. "Besides the formal recognition, the businesses will be recognized in the city's newsletter and on its social media platforms. The owners of the businesses will receive accommodations and a window decal identifying it as a legacy business."
"As the result of the pandemic, small businesses are more than ever challenged with economic challenges," Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo said. "This is an attempt to recognize some of these businesses."
Vroman's is 126 years old. The other business honored under the Legacy Business Program is Pashgian Brothers Fine Oriental Rugs, which was established in 1889. Similar legacy business programs have been founded in Long Beach and San Francisco, Calif., and in San Antonio, Tex.
Unsurprisingly, the pandemic and quarantine has brought more online shoppers to sites like Amazon, and therefore more wealth to it's CEO, Jeff Bezos. Now, it would appear that Bezos is stepping into a more creative role within the company (and spending more time on his rocket ship company, Blue Origin), and letting Jassy take the reins (or the oars, as the case may be) of the ship that sails the Amazon. It's hard to believe that when we moved here to Seattle, there was no Amazon, and the internet was still in it's toddler years. I didn't even get an email address until 1995, and then there were few places to actually interact online. I'd say that I never ordered a book online, or from Amazon, until the early 2000s, back when Amazon was all about books...now they hardly even mention books as being among their bestselling products...how times have changed! BTW, I just recently purchased an Amazon Kindle Paperwhite e-reader for reading books digitally, and I transferred books from my old Kindle Fire onto it. Never thought I'd say that I read books that aren't made of dead trees.
Amazon: Jeff Bezos Giving Up CEO Post; Record Quarterly Results
The big news from Amazon yesterday wasn't so much its fourth-quarter results--which set a record as more consumers did more buying online because of the pandemic--as the announcement that founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is giving up the CEO post sometime after July 1 and will become executive chair. Andy Jassy, who is currently CEO of Amazon's highly profitable cloud division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), will succeed him as CEO.
Jessy, 53, is a graduate of Harvard Business School and joined Amazon in 1997 as a marketing manager. In 2003, he launched AWS and was became AWS CEO in 2016.
Amazon announced the move in a way that was as much an advertisement for the company as an explanation, quoting Bezos as saying, "Amazon is what it is because of invention. We do crazy things together and then make them normal. We pioneered customer reviews, 1-Click, personalized recommendations, Prime's insanely-fast shipping, Just Walk Out shopping, the Climate Pledge, Kindle, Alexa, marketplace, infrastructure cloud computing, Career Choice, and much more. If you do it right, a few years after a surprising invention, the new thing has become normal. People yawn. That yawn is the greatest compliment an inventor can receive. When you look at our financial results, what you're actually seeing are the long-run cumulative results of invention. Right now I see Amazon at its most inventive ever, making it an optimal time for this transition."
In an e-mail to employees, Bezos, 57, said, "As much as I still tap dance into the office, I'm excited about this transition Millions of customers depend on us for our services, and more than a million employees depend on us for their livelihoods. Being the CEO of Amazon is a deep responsibility, and it's consuming. When you have a responsibility like that, it's hard to put attention on anything else.
As exec chair, I will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, the Washington Post, and my other passions. I've never had more energy, and this isn't about retiring. I'm super passionate about the impact I think these organizations can have."
The New York Times noted that "in recent years, Mr. Bezos had stepped back http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz47321370 from much of Amazon's day-to-day business, delegating those responsibilities to two main deputies, including Mr. Jassy. He instead had focused on Amazon's future and personal projects such as space travel... But the pandemic pulled Mr. Bezos back into Amazon's daily operations last spring. As Amazon grappled with a flood of e-commerce demand, labor unrest and supply chain challenges brought on by the coronavirus, Mr. Bezos began holding daily calls to help make decisions about inventory, talked to government officials and made a much-publicized visit to one of Amazon's warehouses. Amazon has now stabilized and its growth surged."
Bezos founded Amazon 27 years ago as an online bookseller. Of course, Amazon has grown a bit since then, and now in press releases about company results, books are rarely if ever mentioned. Bezos's personal fortune is estimated at $188 billion, making him the second richest person in the world. (If not for his 2019 divorce settlement and Tesla's huge jump in stock price, he would easily be the richest person in the world now.)
I love LeVar Burton's "Reading Rainbow" and I also adore him as a talented actor, especially as Geordie LaForge on Star Trek Next Generation. This award is well deserved.
Burton is the First PEN/Faulkner
Literary Champion
LeVar Burton, award-winning actor and longtime host of Reading Rainbow, has been named the inaugural PEN/Faulkner Literary Champion http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz47321422, which recognizes "devoted literary advocacy and a commitment to inspiring new generations of readers and writers."
"For decades, LeVar Burton has inspired readers all over the world," said PEN/Faulkner's executive director Gwydion Suilebhan. "He has brought stories to life in a magical and meaningful way for generations of book lovers, and his work has made a lasting, positive impact in literature."
Burton added: "I come from a family for whom service to others is the highest possible calling. Whatever efforts I have made toward advancing the cause of literacy, give honor to my mother, Erma Gene Christian, my first teacher and from whom I have inherited my love for books and reading. As we move forward out of a time when alternative facts and mendacious propaganda shaped public opinion, the work you do through the PEN/Faulkner Award, and your committed investment in D.C. schools, has never been more important. I couldn't be more honored to be the inaugural PEN/Faulkner Literary Champion."
The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah is probably her 9th or 10th book that I've read. Her prose is always sterling, her plots solid and deep, and her characters brilliant. And unlike many other popular authors today, she never writes about the same thing twice. She always has a different take on a unique subject for every novel. Here's the blurb:
From the number-one bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone comes
a powerful American epic about love and heroism and hope, set during
the Great Depression, a time when the country was in crisis and at war
with itself, when millions were out of work and even the land seemed to
have turned against them.
“My land tells its story if you listen. The story of our family.”
Texas,
1921. A time of abundance. The Great War is over, the bounty of the
land is plentiful, and America is on the brink of a new and optimistic
era. But for Elsa Wolcott, deemed too old to marry in a time when
marriage is a woman’s only option, the future seems bleak. Until the
night she meets Rafe Martinelli and decides to change the direction of
her life. With her reputation in ruin, there is only one respectable
choice: marriage to a man she barely knows.
By 1934, the world
has changed; millions are out of work and drought has devastated the
Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their
livelihoods as crops fail and water dries up and the earth cracks open.
Dust storms roll relentlessly across the plains. Everything on the
Martinelli farm is dying, including Elsa’s tenuous marriage; each day is
a desperate battle against nature and a fight to keep her children
alive.
In this uncertain and perilous time, Elsa―like so many of
her neighbors―must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she
loves or leave it behind and go west, to California, in search of a
better life for her family.
The Four Winds is a rich,
sweeping novel that stunningly brings to life the Great Depression and
the people who lived through it―the harsh realities that divided us as a
nation and the enduring battle between the haves and the have-nots. A
testament to hope, resilience, and the strength of the human spirit to
survive adversity, The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of
America and the American dream, as seen through the eyes of one
indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a
generation.
Though I read this page turner all in one day, I would recommend that others take their time and savor it, because there is so much history and pathos here that you really shouldn't miss it. I also felt terrible for Elsa, the protagonist, because she was so desperate for any scraps of love and affection and acceptance that she could come by that it verged on the pathetic. Her parents were horrible people, so cruel and prejudiced, but perhaps at the time that was common.
I was reminded of my mother's mother, my Grandma Lang, who also got married during the Great Depression, after having been considered an "old maid" because she was tall, skinny and thought to be homely, with a long face and a strong nose and big, long feet. She loved to dance during the 1920s, when she was young, and she liked dressing up and going to church and gossiping about everyone around her. She was over 30 by the time she met my grandfather, the son of Swiss immigrants who owned a dairy and corn farm out in the middle of nowhere in Iowa. My mother wasn't born until 1937, toward the end of the Depression, and my Uncle Ron was born in the midst of WWII, 5 years later. So I could understand what it meant for my grandma to be a hard working farm wife during the Depression, raising her children and only getting by because Iowa farms didn't have much of a drought during those years. So my mother didn't have to worry about starvation, though there wasn't much money for anything but the necessities of whatever they couldn't grow themselves.
And everyone worked...both my parents worked on their family farms from the time they were toddlers. My mother had the hated job of collecting eggs and feeding the chickens, cleaning the hen house and outrunning the mean old rooster (she still hates chickens). My dad helped feed the livestock and helped dig and weed and fertilize the garden and helped rogue corn when he was still a child. My grandma Semler (my father's mother) traded and bartered for what she needed in terms of cloth for children's clothing (which she sewed by hand) and quilted blankets with the local Amish in a quilting bee once a week. She gave birth to all her children on the kitchen table, without any help, and went right back to work. For decades we got all of our meat, from beef to chicken and turkey and sometimes lamb, from my grandparents meat processing plant (it still galls me what a snob I was about it, too, always turning my nose up at steaks and burgers and leg of lamb because I "didn't like the taste" and I assumed that it was cheap because we never had to pay for meat. What a ninny I was!)
So reading about the farms going under and the families having to desert their land to head to California, where they only wanted to work to make a better life for their children, (and were repelled by prejudice and greedy farm owners) was fascinating to me, and made me wonder what would have happened to my family if my grandparents on both sides had had to give up their farms and move out West. This is a story that has a lot of tragedy in it, and it also has an ending that will make you cry, if you have any heart at all, like it made me weep for over an hour. Still it was worth it! I'd give this book an A, and recommend it to anyone who wants to know about the strong women who survived the Dustbowl and the Depression. I think those who have never known poverty should also read it, because we don't realize how fortunate we are in this day and age.
The Invitation by Vi Keeland was yet another of her saucy contemporary romance novels that I got for a song and read on my new Kindle Paperwhite e-reader. I enjoy the slickness of Keeland's prose and the swift plots she sets up, but I was surprised at how many tropes wormed their way into this novel, and the dreaded euphemisms for sex that followed. I had thought better of the author than to succumb to this kind of paint by numbers nonsense. Here's the blurb: The first time I met Hudson Rothschild was at a wedding. I’d received an
unexpected invitation to one of the swankiest venues in the city.
Hudson
was a groomsman and quite possibly the most gorgeous man I’d ever laid
eyes on. He asked me to dance, and our chemistry was off the charts.
I
knew it wasn’t a good idea to get involved with him, considering the
wedding I was at. But our connection was intense, and I was having a
great time.
Though the fun came to a screeching halt when Hudson
figured out I wasn’t who I’d said I was. You see, that unexpected
invitation I received? Well, it hadn’t actually been addressed to me—it
was sent to my ex-roommate who’d bounced a check for two months’ rent
and moved out in the middle of the night. I figured she owed me an
expensive night out, but I guess, technically, I was crashing the
wedding.
Once caught, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. As
I bolted for the door, I might’ve plucked a few bottles of expensive
champagne off the tables I passed, all while the gorgeous, angry
groomsman was hot on my tail.
Outside, I jumped into a taxi. My
heart ricocheted against my ribs as we drove down the block—but at least
I’d escaped unscathed.
Or so I thought.
Until I realized I’d left my cell phone behind at the table.
Take one guess who found it?
This is the crazy story of how Hudson Rothschild and I met. But trust me, it’s only the tip of the iceberg.
The problems with this book started with Hudson being an entitled, privileged jerk, a dickhead and an asshat, all at different times in the book, but he doesn't seem to come out of jerk mode until the very end, and even then, I didn't trust him. So a woman who isn't a wealthy, shallow poser crashes his sister's wedding? So what? (the bride, BTW, forgives Stella and becomes her best friend). It's not like they can't afford it, or afford to lose a few bottles of champagne. Also her gay friend Fisher eggs her on, but does he get any blowback from crashing the wedding and drinking and eating on the sly? Of course not, he's a guy, and guys are supposed to get away with all kinds of crap while women take the blame. But no, Hudson the scumbag decides to make Stella PAY for her crimes by humiliating her right and left, even after she apologizes, sending gifts to both Hudson and his sister and offers to pay for her meal, though she can ill afford it. Of course, he wants to schtup her the moment he lays eyes on her, but he's too much of a jerk to ask her nicely for a date, no, he has to treat her like crap for many more chapters until they get together.
He also comments on how lovely her "little hands" are and her "delicate neck" and of course how petite but buxom she is, because, as we all know from every romance trope there is, only tiny, child-like women are sexy, and then only to tall, broad shouldered men who seem to find women who resemble children (hairless and peach-skinned and short) the height of sensuality (which makes them pedophiles, really, but romance authors never seem to understand this, or if they do, they somehow think it's normal, which is disgusting on so many levels). Then there's the whole "lips swollen from kissing" cliche that I've read in almost every romance novel, or novel with a romantic subplot, since the 70s. Why is this still a thing? I've been kissed plenty of times and my lips have never swollen up like balloons during or after kissing someone. Then there's the use of fingers to get a woman to orgasm. Why, again, would any woman need a man to do that? The only reason to have sex with a man is that he has a penis which, when used properly, is great fun during sex and can help a woman (with simultaneous clitoral stimulation) reach orgasm, and can also fertilize her eggs if she wants to get pregnant. Yes, there's some sexy foreplay that's fun, but really, if you want penetrative sex, a man with a penis or a woman with a vibrator are your best options (or you can DIY, but that's a whole other story). So all this fingering seems to me to be a huge waste of time and again, somewhat weird.
Anyway, the end of this book was slightly unsatisfying, as I just couldn't get how Stella could fall in love with Hudson the handsy. But, as with everything else, your mileage may vary. I'd give it a C+, and only recommend it to women who find masochism and wealthy douchebags captivating.
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