My complaint is a simple one.

Look at the picture there on the right.

See the stack of books to the right? See the stack of books on the iPad? Which one reminds you of the stories still to be read, the books you want to reread; which one literally occupies a space in your conscience (as well as on your bookshelf)?

But in my experience, when I look at my iPad, I don’t see books. I see an iPad. On the device is Middlemarch, a Jonathan Ames novel, a Charlie Huston mystery, a couple of P.G. Wodehouse books, and a half-dozen nonfiction books I thought I wanted to read once upon a time.

This could just be a sad side effect of the way I consume books: (more…)

It’s award season and the results are finally in!

No, no, not those awards, which remind us that the people who create children’s books are artists as well as craftspeople.

No, I’m talking about the Bulwer-Lytton Awards for worst opening sentence. It is Edward George Bulwer-Lytton whose 1830 masterpiece Paul Clifford begins:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

In his honor, each year hundreds of writers compete to write similarly overwrought and overextended sentences, and they are always a riot. Mere badness isn’t enough; these entries are all hilariously awful. Check them out at the link above!

There are two sorts of people in the world: Those who write in and mark up books; and those who view those of us who do write in books as sacrilegious pigs.

Okay, okay—maybe there are a few other sorts of people. (I’ve never been a fan of that whole “There are two kinds of people” routine, except where it is inarguable: women/men; living/dead; rational people/fans of Glenn Beck.)

Myself, I’ve gone from treating every book as a sancrosanct object (as a boy) to routinely scribbling in books (as an adult). Some I so love that I want to puzzle out how they work, and I buy multiple copies and mark them up (Moore, Munro, Cheever, Konigsburg, others). Some books I find so maddening that I have to immediately vent my hooting disdain (among them recent award-winners and bestsellers—don’t ask). Years later I’ll be flipping through an old copy of something and find an expletive in a margin and think, “Really? Was it that bad?”

But my marginalia is as nothing compared to the marginalia of the greats.

There is a wonderful little piece by Ian Frazier in this week’s New Yorker about the marginalia in books owned by famous writers, among them Nabokov, Coleridge, and Twain—who probably wrote the most entertaining marginalia: “At the end of an unusually exasperating chapter, [he wrote,] ‘A cat could do better literature than this.’”

So writing in books: Bad? Good? A necessary evil? A perversion that must be stamped out? Do you write in your books?

(Was going to post this after seeing this movie in preview, but then decided that would be a bit of a spoiler. Lots of people probably wanted to see this movie as much as I had; no reason to kill their joy early. So I drafted it and set it aside til now, when it appears that Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief will be lucky to gross a hundred million dollars. Effectively, this film franchise is already over.)

The wretchedness of some bad movies is forgivable.

You know the ones I mean: There is an artistic vision of some kind behind the mess, a storyteller who got terribly lost. And even though the end result is painful to behold, it still feels like it came from someone who cared. About the wrong things, sure; or about a story no one in their right mind could be bothered to give a damn about, maybe—but whatever the case, you sense someone behind the shambles. The unwatchable hot mess that is Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus falls under this category. As does John Boorman’s Zardoz, and Boorman’s Exorcist II: The Heretic, and—well, a lot of Boorman. You get the picture.

And then there are movies made by witless mediocrities such as Chris Columbus. (more…)

Last night I had the place to myself and fired up the first two episodes in the latest season of Fox’s long-running, melodramatic, completely unrealistic counter-terrorism show 24. And I loved it.

I resisted the adventures of Jack Bauer for a while, despite the claims of friends and family that I’d eventually come to not only enjoy the show, but also yell at the screen in joy, anger, or pure, raw emotion. A friend said, “Trust me, if you watch it, you’ll find yourself screaming out Jack’s name.” He was completely correct.

24 is not art. Let’s get that straight right away. In my DVD collection, the seasons I own are hidden away behind things of more merit. And to be honest, it hasn’t been great since Day 5. But what can I say? I enjoy it.

We all have our guilty pleasures. (more…)

(Crow and Companion shopping during the holidays in high-tech Spend Bucks store packed with people.)

From next aisle over, Voice #1: Yo! What’s the name of that talking pig in that movie!

Voice #2: What movie? What pig? What are you talking about?

Voice #1: You know, that movie with the pig that talks—what’s it called? Babe. What was the name of the talking pig in that movie, Babe?

Over the holidays, the Crows took some time away from the fire of agenting to read things other than manuscripts and contracts. (I know, I know—who knew there was anything else? But it turns out the world of print is far bigger than just our little grimy corner of the bookstore. Will the wonders never cease!?) Some of us lost ourselves in the fat new Stephen King novel; others laughed their asses off over a Bill Bryson book (a helluva way to lose weight); still others turned for inspiration to that magazine of national record In Style to see just what it is we should be reading.

What books can the stars not put down? (more…)

No, I’m not talking about the indentured servitude contract Chris Richman and I agreed to when we booked passage here from the Old Country. We’re still in thrall to our master and doing dishes to earn our room and board. Rather, I’m talking about a little piece of shareware called Freedom. It forcibly stops users from accessing the internet. (That little clock to the right is its desktop icon.)

If you’re anything like me, then you find it hard to stop yourself from checking things throughout the day. Your four email accounts, your Twitter feed, internet messenger windows, that time-suck called Facebook, Goodreads, this blog, and a bazillion other inveigling things worm their way into your serene office and distract you from the Work That Must Be Done. Some of you have self control and practice “restraint.” (What is that?)

Well, bully for you. Me, I got no self control. (more…)

Oh, Jeff Bezos. There was a time when I was a true believer. I bought the first generation Kindle relatively early on—March or April of ‘08, thereabouts. I was impressed (or flattered, anyway) by the letter from you that came with it, complimenting me on being a daring early adopter, one of the few, the proud—

The ripped-off.

Mind you, it did work for just over a year. Sure, the back came off all of the time, and the clumsy design meant I was always turning pages by accident (seemed like every edge of the damn thing had a page flip button). Sure, reading off of a gray screen is nowhere near as fine as reading off of a crisp page, but hey, it’s a new technology! It’s trailblazing of the sort that heralds a new era! It’s—well, how the future looked back in 1982! Sure it’s a homely little device, but who besides Steve Jobs ever said technology should be pretty and appealing?

For my four hundred bucks, I got about thirteen months of use out of it before the screen froze up. (more…)

It may surprise you to know that, despite the approximately seven hours of reading I do on an average work day, I try hard to find time to read for pleasure, too. It doesn’t always work–sometimes I’m burnt out after a long day to the point of eyeball explosion–but every so often I need a break from books for children, books I might be interested in signing, or books where my red pen longs to make corrections to simple sit down and enjoy a good story.

While I realize it’s a little late for retrospectives now that we’re nearly 5% of the way through 2010, I thought I’d compile a quick list of my favorite books for 2009. As you can imagine, I tend to read more books for children than books for adults, and the list reflects that. DISCLAIMER: These are books I happened to read during 2009, not necessarily books that were published during the calender year, and do not reflect the opinion of the entire agency.

So here, in no particular order, are a few of my favorite titles read during 2009: (more…)