News Notes: Fake Steve; Bookseller ReminiscencesYesterday's New York Times uncovered the man behind the Fake Steve blog,
who pretended to be Apple's CEO and, as the Times put it, aimed "to
lampoon Mr. Jobs and his reputation as a difficult and egotistical
leader, as well as to skewer other high-tech companies, tech
journalists, venture capitalists, open-source software fanatics and
Silicon Valley's overall aura of excess." Some might say that's too
easy, but Fake Steve has been so popular that he snagged a contract
with Da Capo Press, which in October is publishing his novel Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs, a Parody ($22.95, 9780306815843/0306815842), one of the publisher's fall lead titles.
In real life, Fake Steve is Daniel Lyons, a senior editor at Forbes magazine who writes and edits technology articles.
Concerning his invention of Fake Steve last year, Lyons told the Times, "I thought, wouldn't it be funny if a C.E.O. kept a blog that really told you what he thought? That was the gist of it."
He added that he tried to give up the blog twice, "but started again
after being deluged by fans e-mailing to ask why Fake Steve had
disappeared."
---
On the occasion of his 90th birthday tomorrow, George Browning, former
longtime bookseller at Capitol Book & News, the Montgomery, Ala.,
bookstore owned by Cheryl and Thomas Upchurch, tells the Montgomery Advertiser
about his days as a POW in World War II. Bizarrely when he was
interrogated by a German officer after being captured when his B-17
crashed in the Netherlands, the officer stopped his questioning
and asked, "Haven't we met before?"
The answer to that interrogatory was ja. It turned out that the two had
been at a frat party following a Virginia Military Institute-University
of South Carolina football game in 1936. Browning had been a student at USC; the German was studying at VMI. ---
Frances Steloff, "a raggedy little girl" who peddled
flowers at fancy hotels in her native Saratoga Springs, N.Y.,
eventually became the prescient businesswoman who, in 1920 and with
only $100, started Manhattan's legendary--and recently closed--Gotham
Book Mart (then called Gotham Book and Art).
The Glens Falls Post Star
reminisced about the woman who "befriended and supported some of the
most celebrated figures of the twentieth century--Martha Graham, Anais
Nin, Henry Miller, and many more. As owner of the Gotham Book Mart in
New York City, hailed by one book reviewer as being as important to the
culture as the Museum of Modern Art, she became a minor celebrity in
her own right."
Despite her
notoriety and having left Saratoga at age 12, Steloff "kept
strong ties to the city throughout her life," the Post Star continued. "In 1968, the year after
Skidmore College awarded her an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters,
Steloff endowed an annual lecture series and poetry prize there. She
later donated a collection of rare books, many first editions inscribed
to her by the authors. In December 1987, on her 100th birthday,
then-mayor of Saratoga Springs Ellsworth Jones gave her the key to the
city. When she died at 101, she was buried at the Shaara T'fille
cemetery on Weibel Avenue, in a tree-shaded plot she had chosen a month
earlier. With $100 and a few books."
---
The Oak Ridge Bookshop and Café has opened in Oak Ridge, N.C. The Stokesdale News
reported that owner Minaxi Patel "has been very pleased with the reception the bookstore has
received in the community. . . . Minaxi said she started the bookstore
because there was no close-by bookstore for her children to get books."
The nearest bookshop is a Barnes & Noble in Greensboro.
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* * * Literacy Opened Eyes for RealEyes Owner"In the past, I would think of everything as a problem. Now I turn the
other way and see where another door is open. This whole literacy thing
is about opening your eyes."
Those are the words of Darren Vincent, owner of RealEyes bookstore, Charlotte, N.C., and organizer of the Charlotte Literary Festival, which will be held this coming weekend. He told his story to the Charlotte Observer,
recounting a hard journey from his troubled past in Niagara Falls,
N.Y., "where people knew him as a roughneck, a troublemaker. He was a
rap singer with muscles and tattoos and a scar from a barroom brawl. .
. . But one day, Vincent says, someone convinced him to read a book
about facing fear. It was the first book he ever read from front to
back--and it awakened a hunger in him."
As Vincent put it, "I was a kid from the 'hood, and all of the sudden, I realized I didn't know anything."
Like
most independent booksellers, Vincent's bookstore dream, which grew out
of conversations with a co-worker at a call center, wasn't about
getting rich, but nourishing people with information. "I was looking at
all my family members, and I saw people who were 26 years old and had
six kids, and they had never picked up a book about parenting, never
picked up a book about pregnancy. And at the call center, I was taking
in what all those people wanted to do and where they wanted to go. And
I realized that it was just like in the 'hood. What they all lacked was
information."
Last year, Vincent's commitment grew further when
he started the Charlotte Literary Festival, which drew Nikki Giovanni
as well as local authors. This year Catherine Coulter and Zane are
expected to participate.
A long way from home. "Everybody
who knows Darren Vincent back in the Falls says, 'Oh yeah, I remember
him. He beat up my cousin, Now he owns a bookstore?'" said Humphrey
Hill, Vincent's cousin.
When asked if he is happy, Vincent
replied, "I have a lot on my plate. I don't have the money to get the
kind of manpower I need to do what I want to do. I have to be in so
many places at once. But I finally in my life like what I do."
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* * *Media and Movies Media Heat: Meyer's Eclipse of YA First Printing RecordsThis morning on Good Morning America: Stephenie Meyer, author of Eclipse
(Little, Brown, $18.99, 9780316160209/0316160202). Published today, this title has a one
million copy first printing, Little, Brown's largest first printing for
a YA author, according to the Wall Street Journal. There are 1.6 million copies in print of the first two books in Meyer's vampire series-- Twilight and New Moon.
---
Today on the Diane Rehm Show: Alan Krueger, author of What Makes a Terrorist: Economics and the Roots of Terrorism (Princeton University Press, $24.95, 9780691134383/0691134383).
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Today on the Brian Lehrer Show: Bryan Caplan, author of The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (Princeton University Press, $29.95, 9780691129426/0691129428). The book was recently described by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times as "the best political book of the year."
---
Today on the Oprah Winfrey Show: former Vice President Al Gore talks about global warming, the subject of his book An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It (Rodale, $23.95, 9781594865671/1594865671).
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Today on Ellen, in a repeat: Kanye West introduces his mother, Dr. Donda West, author of Raising Kanye: Life Lessons from the Mother of a Hip-Hop Superstar (Pocket, $24.95, 9781416544708/1416544704).
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Tonight on Larry King Live: "Oprah's health experts":
- Dr. Mehmet C. Oz, co-author of You: On a Diet: The Owner's Manual for Waist Management (Free Press, $25, 9780743292542/0743292545).
- Bob Greene, Oprah's personal trainer and author of many exercise and diet books.
---
Today on the Charlie Rose Show: Nancy Gibbs, author of The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House (Center Street, $26.99, 9781599957340/1599957345). --- Tonight on the Colbert Report: Ian Bogost, author of Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames (MIT Press, $35, 9780262026147/0262026147). Share This Books & Authors Attainment: New Books Out Next WeekSelected new hardcover titles appearing next Tuesday, August 14:
Play Dirty: A Novel by Sandra Brown (S&S, $26.95,
9780743289351/0743289358) follows a disgraced football player who
receives an unusual job offer from a millionaire. The Rake by William F. Buckley, Jr.
(HarperCollins, $24.95, 9780061238550/0061238554) stars a young,
charismatic, liberal presidential candidate with many skeletons in his
closet. Stardate: 1992.
Force of Nature: A Novel by Suzanne Brockmann (Ballantine, $21.95,
9780345480163/0345480163) is a romantic suspense story about a former
cop, a gay FBI agent and mobsters working with terrorists. Obama: From Promise to Power by David Mendell
(Amistad, $25.95, 9780060858209/0060858206) is a biography by a
journalist who has covered the presidential hopeful since his election
to the Senate in 2004.
Hard Call: Great Decisions and the Extraordinary People Who Made Them
by John McCain and Mark Salter (Twelve, $25.99,
9780446580403/0446580406) profiles courageous people who have made difficult
choices and the circumstances surrounding their decisions. The Art of Power by Thich Nhat Hanh
(HarperOne, $24.95, 9780061242342/0061242349) teaches that true power
is within and that what we seek we already have. By the Vietnamese
Buddhist monk and peace activist who now lives in France.
Appearing on Monday, August 13:
Religion of Peace?: Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't by Robert
Spencer (Regnery, $27.95, 9781596985155/1596985151) makes the
eyebrow-raising claim that Christianity has always promoted peace and
logic while Islam has always been violent and without reason.
Share This Mandahla: The Cutting Season ReviewedThe Cutting Season by Arthur Rosenfeld (YMAA Publication Center, $21.95, 9781594390821/1594390827, June 25, 2007)
I've been on a mystery-reading binge. July and August are the perfect
months for it (as is any month, let's be real), and I have read a slew
of them (including the fine The Face of Death by Cory McFadyen). I
inadvertently picked a lot of books with beatings, missing body parts
and the unnerving phrase "bled out," so when The Cutting Season was
next on the pile, with a knife on the cover, I thought it might be time
for a British cozy. But a cat was asleep on my lap, and the Brits were
in another room, so blades and mayhem it was. I read it in one sitting
(with several changes of cats). More bleeding out, more severed limbs,
but nonetheless, an intriguing page-turner with a startling opening in
an operating room:
"The young boy's soul emerged from his body, hesitated as if getting
its bearings, made a circuit of the operating theater, and flitted
upward toward the radiance of the halogen lamp like a wispy white
pigeon homing in on the sun."
Dr. Xenon Pearl is so shocked at this sight that his scalpel slips and
cuts a vertebral artery, and the boy dies. His death was inevitable,
for the Russian boy, Rafik, had been beaten beyond saving; no matter,
Zee feels tremendous guilt. His second shock comes when he walks out of
the doctors' shower room and sees Wu Tie Mei, his former nanny and
martial arts instructor--she's been dead for 10 years. He thinks he's
hallucinating when she tells him that a big change is coming. He
protests, "I don't like change, even when a person long dead suggests
it." She basically tells him to shut up and explains what he has to do:
mete out justice in a world that has little. "Do your work. It has to
be done. Applying justice is nothing to be ashamed of."
Wu Tie Mei also taught him Chinese medicine, making clear to him that a
martial artist has to be equally adept at hurting and healing. Zee is
more than adept at healing, now she wants him to start hurting. She
urges him to get in touch with his past lives, which include being an
imperial guard, a monk in the northern provinces and the wife of a
ferryman in Guangling. Little Rafik was his former war commander, and
the boy's mafiya father, Petrossov, had been a village pimp. Zee's
first task is to scare straight the husband of one of his patients, who
burns his wife repeatedly. Zee thinks he's going crazy, but soon finds
himself on his Triumph Thruxton, sword strapped to the saddlebags,
breaking and entering. And cutting. Not killing, mind you, just some
meaningful slices along with a warning. And so he starts on his new
mission.
There is a lot going on in this book, starting with the hero, Xenon
Pearl. He's a brilliant neurosurgeon who lives in southern Florida. He
rides a motorcycle and is restoring his father's old Triumph. He has a
ponytail. He's mastered secret Chinese martial arts. Perhaps most
important, he knows his way around good chocolate (and uses the drug for
good, never for evil). There is information on sword-making (and a
beautiful bladesmith named Jordan Jones); there are lessons on karma
and reincarnation; there is humor. The author, in his acknowledgements,
even thanks his personal armorer. What's not to like? Well, the
vigilante justice is a bit disconcerting (as is one sex scene). Perhaps
that's because retaliation is carried out with a knife--we usually have
no problem with Spenser or Reacher and fists and guns. All in all, The
Cutting Season is fine thriller with a cinematic shine--you'll have fun
casting the movie in your mind.-- Marilyn Dahl
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