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Published on May 28, 2017 21:41

BookExpo's Librarians' Lounge 2017: Meet the Authors (and New Imprints) Keeping Harlequin on a Roll

This content was originally published by on 25 May 2017 | 4:00 am.
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On Friday, June 2, from 11:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m. stop by the PW BookExpo Librarians’ Lounge (Booth 875) to meet some of the authors anchoring Harlequin’s newest publishing programs.

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Published on May 28, 2017 20:39

Tell Us 5 Things About Your Book: Ben Falcone on the Father-Son Bond

This content was originally published by JOHN WILLIAMS on 28 May 2017 | 9:12 pm.
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Patricia Wall/The New York Times

Ben Falcone is an all-star on the That Guy team — familiar from too many sitcom roles and movie appearances to list here, even if you might not immediately attach the name to the face. He’s also a , perhaps best known for working on “The Boss” and “Tammy,” two films starring his wife and writing partner, Melissa McCarthy. His new book, “Being a Dad Is Weird,” is a series of comic essays about raising his daughters — Vivian, 10, and Georgette, 7 — in Los Angeles, and about his own childhood in Carbondale, Ill. The book’s real star is Falcone’s father, Steve, a colorful character with “a big heart and strong emotions.” Below, Falcone, 43, talks about roasting his father at parties, how music inspires him and more.

When did you first get the idea to write this book?

I’ve been telling stories about my dad for a long time, and I used to sort of roast him at parties. It was one of the times I figured I could be a performer, when I would tell this story of an awful vacation he took me on when I was 15. Or a disastrous attempt at getting a Christmas tree one year. He was sort of the butt of the joke, but I think he liked it. It would always get laughs from my friends and family. Finally, I was in my late 30s, and I go home for the holidays and I think, “I’m an adult, let’s not keep telling these stories.” And I don’t. And at the end of the night Dad said, “Hey, buddy, why didn’t you tell any stories?”

I wanted to give the book to my dad as a Christmas gift two years ago, so I wrote it over the holidays when I had a good amount of time. I had started to forget some of the stories. Writing it was one part love letter to my pop, my mom and my brother; and one part worrying about forgetting all these stories.

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Ben Falcone

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Rob Kim/Getty Images

What’s the most surprising thing you learned while writing it?

I guess I’m weirder than I thought, particularly as I think about me as a dad. My dad is weird in this robust, over-the-top way. He dressed as the Green Giant for Halloween and went downtown with an ax. The police had to tell him, “You can’t be walking around with an ax.’”

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Published on May 28, 2017 18:36

BookExpo's Librarians' Lounge 2017: Meet YA Superstars Holly Black and Ryan Graudin

This content was originally published by on 25 May 2017 | 4:00 am.
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On Thursday, June 1, from 11 a.m.–12:30 p.m. stop by the PW BookExpo Librarians’ Lounge (Booth 875) to the bestselling authors, courtesy of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

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Published on May 28, 2017 17:36

‘The Reminders’ Is A Story About Memory : NPR

This content was originally published by on 28 May 2017 | 12:09 pm.
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What does it mean to be remembered? It’s the question at the heart of The Reminders, the debut novel from actor, musician, and now author Val Emmich. He joins NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro.

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

What does it mean to be remembered? It’s the question at the heart of “The Reminders,” the debut novel from actor, musician and now author Val Emmich. It’s the story of Joan Lennon Sully, a 10-year-old girl, who desperately wants to be remembered, and her friendship with Gavin Winters, a bereaved actor and friend of Joan’s parents, a man who just wants to forget. Together, the two form an unlikely bond based on Sully’s highly superior autobiographical memory. She has perfect recall of almost every single day she’s lived.

Val, thanks so much for being with us.

VAL EMMICH: Thanks for having me.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: So I wanted us to start with a short reading. But first, can you set the stage for us? Where do we find Joan at the start of the novel?

EMMICH: She’s just finished this little class, which I imagine is – involves singing and acting and all sorts of fun activities for a girl 10 years old. And she’s waiting for her father to pick her up. And her father is very late, and she’s the last one, and she’s sitting with the instructor. And so here we go.

(Reading) What time is it now, I ask, strumming my guitar. Five after 5. A car is coming fast but it passes by. I play a minor chord because I’m not in the mood for a happy sound. Ms. Caroline (ph) looks up at the clouds in the sunny sky and says, it’s been so long since we’ve had rain. Actually, I say, it rained on June 20, which was a Thursday, and that was less than three weeks ago. Is that right? Yes, it is. She seems impressed. Did you always have such an amazing memory? No, I say. I got it when I fell on my head in Home Depot. Ms. Caroline laughs, but I’m telling the truth. My friend Wyatt (ph) knows all about comic books and the Internet, and he told me that falling on my head in Home Depot is what gave me my highly superior autobiographical memory and falling on my head again in Home Depot would make me lose it. That’s why I haven’t gone back to that store after all these years.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Why is Joan so worried that she is going to be forgotten?

EMMICH: Because I am, and I’m the author.

(LAUGHTER)

EMMICH: I think…

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Really, is that true?

EMMICH: It is. Well, I know I’ll be forgotten. And I think you’d have to be a fool to think that anyone will remember any of us. But I think for someone who has a near perfect memory, she’s sensitive to this idea of what people remember and what people forget. And she wants to be one of those things that people don’t forget.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Let’s talk about the other character in this book, which is Gavin. Tell me a little bit about him and what he’s going through and when she first encounters him.

EMMICH: He’s just lost his – the love of his life – Sydney. And they are living together in LA. And when Sydney dies, which is only a month ago, Gavin has to live in this house by himself, and he can’t take looking around at all the reminders that Sydney left behind. And he starts burning a lot of the stuff when the book opens, but you can’t burn these memories. So he leaves LA, and he goes to stay with some friends in New Jersey just to get away from these reminders. And Sydney, Gavin’s partner, used to visit this family in New Jersey. And Joan was there, and she was observing and interacting. And she has stuff to tell. And some of it’s very small stuff, like what he wore when he came by or what he ate for dinner.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: What does Gavin get from his friendship with Joan?

EMMICH: I mean, in a word, he gets renewal. Joan has her own, like, I guess, shallow goal, which is to win this song contest. But…

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Right.

EMMICH: …It’s a – really, it’s a larger goal, which is to matter, you know, to matter not just today but to matter tomorrow, which is a mature goal for anyone, let alone a 10-year-old. But I think it’s like a link into a past that he doesn’t have access to. These are memories she offers him that he doesn’t have. And at first, he’s wary because he’s trying to turn off this pain. It’s like awakening the dead. It’s like bringing the past to life. And Gavin can’t – he can’t deny that offer, you know.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: They get close by working on a song together. As you mentioned, she wanted to participate in this contest. Tell me a little bit about that relationship with music.

EMMICH: Well, music is this thing that’s always around in the house with Joan because her father is a musician. He’s got this little home studio. And she sees how powerful music is, how it can bring the past to life. And so they start to write the song together. And I think Gavin is unaware of, at first, how he’s not just helping her with this song, he’s helping himself. Not only is he able to deal with some of his grief through music, but just the communal aspect of songwriting and building something new is healing for him.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You actually recorded the track that Joan and Gavin wrote together.

EMMICH: Yeah, it’s called “Leave The Past Behind,” and I think it’s partially about that, moving on. But in order to move on, I think it’s not about ignoring the past but somehow reckoning with it.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “LEAVE THE PAST BEHIND”)

EMMICH: (Singing) Morning comes and you’re not here. An empty bed, but I feel you near. Such a mess you left behind. I’m not so sure I’ll make it this time.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: After you wrote this, did you come away with a sense of what it means to be remembered?

EMMICH: I did come up with an answer. And I think part of this book was me trying to deal with that. I don’t know why it really bothers me that – I think the speed of our culture. We don’t have a lot of time to think about the past. And I was trying to find an answer of, like, what does all this matter? What is…

GARCIA-NAVARRO: What is a life?

EMMICH: What is life? Like, yeah, just trying to crack that nut with a novel. I did come up with an answer. I don’t want to give it away, but I think what does it matter when we’re gone if someone remembers us? We won’t be here. Why should we have that cause us turmoil in the here and now? Now, I say that, and I’d like to live towards that, but I still have a battle with that.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: That’s Val Emmich. His debut novel is “The Reminders.” Thanks so much for being with us.

EMMICH: Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “LEAVE THE PAST BEHIND”)

EMMICH: (Singing) Life began when you arrived. What came before was a waste of time. Now I’m wondering where to go. Some answers I will never know. I could sail into outer space, but even stars, they leave a trace…

GARCIA-NAVARRO: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I’m Lulu Garcia-Navarro.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Published on May 28, 2017 16:35

Guides for Exploring New York

This content was originally published by SAM ROBERTS on 25 May 2017 | 9:07 pm.
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Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start of summer. Here are other intriguing guides to getting around New York City and its surrounding areas:

“The Borscht Belt: Revisiting the Remains of America’s Jewish Vacationland” (Cornell University Press, $29.95), featuring photographs by Marisa Scheinfeld, provides a vivid, bittersweet record of forsaken archaeological sites that were once beloved summer havens in the Catskills. “To me,” Ms. Scheinfeld writes, “these discarded places are artifacts of time, evidence of change and settings of intrigue.”

“A Field Guide to Long Island Sound” (Yale University Press, $27.50) by Patrick J. Lynch is a lavishly illustrated and enlightening companion to anyone who cares about the 110-mile long estuary’s survival.

“Figures in Stone: Architectural Sculpture in New York City” (W. W. Norton & Company, $19.95) by Robert Arthur King, an architect and designer from the Bronx, takes readers on a tour of visible, but overlooked, carvings.

“Fire Island Lighthouse: Long Island’s Welcoming Beacon” (Arcadia Publishing and the History Press, $21.99) by Bill Bleyer explores the 1858 tower.

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An early photograph of the Fire Island Lighthouse, with its black and white bands.

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Fire Island National Seashore

“Gardens of Stone: The Cemeteries of New York City From Colonial Times to the Present” (Fonthill Media, $22.99) by Alexandra Kathryn Mosca offers a historical excursion, with stops at grave sites that include Louis Armstrong’s and Harry Houdini’s.

“Magnetic City: A Walking Companion to New York” (Spiegel & Grau, $22), by Justin Davidson, New York magazine’s architecture critic, provides an intimate, seductive guidebook.

“New York Art Deco: A Guide to Gotham’s Jazz Age Architecture” (Excelsior Editions, State University of New York Press, $24.95) by Anthony W. Robins is a colorful keepsake for any aficionado.

“The Rockefeller Family Gardens: An American Legacy” (The Monacelli Press, $50), with lush photographs by Larry Lederman, captures how gloriously each generation expressed its personal character on a monumental canvas.

“The Quarry Fox and Other Critters of the Wild Catskills” (The Overlook Press, $25), by the naturalist Leslie T. Sharpe, is a poignant and modern reminder of untamed creatures so close to home.

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Published on May 28, 2017 15:33

BookExpo's Librarians' Lounge 2017: How Baker & Taylor Is Helping Public and School Libraries Work Better Together

This content was originally published by on 25 May 2017 | 4:00 am.
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Stop by the PW BookExpo Librarians’ Lounge (Booth 875) to speak with Baker & Taylor representatives, who will be om hand throughout BookExpo.

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Published on May 28, 2017 14:32

From social media star to bestselling writer, the young ‘Instapoet’ | Books

This content was originally published by Rob Walker on 27 May 2017 | 11:04 pm.
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Ordinarily, the illustration adorning the cover of a new book is not a big story, but such is the hype around the young Canadian poet Rupi Kaur that her plan to release the picture to her 1.3 million Instagram followers on 1 June is generating great excitement.

Kaur, 24, came from nowhere to sell 1.4 million copies of her first book, Milk and Honey. That is almost unheard of for a first-time writer, let alone a first-time poet. First self-published in 2014 and then by a publishing house the following year, the poetry collection became a New York Times bestseller. Now Kaur is building up anticipation on social media for her new anthology, which is due out in September. And here, the Observer publishes an exclusive extract.

Kaur is one of a burgeoning group of young “Instapoets”, so called because they have shot to fame after building up huge followings on social media. She was catapulted into the limelight after Instagram banned a self-portrait photograph, in which she is seen lying on a bed with menstrual bloodstained sheets.

She took a stand against Instagram, pointing out the hypocrisy of a platform that hosted sexual images of women yet censored a typical female experience. Followers came in their droves – 1.3 million of them at the last count (though notably she follows no one). “My book would never have been published without social media,” she says. “I wasn’t trying to write a book, it wasn’t even in my vision. I was posting stuff online just because it made me feel relieved – as a way of getting things off my chest.”

Milk and Honey is a collection of poems that tackles tough themes – rape, violence, alcoholism, trauma – but it’s written in Kaur’s trademark short, simple verse – with her own illustrations acting as visual punctuations.

“People aren’t used to poetry that’s so easy and simple,” she says.

And that is key to why Kaur has connected so strongly with millions of young people worldwide. Her poetry does not need heavy analysis. Rather like a rapper, she tells it how it is. One of the poems in Milk and Honey goes like this:

The thing about having

an alcoholic parent

is an alcoholic parent

does not exist.

Simply

an alcoholic

who could not stay sober

long enough to raise their kids

She is in Sydney this weekend, as part of a tour that has seen her take in Britain, Spain, New Zealand and, next month, Canada. This month in Brighton, tickets to her performance sold out in less than 45 minutes, her London show in less than 10. The audience was predominantly female, twentysomethings, mostly students.

“She has changed the way that a lot of us think about poetry – she’s dusted off its cobwebs,” said Daniella Bassett, 20, queueing for the Brighton show. “She really gets to the raw emotion of life – but puts it in a human way. It’s gorgeous.”

Clutching a copy of Kaur’s book, photography student Rebecca Guiterrez, 23, agreed. “The images speak to me just as much as the words.” But the simplicity of her work has drawn criticism too. And Kaur says she is hurt by that. At the same time, she revels in being anti-establishment.

“I don’t fit into the age, race or class of a bestselling poet,” she says, a glint in her eye.

“I used to submit to anthologies and magazines when I was a student – but I knew I was never going to be picked up. All their writing was, you know, about the Canadian landscape or something. And my poem is about this woman with her legs spread open.”

Born in Punjab, India, Kaur moved with her Sikh family to Toronto when she was four. She loved reading at school, but with English her second language she found it difficult to understand most of the poetry. What she loved was cutting and pasting words and images, or filling up poems with drawings.

It is not a million miles from what she does now and that formula will not change for her second book.

“It’s a grown-up version of Milk and Honey. The style is the same but I go deeper. It’s more emotional,” she says.

There are poems about refugees, immigration, revolution – each motivated in part, she says, by her experience of living and writing in the US during the rise of Donald Trump.

But a big part of the new book, too, is about the grief of losing “what you think is the love of your life – and dealing with its raw aftermath,” she says. “How do you redefine love when your idea of love is something that’s so violent? When your idea of passion is anger. How do you fix that?” she says.

Kaur does not necessarily write from experience. Hers seems to have been a happy, albeit strict upbringing on the outskirts of Toronto. She talks little of her past but simply points to her experience of being a woman as the thing that has most informed her writing.

[image error]

Whatever you might think of it, there is little doubt Kaur is at the forefront of a poetry renaissance in both Britain and US. People line the streets to see her perform and last week Milk and Honey was still in Amazon’s top 40 bestellers in the UK, more than 18 months after publication.

During her Brighton performance, she wooed the audience like a pop star rather than a poet. It was as if they were under her spell. She asked them to click their fingers when something she recited “moves you emotionally”. As a result, the performance is punctuated by mass finger clicking, providing a rhythmic, almost musical backdrop to her words.

Kaur says it got her thinking. “How do I get this poetry bumping in somebody’s car? So maybe after this second book, I’ll get some time to go into a studio and perfect it,” she says.

She is unashamedly ambitious –a workaholic. She’s already 10 chapters into her first novel – “I’m just free-writing it at the moment” – and, apart from the music, she’s keen to experiment with screenwriting, films and photography.

“I want to do all those things – I want to double up – why not?” she asks.

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Published on May 28, 2017 03:21

BookExpo's Librarians' Lounge 2017: Take a “Maker Break” with DK

This content was originally published by on 25 May 2017 | 4:00 am.
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On Thursday, June 1, from 2:30–4 p.m., stop by the PW BookExpo Librarians’ Lounge (Booth 875) for a crafting session, courtesy of DK Publishing.

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Published on May 28, 2017 02:19

A Cambodian Refugee Returns Home, to a Landscape Brutally Changed

This content was originally published by GAIUTRA BAHADUR on 26 May 2017 | 9:00 am.
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Credit

Eleni Kalorkoti

MUSIC OF THE GHOSTS
By Vaddey Ratner
324 pp. Touchstone. $26.

Vaddey Ratner calls each of the three parts of her tenaciously melodic second novel a movement. And indeed this story of an orphaned Cambodian refugee’s return to her homeland does have a symphony’s elevating effect on emotion. Ratner stirs feeling — sorrow, sympathy, pleasure — through language so ethereal in the face of dislocation and loss that its beauty can only be described as stubborn.

“Music of the Ghosts” is an aesthetic gesture akin to the plaintive playing Ratner’s protagonist, Suteera, hears in the novel’s third movement while walking through a forest near Angkor’s ancient temples. In a remote clearing, she finds an unlikely ensemble, the victims of land mines: a blind man, a fisherman, an amputee, a former Khmer Rouge insurgent and a former government soldier, rivals in another life now joined in making otherworldly music. The three-stringed instrument whose lament transfixes Suteera has only one string that still works. Both the musicians and their instruments are broken, disfigured, yet still they create beguiling art.

They also provoke an unsettling memory. Once before, in that very region, Suteera had heard the quiver of a string plucked in the wild. Then she and her aunt were fleeing Cambodia through an abandoned rice field sown with corpses and mines. Everyone else in her family was dead — except for her father, whose fate she did not know. Just before a mine exploded, claiming most of their escaping party, they heard a faint cry, resembling the sound of a lute. A little later, Suteera thought she heard it again. But when she told their captor turned savior, the Khmer Rouge soldier who guided them across the Thai border, he dismissed it as hallucination. “Out here,” he proclaimed, “there’s only music of the ghosts.”

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Such echoes haunt Suteera’s journey when she travels from her new home in Minneapolis to the Buddhist temple where her father had been raised by monks. Ostensibly there to scatter her aunt’s ashes, she has been lured by a letter from a guilt-stricken man who calls himself the Old Musician and claims that he met her father in one of Pol Pot’s prisons. He also claims to have three classical instruments owned by her father and intended for her. Suteera returns half-hoping to find her soldier savior as well as her father, half-thinking the musician might in fact be her father. As the novel shifts between past and present, from her perspective to that of the Old Musician, another set of instruments emerges as symbolic: electric cords with exposed wires, metal clamps, pliers, a rope, all hung on the wall of the prison. One set of instruments is the dark twin, the reverberation, of the other.

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