Josh Hanagarne's Blog, page 20

Please Join Me On Booktalk Nation – April 29

Hi everyone, I’d like to invite you to an event next Monday, April 29.

At 7 PM Eastern Time I’ll be a guest on Booktalk Nation, discussing the book, and whatever questions people (you!) submit.  I’ll be interviewed by Karen Holt from O Magazine.  In a few email exchanges, Karen has already made me laugh more than I’m used to, so I think we’ll have a fun conversation.

How you can participate

Here’s my Author Page on Booktalk Nation. If you enter an email address below the calendar on the left side of the screen, you’ll be sent the information about how you can listen to the interview. The talks generally last about 30 minutes. 

Inscribed books

If you order an inscribed book through the website, they are sold through the King’s English Bookshop, a store here in Salt Lake.  A couple of days later I’ll go up to the store, sign the books with the messages you request, and the King’s English will ship them to you.  I’m looking forward to seeing the requests.

Once I ordered a signed book from Chuck Palahniuk through Powell’s in Portland. He ignored my inscription (I won’t tell you what it was) and wrote, Josh, finish your book or I’ll kill you!!!  It was appropriate, since the book I ordered was Haunted.

Booktalk Nation has a great lineup of authors, and Mary Roach is tonight!  I’m very excited to be part of this and hope you’ll drop by to chat.

Let me know if you’ve got questions! If I can’t answer them, I’ll still get an answer for you.

What To Do In New York, Atlanta, and St. Louis?

Hi all, it’s right on top of us now.  Next week I’ll fly to New York, Atlanta, and St. Louis for the first leg of the book tour.  I know I’ll be busy in NYC, and I already know some of the things I want to see there, but I’d love to have some suggestions about what you think is a Must See.

And I know almost nothing about Atlanta (except for Tom Wolfe and A Man In Full), or St. Louis, short of the arch and people saying, “Don’t get shot while you’re there.”

How about it? Any recommends?

Me And O Magazine

Hi all, I’m briefly interrupting my week offline for a bit of good news. I found out yesterday that The World’s Strongest Librarian was in the May 2013 issue of Oprah Magazine.

So, two firsts for me:

1. I bought an O Magazine

2. Yes, my book was in it, as seen below:

Very surreal.

I feel like I’ve been in denial up to this point, like someone else wrote the book, or like it’s all happening to someone else, but this is the cold hand of reality slipping up the back of my shirt and pinching me.

It’s great, but it’s weird.  And now it’s here and we’re about to find out what we’ve got.

And now, I’m out of here for the week.  See you Monday!

Josh

 

Event With Richard Paul Evans

Hi all, I’m adding an event to the tour calendar today that might be of interest to the Salt Lake area folks.

On May 3 at the Sugarhouse Barnes and Noble I’ll be doing a conversation and signing with mega-mega-mega-bestselling author Richard Paul Evans.  Mr. Evans has written The Christmas Box, the Michael Vey sci-fi series featuring a teenage boy with Tourette’s, and too many other books to list here.

Mr. Evans will be leading a conversation with me and then we’ll sign books until the pages catch fire.  That’s going to be book tour eve, after which I’ll be out and about and Richard will start touring for A Step Of Faith, which comes out the next week.

Richard has done so much wonderful work for various charities and the Tourette’s community and I couldn’t be prouder that he wanted us to do something together.  If you’re in town, I hope to see you there!

Here are the details: 

Friday, May 3

7PM

Barnes And Noble   

1104 East 2100 South                                                                          

Salt Lake City, UT 84106

41 Books That Give People Strength

Yesterday there was a giveaway on Twitter where my publishers asked everyone to answer this question:

What books give you strength?

It was great fun to watch the responses pour in, and yes, the nerd in me was thrilled to see that the good old dictionary made it onto the list, although this was a joke about physical strength.  The Joy of Cooking also made it into the “It’s so heavy” category, but I know plenty of people who love and use The Joy of Cooking as much as I’ve loved any book.

I may have missed a couple, but here’s the compilation.  I think The Bible and Paulo Coehlo came out ahead. Please to the list in the comments, and/or check out the responses below.

The Old Man And The Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Love in the time of Cholera by Garcia Marquez

The Bible

Just One Day by Gayle Forman

The Unlikely Pilgrimmage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

War And Peace by Leo Tolstoy

The Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer et al

What Is The What? by Dave Eggers

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala

Pride And Prejudice by Jane Austen

The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo

Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Garcia Marquez

Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley.

The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger

Reach for the Sky by Paul Brickhill

Veronika Decides To Die by Paulo Coehlo

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran

The Dictionary

Just One More Day by Mitch Albom

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Empire Of The Sun by JG Ballard

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

Oh The Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss

Proverbs

Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

The Greatest Miracle in the World by Og Mandino

Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima

How To Get Out Of Your Own Way by Tyrese Gibson

The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama by Pico Iyer

Til We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

Have Any Of You Read Murakami?

Over the past week I read Sputnik Sweetheart, Norwegian Wood, and The Wind Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami. Not sure what I think yet, or how to talk about these three books.

Are any of you Murakami fans?  What do you like about his work?  Which of his books do you think is the best starting point for a newbie like me?

Thanks!

Josh

Why I’m Not Reading Reviews of My Book

Hi all, I hope your Friday is proceeding with great jolliness.  I wanted to write a quick post to thank to every well-meaning one of you who is sending me links to all the positive (so I’m told) reviews of my book that are popping up on blogs, websites, and in the media. And I wanted to explain why I’m not going to read them.

As much as I love a good compliment (too much), and as proud as I am of my book (I love it!), and as happy as I am that so many advance readers have enjoyed it, I know myself too well.  I know that there are much healthier things for me, mentally, than reading my own praises. Not that I’m not tempted!

But I’m sure that, given time, the positive reviews would make me start to think I’m some sort of Big Deal, while the negative reviews would be committed to memory and become an unhelpful fixation during long, sleepless nights.

At the core of this is my determination not to take any criticism, positive or negative, personally.  I don’t even want to give myself the chance.

But!  If you ever want to write to me and discuss the book, or you have questions. I’d be delighted and honored.  I’m open to any and all interview requests and media.  I’ve already had some great chats with early readers, which usually devolve into conversations about other books.  And we can always talk in the comments here on the blog if you prefer that.

So, if you send me a link to a review of my book, I’m going to say thank you, forward the link to someone in publicity, and then ask you if you’re reading anything else good.  Then I’ll get back to trying to become a better writer, a kinder person, and a useful librarian.

Thanks as always!

Josh, just some guy

 

 

RIP Roger Ebert

I just found out that Roger Ebert passed away.

I think I read every movie review he wrote over the last 10 years, and I followed his blog and his articles elsewhere. I never even cared what he was talking about, I was just impressed by the way he thought about things.

He always struck me as kind, curious, and eloquent.  He had opinions and could defend them, while fully admitting that his own understanding of many things would always be incomplete.

One of my favorite Ebert quotes is in my book, during a section on libraries.  He said:

“Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly. ”

My favorite article of his is I Do Not Fear Death, which I originally read on Salon.com.

My favorite book of his is, I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie, a sublime collection of nasty reviews for movies that generally deserved what they got.

RIP Mr. Ebert. You’ll be missed by many.

Why Libraries Matter, and What Would Be Lost

One thing writing my book has taught me is that I love libraries much more than I even thought I did. As I count down to publication day while continuing to work at the library, I’ve decided just to make April “Why libraries matter to me” month.  I’ll still be talking about books, of course, but there will be more library stuff than usual.

Onward, then.

Author Terry Deary–whose books I love!–recently came out in opposition to public libraries.  An unusual stance for an author, but it has made for some great discussion. You can read some of his remarks, as well as some other authors’ responses, here.

Many of the points he makes simply can’t be taken seriously, so I’m not going to try, especially since many, many others have already taken the argument apart at great length. 

When Deary compares people who borrow books to”looters,” I can only laugh.

But his comments have reinforced to me again that libraries, while full of books, are so much more than buildings full of books.

I recently watched several classes of grade school children taking a tour of the library.  They spent most of the hour exclaiming about the building, the huge glass windows, and the fact that they could take any book, CD, or DVD they could find, for free. And when I saw many of them in line at the circulation desk with stacks of things they wanted to read, watch, and listen to.

My library system puts on over 2000 programs a year.  It houses over 1,000,000 items. It is a public space used for so many different kinds of activities that if I started listing them, you’d probably put this post into the “too long, didn’t read” category.

I asked in an interview recently to talk about why libraries matter.  Yesterday I talked about libraries and dignity.

But honestly, the best way to make a case for libraries is simply to go to a thriving library, watch for a while, and list everything that would be lost without it. It’s a far better answer than I could ever give in words.  There’s simply no other place like a library.

I was one of those kids once, touring a building but learning that I always wanted a library in my life.  At heart, I’m still one of those kids. Every time I walk into this place, the words of Shel Silverstein’s poem “Invitation” would make a great voiceover:

If you are a dreamer, come in.

If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,

A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer . . .

If you’re a pretender, come sit by my fire,

For we have some flax golden tales to spin.

Come in!

Come in!

 

“Why Are Libraries Important?”

Recently in an interview I was asked, “Why are libraries so important to you?  Why should they be important to anyone?”

There are many, many reasons, but this one is the most important to me:

I believe that libraries give dignity to anyone who walks through their doors.  You can walk in without anyone having already decided who you are. Any librarian will help you find whatever you want, provided it exists and we have it. You can read whatever you choose, ask whatever questions you want, and learn about whatever interests you.  And you can do all of this anonymously and for free.

My library  is used by large numbers of homeless patrons.  More than once in the past month I’ve heard a homeless person apologize for asking for help.  It breaks my heart. 

“Sorry to bother you.”

“I know you’re busy, but I’m looking for–”

“I know that this place isn’t really for people like me, but…”

And every time, each person seems genuinely surprised to hear one of us say, “You’re not bothering me.”  ”We’re here for everyone, including you.”  ”You don’t owe me an explanation for anything.”

A couple of weeks ago a man told me, “I come here because I’m ignored everywhere else. Some of it’s my fault, some of it isn’t. This is the only place where I feel welcome.”

When I said “While you’re here, you’re no different than anyone else,” he hugged me, even though I said I’m just doing my job.

I’d never been prouder to be part of this work, and I don’t think it’s ever been more necessary.