I understand that Harry Potter is essentially the biggest literary event since the first Bible rolled of Guteburg’s press in 1430, but I have yet to understand or come to terms with the shear amount of energy some people put into caring about their favorite little wizard. I understand that some books can be compelling, but the ravenous enegy with which millions have devoured every little detail is impressive if nothing else.

So, when J.K. Rowling announced that Dumbledore was gay, I was slightly amused at how much of a big deal it seems to have become. First off, it’s a book. Since when do authors come out and explain to their readers the motivations and sexual orientations of their characters. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s awesome that Dumbledore was gay - it adds yet another layer of flippancy to the Christian right that has so thoroughly denounced the books because they promoted witchcraft and the like. What better way to preach tolerance than make one of the most likable and interesting characters in the series gay.

I just thought it was amusing how many people have taken up detailed conversations about the gay old wizard. Yes, Dumbledore is gay, but how does that have any effect on how you read the book (unless, of course you’re Pat Robertson…then, well, who knows what horrible plots his repressed mind is cooking up already).

It’s been a couple of years since my last year of college, but I still remember the compelling draw of the lit classes that would take hold just before I was forced to sit inside on a Friday night and read half of a Shakespeare play. That said, I’m a huge fan of Shakespeare and everything I’ve read of his. It’s almost requisite for anyone who wants to spend the better part of four years reading novels and learning how to write well.

Anyways, PlayShakespeare.com caught my eye as they have compiled a nice, complete listing of everything that has anything to do with the bard. A complete listing of all the plays, reviews of recent performances, the films, and every possible news story that has anything to do with the 16th century playwrite. Anyways, anyone interested in a more complete resource than your standard SparkNotes page, this is a great place to start.

I’m a huge Booker Prize fan, so I thought I’d reprint this post from Amazon.com’s Book Blog.

The bookies, and the bettors, were once again confounded, as the judges for the 2007 Man Booker Prize selected neither Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach, the initial bookies’ favorite, nor Lloyd Jones’s Mister Pip, which the betting drove to the top odds by the time of today’s award announcement. Instead, they chose Irish writer Anne Enright’s The Gathering, which had been largely ignored by both bettors and commentators alike. Our own Anne (Bartholomew), however, just read

The Gathering and had told us to watch out–it’s a good one. She’ll chime in later on the blog with her own take.
In further Booker notes: two of the six nominees did not have US publishers when the shortlist was announced, but have since been signed. Nicola Barker’s Darkmans, gigantic and audacious (by all reports), will be published by HarperPerennial in November, while Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People, based on the 1984 Bhopal disaster, will come out in spring 2008 from Simon & Schuster

I saw this news the other day and can’t for the life of me remember why I didn’t post it then. I started writing the Wheel of Time novels when I was 16 and feel as though I know the characters within as well as any group of fictional beings I’ve ever had the pleasure of spending my time with. Here is a repost of the well written post written by Jeff at the Amazon.com book blog.

After a long and brave fight with amyloidosis, international bestselling fantasy author Robert Jordan (born James Oliver Rigney, Jr.) passed on Sunday afternoon. Jordan’s Wheel of Time series had spawned a legion of fans, along with music, websites, and all of the other trappings that come from the kind of success in which an author’s imagination transfers itself to his fans. (See a sample YouTube tribute from one fan below.)

Jordan had first disclosed his condition through a letter posted on Locus Online and elsewhere in March 2006. In it, he had expressed his determination to beat the disease: “I have thirty more years’ worth of books to write even if I can keep from thinking of any more, and I don’t intend to let this thing get in my way.” Jordan’s honest and open approach about his condition helped bring needed attention to amyloidosis, a rare blood disease.

According to Wikipedia and his publisher bio, Jordan was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and served two tours in Vietnam, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross with bronze oak leaf cluster, the Bronze Star with “V” and bronze oak leaf cluster, and two Vietnamese Gallantry Crosses with palm. He later received a degree in physics from The Citadel and worked for the U.S. Navy as a nuclear engineer.

Jordan began writing in 1977 and was first published in 1980 with The Fallon Blood under the pen name Reagan O’Neal. He then cut his teeth on a series of Conan novels, before turning in the 1990s to the Wheel of Time novels that earned him his reputation.

Jordan’s heroic fantasy had a truly epic scope and his readership similarly transcended the fantasy genre. Over the years, I can recall hearing about Jordan from a multitude of people and settings–on racquetball courts, in shopping malls, at dinner parties, on boats, in pool halls, and in a number of different countries.

Galley Cat has reported on the reaction of fans worldwide, and his official blog has over 700 comments from readers who loved his work. Wrote one fan, “Thank you for making a world where we could enter into and indulge our imagination and fantasies.”

But it wasn’t just fans who adored Jordan. His publisher, Tor Books, had a special relationship with Jordan. Tom Doherty, founder of Tor, had long been close friends with the author, and Jordan’s wife Harriet McDougal works for Tor. Tor editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden noted on his blog, “He was a doer of quiet kindnesses, which counts for a very great deal.”

“Brother/cousin” Wilson posted the following message on the official Robert Jordan blog site yesterday: “Thank each and everyone of you for your prayers and support through this ordeal. He knew you were there. Harriet reminded him today that she was very proud of the many lives he had touched through his work. We’ve all felt the love that you’ve been sending my brother/cousin.”

It’s that time of the year again and the Booker shortlist was just announced. Ever since I first read “God of Small Things” for a class in college, I’ve been an avid fan of the annual awarding of British Commonwealth authors. Life of Pi, The Sea, and Small Things are among my favorite books and others have proven themselves time and again as amazing exertions in literature. That being said, here is the shortlist (of which I have only read one book…The Reluctant Fundamentalist - which won’t win).

• Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
• On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
• Darkmans by Nicola Barker
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
• Animal’s People by Indra Sinha
• The Gathering by Anne Enright

I always watch this award very carefully, as the powers that be awarding this prize tend to be much better at their jobs than those who hand out other major literary prizes. I’ll post again when the winner is announced (and I’ve read it)

So I cleaned up the house today and did some digging through my books and closet and whatnot and realized that I had a few dozen different books sitting around that I haven’t read yet but was really excited about in the first place:

There are too many books on the shelf right now, including all of the major releases I’ve been waiting on since late last year, which I purchased and now need to read. I did finish the new Paul Auster book, but I have the new Murakami, Palahniuk, and Chabon sitting around, among a dozen other newbies that I’m flipping through every now and then.

Anyways, I recently finished Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind, a new fantasy entry that reads more like an epic character study in a far off land than a fantasy novel. It was rather good and probably the best fantasy/science fiction novel I’ve read in the last five years…in fact it is. I’ll just say that it is, and I can’t wait for the next two books to be released for the sake of finishing Kvothe’s story. I don’t read a lot of this genre anymore; it’s usually rather simple, repetitive stuff, but I’m glad I picked up Rothfuss’s first.

I’ll give it a shot, stopping by with the reviews of the best of the bunch in time. Michael Chabon was actually in town tonight at Elliot Bay Books, but I was unable to get down there (mainly because I wasn’t watching the clock and there was a Mariner game on) and everything I’ve ready about his newest is amazing, so I’m going to sink my teeth into it next.

I hit the bookstore on Tuesday and picked up a couple new big titles that I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. The new Chuck Palahniuk book, Rant showed up on shelves alongside the new Michael Chabon book, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. I noticed Michiko Kakutani wrote a rather intriguing review of Chabon’s newest, comparing his newest hero to Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe (arguably two of my favorite literary hero/detectives ever written), meaning I’m foaming at the mouth to finish up my current read and start on Chabon’s newest. I’ll be sure to post a review when I get to the book and share my own thoughts.

Looks like Cormac McCarthy is getting a lot of attention these days. Just a couple of short weeks after winning the “honor” of Oprah’s next book club selection, McCarthy’s The Road picked up the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and his previous book, No Country For Old Men, will soon be released as the next big Coen Brothers pic.

I just thought it would be interesting to share a list that Janice Harayda posted over at One Minute Book Reviews about the major names that have been snubbed in literary history in favor of lesser known novels (Oliver La Farge anyone?) Just some food for thought.

1962
Loser: Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Winner: The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O’Connor

1957
Loser: Seize the Day by Saul Bellow
Winner: The Fixer by Bernard Malamud

1952
Loser: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Winner: The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk

1941
Loser: For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Winner: Nobody. No award given.

1937
Loser: Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner
Winner: Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

1930
Losers: A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway and The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Winner: Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge

1928
Loser: Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
Winner: The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

1926
Loser: The Great Gatsby
Winner: Arrowsmith by Sindlair Lewis

1921
Loser: Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
Winner: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

My posting has been sparce of late because of my schedule and my being out of town for long periods of time, but I felt I needed to take the time and the effort to stop off and partake of at least one note of appreciation for who I think is one of the truly great American voices of the 20th century and of literature in general. Kurt Vonnegut passed away last night at the age of 84.

As a young reader and prospective writer, I always felt a strong draw to works of fiction that didn’t constrain themselves to the norm, falling into the patterns of recycled fiction and panached landscape that so many “literary fiction” writers did and still do with their “Great American Novel”s. And while I have to admit that the only true reason I first read a Kurt Vonnegut book was the cool little pictures I saw in Breakfast of Champions, I never regretted nor stopped reading any of his books.

Lining each of my three separate bookshelves are his works, dog eared, high lighted, written in, and read thrice over with the loving attention of a youth just learning what the world has to offer. Slaughterhouse Five, whether it was the first time in high school or the fifth time in college, was a novel I’ll never forget, nor its effect on how I approached the art of reading and my own writing.

His pointed satirical voice, self referential genius, and ability to retread the same soil as so many great American novelists without the slightest hint of that thick, gooey sludge that catches so many young writers made him a gift to literature and to free thought.

As one of the most important writers in the canon of my own literary adventures, Kurt Vonnegut will be remembered warmly for as long as I can still take those pocket sized masterpieces down and read them.

So, I started writing a post about how much I respect a guy named Ishmael Beah, a man who wrote a book about being a child soldier in Sierra Leone and the rehabilitation process from being enmeched in a war at such a young age. Then my computer crashed. It crashed hard. Monumentall hard. So, I have to copy what I could remember and start over. It loses some of the gravitas of the original post. But, I will repeat (for myself at least) that there are very few writers I have any respect for whose work I’ve never read, almost none that are alive today.

Ishamel Beah first appeared as a mention on Janice Haryada’s One Minute Book Reviews. Mentioning his book as the new Starbuck’s choice to sell in their stores (ousting the horrendous new book by Mitch Albom) and showing off an essay he wrote while attending the United Nations International SChool in New York, she brought my attention to his book being released in March.

Later in February, I saw Beah on The Daily Show in a rare display of solemn chat with Jon Stewart, free of jokes and asides, a candid conversation about an incredible story as told in Beah’s upcoming book, a long way gone. Flash forward another month or two and I still haven’t read the book, but I’ve seen it everywhere and as one of the bestselling books in every bookstore I visit, I’ve been massively tempted to pick it up, but just hadn’t gotten around to it quite yet.

Luckily for me, I waited because on Monday, Ishmael Beah made an appearance at the University Bookstore here in Seattle and read from a long way gone and signed copies for everyone. Before I tout how happy I was to have met the man and shaken his hand, let me say that this is a vastly important book, regardless of the hype or import grafted to it by the media, Beah does something very special in these pages.

He’s an incredible writer with a story very few will ever be able to tell and fewer still as fully as him. He was intelligent, humble, and visible troubled with the recount, even now after having written an entire book and talked about it for months. More than 10 years he’s been free of that lifestyle, but the pain of it still sits at the surface and his willingness to speak openly about everything he’s been through was captivating. Granted, he was also a very quiet man, and so hearing his words was a task of its own. The top floor of the bookstore was more than full, overfilling to the stair welds and adjacent departments, and such a quiet man’s voice just didn’t carry with the force needed to reach the back rows.

But, meeting the man, visibly tired and worn by the night’s activities was still quite a turn. He was kind, shook my hand and answered my questions about his stay in Seattle (a bit too cold for his tastes) and I left feeling as though I’d met someone who will be an important world leader one day, a speaker of international importance. This isn’t a review of his book or anything, nor commentary on his message. I’m just happy to have heard him speak and hope that others might find his book and read it themselves.