Tag Archives: TLC Book Tours

Mar 28 2012
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Guest Post, Review

Allison Winn Scotch’s “The Song Remains the Same”

Allison Winn Scotch's "The Song Remains the Same"

NOTE: This is a debut guest review from Sami Skelton. You can expect more guest reviews from Sami in the future, and remember that you can always submit your own guest reviews for consideration to dbcreads@gmail.com.

If you looked in at your life as a clueless, third-party observer, would you like what you saw? Or would you be disappointed? Can you imagine what it would feel like to not even recognize your own face?

The Song Remains The Same follows the life of Nell Slattery, a successful art gallery owner, after she survives a devastating plane crash of which she is one of two survivors. Nell may have survived, but her memory of the past 32 years of her life did not.

The life Nell’s forgotten wasn’t a fairytale; her past life was wrought with complications and drama. All Nell has to go on in her attempt to regain her past is a not-so-fun game of he said/she said, and Nell doesn’t know who to believe. Nell’s family and friends don’t always keep her best interests in mind and each person’s version of the past differs from the next.

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Jan 09 2012
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Review

Doc Hendley’s “Wine to Water: A Bartender’s Quest to Bring Clean Water to the World”

I never wanted Wine to Water to be like one of those…nonprofits I’d heard about on the news that used the majority of the donations to pay staff and run their businesses while little of it actually ever made it to the people who needed it most. I wasn’t going to let that happen. I didn’t know how exactly it was going to work out, but I’d figure it out.

Nine nations, hundreds of wells, and over 50,000 people later, it’s safe to say that Doc Hendley has indeed figured it out.

The narrator of his own unexpected journey from the North Carolina bar scene to the deserts of Darfur, Hendley’s Wine to Water is a riveting and humble account of how anyone can, with the proper perspective, become a large-scale Good Samaritan. I myself hadn’t heard of Doc’s Wine to Water organization before reading this book, but now, knowing how many villages the team has hydrated – often when no other aid group was willing to travel to the dangerous rebel-filled zones where water was needed most – I am excited to make my first donation to what is an indisputably genuine cause, founded on genuine principles. (Not to mention the world’s most endearing and folksy vernacular. I challenge you to find a 2012 publication with more instances of the adjectival phrase “big ol’…”)

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Jan 04 2012
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Review

Sandra Newman’s “The Western Lit Survival Kit: An Irreverent Guide to the Classics, from Homer to Faulkner”

It says “irreverent” right there on the cover, but maybe they should bold it. Put it in all caps. Underline it. Because I don’t think I was prepared for a tenth of The Western Lit Survival Kit’s sassiness. Sandra Newman, it’s safe to say, has nothing short of an acerbic wit.

In some ways, I was the ideal audience for a book like this, going in. I have read a pitifully small sliver of the canon, and I know that many of the books I could read to bulk up my literary chops would only be digested with a mind to say I’ve read more of the canon. I really just don’t think I’d enjoy Moby Dick, for example, just as so many of the first chapters of other classics mentioned in Newman’s Survival Kit went so dishearteningly unenjoyed. Not because they’re poorly written, and not even because I’d find them boring; I just wouldn’t find myself connecting. So it’s really pretty perfect for me that Newman goes to the trouble of not only giving me abbreviated synopses of so many classics, but also a scale that rates each book in terms of Importance, Accessibility, and Fun. And, of course, it doesn’t hurt that she outlines the larger literary movements themselves (Old Comedy, Realism, Romanticism), being careful to mention which talking points you can use to sound more learned at cocktail parties (though I object, on principal, to learning anything purely on the basis of a potential cocktail party I might never, in fact, get invited to – maybe getting that pesky MFA would up my chances?).

Zeus was notorious for taking the form of just about anything he could think of in order to get girls to sleep with him – a bull, a swan, a shower of gold. Apparently it never occurred to him that girls might want to sleep with someone who looks like a Greek god.

The Survival Kit positively bursts with moments like this.  Whether it’s through obviously modernized paraphrasing of characters’ dialogue or wordplay in the sidebar commentary, Newman is committed to the idea that her spin on CliffsNotes will be a different sort of summary: one that fully admits (rather more than CliffsNotes and SparkNotes do) that there might be a damn good reason you haven’t read some (or most) of these before. With the three-rating scale she’s devised, then, she lets you know whether you should really reconsider and try to slog through a particular volume (because it’ll be well worth it, like the poetry of John Donne), or whether, truth be told, she didn’t find a whole lot about the book redeeming, either (as with Mark Twain’s The Innocent Abroad). Whichever the case, Newman does not condescend to her reader.  Continue reading →

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Dec 18 2011
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News

Odds and Ends

Merry Sunday, everyone.

We’re doing some year-end business for the next thirteen days, but in the meantime we thought we’d let you know about our packed January review schedule.

January 3: Leigh Stein’s The Fallback Plan
Stein’s debut arrives just after New Year’s Day and deals with a topic near and dear to our hearts: what to do after college? Of course the protagonist, Esther Kohler, has a situation much more complicated than any of ours; that’s probably why she’s a character in a novel and we’re just a bunch of metropolitan white people. We digress! Stein is 26, and by all accounts, her debut is a promising entrance into the fiction world.

January 4: Sandra Newman’s The Western Lit Survival Kit: An Irreverent Guide to the Classics, from Homer to Faulkner
Newman’s flyover “guide to the classics” is certainly written at the right time: if there’s one thing the aughts-generation (Are we Generation Z or something? Whatever.) has seemingly missed out on, it’s classic literature. My high school English courses were a wasteland in terms of quality classic literature, the only two exceptions being Native Son and The Great Gatsby. (I’m not counting the abridged-to-airplane-safety-manual-size translation of The Odyssey, either.) Newman, in humorous fashion, condenses these texts, using a formula to rate and discuss them.

January 9: Ayad Akhtar’s American Dervish
Akhtar’s debut novel (can you tell we still love first-time authors?) has a very clear objective: to tell the story of being Muslim in America, long before 9/11, in the 80s and 90s. American Dervish focuses on Hayat Shah, a pre-teen Muslim in suburban Milwaukee attempting to reconcile his faith and his family. But while it focuses on Hayat, Dervish is as much about the female experience in Islam. The subject matter is charged and sure to provoke some reaction; but Akhtar’s own command of Islamic texts is so strong that there is authenticity and authority in criticisms of religious texts or traditions.

January 9: Doc Hendley’s Wine to Water: A Bartender’s Quest to Bring Clean Water to the World
Hendley’s memoir is a genuine story of a small town American meeting faraway problems in remote corners of the world. His stories are riveting, and his charm apparent.

January 17: Ben Marcus’ The Flame Alphabet
Marcus, known as much for his criticism of Jonathan Franzen as his own presence as a force in our literary culture, focuses his new novel on a plague: language. Adults, affected by their children’s use of it, are struck with a grotesque condition, with jaundice, soreness, open sores—all things one associates with, you know, plagues. The Flame Alphabet is haunting, and a slam-dunk to be on (most) year-end lists in 2012. Also: kick-ass cover art, if there ever was; my goodness.

January 17: Eli Gottlieb’s The Face Thief
Gottlieb’s new novel focuses on a protagonist, Margot, well-versed in the Chinese art of face reading. Using her new-found powers for untoward means—preying on the weaknesses of men—Margot destroys lives and families.

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Nov 09 2011
2 Comments
Review

Robert Rave and Jane Rave’s “Conversations and Cosmopolitans”

We sat down to dinner every night as a family, whether the kids liked it or not…With the rest of the rest of the family around us, a pearl of wisdom was bound to be shed, even if it came through a mouthful of potatoes.

Luckily for us, the Rave family has a whole string of those wise pearls.

Everyone is bound to relate in some significant way to the Rave family as their most honest moments are relayed to us, for better or for worse.  In Robert and Jane Rave’s new co-authored book, Conversations and Cosmopolitans:  Awkward Moments, Mixed Drinks, and How a Mother and Son Finally Shared Who They Really Are, the duo looks back at the milestones that have marked their life ever since Robert, Jane’s youngest son, wrote a letter at age 21 informing his parents that he was gay. Adding to the weight of this long-muted admission is the fact that the Rave family hails from what is basically one of the most heterosexual places on earth: Bloomington, Illinois, a conservative and quiet town full of retirees and lawn-care enthusiasts. Continue reading →

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Nov 09 2011
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Feature

A Q&A with Robert and Jane Rave

I had the great opportunity of posing some questions to Robert and Jane Rave regarding their new book, Conversations and Cosmopolitans: Awkward Moments, Mixed Drinks, and How a Mother and Son Finally Shared Who They Really Are, released this week. Their answers are as fresh, frank, and genuine as the book itself, as they discuss their process, and what they hope their story can do for others–principally, to start an open and ongoing dialogue. Continue reading →
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Nov 07 2011
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News

Win a Copy of “Conversations and Cosmopolitans”

Hey everybody. We are giving away a copy of Jane and Robert Rave’s new book Conversations and Cosmopolitans, which comes out tomorrow! So, if you would like to enter a drawing for this wonderful, charming new memoir—which, by the way, we’ll be reviewing here on Wednesday—then please send your name and mailing information to dbcreads@gmail.com.

Also on Wednesday, we’ll be posting a Q&A we did with the authors.

Do not miss this chance! When the winter slush is making you miserable, you’ll want to have this warm book on the train.

Check back later tonight for a review of Peter Orner’s new book Love and Shame and Love.

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