Twilight and Dickens

Posted on December 10, 2011 by Ed Battistella
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My fall term linguistics class spent a little time on the origins of writing and the alphabet, including a look at Egyptian hieroglyphs.

And we wondered whether The Book of the Dead was an example of ancient Egyptian vampire literature. Can you spot Bella, Edward and Jacob?

And speaking of vampires and werewolves, Carl Hilton of Bookwagon took his editorial pen to Charles Dickens to produce a Kindle ebook called A Christmas Carol with Zombies.

What’s Christmas without zombies?

Three cheers for public domain literature.

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What goes on a book flap

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Ed Battistella
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Here is a piece by Daniel Menaker (editor of Grin and Tonic) from The Barnes and Noble Review on the language of book flaps.

It’s got 16 rules for writing the copy on books flaps. Words to use: “stunning,” “deeply,” “enthralling,” “gritty,” “original,” “remarkable,” “magical,” “ground-breaking,” “arresting,” “dazzling,” “heartbreaking,” “compelling,” “devastating,” “captivating,” and of course “best-selling”even out of context, as in “So-and-so is often compared to the best-selling novelist….” Check it out.

But I wonder, what’s going to happen to the flap in the age of ebooks?

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Hammy and Grammy

Posted on December 4, 2011 by Ed Battistella
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Last week the New York Times Book Review did a couple of nice features on audiobooks, an under-reviewed genre. The Times stories “Wired for Sound” and “The Mind’s Ear,” got me to thinking about audio.

I’ve always used audiobooks on car trips, where I dug into things I might not otherwise read in a book book, and I’ve enjoyed audiobooks on the treadmill at the Ashland YMCA (though I exercise harder with music than with books or cable news). And when I had eye surgery, I listened to all 10 disks of David Hajdu’s The Ten-Cent Plague, read by Stefan Rudnicki. Perhaps my New Year’s resolution should be to get more systematic about listening to audiobooks.

So seeing the Times pieces and making my pre-resolution, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that two Blackstone audiobooks were nominated for the 2012 Grammy Awards, in the wordy category “Best Spoken Word Album (Includes Poetry, Audio Books & Story Telling).” I had forgotten there was such a category, but I shouldn’t have: Barack Obama won in 2005 and 2008.

HamletThe three-hour “Hamlet” performance was produced and directed by Ira Burton and based on the 2010 Oregon Shakespeare Festival production directed by Bill Rauch. It’s part of an OSF-Blackstone collaboration which aims to produce audio versions of all of Shakespeare’s plays over the next 17-25 years. The “Hamlet” audio features almost the entire cast of the OSF 2010 production, including Dan Donohue in the lead. It’s great to see the debut production in the running for a Grammy.

And congratulations too on Blackstone’s nomination for “The Mark of Zorro,” read by Val Kilmer. The winners will be announced at the 54th Grammy Award ceremony on February 12, 2012.

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Literary Ashland Kudos

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Ed Battistella
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A lot of congratulations to extend this month. Congratulations…

to Robert Arellano, whose forthcoming novel Curse the Names was reviewed by Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly, which says “Arellano displays a sly, Hitchcockian touch.”

to Midge Raymond on her Pushcart Prize nomination from The Bellingham Review. Midge is a publisher and teacher as well as a writer, so check out the latest from Ashland Creek Press (don’t miss the Ashland Creek Press vintage typewriter notecards).

to FUZE Publishing on The Mother Daughter Show, a satire of the Sidwell Friends School. FUZE author Natalie Wexler’s new novel was recently interviewed on The Washington Post.

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