I took one glance at the covers of Simon Van Booy‘s books, one long, lingering glance at his photos, and then noted that the word love appears in nearly every title of his published works and I thought to myself, what a curious, calculated man. (You can drool over him at his website.) Born in rural Wales, Simon attended a prestigious private school for boys in Wales, eventually ended up playing football at a university in Kentucky, taught English in Greece and endured the earthquake and personal poverty there while writing. Today he lives in New York City–I guess enjoying all a hunky 34-year-old man can, all the while teaching and working with an outreach program for adults in underserved communities.

I am taking home Love Begins in Winter and hope to read at least one of his stories tonight. As may be apparent to you by now, I am trying to get past the strong romantic image SimonVan Booy seems to have put forth intentionally and move on to more of a substantial impression of him.  Most people have a degree of narcissism,  I think he certainly has found a healthy outlet for his.

Now back to his writing . . . sigh.

The Secret Lives of People in Love (2007) is a collection of short stories set in New York City, Paris and Greece and has been re-released this February 2010. Love Begins in Winter came out in 2009 and won the prestigious Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. His published writing includes a collection of poetry, a children’s book and a series of philosophical works (Why We Need Love; Why We Fight; Why Our Decisions Don’t Matter–all out in August 2010).  His first novel, The Greek Affair, is supposed to be out in 2010 as well.

I don’t mean to treat Simon Van Booy as a man might be tempted to treat a stereotypical blond bombshell, but I think he has the potential to intrigue us all with his charms in the midst of a dismal and endless February.

I promise to report back on the courtship.

2/26 Update: I am on page 30-something of the first story which is 70-something pages long. I guess these are really more aptly titled novellas. But what is important is that I find his writing to be very agreeable. Simon has a neat way of leaves spaces in thought between the sentences, but he so far has filled in the spaces quite elegantly at later points in the story. I can’t wait to finish this story. The only interference in our courtship is my own fatigue and my true-love who loves to talk to me. Life is so hard!

Please comment if you have read Love Begins in Winter!

“Lisbeth Salander—the heart of Larsson’s two previous novels—lies in critical condition, a bullet wound to her head, in the intensive care unit of a Swedish city hospital. She’s fighting for her life in more ways than one: if and when she recovers, she’ll be taken back to Stockholm to stand trial for three murders. With the help of her friend, journalist Mikael Blomkvist, she will not only have to prove her innocence, but also identify and denounce those in authority who have allowed the vulnerable, like herself, to suffer abuse and violence. And, on her own, she will plot revenge—against the man who tried to kill her, and the corrupt government institutions that very nearly destroyed her life.”

“Once upon a time, she was a victim. Now Salander is fighting back.”

After reading that I don’t know if I can wait until May 2010 and I know many of you feel the same way.  Everyday someone comes in the bookstore and asks “When is the third book coming out?”  Stieg Larsson’s final book, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest is almost here.  We are taking advanced orders for the book now so give us a call and get on the list or reserve a copy on our website.  We will call you or ship the book to you the minute we unpack the box!!!

I absolutely loved The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and then I thought that The Girl Who Played with Fire was even better.  The reviews for The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest have been fantastic.   Of course, the book is already out in UK so here are a few reviews….

“Fans will not be disappointed: this is another roller-coaster ride that keeps you reading far too late into the night. Intricate but flawlessly plotted, it has complex characters as well as a satisfying, clear moral thrust.”
—Evening Standard

“Salander is a magnificent creation: a feminist avenging angel . . . I cannot think of another modern writer who so successfully turns his politics away from a preachy manifesto and into a dynamic narrative device. Larsson’s hatred of injustice will drive readers across the world through a three-volume novel and leave them regretting the final page; and regretting, even more, the early death of a mastery storyteller just as he was entering his prime.”
—Observer

“Larsson has produced a coup de foudre, a novel that is complex, satisfying, clever, moral . . . This is a grown-up novel for grown-up readers, who want something more than a quick fix and a car chase. And it’s why the Millennium trilogy is rightly a publishing phenomenon all over the world.”
—Guardian

Get on this list! Don’t miss out! If you haven’t read any of these books come by Lemuria and pick one up!

Those of you with HBO are lucky because in a couple of weeks, The Pacific is going to air.  It’s a 10-part miniseries done by the same people who did Band of Brothers in 2001 (Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman), and so I think we can go ahead and get really excited.  Band of Brothers was fantastic.

The best part about all of this is that there’s an official companion book to this miniseries, written by Hugh Ambrose, who not only was Stephen’s son but also worked with him on many of his books.  The Pacific is a collection of five narratives, which Ambrose explains were chosen because they are representative of the vast experience that was the Pacific War.  And so we see the war from different angles, all of which are personal and vivid.  Ambrose gathered much of his information comes from diaries and photos and memoirs and other quite intimate sources, making for a book that is as comprehensive as any other out there, yet also as exciting as a first-hand account of the action.

I’m only about 60 pages into this book and already I’m overwhelmed by the simple fact of the war itself.  These stories are tremendously affecting.  One thing that’s struck me the most is how vast, new, difficult, and terrifying the Pacific War was.  It’s hard for me to fathom, especially since as a young person it has always been simply a fact of history rather than a colorful and uncertain event.  It’s been interesting reading about the emergence of the Marines as a crucial force in WW2, as well as the immediate, and varying, reactions these men had after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

We should have a few copies of this book in the store within the next few days (it’s not out quite yet) and even if you’re not planning on watching the miniseries on HBO, I recommend reading it.  As I said, I’ve still got to read most of this book but so far it’s fantastic.  As Ambrose himself points out in the introduction, there are lots of books about the Pacific War, each with their own place; there’s certainly room in the historiography of the war for this one.

Susie

Lemuria recently hosted events for Amy Greene and Elizabeth Kostova.

Amy Greene mesmerized us last week when she read from her first book, Bloodroot, set in Appalachia.  I was almost finished with her novel when she came; hearing her read a part I had read just a few days before brought the characters to life.  It’s really a treat to hear an author read her own work, especially one with so much promise.

We had a blast with Elizabeth Kostova this week in the dot.com building.  She recently followed the sensation of her first novel, The Historian, with The Swan Thieves, another thrilling tale, this time about a psychiatrist who becomes obsessed with discovering the motive behind a patient’s attempt to slash a painting at the National Gallery.

Don’t miss either of these wonderful reads, and if you missed the events, you should come to the next one!

I wish that I had written this blog two weeks ago when I had finished reading Point Omega over a cold weekend. I read it in two sittings, just to make it last a little longer, but this short novel could easily be read in one.  My experience with DeLillo’s work is limited in my having read only one other: White Noise, which I found on the bedside table of my then college-aged English major daughter several years ago. Intrigued as I was then, when Point Omega arrived at Lemuria, I watched it from afar on the shelf in front of me for a few days before I made the move to pick it up and then the decision to take it home with me. That was a very good decision! How to write about this extremely complex work of fiction poses quite a challenge.

First, for a little background information: DeLillo, the author of fifteen novels and three plays, won the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize, as well as many other smaller awards. He also won the American Academy of Arts and Letters’  William Dean Howells Medal for his 1997 novel Underworld.

The initial thing to know about this novel is that the action which appears at the surface is secondary to what the book is “really” about , in my opinion. Then, another thing to consider is the element of what “really” happens, action wise, versus what is happening in the mind of the protagonist, which is not to say that the subconscious is secondary at all. In fact, it could be argued that the subconscious just might be the protagonist!

Before you, reader, stop reading this blog, I should move ahead before this all becomes way too esoteric.  So, let me begin with the surface action which most Americans will be familiar with–the Alfred Hitchcock movie sensation “Psycho”. For those of us who wither and cringe at the idea of watching a horror movie, even a cult classic horror movie, all the way through, then even reading about someone else watching “Psycho” would send chills up my arm! The shower scene has been permanently fixed in our collective consciousness. Now, imagine a slow motion version of the movie with a protagonist going to a venue to watch it over and over and over, especially that scene. Just ponder for a moment why anyone would want to do that! Maybe it is understandable if I tell you that the protagonist is a filmmaker himself. So, this is the opening of Point Omega. Actually, in this opening scene, DeLillo references the real life/slow motion version of “Psycho” in Douglas Gordan’s film project exhibited in 2006 at New York’s MoMA (Museum of Modern Art). The film scene ran non-stop for a full day and a night. In Point Omega, the narrator/protagonist also watches and comments on other interested patrons moving in and out of the film room. This allusion to other characters yields great importance later on in the novel.

Flash forward……..the filmmaker, protagonist Jim Finley, goes to the desert to talk a brilliant governmental war consultant into agreeing to a documentary about his work with war planners. Days and nights pass where little dialogue occurs and the two men, who barely know each other, become ensconced in watching desert life from a backyard deck. Every now and then the filmmaker tries a different angle to try to persuade scholar Richard Elster into being filmed as a one man show. The slow paced motion, simple sentences, and sparse language which Delillo uses expertly in this part of the novel mimic the lack of action.

Enter the scholar’s daughter, a mysterious twenty-year-old from New York who arrives for a visit which is preplanned by her mother in order to get the young girl’s troubled mind off a bad relationship. Equally withdrawn, much like her father, the now threesome watch the desert together.  She disappears! Questions, hopes, then fears surface. A futile search begins! Heartache surrounding the unknown ensues. The scholar and the filmmaker sadly return to civilization.

So, now, you, reader, know the “surface action”. I won’t tell you the underlying action. You’ll have to figure it out for yourself. I can say that there is a conflict among time, perception of time, and the imagination.  For those of you who read In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O’Brien back in 1994, you’ll be reminded. Suffice it to say that the old adage, “Things will seem as though they are and yet they are not” will work quite well here. Isn’t it always true that appearance versus reality is the true question about  human nature or for those who study it either in life or in literature?

See Kelly’s Blog on Point Omega.

-Nan