Revenge. No, not the Kiss album and not the Jim Harrison-written screenplay staring Kevin Costner, but Mary Morris’ 2004 novel now out in paperback from Picador. Revenge details the complicated relationship between a young painter named Andrea and a famous novelist named Loretta. Andrea is stuck in grief and obsession over an tragic accident involving her father and she turns to her novelist neighbor for support, and also a bit of payback. As a critic from the Chicago Tribune writes, “a thriller doesn’t always need international intrigue, firearms, or even a murder to be exciting. In the right hands, a story of a growing friendship can be as tense as anything publishers would subtitle ‘A Tale of Suspense.’ Revenge is such a novel.”

The best compliment I can pay this novel is that it’s easy to read. I got involved in this book, was ensnared, hurtled along, and before I knew it, I’d read a hundred pages. Don’t mistake that for being simplistic or poor writing like an airport massmarket paperback. This is no Jackie Collins novel. Morris has written a literary novel: the characters are well-developed, scenes are set nicely, and there is just enough foreshadowing to hint at things to come while not being obvious. This book is deceptive in that it’s extremely quiet in execution which is a testatment to Morris’ skill.

In sharp contrast to the coke-snorting, chick-grabbing, crowd-rocking antics of the music books I’ve recently been re-reading, On Celtic Tides: One Man’s Journey Around Ireland by Sea Kayak by Chris Duff provides a nice slow meditative pace. Duff’s twelve hundred-mile circumnavigation of the Emerald Isle provides both thrilling moments of adventure in the sea and quiet, contemplative recollections of nights camping by the shore. He describes the sights, sounds, culture, and history of the people that live along the Irish coastline and, as Irish Voice stated in a review, this “is much more than a travelogue, it is a story of discovery, of courage and perservance, and life… buy this one.”

Check it out here.

As if my bank account didn’t already suffer enough from my guitar obsession and my work with The Wrist Watch Review, a hip book expert just had to tell me about a book that is destined to damage my credit rating. First of all, let’s talk about the basic text. Robert Sabbag’s 1976 book Snowblind: A Brief Career in the Cocaine Trade tells the story of smuggler Zachary Swan and his intricate maneuvers for getting drugs out of South America and into New York City. Some of the information in the book is now dated, and may even seem simplistic. For instance, most contemporary readers will know all about the drug and won’t need Sabbag’s lengthy descriptions of pharmaceutical effects. But at the time the book was being written, most Americans had never heard of cocaine so it’s an interesting time capsule into the era before freebasing and crack. And even if the info is a tad dated, the writing remains sharp and crisp.

Now, the copy that I recently purchased and read was a plain-old $14.00 trade paperback from Grove Press. But one passage in the book gives a clue to why this seemingly innocuous book tip I received is bound to set me back some rent money. Sabbag explains the allure of cocaine and what it symbolizes by writing “cocaine is the caviar of the drug market.” Remember the book was being written in 1974 and released in ’76. He describes the drug’s place in high-society:

As inelegant as snorting anything seems to be, most people who can afford cocaine are not the kinds of people one is likely to find in public hospitals or listed on police registers. More likely they are to be found coming out of the Athletic Club or the rear door of a Rolls. To snort cocaine is to make a statement. It is like flying to Paris for breakfast. These are people who raise the pedestrian procedure of inhaling to the formality of a tea ceremony. Chop up the crystals, divide the pile into ‘lines,’ one for each nostril–call it a one and one–and with a bank note of impressive denomination rolled into a straw… snort.

Taking cues from this ceremony of doing lines, in 1998 artist Damien Hirst designed a limited edition of Snowblind for Rebel Inc in Scotland. 1000 copies were produced and bound in reinforced mirror boards with a silver metal spine. The page edges were also silvered. A bookmark fashioned in the style of an American Express Platinum card in the authors name was laid in. And inside the book, a special trench runs through the pages that contained a one hundred dollar bill. A real one hundred dollar bill. The bills were specially requested from the US Treasury so that the final three digits of the serial number match the number of the edition. The book was presented in a special slipcase featuring artwork of reproduced dollar bills and the copy was signed by artist Damien Hirst, author Robbert Sabbag, and British drug smuggler Howard Marks who wrote an introduction.

Abebooks has 4 copies of this limited edition run for sale, ranging in price from about $1,900 to $2,400 which is absolutely going to send me back to the plasma bank for more frequent donations. Some helpful members of The Velvet found other sites selling the book for around the same prices. A very cool book fan from Manchester dug up this photo of the book which includes the slipcover:

Really enjoyable book, I appreciate the tip I received, but this limited edition is going to haunt me for some time.

You can get the regular priced version from Amazon here.

Arguably the definitive account book about the blues, Robert Palmer’s Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta explores the origins of the music and its transformation from early field hollers to electric blues. Detailed treatments of greats such as Charley Patton, Elmore James, Son House, and many others, this book is required reading for any student of American music. Deep Blues is like that old Norton anthology you remember from college literature courses. Sure, heavy-duty scholars may think other texts are more useful, but for most people it’s a great introduction. And for people interested in learning about the roots of one of America’s homegrown music forms, Deep Blues is one of the first places to look. Check it out here.

Continuing my recent fascination with music books, our Book of the Day is Bill Flanagan’s U2: At the End of the World. This book is no regular bio of a popular band. Arriving in Berlin as the wall was being torn down, Flanagan spent several years with U2 during the recording and touring for the Achtung Baby and Zooropa records and he inserts himself into the story. Instead of being some fly on the wall (although Bono’s fly sunglasses might have helped) Flanagan is an active participant which makes this book as much a memoir as a rock biography. Flanagan lives out every fan’s dream in following around U2 and his book is an enjoyable ride in the limos, planes, and tour convoys. Pick up U2: At the End of the World here.

I don’t know why I’ve been on such a music and books kick lately. Maybe it’s because of Michael Schaub’s guide to rock novels presented over at BookSlut. Maybe it’s because I’ve been watching two of my heroes, Gene Simmons and Tommy Lee, on their TV reality shows. Regardless, I’ve been going through some music books recently while searching for the Book-of-the-Day and the grandaddy of them all, without a doubt, is Stephen Davis’ Hammer of the Gods. For anyone interested in Led Zeppelin (or music in general) it’s all here: shark incidents, creampuffs, tubs full of baked beans, black magic, and enough thunderous riffs to wake a dead man. Dismissed as rubbish by many of the band, I tend to take Hammer of the Gods with a grain of salt. I’m not going to necessarily quote it as fact, but as an enjoyable read, it can’t be beat.

Also worth mentioning is that Led Zeppelin tour manager Richard Cole also wrote a book called Stairway to Heaven: Led Zeppelin Uncensored that provides a nice counterpoint to Hammer of the Gods. Cole has been considered to be a less than accurate source of information about Zeppelin, so when he says that Hammer of the Gods is exaggerated, then you get a sense of how wild Davis’ book is. But whether it’s true or not, it’s a great read.

Don’t worry about saving food. Don’t even worry about toilet paper, electricity, clothing, or a radio. Just protect the booze. In John O’Brien’s The Assault on Tony’s a group of hardcore alcoholics barricade the door of their neighborhood bar and prepare to ride it out as a race riot engulfs the city outside. O’Brien, author of Leaving Las Vegas, locked himself in his apartment and watched the LA riots unfold outside his window. The Assault on Tony’s is his exploration of what men do to survive when the liquor runs out. The men ration alcohol based on who has the worst case of the shakes. The really bad ones get the good stuff, everyone else who is managing drinks out of a vat of liquor combined from hundreds of broken bottles. Inevitably, the men in the bar descend into chaos, power struggles, and the usual Lord of the Flies type of situations, but it’s a damn good read if you can stand O’Brien’s darkness.

O’Brien didn’t finish this book and he never saw it published. After his unfortunate death, his sister Erin was cleaning out his things and came across this novel as well as one entitled Stripper Lessons. Erin wrote the conclusion to Tony’s based on O’Brien’s notes and her work is pretty seamless.

I thought of this novel after New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin stated that the violence and lawlessness in his city was the result of drug-addicts cut off from their supply and “looking to take the edge off their jones.”

Like all of O’Brien’s work, The Assault on Tony’s is incredibly dark. But if you can take stomach that, this is an outstanding read. The New York Times said that O’Brien takes “us deep into an alcoholic’s world that few others have described so well.” Pick up the novel here.

Feuding rappers from the East Coast and West Coast don’t have the market covered when it comes to musical warfare. So here’s our Book-of-the-Day, Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Soderlind recount the story of how nearly 100 churches were burned and desecrated, while suicide, murder, and terrorism spread throughout the bands and their fans. Primarily set in Norway and the rest of Scandinavia, Lords of Chaos focuses on the power struggles revolving around a band called Mayhem. One musician named Dead, naturally, is discovered by his friends and bandmates Euronymous and Hellhammer. Dead, uh, died from a self-inflicted shotgun blast to the head. His friends take photos before calling the police. Before the authorities could arrive, friends take pieces of Dead’s skull to use in making necklaces. Later, Euronymous is murdered by rival Varg Vikernes, also known as Count Grishnackh, from the band Burzum.

Besides the examination of these specific bands, the first couple of chapters to the book give an overview of the musical genre. From Led Zeppelin’s fascination with Aleister Crowley to Black Sabbath’s early subject matter and Anton LaVey’s theatrics, the thread is carried out through bands like Coven, Venom, Mercyful Fate, Bathory, Slayer, Celtic Frost, Morbid Angel, Dismember, and others.

Lords of Chaos was re-released in an updated edition in 2003 that the publisher Feral House states “adding fifty new pages, detailing outbreaks of Black Metal crime in Finland, Germany and the United States; and includes the secret history of occult Rock, a new section on Varg Vikernes‚Äô promulgation of bizarre Aryan UFO theories, and material on the career of Hendrik Mobus, an international neo-Nazi fugitive. This award-winning expos?© features hundreds of rare photos and exclusive interrogations with priests, police officers, Satanists, and leaders of demonic bands who believe the greater evil spawns the greatest glory.”

At first glance, looking at the photos in this book, long hair and grease-paint, grown men posing with swords and armor, drinking blood out of goblets, it’s easy to dismiss these characters as childish and insignificant. You might think, “how can I take anyone seriously that calls himself Count Grishnackh?” But think back to the late eighties. If I told you that there was this new musician who was going to be initially feared by everyone, face trial for murder, and would ultimately go on to be respected and accepted and make commercials with Lee Iacocca. And then I said “his name is Snoop Doggy Dogg,” you would have laughed at me. If walked up to you, way before we ever knew what we know now, and said “My name is Christopher Wallace, but I want you to refer to me as Biggie Smalls, and then later I’ll change my name to The Notorious B.I.G., I will be one of the most important artists in my genre, I will ultimately be murdered, and I will be immortalized and reach icon status after my death” you would, once again, laugh at me. The point is that although the names and attitudes may seem foreign or outlandish, America and more mainstream music has its share of weird conventions that does not diminish the importance of the art and the artists. And the difficult experiences they face doesn’t change based on how outlandish their names are. The same is true with Euronymous and Count Grishnackh in Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground.

Pick up a copy here.

The essays collected together in Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times present some interesting perspectives on the state of modern writing and publishing. In the introduction, written by editor Kevin Smokler, the 2004 National Endowment for the Arts Reading at Risk report serves as the catalyst for this examination of reading and writing. The report gathered twenty years worth of data and a sampling or nearly seventeen thousand subjects and concluded that literary reading had dropped across every age, ethnic, economic, and geographic group in the nation. Smokler recounts all “the sky is falling” cries that greeted the study even though he doesn’t necessarily share in their doom and gloom. Nor does he agree with the report’s pointing the finger at the obvious causes of reading’s decline: the Internet, video games, and television. Smokler writes

Were we simply a country of morons fulfilling our insipid destiny? Could we blame sexier, flashier media options with which the humble book couldn’t compete? Those are pat, elitist answers to a complex problem, and America’s reading public, however big or small, deserves better. If many factors are to blame as [NEA] Chairman Gioia asserted, surely some come from inside, from the industries and institutions that depend on a healthy reading populace for their very survival and yet seem to be losing more of it every generation.

One of the key problems in the state of reading today, Smokler argues, is publishing itself.

Smokler bemoans authors who give “dull, mumbly readings at bookstores and see interaction with readers, at best, as tedious distraction and, at worst, a frighteningly awkward social predicament. Universities, local lecture series, and writers’ conferences are enablers, presenting writers in hushed, reverent tones, as if they were dangerous animals on safari.” This certainly isn’t true of every writer. I’ve attended readings that were as awe-inspiring and as passionate as any rock concert and I’ve seen authors put on performances worthy of Broadway. Unfortunately, I’ve also seen too many authors in tweed jackets stumble through readings that drag on worse than a trip to the dentist. And those are just the boring ones. Some authors are just plain assholes and they can make a booksigning hell for the poor clerks and staff that have to work around them. This isn’t relegated to writers; all occupations have a certain small percentage of jerks. But when Eminem is packing in 50,000 people to a concert, totaling millions of tickets sold in a year, he can afford to be a little grouchy, maybe a little late. I’m constantly amazed to meet authors who sell little more than 10,000 books in their entire career yet they act like human contact is a torture.

One of my pet peeves in this disdain for human interaction, connecting-with-fans, discussion is that so many authors do not have websites. You’ll notice that most of the authors we’ve interviewed here on Slushpile tend to be younger and many of them tend to be mystery or crime writers. That’s not a result of any particular slant or choice on my part, but rather the simple fact that I have interviewed authors that I could find. So many of my literary heroes (I won’t mention names but they will jump off the shelves if you come over and look at the Slushpile library) are basically unreachable. They don’t have websites, their publishers won’t forward requests, and the identities of their agents are state secrets. There are so many critically lauded authors, most in their fifties and sixties, who have no presence available to fans or to critics or to other writers. Obviously, that’s their choice and I respect that, but I also have to wonder how that may hurt their business. Today, most people, particularly young people, expect to be able to see a website. Yet many older authors either feel like they don’t need a web presence, or they don’t know how to establish one, or they don’t like the Internet or any number of explanations. So that while you and I may be familar with Great Writer X’s work, when a younger person hears his name, Googles him and finds nothing, will that person then still take the time to seek out the books?

Smokler continues “we lusty bibliophiles know that reading, unlike just about anything else, is both good for you and loads of fun. But look at how literature presents itself in public; then say loudly, ‘Where the hell is the fun?’” I think this is not only true of the writing and publishing industry, but also how literature is taught in this country. I had amazing English teachers in high school and one particular lady’s instruction continues to influence me to this day. But we bury our junior-high and high school literature education under theme, symbolism, and structure. We write research papers, we write reports, we learn to use the critical dictionaries and what have you. But I honestly don’t remember ever being asked “did you have fun reading this? Did you enjoy it?” I’m not saying that our young people don’t need academic rigor and instruction when they’re growing up, but even for me, after sitting through the drone of literature classes in this country, I have to wonder why bookish people are surprised that more people don’t like to read.

However, Smokler does point out some reasons for optimism. First of all, the obvious, the can’t-see-the-forest-for-the-trees, the main culprit of the decline of reading is essentially a form of reading.

Arguing that youth are neglecting reading in favor of online media ignores one simple fact: The Internet is fundamentally a reading and writing medium… The number of blogs and online diaries worldwide reached 5 million this year, with half their creators under the age of thirty. Say what you want about the contents. That’s millions and millions of young people writing and reading out of habit.

Smokler also included online conversation about books. “Each day, reading and publishing are more vigorously debated online than anywhere else in old mediascape,” he writes. It’s important to note that as far as I know, only three major newspapers in this country still feature dedicated book sections and most magazines have moved away from publishing fiction entirely. Yet, the discussion of books and fiction roars on in cyberspace. Smokler also applauds the McSweeney’s Factor and how Dave Eggers “and company have convinced a generation of young, media-overloaded readers that literature is cool,” while the influence of hip-hop, the culture of collaboration, the culture of transparency, and the culture of story all continue to bode well for reading’s future.

Listen to Steve Jobs talk about the latest offering from Pixar, the creators of the Myst video game series and musical epics like the Flaming Lips’ Yoshi Battles the Pink Robots and Jay Z’s Black Album. Their creators all say that, no matter how flashy the effects, in the end it’s all about story: A compelling narrative, an original voice, and characters both relatable and wondrous. We writers are the frontline artisans of story. It’s our world out there, no matter how humble and plain our creations seem in comparison.

So Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times is not a lamentation for books and writing. Far from it. The book is actually a celebration of young writers (the oldest are in their early forties, the youngest is nineteen) who are doing things in new ways, who are energized by the state of the industry, and who are determined to make an impact. Rather than complaining about the Internet, these writers embrace it. Instead of whining about their lot in life, these authors enjoy the unknown. Smokler writes “This is an amazing time for books. If reading and literature are in crisis, it certainly isn’t one of apathy but one of seismic rumblings of change that will have profound effect on the future.” Like many of us, Smokler states that “since I’ve never been on time for any trend in my life–not indie rock, breakdancing, or parachute pants–I’d rather be at the party now than in an imagined past when a nation read together, authors walked as gods on earth, and publishers went home fat and happy every afternoon.”

With contributions from Christian Bauman, Tom Bissell, Nico Cary, Tracy Chevalier, Paul Collins, Meghan Daum, Kelley Eskridge, Paul Flores, Nell Freudenberger, Glen David Gold, Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Nicola Griffith, Howard Hunt, Adam Johnson, Dan Kennedy, Robert Lanham, Vivien Mejia, Benjamin Nugent, Neal Pollack, Pamela Ribbon, Michelle Richmond, Douglas Rushkoff, Tara Bray Smith, K.M. Soehnlein, and Elizabeth Spiers, Bookmark Now is a great read for anyone who wants to know what is next in line for writing, publishing, and reading. Pick it up here.

In 1982, literary editor extraordinaire Bill Buford was living in London, running the prestigious magazine Granta. He caught a train at a rural railway station in Wales and was soon over-run by soccer (or football to them) supporters who were methodically destroying everything in their path. Fascinated by what he saw, Buford spent the next eight years immersed in hooligan culture and he traveled with the supporters to Italy, Turkey, Greece, Germany, and all over Britain. He attended a National Front event, witnessed the robbing of a pub, and saw horrific acts of violence. Among the Thugs is an insightful and revealing look inside hooligan culture and examines the experience and attraction of crowd violence. It’s a fascinating and surprising read because the hooligans rarely turn out to fit the stereotype.

Pick up Among the Thugs here.