Burning Books for Fun and Profit

In one of those moves so twisted it makes your brain sweat just thinking about it, Tom Wayne, a Kansas City, Missouri bookstore owner, has been setting fire to his stock in order to protest what he sees as society’s diminished interest in books and reading. According to AP:

“This is the funeral pyre for thought in America today,” Wayne told spectators outside his bookstore as he lit the first batch of books.

The fire blazed for about 50 minutes before the Kansas City Fire Department put it out because Wayne didn't have a permit for burning.

Wayne said next time he will get a permit. He said he envisions monthly bonfires until his supply -- estimated at 20,000 books -- is exhausted.

Does anyone else think this is just twisted? At least a little like a restaurateur protesting slow business by dumping food into the gutter, or a liquor store owner pouring booze down the drain. Can you imagine if Wal-Mart tried this particular tactic? Home Depot? Bloomingdale’s? But they don’t. And why not? Because it’s counterproductive, counterintuitive and -- I’ll just say it -- plain goofy.

Wayne said he has seen fewer customers in recent years as people more often get their information from television or the Internet. He pointed to a 2002 study by the National Endowment for the Arts, that found that less than half of adult respondents reported reading for pleasure, down from almost 57 percent in 1982.

OK, so let's get this straight. Wayne is suggesting business is down? That fewer people are venturing to his store in order to buy books? That fewer people are reading? And his response is to... destroy his stock? Maybe if he read the marketing books in his store instead of burning them, he could buy a clue that burning inventory is not a textbook response to a changing business environment.

Meanwhile, some customers are responding to the blaze with their pocketbooks:

The idea of burning the books horrified Marcia Trayford, who paid $20 Sunday to carry away an armload of tomes on art, education and music.

“I’ve been trying to adopt as many books as I could,” she said.

Calculated Loss, the Movie?

Not really. Well, not yet, anyway. However the Madeline Carter novels are featured today on “My Book, the Movie,” the most recent blog from Marshal Zeringue, the workoholic who brought us Campaign for the American Reader, the Page 69 Test and other interesting blogs.

See the Calculated Loss “My Book, the Movie” entry here.

The Fun Continues

At The Rap Sheet, the first anniversary bash is in full swing. As I posted yesterday, Rap Sheet editor J. Kingston Pierce has asked 100 writers to share the single crime, mystery or thriller novel that they think has “been most unjustly overlooked, criminally forgotten, or underappreciated over the years?”

The answers are fun, interesting and are adding stacks to my own TBR pile. (Like said stack isn’t already dangerously high enough!) And, in the latest installment, look for my own suggestion of Jonathan Lethem’s terrific and often overlooked 1994 debut novel, Gun with Occasional Music.

Oops! So I gave mine away. But there are 11 other picks including picks from the wonderful Linda Fairstein; the terrific Duane Swierczynski, the well-loved Crimespot editor Graham Powell... I’d go on, but I’m running out of superlatives. Go see for yourself.

The One That Got Away

Over at The Rap Sheet, J. Kingston Pierce has outdone himself. To celebrate The Sheet’s first birthday, Pierce has put together a feature that runs all this week:

I recently invited scores of crime novelists, critics, and bloggers from all over the world to answer a not-so-simple question: What one crime, mystery, or thriller novel do you think has been most unjustly overlooked, criminally forgotten, or underappreciated over the years?

In the first installment, the question is answered by Megan Abbott, Charles Ardai, Robert Ferrigno, Peter Guttridge, Gar Anthony Haywood, Steve Hockensmith, Paul Johnston, Jiro Kimura, George Pelecanos and M.J. Rose. Look for 90 more over the coming week.

Happy Birthday, Rap Sheet! And, well done, Pierce!

The feature begins here.

Does This Seem Like a Mother’s Day Fact To You?

According to AP (who pride themselves on being right about such things) on this day “in 1917, three peasant children near Fatima, Portugal, reported seeing a vision of the Virgin Mary.”

This strikes me as salient only because it offers up a tenuous connection to Mother’s Day. (Or non-tenuous, I guess. Depending on how you're wired.)

AP offers up other “today in history” type facts (though none of them mother-related) here.

I also learned that Beatrice Arthur turns 85 today; Harvey Keitel is 68 while Stevie Wonder turns 57. Dennis Rodman turns 46 today, Stephen Colbert is 43, Darius Rucker -- if you’re into one hit wonders, you probably think of him as “Hootie” -- turns 41.

Quote of the Week: Too Little, Too Late

This is depressing:

“First there is what might be called the moralistic approach: Be less bad. Get rid of your SUV and buy a Prius. The problem here is that, according to Worldchanging.org, a minimum of 50 to 60 percent of the lifetime energy consumption of a car goes into its manufacture and shipping, so this may translate into feel-a-little-too-good-a-little-too-late.”

-- from “The Eco-Design Movement,” May 2007 edition of Dwell: At Home in the Modern World

Glorifying the American Girl

I found this film on a research trip. I’d never heard of it before.

The research trip in question was of the Googlish variety. I’m not even going to tell you what I was researching (not yet, anyway) but this film moves to the top of my personal to-be-watched list.

From Wikipedia:

The movie contains brief shots of Noah Beery, Irving Berlin, Billie Burke, Charles B. Dillingham, Texas Guinan, Otto Kahn, Ring Lardner and Mayor of New York City Jimmy Walker as themselves. There is also an uncredited, non-speaking scene with Johnny Weissmuller wearing nothing but a fig leaf. The greater part of the final half of the film is a revue given over to a re-creation of a Follies production, replete with musical solos by Rudy Vallee and Helen Morgan and a comedy sketch with Eddie Cantor and Louis Sorin as a pair of Jewish tailors.

Add that to that the fact that Glorifying the American Girl (1929) was produced by Florenz Ziegfeld (yes: that Ziegfeld) and was the first talkie to use the word “damn” (not once, but several times) and you’re on your way to a film that would end up making history, though for all the wrong reasons.

I gotta see it! Apparently Paramount didn’t renew the copyright and Glorifying the American Girl is in the public domain. But which public domain? I gotta get my mitts on a copy. If you’ve got any ideas -- or have seen the film -- let me know.

Blue Who? or A Rose by Any Other Name...

Back in February, I announced that St. Martin’s Minotaur would be publishing my fourth novel. We both announced the book as Blue Murder. And for a while, that’s what it looked like it was going to be.

It had been my working title for most of the time I was writing the book. I liked the title well enough. It had to be called something, after all. The whole industry thinks dimly of books with no names: harder to identify in the store. Blue Murder is an archaic expression, one that I thought evoked the time in which the book is set -- the early 1930s -- plus it had a sort of cool, noir sound. Also, at one point in the book, someone actually does scream blue murder, so it was even a bit relevant. I figured better titles might be out there, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what they might be. There are many things I’m good at, but dreaming up titles -- for books, magazine articles or anything -- is not one of them. I don’t know why that should be so, but it is.

About a month ago, perhaps more, Peter Joseph, my wonderful editor at St. Martin’s, suggested that we go hunting for that better title. This led to some hilarious spitballing sessions on this end, with my partner, David, obligingly hauling out his collections of books on noir and art deco and 1930s industrial design and us sitting around with glasses of wine and plates of cheese making great long lists of potential titles, most of them strings of words you wouldn’t even wish on a dog. (I say that blithely and with tongue in cheek. Everyone knows that dog naming is a serious undertaking. Even if I happen to think that the best name for a dog is “Steve.”)

I thought I might share some of the titles David and I cooked up, but I’ve decided against it. I’m going to be greedy and hang onto them, perhaps use them some other time. Some of them are actually quite good, (especially a few of the ones David came up with) but none of them described this book; the book that had been known as Blue Murder. (And remember what I told you: I’m not so great at cooking up titles. So I’d best hoard the good ones I’ve collected.)

In the end it was Peter that came up with the winner, the title by which the book will be known:

Death was the Other Woman.

I love it, because it's so simple and it describes the book quite precisely, while giving nothing at all away.

It excites me that the book already has an ISBN -- 0312377703 -- and a publication month -- January 2008. I haven’t seen the cover yet, but I know it’s in progress and I’ll be seeing designs soon.

This is the first time I’ve mentioned the book in this space since February, though it’s been occupying a lot of the space in my head. I’ll likely go back to not mentioning it again for a while, at least until ARCs go out in a few months. But I did want to tell you: Death was the Other Woman. January 2008.

You Know You’ve Been Hanging Around the Book Business Too Long When...

... You see this headline:

“D.C. Madam” case enthralls capital

... And all you wanna know is when the book deal will be announced.