I've heard a lot of buzz about the debut novel Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles, whose protagonist gets stuck at O'Hare Airport (who hasn't?) and decides to vent his frustrations on paper.
Here's a review:
By CHAD ROEDEMEIER
There could never be a debut novel more perfectly timed to enter the world than Jonathan Miles’ Dear American Airlines (Houghton Mifflin, 192 pages, $22).
The book is a novel-length complaint letter written by one angry American Airlines passenger who has been stranded in Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and may miss his daughter’s wedding in Los Angeles.
Sound familiar? Just a few months ago, hundreds of thousands of actual American Airlines customers were stranded in airports across the country when the airline was forced to cancel 3,100 flights to check or redo something called ‘‘wiring bundles.’’ The universe, or at least the Federal Aviation Administration, has apparently gift-wrapped a marketing campaign just for this book.
Last week on "Chicago Tonight," host Phil Ponce led a discussion with local bookworms, who gave their recommendations for summer reading. Panelists included Jessa Crispin, editor of Bookslut; Author and Loyola professor Al Gini, and novelist Kimberla Lawson Roby.
Each panelist recommended several books for the summer but right off the bat Ponce asked for their No. 1 choices. Crispin chose Daughters of the North by Sarah Hall (HarperCollins, $13.95); Gini chose The Blue Star by Tony Earley (Little, Brown, $23.99); Roby chose The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow (Hyperion, $21.95).
This year, After-Words Books' semi-annual book sale for charity will benefit the Greater Chicago Food Depository, "a not-for-profit food distribution and training center providing food for hungry people while striving to end hunger in our community."
The sale will take place from noon to 6 p.m. May 25-26 at After-Words, 23 E. Illinois. Bring your own bag or purchase one at the bookstore. For $5 you can fill your bag with books.
Those who follow publishing all know the story of John Grisham, who as an unknown author started out self-publishing a little book called A Time to Kill , driving around selling it out of the trunk of his car.
While most self-published authors don't see Grisham's kind of success, with a little persistence it can happen. Former Chicagoan John Bernard Ruane is getting a shot with his memoir Parish the Thought: An Inspirational Memoir of Growing up Catholic in the 1960s (Roswell Press, $19.99), which found its way into the book room right about the time I took over the job of Books Editor last year.
Anyone who grew up Catholic wlll relate to Ruane's stories of growing up in a Chicago parish, where he served as an altar boy and was schooled under the influence of nuns and priests in the 1960s. (One can't help recall John R. Powers' fictionalized memoirs about growing up Catholic in the '50s — The Last Catholic in America, Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?)
Ruane, who now makes his home in Roswell Georgia, printed only 5,000 copies last summer. Most of the hardcovers have sold out and now Pocket Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, will publish the paperback edition this fall.
None other than our city's own archbishop, Francis Cardinal George blurbs the book on the back cover:
"John Bernard Ruane writes about a truly memorable parish, St. Bede's in the Archdiocese of Chicago. His witty but moving recall of his years growing up is a marvelous tribute to his mother and father and to the parish itself. Chicago priests and parishes have shaped literally millions of Catholics, and all of us now have reason to be grateful to John."
Chicago-based author Jon Lellenberg, along with his co-authors Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley, was recently nominated by the Mystery Writers of America for a 2008 Edgar Award in the Best Critical/Biographical category for Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters (Penguin Press, $37.95)
Publisher's Weekly had this to say: "This fascinating collection of previously unpublished letters from the creator of Sherlock Holmes offers a revealing glimpse of a Renaissance man fated to be overshadowed by his most famous character. Beginning with correspondence from Doyle as an eight-year-old in 1867, the editors offer a warts-and-all picture of his life until 1920, 10 years before his death, covering the author's frank accounts of life at a boarding school, his struggles as a young doctor and aspiring writer, and his political advocacy. This will be essential reading for all fans of Conan Doyle and his sleuth."
The Edgar Awards —named after Edgar Allan Poe, of course — "are considered the Oscars of the mystery genre." The award ceremony will take place May 1 in New York. For more information: www.theedgars.com.
As part of the One Book, One Chicago program, The Outfit, a group of area crime fiction authors, has been asked to write about different aspects of Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye. The group began blogging about the book yesterday and will continue through the next two weeks. Sara Paretsky started things off. Check it out.
Other members of The Outfit include Sean Chercover, Barbara D'Amato, Michael Allen Dymmoch, Kevin Guilfoile, Libby Fischer Hellmann and Marcus Sakey. Several members have new books out:
Check this out. Bikini-clad Pamela Anderson is caught on camera reading local author Anne Elizabeth Moore's book, Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity.
Congratulations to Chicago author Dwight Okita, who you might remember from a March 19 posting on this blog. Okita was one of 10 finalists in Amazon.com's Breakthough Novel contest, in which the public voted for the winner.
Okita didn't win for his book, The Prospect of My Arrival, but he did get enough votes to make the Top 3, who were all flown to New York for the awards ceremony. The winner was Bill Loehfelm, for his book, Fresh Kills, about an estranged son struggling to find his father's killer and make peace with the past.
Here's a note Okita sent out to his supporters last night:
Hi all,
As some of you know, I got the exciting phone call from Amazon telling me that I had made it to the Top 3 in the novel contest! They flew us to New York last weekend for the awards ceremony. Though I didn't win the publishing deal, I made many great connections in the business and hope to find a happy ending to my novel yet. Thanks to everyone for their support of my novel. More to come later.
Dwight
And here is what Publisher's Weekly had to say about Okita's book:
In Chicago of 2025, the experimental Pre-Born Project at the Infinity Medical Center has inserted the consciousness of a fetus into the unoccupied body of a 30-year-old man, who will visit seven Referrals before deciding whether he chooses to be born. In lesser hands, this odd premise might have veered into political diatribe or slapstick. Instead, the protagonist, called Prospect, takes the reader on an engrossing and moving journey into the meaning of life, filled with fresh observations and memorable characters. Addressing the reader with a voice that skillfully blends innocence and wisdom, this latter-day Candide discovers unexpected connections among his Referrals and lands in jeopardy that keeps the pages turning until its satisfying and touching conclusion. The reader will find many insights and turns of phrase (curtains that "move like jellyfish in the summer breeze") to savor along the way.
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, his state’s first black governor and a close ally of presidential candidate Barack Obama, is writing a memoir that will be published by Broadway Books in 2010.
Gov. Deval Patrick
The deal is worth $1.35 million and nine publishers competed for the book, currently untitled, according to agent Todd Shuster of the Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency. Patrick will donate some of his royalties to A Better Chance, a nonprofit educational organization that helped Patrick attend the Milton Academy, south of Boston.
‘‘Drawing upon his extraordinary journey from Chicago’s Wabash Avenue to the Massachusetts State House on Boston’s fabled Beacon Hill, Gov. Patrick will offer in his book a series of lessons and insights on life and leadership,’’ according to a statement released Friday by Broadway Books, an imprint of Random House, Inc.
‘‘Among the subjects he will address are self-truth, grace, faith, courage, and compassion, as well as the importance of forgiveness, and embracing optimism and hope to make good outcomes possible.’’
Obama, a black Illinois senator who wrote Dreams From My Father and Audacity of Hope, is similar to Patrick in several ways: Both are Democrats who graduated from Harvard Law School, have Chicago ties and ended up seeking elective office on the strength of their backgrounds.
Patrick, 51, was out of state last week when his casino gambling plan, a cornerstone of his economic program, went down to defeat, leading to speculations about his whereabouts: He was in New York, shopping his book.
Patrick briefly became an issue in the presidential campaign when it was discovered that Obama had been using some of his lines, saying that while words matter, actions mean more, leading Obama’s rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, to call him the candidate of ‘‘change you can Xerox.’’
Patrick, one of Obama’s strongest supporters, dismissed the charges as ‘‘sort of a tempest in a teapot.’’
A gossipy book by two ex-concierges at Chicago’s luxurious Four Seasons Hotel has been pulled by Three Rivers Press because the authors were legally banned from writing about their experiences.
‘‘Despite previous and repeated inquiries made by Three Rivers Press, we recently learned that Abigail Hart and Nancy Callahan did not disclose that they had signed confidentiality agreements with their former employer, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts,’’ publicist Katie Wainwright told The Associated
Press on Thursday.
The book, Great Reservations: Two Concierges Dish About Outrageous Requests, Celebrity Encounters, and Guests Behaving Badly at a Luxury Hotel, had been scheduled for a June release. It featured anecdotes on such celebrities as Madonna (who had a ‘‘phobialike aversion’’ to air conditioning) and Sir Anthony Hopkins (who asked that he simply be called ‘‘Tony’’).
Although advance copies had been sent to the media, the book had not yet been shipped to stores and a print run had not been determined, Wainwright said.
Three Rivers Press is an imprint of Random House, Inc., which is owned by Bertelsmann AG.
AP
Note: Here's what the book would have looked like had it made it to store shelves:
