Books

The Hairy Guy is Gone

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Back in the 1970s, when I was about nine or ten years old, I remember stealing glimpses at my parents'  copy of THE JOY OF SEX, with it's drawings of hairy, bookish couple coupling, and thinking if that was what sex was like, I didn't see what all the excitement was about.  Now the New York Times reports that there's a new edition of the book. Gone are the illustrations of hairy man and his hippie babe, replaced by photos of an attractive young couple, and now the book explores issues like AIDS, Viagra, and Internet porn, but…:

In a society where, if anything, people talk and think far too much about sex already, what is the point of reading anything else about it? Is there really anything new to say? […] People have more sex with more partners and think nothing of talking about it the next day in Starbucks, on the bus, on their cellphones as they walk along the street. College students hook up instead of dating. Magazines aimed at teenage girls publish practical advice on where to put what, and what to do then, when performing oral sex. Sexual images loom down from billboards, leap out of television sets and beckon from computers. Old-style pornography has become modern erotica; the newer, hard-core versions can be easily found by anyone with a computer. 

Good point. So why the update? Well, it turns out that Dr. Alex Comfort, who wrote the original book, overlooked a few things:

“He mentions the clitoris, he honors the clitoris, he says it’s important,” said Susan Quilliam [who did the revision]. “That was a lot more than most people did in those days. But he only mentions it in passing a few times and has no specific section on it. Not because he was anti-clitoris but because he just didn’t know […]I’m sure he was a lovely man, but he said that most men, given a young and attractive partner, can always get it up — it’s only when a woman lets herself go that he has a problem. And you’re going, ‘No, no, no!’ But that is what it was like then.” 

It's a good thing for us men that fewer women are letting themselves go today!

Bloodshed Continues in NY Publishing

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Sixty four people lost their jobs today at MacMillan as the bloodshed continues in the NY publishing world.

Simon & Schuster, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Thomas Nelson also have announced layoffs in recent weeks. Staff reductions are likely at Random House Inc., which is undergoing a significant consolidation. Other publishers, including Macmillan, have frozen wages or deferred raises.

[…]Macmillan's publishers include St. Martin's Press, Henry Holt & Co. and Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Macmillan is owned by Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, based in Stuttgart, Germany.

This is bad news for writers. The job losses in the executive suites will undoubtedly lead to dropped book contracts, fewer manuscript acquisitions, and smaller advances. I don't mean to sound too pessimistic, but this is a tough time to be a writer.

Final Chapter for Books?

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The New Yorker paints a bleak picture of publishing today. Borders is facing bankruptcy. There have been massive firings at Random House and its subsidiaries. Simon and Schuster cut thirty-five jobs, Thomas Nelson cut 54. Harcourt halted acquisitions of new manuscripts, and Penguin froze salaries for anyone making $50,000 or more. More bloodshed and consolidation is certainly on the way, even at smaller houses. The article included this quote from an editor at Farrar Straus Giroux:

We’re privately owned and not quite as massive as houses like Random House. We’ve definitely been feeling the burn with shorter print runs and a tightening on what we can buy, and we’ve had some really bleak editorial meetings.

Mr. Monk at the Roundtable

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Tracy Farnsworth at Roundtable Review gives MR. MONK IS MISERABLE a thumbs-up. She writes, in part:

Fans of the show are in for a treat. […]Goldberg does a stunning job capturing Natalie's voice. If you are missing the show between new episodes, the books are just as good, if not better. In fact, I have my fingers crossed that producers consider televising this latest novel. It has some excellent Monk moments!

Thank you, Tracy! I'm afraid that it's very unlikely that this book will be adapted for the show. The series is set in San Francisco and shot in Los Angeles on a very tight budget. Just going to Pasadena is a pricey proposition for them. It's also the series' final season so I think that Paris, Germany and Hawaii, the settings for three of my seven Monk books, are definitely out of their reach.

The book also gets a positive nod from the And Then I Read blog, which gives it 8 1/2 stars out of 10. I like this observation from the review:

I must confess, I love it when Adrian Monk is out of his milieu, but let's face it, Monk is out of his milieu five steps outside the front door of his apartment.

That is so true, which is what makes it so much fun for me when I take him somewhere he has never been before,  whether it's Hawaii or a science fiction convention.

Amazon is taking over the world

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Publisher's Weekly reports that Amazon has purchased Abebooks, the online used bookstore.

AbeBooks, which has over 110 million books for sale listed by independent booksellers, will continue to function as a stand-alone operation based in Victoria, British Columbia.  AbeBooks will maintain all its Web sites, including its Canadian Web site, and all sites will continue to have country-specific content.

On the Road with Mr. Monk

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For a while now, people have occasionally sent me pictures of themselves in far-flung places with one of my MONK books in their hands. If you're out and about, and happen to have one of my MONK books with you, please send me a photo (to Lee AT Leegoldbrg.com) and I will post it here. (That's me with the Naked Bookseller of Quartzite, AZ)

Mr. Monk has a Bookgasm

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Alan Cranis at Bookgasm has given MR. MONK IS MISERABLE a rave review. He writes, in part:

Goldberg realizes the obligations he must fulfill in writing tie-ins, and successfully recreates the rhythms and nuances of the television characters on the printed page. But he never cheats his readers. The scenes are well-researched, and the plot is as inventive and vivid as any original story. Additionally, the author adds just enough interior emotion to give the story depth without sacrificing the energetic pace.

His biggest challenge, as always, is Monk himself. For those with only scant knowledge of the TV series or the characteristics of OCD, Monk might seem like an insufferable asshole. But while staying true to these traits, Goldberg manages to bring our sympathies to Monk, first with the humorous observation of his ever- patient assistant and finally when we see Monk fully involved and secure in what he does best: solving murders.

Goldberg also manages to have some fun with a few traditional mystery techniques. Monk’s sharp-eyed observations and detached explanations are positively Holmesian. And one scene recreates a classic “locked room” murder right out of John Dickson Carr.

But like most tie-ins, the bottom-line mission is to entertain. And Goldberg expertly succeeds here as well. Series fans will find much to enjoy and celebrate. And for everyone else there is a neat, surprisingly literate and well-written mystery starring a most unlikely crime solver.

Thanks, Alan!

Mr. Monk is Miserable Today

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My seventh original "Monk" novel, MR. MONK IS MISERABLE, hits the shelves of bookstores nationwide today. It picks up where my last book, MR. MONK GOES TO GERMANY, left off. And I think you should rush out RIGHT THIS SECOND and buy it…or click here.   Here's how the publisher describes the book:

Monk already ruined a trip to Germany for his long-suffering assistant Natalie. The least he can do is accompany her on a detour to France—and try not to ruin that too. In fact, Monk stuns Natalie by announcing that he wants to visit the sewers of Paris. The historic underground maze of pipes and tunnels is famous for making the City of Light sanitary, and to Monk, that’s worth paying tribute to.

The only problem is that their explorations lead them to another hidden world below the Parisian streets: the catacombs, filled with aging skulls and bones. Monk’s sharp eye catches sight of one skull that’s not so old—and that shows evidence of murder—pulling them into a case more twisted than the catacombs themselves. 

I hope that you enjoy it!

Saintly Diversions

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  Over the holiday, I read Roger Moore's delightful memoir MY WORD IS MY BOND and I watched the documentary THE SAINT STEPS IN…TO TELEVISION. Both are a "must" for any fan of THE SAINT. But if I had to pick just one to recommend, it would be the book.

Moore's good humor and engaging personality comes through on every page of his memoir. Although the book is a fairly superficial skimming of his life and career, there's still plenty of amusing anecdotes and production details for die-hard MAVERICK, SAINT, PERSUADERS and Bond fans (the stories about THE PERSUADERS are particularly entertaining).  But readers looking for scandalous details about his love life, or those of other Hollywood personalities, will be disappointed.  Overall, it's a fast, informative, and fun read.7952968med

Many of the stories Moore tells about the Saint in his memoir are repeated in the documentary, only not as well. The documentary, narrated by Roger Moore and Ian Ogilvy, is bloated, plodding and unbelievably repetitive. That's not to say there isn't some real gold in there for SAINT fans and students of television in general…but you have to pan through a lot of  gravel to get to it.

I enjoyed the interviews with the SAINT writers (and interviews about the writers), the
discussions about script troubles, and the nasty script notes from author Leslie Charteris…but even that got extremely tiresome after
a while, since they basically kept repeating the same anecdotes, or
variations of the same anecdotes, over and over, long after the points were made. That's true of every subject the documentary tackles (it felt like an hour was spent just talking about what a nice guy Roger Moore is). And there's a long section about going from black-and-white to color episodes that can be marketed as a cure for insomnia.

The section on THE RETURN OF THE SAINT moves much more briskly, but the whole project feels needlessly padded … which, in fact, it was. The documentary is actually two shorter films made as "DVD extras" for the series boxed sets that were combined and expanded to fill a standalone release. I'll bet that the shorter versions play much, much better…and are every bit as informative.

This Is A Very Bad Sign

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Publisher's Weekly reports the scary news that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, a major NY publisher, has ordered editors to stop acquiring new manuscripts.

Josef Blumenfeld, v-p of communications for HMH, confirmed that the publisher has “temporarily stopped acquiring manuscripts” across its trade and reference divisions. The directive was given verbally to a handful of executives and, according to Blumenfeld, is “not a permanent change.” 

Blumenfeld, who hedged on when the ban might be lifted, said that the right project could still go to the editorial review board. He also maintained that the the decision is less about taking drastic measures than conducting good business.

“In this case, it’s a symbol of doing things smarter; it’s not an indicator of the end of literature,” he said. “We have turned off the spigot, but we have a very robust pipeline.” 

The action by the highly leveraged HMH may also be as much about the company's need to cut costs in a tight credit market.as about the current economic slowdown.

While Blumenfeld dismissed the severity of the policy, a number of agents said they have never heard of a publisher going so far as to instruct its editors to stop acquiring.