Geoff Schumacher

I’m Switzerland in the war between printed and digital books. I love printed books, of course. They’ve basically taken over our house. (It’s still more of an accumulation than a collection but it’s starting to look and act more like there’s a method to the madness.)

I also have a Kindle, and I have intentions of reading books on Apple’s new iPad. I read and write about books online. The internet has become a tremendous resource for information and criticism about books and the book industry. It also can be a great place to buy hard-to-find books.

But for all the benefits of the web, there is still no substitute for browsing in a brick-and-mortar bookstore, especially a secondhand shop. If you walk into a used bookstore with an open and curious mind, you are likely to leave with an item you’re extremely pleased to have acquired. Thrift shops with well-populated shelves of books also often yield surprising finds.

Take, for instance, a little book I picked up the other day at Dead Poet Books at Rainbow and Charleston boulevards. Wandering with the aforementioned open and curious attitude, my eyes fell upon an old paperback. It lay flat and askew on the shelf next to the properly alphabetized and aligned paperback novels. I can’t really say why I was drawn to the book — a hunch and no more.

But once I started looking it over, I knew I’d found something I had to take home with me. The title: “Edge of Awareness: 25 Contemporary Essays.” Published by Dell in 1966. A fairly slim 240 pages. Sold for 60 cents when it was new.

The cover barely contains any artwork to attract the eye, but it does have this compelling text running down the right side: “Provocative views of man in a complex world by distinguished modern writers, including: Jack Kerouac, Lillian Ross, E.M. Forster, Harry Golden, John Keats, Robert Graves, Margaret Mead, Adlai Stevenson, John Ciardi, Arthur C. Clarke.” I didn’t recognize all the names but I was acquainted with enough of them to pique my interest.

Needless to say, the book now rests on the desk beside my keyboard. I have read the first two essays, by Keats and Kerouac, and they are good, both narratives on the general theme of “something valuable I learned in my youth.” Keats recalls his post-high school, Depression-era adventure riding the rails across America. Kerouac writes about serving a solitary summer as a fire lookout in the mountains north of Seattle. Great stuff.

Kerouac: “Thinking of the stars night after night I begin to realize ’the stars are words’ and all the innumerable worlds in the Milky Way are words, and so is this world too. And I realize that no matter where I am, whether in a little room full of thought, or in this endless universe of stars and mountains, it’s all in my mind. There’s no need for solitude.”

Keats: “I can say that some part of me, now and forever, answers to the sounds of a train whistling lonely in the night, and to the deep tones of foghorns in the mist of the Northwestern coast. Some part of me is still a boy sweating at unloading watermelons from a truck in Portland; I am still shivering atop a cattle car in the winds driving through the snow-covered high passes. There is still in whoever I am the wink of campfires and the sight of drunken men jumping across a fire and someone hitting him with a railroad spike and him falling into the fire. I can still see the lights of San Francisco and of Alcatraz from Coit Tower, and the delicate faces of the Chinese girls that Louis found for us. I have a memory of walking the docks in the rain in Seattle, and of sleepless nights in the fumigated cost of flophouses run by the Gospel Mission; of the Western wastelands creeping past and a hawk swooping on a gopher. . . .”

I will end up reading this entire essay collection, and getting a ton of pleasure and wisdom from it. I’m particularly curious about an essay by one Joseph Wood Krutch titled, “Can We Survive the Fun Explosion?” I’m also eager to read “TV Shows Are Not Supposed to Be Good” by David Karp. I’m curious, too, why this book was published in the first place. Something tells me the very idea would be rejected out of hand today.

And I highly doubt there’s any way I could have come across this book on Amazon or ABE Books or anywhere else on the internet. The only way to come into contact with a forgotten gem like this is to run across it in a book shop.

This piece was first published earlier today on Facebook:

Tomorrow evening, “Blue Vegas,” a short story collection by P Moss, will make its debut. A book launch party at the Double Down Saloon starts at 8 p.m.

“Blue Vegas” originally was going to be CityLife Books’ first title. But last fall, when we decided to publish “Restless City,” the serial novel commissioned by the Vegas Valley Book Festival, “Blue Vegas” became the imprint’s second title.

I’m extremely proud of both books. I think they represent a great and appropriate start for this imprint, which I dreamed up about two years ago and which Stephens Press publisher Carolyn Hayes Uber embraced from the minute she heard my idea.

Since its release in November, “Restless City” has been well received. Featuring a talented lineup of local authors — Lee Barnes, John Irsfeld, Brian Rouff, Leah Bailly, John L. Smith, Constance Ford and Vu Tran — it’s a fast-moving, edgy crime tale set in modern-day Las Vegas. It’s a fine addition to the local culture, I believe, and an appropriate title for CityLife Books to publish.

“Blue Vegas” also fits perfectly into what CityLife Books aims to do. The 17 stories reflect the dark side of life in Las Vegas, the side where people lose more than a few dollars in a casino, where they find themselves in deadly situations because of greed or stupidity, where dreams don’t come true.

Moss had been working on these stories for some time but it wasn’t until the creation of CityLife Books that he really had an appropriate venue in which to get them published. They deserve a wide audience, I think, wider than the confines of this valley. An article in Sunday’s L.A. Times surely has triggered interest in Southern California, and review copies have gone out far and wide.

The local media coverage has been ample and enthusiastic, promising a good turnout at tomorrow night’s event, as well as at book signings scheduled later in the month.

I am pleased to be involved with these two books, as well as a few more in the pipeline. CityLife Books fills a void, providing a vehicle for promising local authors of good fiction and nonfiction about Las Vegas to get published. It’s a low-cost operation, which means we are willing to gamble on a piece of writing that might not pencil out for Stephens Press or other publishers.

“Restless City” and “Blue Vegas” are just the beginning. The next title will be called “Vanishing Village,” a nonfiction work by Evan Blythin. If you or someone you know has a manuscript or is working on one about Las Vegas, and it is less than 50,000 words, consider making a pitch to CityLife Books. We’re especially interested in writing that challenges the status quo and the conventional wisdom in Las Vegas.

In the meantime, “Blue Vegas” is the hot new title to get a hold of. Whether you ultimately love it, like it or hate it, I guarantee you will remember reading it.

New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik wrote the introduction to a just-released collection of journalism by old-time New Yorker staff writer St. Clair McKelway called “Reporting at Wit’s End.” In praising McKelway’s work, which appeared from the 1930s to 1960s, Gopnik sums up what writers of journalism can take away from McKelway’s work:

“Find weird data, funny facts, and align them nicely; listen to strange people and give them space to talk; keep a cartoonist’s license but not a caricaturist’s smugness; rely on the force of simple words, but don’t be afraid of big ideas, or of the stuff of history, if you can make it sound like learning casually attained. Above all, keep your voice hovering just above your material, neither below it “subversively” nor alongside it chummily, but above it, a few light and happy inches over the page.”

Harrison Ford and Denzel Washington are two of the good guys. They are good actors, of course, but they also are good people. They aren’t tabloid fodder, preferring not to live the fast-lane lives of many of their colleagues. This fact is reflected in two recent profiles.

The Jan. 10 issue of Parade magazine had a profile of Ford. Ford likes flying airplanes. He owns eight of them. He also walks his dog in the local park. At 67, he has older kids and younger kids and grandkids. He tries to be as much of a regular guy as he can reasonably pull off. Work of whatever kind is what makes him happy: “Where I find peace is where I find the most utility, probably on a movie set or in an airplane, not a place. I think I have to find peace in focused activity.”

Washington, profiled in the Jan. 8-10 issue of USA Weekend, seems to have a lot in common with Ford, including a drive to work and a sense of humility about his success. He’s been married to the same woman for 26 years and has four kids, all in college or beyond. “I’m a work in progress like everybody else,” says Washington, 55. “I’m just an ordinary guy with a great job. And, like any human being, I’m constantly trying to improve.”

Ford and Washington exemplify what can be achieved in the movie business while maintaining a semblance of a normal life and family.

The Jan. 15-17 issue of USA Weekend has an article by Stephen Covey, the business leadership guru, offering “seven new ways that each of us can bridge the gulf that separates us from our neighbors.” The premise is that Americans are deeply divided on many issues these days. Here, in a nutshell, is Covey’s advice:

1. “Really try to understand different points of view.” Good advice, but it’s difficult to convince an ideologue, which many people are these days,  to even consider another point of view.

2. “Come up with a third solution that’s better than those already proposed.” Another good idea. Hasn’t worked very well with health care reform, though.

3. “Model yourself after others.” He suggests striving to emulate the best traits of great people such as Abraham Lincoln,  John F. Kennedy and Nelson Mandela. Makes sense but hard to measure up.

4. Don’t let the quest for riches or bitter rivalries obscure who you really are or want to be. Sure. His example is the millionaire who quit the fast lane and started Habitat for Humanity. Great story, but most of us don’t have the income comfort to drop our jobs and pursue another dream. Still a nice idea that can be achieved on a smaller scale through various volunteering efforts.

5. Try new things to widen and deepen your perspective. If you think you hate NASCAR, for example, go to a race and find out firsthand what it’s like. This is the best one so far. It really works.

6. “Understand your audience.” In other words, take an interest in other people, so that you can do a better job of speaking to them about things they care about and perhaps persuading them to your point of view. Makes sense.

7. Laugh. “Is there a better way to break the ice and build a bridge?” Covey asks. He’s right, laughter is a good tool to bring people together.

Okay, so what’s the verdict? Covey’s advice is sound. But I’ve become cynical of late about the hardening of people’s political views. I see this in the e-mails and online comments I receive after my column is published each Friday. Things can swing back to more open-mindedness, but right now too many people are only hearing what they want to hear and not listening to other sides.

When you look at 2009 best-of lists from the nation’s music critics, one thing you often find is an ability to recognize the merits of music from a range of genres. Eclectic would be the word. In addition, you often notice a desire to look cool in the eyes of fellow critics by listing CDs that nobody — nobody! — has heard.

I buy and listen to a lot of CDs in a year, far more than the average person. I also venture beyond my comfort zone, acquiring quite a few CDs by bands and musicians that are not well known. But because I’m not a working music critic, I don’t feel any particular expectation to sample CDs in genres I’m not particularly interested in. As a result, the following list very much reflects my musical interests and doesn’t attempt to cover the full spectrum of popular music produced in 2009.

Unlike some critics, I’ve chosen to include new studio albums, live recordings and anthologies all in one list. If it was released in calendar year 2009, it was eligible for inclusion here.

1. Neil Young, Archives Vol. 1

2. Leonard Cohen, Live in London

3. Drive-By Truckers, The Fine Print

4. Cage the Elephant, Cage the Elephant

5. Wolfmother, Cosmic Egg

6. Dan Auerbach, Keep It Hid

7. Neil Young, Fork in the Road

8. Patterson Hood, Murdering Oscar

9. Lucero, 1372 Overton Park

10. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Live Anthology

11. Bruce Springsteen, Working on a Dream

12. Todd Snider, The Excitement Plan

13. Bob Dylan, Together Through Life

14. Steve Earle, Townes

15. Jay Farrar and Benjamin Gibbard, One Fast Move or I’m Gone: Songs from Kerouac’s Big Sur

16. Rosanne Cash, The List

17. Richmond Fontaine, We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River

18. Lyle Lovett, Natural Forces

19. The Decemberists, The Hazards of Love

20. Drive-By  Truckers, Live from Austin, Texas

21. Cross Canadian Ragweed, Happiness and All the Other Things

22. Nirvana, Live at Reading

23. Arctic Monkeys, Humbug

24. Green Day, 21^st Century Breakdown

25. The Hold Steady, A Positive Rage (live)

26. Neil Young, Dreamin’ Man Live ’92

27. Heartless Bastards, The Mountain

28. Wilco, Wilco (The Album)

29. Son Volt, American Central Dust

30. Neko Case, Middle Cyclone

31. Blakroc, Blakroc

32. Mark Knopfler, Get Lucky

33. U2, No Line on the Horizon

34. KISS, Sonic Boom

35. Justin Townes Earle, Midnight at the Movies

Disappointments of 2009

Some critics really liked a few of the following albums but I just couldn’t get into them. Others I had high hopes for but they just didn’t work for me.

– Monsters of Folk, Monsters of Folk

– Them Crooked Vultures, Them Crooked Vultures

– The Dead Weather, Horehound

– Mastodon, Crack the Skye

– Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Self-titled

– J.J. Cale, Roll On

– Levon Helm, Electric Dirt

– Sonic Youth, The Eternal

– Adam Lambert, For Your Entertainment

– The Derek Trucks Band, Already Free

– Ace Frehley, Anomaly

– Booker T. Jones, Potato Hole

So, here it is, my annual report on the books I read in the previous year. My total of 48 books is relatively low compared with recent years. But in my defense, I read some long books in 2009. In addition, it was a hectic year, professionally and personally, leaving a little less time for reading.

Fiction highlights: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon; Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser; Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead; The Signal by Ron Carlson; Dead Boys by Richard Lange; Inherent  Vice by Thomas Pynchon; The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon; and The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter.

Nonfiction highlights: Stories Done: Writings on the 1960s and Its Discontents by Mikal Gilmore; Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization by Nicholson Baker; West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders, and Killers in the Golden State by Mark Arax; 1969: The Year Everything Changed by Rob Kirkpatrick; Zeitoun by Dave Eggers; Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free by Charles P. Pierce; Books: The Essential Insider’s Guide, edited by Mark Strand.

Book of the year (fiction): The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Can’t wait to read his next one, The Angel’s Game, which colleague Tod Goldberg says is even better. Runners-up: Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon and The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter.

Book of the year (nonfiction): Zeitoun by Dave Eggers. This is a great piece of literary journalism, one man’s story, both heroic and tragic, about Hurricane Katrina. Runner-up: Idiot America by Charles P. Pierce.

The complete list

January

Last Train to Memphis:  The Rise of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick (nonfiction)

Shakespeare Wrote for Money by Nick Hornby (nonfiction)

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (fiction)

In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed by Carl Honoré (nonfiction)

February

The Continental Op by Dashiell Hammett (fiction)

Stories Done: Writings on the 1960s and Its Discontents by Mikal Gilmore (nonfiction)

March

American Gods by Neil Gaiman (fiction)

Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser (fiction)

Dress Her in Indigo by John D. MacDonald (fiction)

Falconer by John Cheever (fiction)

Nonconformity by Nelson Algren (nonfiction) (Kindle)

Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization by Nicholson Baker (nonfiction)

Travels in the Scriptorium by Paul Auster (fiction)

April

West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders, and Killers in the Golden State by Mark Arax (nonfiction)

Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick (nonfiction)

Enemies of Promise by Cyril Connolly (nonfiction)

May

How the Two Ivans Quarreled by Nikolai Gogol (fiction)

On the Shortness of Life by Seneca (nonfiction)

The Essential Marcus Aurelius by Marcus Aurelius (nonfiction)

Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea (fiction)

Blue Vegas (manuscript) by P Moss (fiction)

The Unquiet Grave by Cyrill Connolly (nonfiction)

The Voices in My Head (manuscript) by Danny Gans (nonfiction)

Writing Places: The Life Journey of a Writer and Teacher by William Zinsser (nonfiction)

June

Paris Spleen by Charles Baudelaire (nonfiction)

The Poet by Michael Connelly (fiction)

Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead (fiction)

The Signal by Ron Carlson (fiction)

It Happened in Las Vegas (manuscript) by Trish Geran (nonfiction)

July

House of Boxes: The Secret Life of Howard Hughes (manuscript) by Douglas Wellman and Mark Musick (nonfiction)

The Thoreau You Don’t Know: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant by Robert Sullivan (nonfiction)

A Conservationist Manifesto by Scott Russell Sanders (nonfiction)

Elric: The Stealer of Souls: Chronicles of the Last Emperor of Melniboné, Volume 1 by Michael Moorcock (fiction)

A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition by Ernest Hemingway (nonfiction)

August

1969: The Year Everything Changed by Rob Kirkpatrick (nonfiction)

Dead Boys by Richard Lange (fiction)

The Time of Their Lives: The Golden Age of Great American Book Publishers, Their Editors and Authors by Al Silverman (nonfiction)

September

Inherent  Vice by Thomas Pynchon (fiction)

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers (nonfiction)

October

Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone by Eduardo Galeano (nonfiction)

Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free by Charles P. Pierce (nonfiction)

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (fiction)

November

Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon (nonfiction)

Books: The Essential Insider’s Guide, edited by Mark Strand (nonfiction)

December

Family Secret by Warren Hull and Michael Druxman (nonfiction)

The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter (fiction)

Googled: The End of the World As We Know It by Ken Auletta (nonfiction)

The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker (fiction)

I just finished reading Ken Auletta’s “Googled,” about the ubiquitous Internet goliath. It’s a very good book that explains clearly and completely why Google is such a dominant player on the web — and why so many people want to work there. Auletta also does a fine job of outlining the dilemmas faced by the newspaper, magazine, book and television industries as the world becomes more and more comfortable with online reading, viewing and so forth.

There are many lessons to be gleaned from this book for anyone in the print media business who is striving to change the business model to not only incorporate the web but to make it the primary focus of the enterprise. One of the main lessons is that newspaper companies need to hire more and better computer engineers and let them help guide the way. All us old-school word people may have vaguely decent ideas about how to make our websites better and more profitable but we need engineers to be involved to not only implement what we envision but to come up with better and more efficient ways of doing things.

This is primarily why Google has leaped far ahead of the pack. Here is a quote from Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, from the book: “I sometimes feel like I live on another planet and speak a different language from traditional media companies.” Here is a common mantra heard at Google: “Have a healthy disregard for the impossible.”

I read a lot of books this decade, more than I ever had in any previous decade. Despite being a voracious reader, I’m disappointed not to have read a lot more. I haven’t gotten around yet to so many great books. Nevertheless, I think I’ve read enough of them over the past 10 years to offer a decent list of my favorites.

Here, in no particular order, is my favorite fiction published from 2000-2009.

– Empire Falls, Richard Russo

– John Henry Days, Colson  Whitehead

– Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling

– Drop City, T.C. Boyle

– The Known World, Edward P. Jones

– Atonement, Ian McEwan

– Snow, Orhan Pamuk

– The Road, Cormac McCarthy

– Citizen Vince, Jess Walter

– The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz

– The Motel Life, Willy Vlautin

– The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon

– Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon

– The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon

– Dangerous Laughter, Steven Millhauser

– True North, Jim Harrison

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