New book on maritime leadership . . .

. . . and thoughts about book jackets

Admirals: The Naval Commanders Who Made Britain Great, by Andrew Lambert has just been published by Faber & Faber in the UK.

The book examines ten admirals, from Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham (1536-1624) to Andrew Cunningham (1883-1963). The author uses these individuals to trace the evolution of naval command over four centuries.

What a great jacket! Last night, our book group discussed what it is about a book that makes it irresistible (or otherwise) to pick up, leaf through, and eventually buy. The jacket was a major reason, along with the typeface of the title and subtitle. Everyone said they were turned off by misty pictures rendered in Victorian pinks and blues. Titles in funky fonts that resemble cellphone texts or crawl-bar messages were equally off-putting.

Author Lambert must be very pleased with this effort.

Newspaper blogging

The ever-lively GalleyCat comments on a survey just released by the Online Journalism Blog, which reveals how deeply blogging has affected the traditional print media.

"We'd hazard a guess that at least 60 percent of all authors are doing some sort of blogging," observes editor Jason Boog, and strongly suggests that those authors should be comparing notes. How has blogging affected the style and depth of their writing? And has it provided an extra platform for telling great tales?

One respondent has already reported that he or she now thinks in hyperlinks. As an editor for the Indian news site, Instablogs, I would heartily concur with that: it is like the old days of writing academic papers, when thorough footnoting was vitally necessary, simply to protect one's scholarly reputation. URL links provide the same kind of cover-your-back credibility. I also find I think in photographs, as images give such a vivid dimension to the story.

In fact, I am seriously considering turning in my next book proposal in blog-post form, complete with links and wonderful pix.

An aspect allied to newspaper blogging I particularly enjoy is the "comments" section, where readers post their opinions of whatever has been reported or discussed, often with a blithe disregard of the proprieties. Many are ignorant, misspelled, and badly phrased, and rely far too heavily on foul language. Others, however, are wonderfully eloquent, and at times have a tongue-in-cheek humor.

A perfect example of this is the commentary to a BBC report of the drunken behavior of the graduating class of an exclusive Australian boys' school. Much of it was the usual outcry to "bring back the cane," plus a few reminiscent remarks from old boys of the school. But then there was "Sheila Outrigger of Melbourne."

"It was disgusting, these young lads were urinating in my fish pond, and kicking over my gnomes. I have never seen anything like it, I have lived here for 28 years, and my gnomes have never been attacked like this before," she exclaimed.

"They beheaded five of my gnomes and knocked over my brand-new bird bath," chimed in "Lucinda R.," also of that city. "It's a disgrace, they have no respect for others, and I blame, as always, the parents."

The entire class has been suspended from school. Undoubtedly, the gnomes are delighted.

VIACOM up for sale?

Well-informed speculation by Peter Lauria in the New York Post has it that mega-media-mogul Sumner Redstone, 85, may be forced to sell Viacom.

Viacom, no less, home of MTV, Nickelodeon, and Paramount Studios.

Another option is to sell off bits of CBS, such as a few radio stations, or publisher Simon & Schuster.

It's the credit crisis, of course. "Sumner needs more money," confided one of Lauria's sources. Apparently this simple statement is a textbook example of gross understatement -- according to a second source, Sumner Redstone is so deeply into hock with the banks that hold his collateral that sale of bits of the two huge empires may not solve the problem. Worst case scenario is to sell off all of CBS and/or Viacom.

However, it is not a sure thing, Redstone being a shrewd and seasoned negotiator.

Is the Associated Press becoming an unaffordable luxury?

One hundred and sixty-two years ago, a bunch of US newspapers banded together to create a wire service, called The Associated Press, which would provide breaking news and instant headlines to the group, for a fee. It worked outstandingly well, and has been an integral feature -- an inner cog -- of American journalism ever since.

However, it seems that the cog might have fallen out of synch with the machine. The Media section in today's New York Times features a startling story by Richard Pérez-Peña, headed:
Some Papers in Financial Trouble Are Leaving the A.P. to Cut Costs

The latest defector is the Columbus Dispatch, which says it can no longer afford the $800,000 annual fee. Last week one of the country's largest chains, the Tribune company, announced it would drop out, saying that in an era where advertising revenue is dropping by 25%, it is forced to cut costs.

Other factors could be that the AP is competing with online editions of newspapers on the internet, or that the AP has moved away from its traditional role of providing breaking news into featuring oped-type discussions, which have been the province of the newspapers up until now.

It is yet to be seen whether this rebellion will extend to the thousands of foreign papers which also use the service.

Wellington misses out on City of Literature standing

In this morning's Dominion Post, Ruth Hill contributes the sad news that Wellington's bid for Unesco City of Literature status has been written off by the economic climate.

The campaign, which would have set Wellington alongside Melbourne and Edinburgh, promised a bonanza of millions of dollars, but was stymied by the projected cost of several hundred thousand.

The letter announcing the withdrawal of a previous application was signed by Wellington City Libraries' strategic marketing manager Duncan McLachlan. The plans had been scrapped, he said, "because of the global financial crisis and the council's need to focus on core services."

Wellington matched most criteria. Many of the country's leading literary lights live here, and it is also home to Victoria University's world-rated International Institute of Modern Letters. The National Library of New Zealand is here, as are the Alexander Turnbull and Beaglehole research libraries. There are several excellent bookstores, including quality independents, and stages both a literary festival and an international festival of the arts. There is also a quirky and popular Writers' Walk on the waterfront.

However, money talks, and finding sponsorship for anything at all, no matter how worthy, is getting harder all the time.

The words you use

This is not even about the written word, but the spoken word instead.

However, I found this story, written by Jessica Wapner for the science section of the New York Times, so intriguing I couldn't resist posting a summary.

In short, James W. Pennebaker, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas, has discovered interesting things about people's choice of words in speech. It's called text analysis, and it consists of counting the different kinds of words a person says.

Excessive use of first person pronouns (I, me, mine) indicates insecurity and a sense of being threatened. When you are sick or hurt, you use first person words more often (I want water, please help me). As you get better, you gradually drop this use of egocentric terms. Liars, on the other hand, avoid first person pronouns -- undoubtedly because they want to keep the focus away from themselves -- and use negative words (hurt, ugly, nasty) instead.

There are more fascinating conclusions drawn. Those who are mentally alert are more likely to use causal words (because, since, therefore). Men use more articles (a, the, that, this) while women use more second and third person pronouns (he, she, they), probably because men are more concrete thinkers, and women are more empathetic.

The world of diplomacy and espionage is interested. Dr. Pennebaker has received a grant from the Army Research Institute to study how foreign leaders use language.

Leviathan -- and cat poetry

New Zealand economist Brian Easton sent me a ripped out page from The Spectator with a review of yet another whaling history, called (yet again) Leviathan.

The last Leviathan I read was a terrific history of American whaling by Eric Jay Dolin (Norton, 2007). This one, it seems, covers the same ground . . . poetically.

Apparently the jacket is the best part of the book.

Quote from Hoare's Leviathan (as quoted in the review):

If any animal were to evolve its own religion, what better animal than one that, for all its trials and tribulations, remains an immortal, omniscient power, a lingering shape in the ocean, beyond all human comprehension and physical dimension, forever spinning into space.

Oh, for heaven's sake. Who does Hoare think he is? The 21st-century heir of the great Herman Melville?

Having decided not to bother reading this book, I flipped over the page from The Spectator . . . and found a really neat piece of poetry. It's so good, I read it out to my husband, Ron, and it is so good that he actually listened.

It's written by Connie Bensley.

She called it, Feeding your cat.

The recalcitrant lock,

the gloomy hall,

the unfamiliar creakings

and sussurations,

the bored letters waiting

to be picked up.

The stink of lilies

drooping in their huge vase

on a ring of unlatched petals.

How suddenly you left for --

where was it? -- Los Angeles?

I can't find the cat.

But starlingly, she leaps out

like a trouper from

behind a curtain, tail up,

with an expression I read as:

About bloody time too.

When I bend over her saucer

she bites my hand. It might be

a love bite, and I decide to give her

the benefit of the doubt.

This is real poetry. I will be looking out for Connie Bensley from now on.

And it is evidence that the printed page yields accidental treasures that a simple link via URL does not.

Dean Koontz to write dog's memoir

Horror/thriller writer Dean Koontz has signed a contract with Hyperion to write A Bit Little Life, a memoir of his love affair with a dog.

According to the way he tells it, he and his wife adopted a dog from Canine Companions for Independence, a non-profit organization that trains dogs to be helpers for people with disabilities. The original idea was that the adoption would be a temporary affair, but the dog was disqualified by an injury, and the adoption became permanent -- luckily, because both owners had fallen in love with their new family member. So, according to Hyperion, the book is "the story of unexpectedly falling in love with a puppy in one's middle age and gaining a family member along the way."

Koontz first found the organization while researching a novel, and now is a major supporter.

Rambles in the bookselling world

After lunch, I ran into Bridget Kinsella—who was wearing a Shelf Awareness badge. "Oh!" I said as she walked by. I've read Bridget's work in Publisher's Weekly for years. I don't know her enough to talk to her. But she stopped when she heard my outburst and we chatted a bit. That's when she told me Publishers Weekly had given her the heave-ho after 15 years. She's working for Shelf until she gets a "real job" (her words).

Thus runs a tidbit from the long and outstandingly interesting blog written at the recent bookfest staged by the NCIBA -- Northern California Independent Booksellers' Association -- by CEO of Beaglebay Books, Jacqueline Church Simonds (pictured right, with Clare Bell, author of Ratha's Courage, and Joel Mikesell of Cypress House).

Read all about it here.

Spin-off from a Nobel Award

Norton is moving quickly to bring out a paperback edition of Luc Montagnier's 1999 book Virus: The Co-discoverer of HIV Tracks its Rampage and Charts the Future.

Last week Montagnier was given the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of the virus that causes AIDS, and the book provides his first-hand account of that discovery process.

The book was not published in paperback previously, and Print-on-Demand mega-business Lightning Source is fulfilling immediate inventory demands while Norton awaits the regular offset print run.