LIBRARY JOURNAL STARRED REVIEWS MAY 2010

The Library Journal  has released its list of 37 books that have earned starred reviews for great writing and good reading.  Reference books feature largely, as do sports books, with a surprising focus on soccer. In this last category, Filip Bondy's Chasing the Game: America and the Quest for the World Cup (Da Capo Press) is highly recommended, while The ESPN World Cup Companion: Everything You Need To Know About the Planet's Biggest Sporting Event by David Hirshey and Roger Bennett (Ballantine) is rated as an "affordable purchase" with "enduring value."

The fiction list is also a surprise, being dominated by spy books, including that long-neglected form, a collection of short stories -- Agents of Treachery, edited by Otto Penzler (Vintage).  Predictably familiar names are there, too --Richard North Patterson, Clive Cussler, Scott Turow, Peter Temple, and Gregg Hurwitz. Oddly, too, mystery is a separate category.  Even stranger is that the book with the jacket I like the most -- Recipes from an Italian Summer (Phaidon) -- is in the science and technology section. 

But it is a list well worth trawling through for summer reading, though readers in New Zealand are more likely to be curled up by a fire.

CHINGLISH IN DANGER

A tourist experience that has given the English-speaking traveller a lot of innocent fun is to end.

Andrew Jacobs in the New York Times reports that Shanghai is trying to untangle the mangled English of Chinglish. 

Expo 2010 is to blame.  No longer will we read "The Little Grass is Sleeping, Don't hurt Me I am Afraid of Pain" on little posts stuck into lawns. Instead, we will be admonished to "Keep Off the Grass."  No longer will there be machines at banks for "Cash Recycling."  Instead, they will lurk under the letters "ATM."  No longer will labels on outsize clothing say "Fatso" or "Lard Bucket."  Instead we will get the tactful XXL.

"The purpose of signage is to be useful, not to be amusing," admonished Zhao Huimin, former Chinese Ambassador in Washington, DC, and now the leader in the fight for sobriety in signs.

A team of experts, led by Jeffrey Yao, an English translator and teacher at the Graduate Institute of Interpretation and Translation at Shanghai International Studies University, is carrying out the exorcism.  "Some Chinglish expressions are nice, but we are not translating literature here," said he sternly.  "I want to see people nodding that they understand the message on these signs.  I don't want to see them laughing."

Oliver Lutz Radtke, former German radio reporter and perhaps the world authority on Chinglish, declares it is a shame.  Chinglish, he reckons, should be allowed to grow into an Official Language. It is an endangered species, and he is lobbying for its preservation.  It is a window, he says, into the Chinese mind.

The fact that he is the author of a couple of amusing picture books featuring Chinglish signs could well be a factor.  Mr Radtke is also working toward a PhD in Chinglish at the University of Heidelberg.

WRITERS - NOT BANKERS - FOR BRITAIN!!!!!

Politicians on the compaign trail are not asked often enough about arts and culture, writes Nick Clegg in The Stage.

According to the numbers, people would rather go to museums, art galleries, stage shows, and concerts, than line up at the ballot box -- or so goes his argument, which is nicely calculated to appeal to a town hall-style audience.  The creative sector is predicted to emply 1.3 million people by 2013, he says -- more than the financial industry.  Why confine the country's fortunes to one square mile of London, when a hundred thousand square miles of British countryside hold such artistic and creative promise?

"Now is the moment to harness the potential in that burgeoning creative industry!" he cries.

Amen to that.  One banker's bonus could provide art classes, drama classes, and writing classes in a whole slew of schools, with a potentially much greater boost to the economy.  Right now, thousands are descending on Wall Street protesting about greed and obstructionism -- and, what's more, the spelling on the signs is right!  I hope those financial wizards who think of the "market" as a faceless object, not a mass of people with families, mortgages, and jobs, are watching and taking note.

LENNON LYRIC UP FOR AUCTION

John Lennon's handwritten lyric for the Beatles song "A Day in the Life" will go under the hammer at Sotheby's, New York, on 18 June, 53 years after being released as the last track on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album.

And, according to a BBC news release, is expected to fetch seven hundred thousand dollars.

For one page of scribbled lines!

Mind you, the page is written on both sides, and has corrections in colored ink.  And the song was controversial in its time.  The BBC banned it in 1967 because someone interpreted the line "I'd like to turn you on" as an invitation to take drugs. Several Asian countries released the disk without the last track, for no stated reason.

And Sotheby's calls it "the revolutionary song that marked the Beatles' transformation from pop icons to artists."

ANGLO-SAXON MANUSCRIPTS ON THE WWW

An important collection of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, held at Corpus Christi College at Cambridge, has been digitalized and is now available on the web.  This is a gorgeous collection, including the earliest of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, and the Augustine gospels.  Follow the link to see samples and listen to librarian Suzanne Paul tell some of the amazing and intriguing stories behind the works.

STRANGE HISTORICAL ADVENTURES

The Coral Thief, by Rebecca Stott
Selkirk's Island by Diana Souhami

Reading was not entirely neglected while I had my head down with the last lap of Tupaia.  The first book, Rebecca Stott's Coral Thief was sent to me by good friend Martin Evans, of Cambridge, England.  He had heard the first episode of its reading on the BBC Radio 4, and was intrigued enough to want to share it with me.  A quick google confirmed that young Stott's book is the talk of England, and the setting is certainly unusual enough to trigger one's interest. 

In 1815, a few weeks after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, Daniel Connor, a young and extraordinarily naive student, is travelling to Paris, to work as one of the assistants of the great Prof. Cuvier.  While on the stagecoach, he is beguiled by a gypsylike female with a baby who defeats dragons (or so the proud mum claims).  He wakes from a dreamlike stupor to find mother and child gone, along with his bag with its priceless collection of coral.  Scared to approach Cuvier without the coral and letters of introduction, Daniel rents a garret and becomes a Bohemian.  The gypsy reappears (of course) and the plot thickens, trailing through a rather marvellous scene in a convent garden where the fate of the decapitated upper class corpses trundled from the guillotine is revealed, to a crashing finale in a set of catacombs I had never heard of before.

There is an opera-like cast of characters; in fact, the whole book is rather like an opera.  Puccini, undoubtedly, would have loved it.  I found the fine research overwhelmed the plot, and it was that, rather than the story and characters, that kept me turning the pages.  But it was definitely worth reading -- for the child who conquered dragons.  While I found the mother very hard to fathom, the daughter is a marvellous creation.

Diana Souhami's Selkirk's Island was loaned to me by a Wellington friend, who declared that I had to read it, being the author of Island of the Lost.  In 1704 Alexander Selkirk was marooned on an uninhabited island in the small Juan Fernandez group, and was not rescued until 1709.  As we all know, he was the inspiration for Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, probably the first novel, and an inspiration even now.  (Certainly for Island of the Lost.)

This is a wonderful book.  I have never read anything quite like it.  The characters, all historically real, leap off the pages; Souhami has performed a miracle in bringing the era to life.  It may the most vivid evocation of existence at sea at the time I have ever read. No maritime historian, the writer is wise enough not to let the ships dominate (as she confesses, she doesn't even know them well enough to call them "she"), but she certainly has a grip on life on board, and the nature of seamen.  Pirate enthusiasts will love this book, but I wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone.

I notice both books were published in London by Weidenfeld & Nicholson.  They are to be heartily congratulated at finding such original talent.

MARK TWAIN SEANCE

Oh damn, I missed it -- a truly centennial event. In the witching hour of April 26, Mark Twain's birthday was marked with a cake and a seance at the Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford, Connecticut.

Ghost Investigator Lorraine Warren led the tour, and cut the cake.

The seance was orchestrated by Illusionist Todd Robbins, founder of the Church of the Parted Veil.

Mark Twain would have loved it.  Did his ghost turn up to the party?  I guess not, or it would have been on the news.

TUPAIA IN PRODUCTION: the jacket

Before I even finished writing the book, my editor at Praeger Books and his designer were working hard on the jacket. The publishers had already been in touch with me about filling in an Author Questionnaire, which includes every question imaginable that a journalist or reviewer might ask, and is the basic armory in the promotion of your book.  It can be a little intimidating to think up advertising copy for a book you haven't even completed yet, so this is where your original query letter (see post below) comes in handy.

I particularly wanted one of Tupaia's artworks to be featured on the cover, and the one I had in mind was of war canoes off a beach in Tahiti.  Tupaia was an enthusiastic character, very keen to share his privileged knowledge with his new friends, and was willing to pick up a pencil and sketch as he was talking, to help get his message across.  In this instance, he was describing the action on war canoes during battle, and in the throes of his driving excitement, he picked up a sketch he had made already, of a longhouse and trees, which is very reminiscent of certain tattoo designs.  He ruined the balance of the drawing by adding the canoes beneath the beach, but inadvertently provided a wonderful contrast between the careful style of the longhouse etc., and the spontaneity of the battle.    

The designer combined this with an equally eye-catching title, with great effect, in my opinion.

Now, for the jacket copy ....

THE QUERY LETTER: finding an agent, part two.

So, you have a copy of Literary Marketplace or Writer's Guide to Book Editors, Publishers and Literary Agents, and you have girded yourself for contacting the agents you have marked on your list.

Your checklist should have been compiled very carefully.  For reasons that are explained at length on a number of valuable internet sites, don't include agents who ask for a reading fee: as a general rule, they are not interested in your book, but in your pocketbook, instead.  Do include agents who want (and sell) books in your genre. DON'T do what I did, once, and send a proposal for a collection of travel stories to an outfit that specializes in cookery books! (True story, and I still haven't worked out how it happened.)  If you write in a specialist nonfiction area, it is a good idea to look through the acknowledgements section of a number of books on the same topic, as authors generally thank their agents, which will give you useful names.  Otherwise, go through the agents directory in the handbook you have bought, and check those who seem to like your kind of book.

Next, the query letter.  Query letters for agent-hunting are the same as query letters for publisher-hunting, as the same rules and format apply.  However, while you (or your agent) can approach a publisher with an idea for a book that is yet to be written, when approaching an agent, it is a good idea to have the book written already.  Unless, of course, you have established a good record for meeting deadlines.

I believe emails are acceptable these days, but proof a post very, very carefully before sending it out.  If you write a letter, put it on good stationery.  Whatever way you do it, make it compelling.  It's a sales pitch for your work, and your agent (when you find one) will use it to make his or her own pitch to chosen publishers. Jeff Herman's fine chapter on writing a query letter is an excellent guide.

Keep it short, keep to the point, keep it positive.  Include your track record in the publishing line -- everything and anything that helps sell your idea, including editing work for your student newspaper, and scholarly papers to academic journals, if relevant to your topic. 

And here, as a sample that might be useful for guidance, is the query letter written for Tupaia, Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator.  (I have a wonderful agent, and a good query letter helps to let her know what kind of project I have in mind.)

Dear [name of the agent, and make sure you get it right]


I am planning to write the biography of Tupaia, who was Captain James Cook's Polynesian navigator on the Endeavour. I won grants from CreativeNewZealand and the Stout Trust to research this book and will be traveling to the States and the UK late this summer to continue that work.  [This is the moment for you to mention your publishing record, if you have one, but keep it short.]


Tupaia, a gifted linguist, a brilliant orator, and a most devious politician, could aptly be called the Machiavelli of Tahiti. Tupaia, being highly skilled in astronomy, navigation, and meteorology, and an expert in the geography of the Pacific, was able to name directional stars and predict landfalls and weather. Though, like all Polynesians, he had no previous knowledge of writing or mapmaking, Tupaia drew a chart of the Pacific that encompassed every major group in Polynesia and extended more than 2,500 miles from the Marquesas to Rotuma and Fiji.

 He was also the ship's translator, able to communicate with all the Polynesian people they met, including New Zealand Maori. As a man of high social ranking, Tupaia performed as an able intermediary, interpreting local rituals and ceremonies. Joseph Banks, the botanist with the expedition, like Captain Cook, is famous for his detailed, perceptive descriptions of the manners and customs of the Polynesian people. Much of the credit for this belongs to Tupaia. Not only did Tupaia become one of the ship's important artists, drawing lively pictures to illustrate what he described, but he could justly be called the Pacific's first anthropologist.


Despite all this, Tupaia has never been part of the popular Captain Cook legend. This is largely because he died of complications from scurvy seven months before the ship arrived home. Once he was gone, his accomplishments were easily forgotten--indeed, by removing Tupaia from the story, what the Europeans had achieved seemed all the greater. James Cook, who could well have resented the fact that Tupaia had been hailed as the "admiral" of the expedition by his fellow Polynesians (the Maori people called the Endeavour "Tupaia's ship"), apparently found it easy to dismiss his memory with a brief, unflattering obituary in his journal. When Cook received his medal from the Royal Society--for his great achievement in bringing the ship home without losing a single man to scurvy!--Tupaia's name went unmentioned.


George Forster, a scientist who sailed with Cook on a later voyage, called Tupaia "an extraordinary genius." No book until the one I plan to write, however, has been devoted entirely to Tupaia.
 
Let me know if I may send you the proposal. I'll look forward to hearing from you.

And that's it -- or something like it.  If you send the query out by post, include a return envelope, postage paid.  To save time, it is perfectly acceptable to query a number of agents at once.  If you are lucky enough to get a number of requests for your proposal, you must say when you send them out that this is a multiple submission.  Indeed, the fact that you have received interest from other quarters should be an incentive.

HINTS ABOUT THE PROPOSAL TO COME.

The Production of a Book, Part One

Those who follow this blog (and say good things about it) deserve an explanation for the long silence since the post about the Well Travelled Bow and the sudden rush of new ones.

I have been Writing.  An intensive two-year slog has resulted in the manuscript of a biography, of a remarkable Tahitian who sailed with Captain James Cook on the Endeavour.  It is called Tupaia, Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator.  While I once edited the journals of Mary Brewster, who sailed on the whaleship Tiger in 1845, and included a potted biography in the commentary, I have never written a biography before.  I have developed a profound respect for biographers.  It is not easy.  Bringing a dead person to life on the page is a challenge.  Goodness knows how they manage with people who are still alive.

Meantime, we have travelled a lot, and communicated with many interesting and helpful people.  The British Library and I have negotiated for images and permissions to use the same -- vastly important, because Tupaia was a remarkable artist.  (Not that they were known as "artists" back then -- artists were skilled craftsmen on shore, and skilled navigators at sea -- and men and women who produced paintings were painters.) 

Anyway, Tupaia has been born, had a remarkably adventurous life, and died, and the manuscript is now on the desks of editors in both the USA (Praeger) and New Zealand (Random House).  What happens next? 

TO BE REVEALED, GRADUALLY.