New Jersey Must Tip Its Hat to Illinois

I thought we knew from corruption, but none of our governors have actually tried to sell the empty Senate seat of the incoming President. That takes massive balls, and I stand in awe of Gov. Blagojevich today.

The Sun-Times has a PDF of the criminal complaint, which also accuses Blagojevich (whom I'm sure the local tabloids call Blago, and I just might start doing so myself) of attempting to blackmail the Tribune Company into firing people he didn't like via withholding Wrigley Field funds.

(I also had a quick start when I saw his Chief of Staff, John Harris, was also arrested. But then I remembered my high-school buddy, now resident in Chicago, is Jon Harris, and not involved in the local government as far as I know.)

Blago, you got caught, which is never good. But it sounds like you had a hell of a ride. I'm only sorry you were arrested before you managed to sell that Senate seat; this would have been a lot more fun if it had happened five months from now and also besmirched the name of whatever poor schmo was about to pony up.

Wiley 2Q Numbers Surprisingly Strong

Wiley is my employer, so you'll forgive me if I stare much longer and more deeply into their quarterly results than those of other publishers.

But John Wiley & Sons, Inc. released an announcement this morning about second quarter sales and revenue that's somewhat different from the gloomy chain of recent publishing news -- revenue up 2%, adjusted earnings per diluted share up 14%. (As always, I note that I may work for Wiley, but I have no standing to speak for Wiley on this or any other subject.)

Admittedly, the big powerhouse of Wiley is the STMS division, which publishes books and journals for technical and scholarly audiences, but that's a big division, and it seems to be doing very well. (Check out the margins -- revenue of $254 million and direct contribution to profit of $105 million!) There are days when I wish I worked in that end of the company, I'll admit.

But I'm in the P/T division, with all of the trade-focused books, along with a lot of technical books for professionals (architects, restaurant chefs, psychologists, and, of course, my beloved accountants) -- and that's not doing so well, in common with all of US trade publishing. I suspect we're not as bad as some, but we'll have to wait to see numbers from other public companies to be sure.

In any case, the takeaway, for those who don't work for Wiley, is that times are tough and retail sales have slowed, but the sky isn't falling; publishing is big and contains many kingdoms, some of which seem to be entirely untouched. (So far, he added, just to be ominous.)

Japan's Last Hope for Economic Dominance Smashed

Because now all the geeky loners can fuck their computers, so they'll never need to go outside again.

Kotaku has the whole story, with additional pictures.

And, yes, that microscope-looking thing is just for what you're afraid it is.

Movie Log: Forgetting Sarah Marshall

So I'm way behind on movies again, going back to just after the epic family vacation (which I suppose I'm now officially too late to blog about). Let's see if I can run through some quick thoughts on a bunch of them.

First up: Forgetting Sarah Marshall. The Wife and I watched it just about a month ago, and mostly enjoyed it. Jason Siegel -- as Peter, our hero -- seriously overdoes the angsty heartache at losing his vacuous but gorgeous blonde TV-star girlfriend of the title (as played by Kristen Bell). And Russell Brand as Sarah's new boyfriend, the so-laid-back-he's-practically-standing-upside-down Brit rocker Aldous Snow is the best part of the movie -- he doesn't actually steal the scenes, since he's not trying, but he's just there, being more interesting to look at and listen to every second he's on screen.

At this point, I don't much remember the plot, besides that it was a bit dull, predictable, and didn't go much of anywhere. Our hero finds new love and gets over his old love, and his old girlfriend gets her comeuppance for dumping him. There's funny stuff going on, fairly consistently, but it's all just funny stuff, rather than being much of a plot.

And, for a long time, the movie can't quite decide if it thinks Peter's great work -- the puppet Dracula musical -- is a joke or not. It is a joke, and a pretty good one, in the end, but the movie toys for a long time with taking it, and Peter's ambitions for it, seriously.

So, Forgetting Sarah Marshall is just OK, and everyone has already seen it, anyway. But where would North America be without OK movies about sex to see in the summertime?

Splashed by a Meme

So John Klima just "tagged" me with this here meme, and, because I am a good sport, I will play along.

The Rules:
1. Link to the person or persons who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

The Meme:
1. See above.

2. See above, redux.

3. a. I sawed down a Christmas tree with my own hands yesterday, and then (much later) wrestled it into a stand. I thinking fighting a b'ar is on for tomorrow.

b. My office-icle features Lord of the Rings magnets, which still have Secret Diaries sayings in attendant speech bubbles.

c. I've done all of my own laundry, and much of the laundry for the household, for the last several years.

d. My back porch steps badly need replacing.

e. When bored, I often find myself counting ceiling tiles, light fixtures, or other nearby objects.

f. I am the rightful King of Ruritania.

4. I prefer not to force these things -- if you want to pick this up, be my guest, and link or leave a comment.

5. Not applicable.

6. Oh, he'll know...

Reviewing the Mail: Week of 12/6

Last week's mail was light. No, really light, probably as a result of the Thanksgiving holiday before it slowing down the mail stream, though the effect of looming massive layoffs and other similar omens of doom & gloom can't be discounted.

So this usual weekly post will be shorter than usual -- insert potted explanation: I get books in the mail, because I review books, but I can't review everything, so I at least mention everything, hence these posts -- and we'll all be able to get back to work more quickly.

Before I dive into the (three) books I did see last week, I'll mention something else that came in the mail. Orbit US sent over a "concertina" -- a little fan-folded brochure -- of their Spring 2009 list. Things that looked interesting there included Orphan's Triumph by Robert Buettner (reminding me I still need to read #3 in the series), a book called The Dwarves by Markus Heitz, and A. Lee Martinez's Monster. So publishing is going on, despite anything you might have heard.

Coming a little more quickly than that are two different books in the very popular (and ever-expanding) young adult Warriors series by Erin Hunter -- first is Warriors: Power of Three #2: Dark River, a new novel by Hunter about a new generation of talking, battling cats, and second in the current series of six books. (It follows the original six-book Warriors series and the five-book Warriors: The New Prophecy.) Dark River is published by HarperCollins's young-readers group, and will be available in paperback on December 23rd -- just in time to fill some stockings, I expect.

Also in the Warriors universe is a new manga, co-published by Harper with Tokyopop, Warriors: Tigerstar and Sasha, #2: Escape from the Forest. The cover only credits Hunter, but, inside, the book says that it's written by Dan Jolley and has art by Don Hudson. This one will be published January 1st, so it'll have to wait for all those kids and their Christmas money to descend on the bookstores.

And last for this week is Cherie Priest's new novel Fathom, her first hardcover and first novel unrelated to her Eden Moore series. Fathom is a big contemporary supernatural novel, with undertones of horror, and it reminds me that I've been meaning to read Priest for several years now. (Maybe this one!) Tor will publish it tomorrow in hardcover; it should be available pretty much everywhere right now.

A British Librarian's "Before You Die" List

It's late on a Sunday night, and I haven't posted yet today. So it's time to dive into the archives yet again. This list was running around the Internet back in February of 2008, and somehow it became a topic of conversation on rec.arts.sf.written. Here's what I had to say:
> To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
I'd put this on the "read before you turn 20" list, with A Separate Peace and all of Vonnegut and Hesse. If you don't read it by then, you
can die without it quite happily.

> The Bible
If the King James Bible was specified, I might agree.

> The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
It's not a trilogy. And, as much as I like it, I'm not sure it's one of the thirty best of all time.

> 1984 by George Orwell
Yes. Absolutely.

Later Note: Of course, in Britain it's Nineteen Eighty-Four, and a librarian should know that.

> A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Why? Because it's short, and has been made into many films of varying worth? There are at least five better Dickens books than this.

> Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
I was forced to read it three times for classes. I've never warmed to it, and I doubt I ever will.

> Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
I can never remember if I've read it. (Which says something, either about the book or about the culture.)

> All Quiet on the Western Front by E M Remarque
I suppose so. It's another one for the "before 20" list, though.

> His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
This may be good, but it doesn't belong on such a list.

> Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
Not a clue.

> The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Reasonable.

> The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Makes sense.

> The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
This is a wonderful novel -- one of the best of the past several decades -- but it's hubris to put anything this new (especially by a writer who hasn't done anything else at that level) on a life-list.

> Tess of the D'urbevilles by Thomas Hardy
The ending seemed to me as if the 20th century, and modernity in general, was faintly dawning, somewhere not too far away -- and if that meant all of these people would have their lives utterly changed, that was fine with me, since the good people were useless and the bad were hideous.

> Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
I'm a fan, but it doesn't belong here.

> Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
I've managed to escape it thus far.

> The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
If they can't even spell the author's last name correctly, why should we believe them? (It's Grahame.") Too lightweight.

> Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Oh god no.

> Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
OK, but I'd add Bleak House, too. And if I had only one Dickens, it wouldn't be this.

> The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
> The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Someone has too close an eye on the bestseller lists of last Tuesday.

> The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
I'd say it's the opposite -- anyone who has enjoyed The Prophet should not be allowed to die, but be tortured eternally. But that would be excessive.

> David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Ah, more of the popular Dickens books. Also good.

> The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
See The Prophet, above.

> The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Absolutely.

> Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Too new, too minor, too sucky.

> Middlemarch by George Eliot
I don't love it, but it is big and important.

> The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Too new.

> A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Only if it has the final chapter.

> A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn
Yes

Quote of the Day

...because it won't wait for its own week:

"If OJ has taught us anything, it's this: In America it's okay to kill people, but don't screw with their memorabilia."
- Brian Alvey, from Twitter

Read in November

This is late, but it mostly functions as an index, and I don't think anyone but me really cares about it. (I keep these up because I like things to be tidy more than out of any sense that they're useful to other people.)

This is the lowest total of the year, since I spent a whole week in Florida with the family without reading a single book (or blogging, or checking e-mail, or doing anything else that's part of my regular life -- it was glorious, and I recommend it highly).

Anyway, what I read last month was...

• Ellen Schreiber & Rem, Vampire Kisses: Blood Relatives, Vol. 2 (11/1)
  
• Shizuru Hayashiya, Hayate X Blade, Vol. 1 (11/1)
  
• Joss Whedon, Drew Goddard and Georges Jeanty, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Vol. 3: Wolves at the Door (11/2)
  
• Tom Philbin, Cop Speak (11/10)
  
• Shiro Ihara, Alice on Deadlines, Vol. 4 (11/11)
  
• Dall-Young Lim & Sung-Woo Park, Black God, Vol. 4 (11/12)
  
• Peach-Pit, Zombie-Loan, Vol. 4 (11/13)
  
• Sloane Crosley, I Was Told There'd Be Cake (11/13)
  
• Edward Koren, What About Me? (11/17)
  
• Appollo & Lewis Trondheim, Bourbon Island 1730 (11/17)
  
• Mike Mignola & Jason Shawn Alexander, Abe Sapien: The Drowning (11/18)
  
• S. Harris, All Ends Up (11/18)
  
• Mike Mignola, Joshua Dysart & Paul Azaceta, B.P.R.D.: 1946 (11/18)
  
• Anna Hanamaki, Nephilim, Vol. 2 (11/19)
  
• Ume Aoki, Sunshine Sketch, Vol. 2 (11/19)
  
• Jules Feiffer, Sick Sick Sick (11/19)
  
• YoungHe Lee, You're So Cool, Vol. 2 (11/19)
• John Hodgman, More Information Than You Require (11/20)
  
• Mahiro Maeda & Yuri Ariwara, Gankutsuou, Vol. 1 (11/24)
  
• Hiroya Oka, Gantz, Vol. 2 (11/25)
  
• Terry Pratchett, Nation (11/26)
  
• Cuvie, Dorothea, Vol. 2 (11/27)
  
• Lynda Barry, editor, The Best American Comics: 2008 (11/29)

And that's the month that was. December's totals should be back on schedule, on the first day of January, to get me back to the tidiness I so enjoy.

Manga and Comics, Comics and Manga

(Sing it to the tune of "Silver and Gold.")

Today, my "Manga Friday" column for ComicMix reviewed new books called Yokaiden, Y Square Plus, and Kaze No Hana.

And, a few days ago, ComicMix also posted my review of the Lynda Barry-edited The Best American Comics: 2008.

Life Is So Tough

From a New York Observer story seeking reactions to "Black Wednesday":

Also, alert to agents! Apparently the "powers that be"—presumably at Macmillan—"have been encouraging us to come up with book ideas and seek out authors ourselves, rather than relying on agents."

Boo hoo. The editors I work with almost never get submissions from agents in the first place, and usually are beating the bushes at conferences and other events to find experts who might want to write books on subjects that people need. It happens a lot in my end of publishing.

It's only the trendy, flashy end of publishing that's over-subscribed by wanna-bes and inundated in slush. On the other hand, the money isn't all that great in professional publishing, most of the time.

But the idea that editors should get off their duffs and figure out what kind of books they should be acquiring -- and then going out to get books like that -- is so obvious and basic that I'm shocked that people have to be told to do it. (Though editors generally are quiet and reactive folks -- I know; I was one for sixteen years -- who prefer to sit in their offices and see what comes in the mail.)

More Auto Industry Cartooning

Here at Antick Musings, we're keeping a beady eye on the shenanigans of the nation's editorial cartoonists -- and, in particular, at how many of them seem to be blaming UAW retirees for the financial woes of the Big Three automakers.

Today sees another shining example of the genre, from Gary Varvel of the Indianapolis Star. Note how the retiree is double labeled, and is not just crotchety -- look at the line of his jaw! -- but actively lambasting the poor l'il CEOs in the front seat with his solid hickory cane. Clearly, if only the suits could jettison their contractual obligations towards the old and feeble, they would be able to build cars that people want to buy and walk smartly into the sunrise of a better tomorrow.

It's so sad that union workers can keep US carmakers from making cars that anyone wants, and puzzling that the rest of the world has no similar issues with their unionized workers.

A Question for Publishing People

Does this description -- from Bob Miller, as quoted in the New Yorker's "Book Bench" blog -- sound like "middle" to you?

No, the problems in the business are actually not at the highest and lowest ends of the risk spectrum; the biggest books are regularly the most profitable, and the smallest ones have significant upside. The problem is with everything in between: the books which publishers spend between a hundred thousand and a million dollars to acquire, followed by hundreds of thousands of dollars in marketing and distribution. This is the dangerous middle, the place where substantial bets are made on books with lots of potential but no guarantees.

'Cause, to me, anything you spend more than $100,000 on had better be a lead title. Maybe that's just my limited, genre-warped perspective...

Quote of the Week

"There's a hole in the world like a great black pit
And it's filled with people who are filled with shit
And the vermin of the world inhabit it.
But not for long...

They all deserve to die."
- Stephen Sondheim, "Epiphany," Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Crazy Traffic Once Again

And now my "A Merry Christmas for Book Publishing" post has gotten an insane number of hits, giving me another massive traffic spike today.

This one, though, I definitely would have preferred to do without.

The good news is that today didn't seem to add much to the list of layoffs (unless the various bits of HMH were today -- I think they were Wednesday as well, and the news is just slow getting out).

But the other big day for layoffs these days is Friday, so good luck to everybody tomorrow. I'd really rather not have to update that post again.