Hi Librarian folk!
So it sometimes happens that independent publishers fall way way way behind schedule in terms of printing books. And when that happens, the orders you so kindly placed with the wholesalers, when you read a good pre-publication review, eventually cancel. As do the orders the wholesalers place with us. While there's no magic bullet to fix this, I thought I would send to our list o' librarians rviews of some books that feel behind schedule but are finally about ready to ship. (And my apologies for the inconvenience!)
Siberia by Nikolai Maslov (1933368039, paper, $19.95)
"Maslov's autobiographical graphic novel begins in 1971. Seventeen and leaving school, he first worked construction, then was drafted. He served his stint, came home, worked some more, went to art school, moved to the capital, worked some more, applied to the graphic arts institute but was rejected, became a drunk after that and his brother's death, sobered up at a state hospital, became a building super, and the last page shows him in 2000, fishing with three boys (his sons?). Drab his life seems and surely was, but that it was lived in the imploding Soviet Union provokes interest in it far beyond what a similar life in Manitoba or Nebraska might immediately rouse. Signs of squalid collapse are everywhere in random piles of trash in city and countryside alike. Heavy drinking dissipates every social gathering. Doing a good job goes unrewarded; once, conscientiousness even leads to accidental death. Yet, reflecting Maslov's stated love for his birthplace, his simple pencil drawings render the landscape, although most often flat prairie when glimpsed, with love."—Ray Olson, Booklist
"The backstory of this graphic novel may be as compelling as the book itself. Maslov, a Muscovite night watchman, handed a visiting French editor some pages from what became this book. Impressed, the editor offered Maslov an advance, enabling the middle-aged artist to finish the book and, for the first time in his life, live as a working artist. This book is the story of Maslov's life. Drawn entirely in soft, impressionistic pencil, it follows his upbringing in Siberia in the 1950s through his army conscription and service in Mongolia, an utterly absurd riff on the tragicomic life of a Soviet soldier in the '70s. These scenes are so strange, so dazed, that they take on a hallucinatory glow. It also tracks his descent into alcoholism and despair, followed by his slow ascent out of that chasm. At times the drawing is stiff and naive, and the translation is spotty, but Maslov's wry, cracked voice always shines through the formal problems. His is a voice from history, and his pencil drawings, which sometimes seem to shift as you look at them, drives that home. Even at his most horrifyingly real, Maslov is a friendly confidant, waving at the audience from what feels like a distant planet."—Publishers Weekly
H2O by Mark Swartz (1933368195, Paper, $13.00)
Swartz portrayed a dangerously alienated loner brooding in Chicago's central library in Instant Karma (2002). Here he zaps forward in time to depict Chicago as a chaotic city-state with a burgeoning homeless population and a failing infrastructure. Tap water is but a cherished memory, so toxic is Lake Michigan. In fact, the earth's entire freshwater supply is imperiled, which is good for the mega corporation Drixa, which is gearing up to produce synthetic water. Or is the fake water fake? Hayden Shivers, a hapless filter and drain engineer who discovered the water-making properties of a rare fungus off the coast of Malta, can't figure out if he is about to be promoted, fired, or worse. Is the African mail-order maid who destroyed his marriage actually an undercover operative? What's up with the beautiful environmental rights protestor, Aqua Bella? Swartz's shrewd, jittery, and noirishly atmospheric speculative tale about a bumbling antihero and dire environmental trauma brings an irreverent and parrying voice to ecofiction and casts a fractured light on follies petty and catastrophic.—Donna Seaman, Booklist
Tear Down the Mountain by Roger Alan Skipper (1933368349, Paper, $13.95)
Poverty and pipe dreams mark the lives of Sid Lore and Janet Hollar, the outsider couple--he, from Tennessee, she, unable to speak in tongues (the mark of a true believer in her Pentecostal church)--at the heart of Skipper's promising debut. A teenager when he moves to West Virginia's Union County, Sid spends the next decade trying to fit in, but a back injury prevents him from finding work that's anything above menial. The balance of power shifts when Janet becomes the breadwinner, emasculating an insecure Sid (her well-meaning anniversary gift to him of a cooking apron doesn't help). After years of struggling, they leave and spend 14 years in an unnamed city, where things are reliably bleak. His marriage on the rocks, Sid returns to Union County (Janet follows later, separately), where SUV-driving yuppies have scooped up cheap land and built luxury homes. Things, of course, end badly. Skipper's earthy prose helps paint a vivid picture of rough-hewn Appalachia, though the dialect can wear thin. This rocky romance will appeal to those who take it dark.--Publishers Weekly
Putting the Pieces Together: The Graffiti Model for Indie Filmmaking (1933368462, paper, $20)
Get in, hit it, and get out--that's the essence of the graffiti model of guerrilla filmmaking that director Morgan applied to his 2004 film, the underground graffiti parable Quality of Life . As an extension of that aesthetic, this book is more of a scrapbook-style art piece than a linear, making-of look at the movie. But it's packed with heart and information--instant-message interviews between core members of the production team, a meaty DIY film primer, production stills, photos of San Francisco graffiti, and the original screenplay. That said, the book does have some serious problems. As several of the contributors admit, they were on the wrong side of the book's deadline, so some of the material is unfinished, and much of it is unedited. Rife with typos, bratty humor, and distracting chattiness, the IM interviews are particularly rough going. Overall, there are epiphanies in these pages, but you have to dig deep for them. Still, the book is leagues ahead of your typical screenplay release. Like Quality of Life itself, this is an exciting but flawed herald of changes to come. For libraries with large film collections.--Matthew Moyer, Jacksonville P.L., FL (Library Journal) [Though might I add myself, this is also for folks into graffiti culture--and this film was #1 on the MySpace Film Users for 6 weeks ths summer...)
Electric Flesh by Claro, translated by Brian Evenson (1933368233, paper, $13)
Three story lines fuse and ignite in this brief novel by the French metafiction master who publishes under a single name (which means "clear," "bright" or "fine" in Spanish). As a child, the real-life Harry Houdini develops a crush on Szuszu, a magician's assistant, whom he eventually pursues--along with the craft that pushes his body to its limits--through a sideshow of carnival freaks. Simultaneously, Thomas Edison directs an army of assistants while attempting to invent the electric chair, conducting gruesome experiments with animals, criminals and high voltage frying. In a modern story set in 1996, an unemployed executioner, Howard Hordinary, masturbates and dreams about Houdini's feats, eventually hoping to prove that he, like Gary Gilmore, is the unacknowledged grandson of the great escape artist, the fruit perhaps of Houdini's liaison with Szuszu. Accomplished U.S. novelist Evenson turns syntax inside out attempting to translate Claro's French whirls and dips into an inventive English, but Hordinary's need to connect with Houdini seems little more than a device to bring the history of electricity closer to a century of terror and torture.--Publishers Weekly
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