Good day and welcome to Lutefisk Day that reminds residents in Norway, Finland, and Sweden to begin preparing their lutefisk for Christmas.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“Now you listen to me, Colonel Bat Guano, if that is your real name!”—Peter Sellers to Kennan Wynn in Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
Groucho Marx once said, “From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.” Nobody, at least that I know of, has ever said the same about one of my books but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.
I’ve written 37 books and for some of them the book concept was originally the publisher’s idea. Some, like was an idea that was presented to me by a friend and collaborator. While others like the Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography was based on a book proposal i made to the publisher while attending a trade show. Like most books I’ve written, the title was not my idea. (More about where ideas come from here.) And more often than not, I’ve had issues with the titles (and cover photographs) that the publisher selected.
How I Read
On Thanksgiving, we were invited to dinner with Mary’s best friend and her family. One of the things we discovered over some yummy turkey and dressing was that they were all a group of readers and that Mary’s friend and her husband belonged to two different book clubs, one that was for couples only. That won’t work for us because Mary’s and my reading habits are so different. Up until recently, she mostly read non-fiction but while recuperating from her recent surgery she started reading the novels of Erin Hilderbrand but as she’s begun healing she’s doing much less reading.
As I write this a copy of a non-fiction photography book (more later) is sitting on the end table next to my bed. In the not-so-distant past, I would typically read two books at the same time; one non-fiction and one fiction. These days I find that I can only handle—maybe prefer— reading one book, either non-fiction or fiction, at a time. Now about that photo book…
Coming Up…or Not
On deck was a photography book that,just based on its title, I was skeptical abou and in reading 50 pages of it turned out to be extremely basic for the typical reader of this blog. The book is, not surprisingly to me, written by a UK-based photographer since the US photo book scene seems dominated by British publishers. That seems odd to me, since the UK has a population of 67,829,581, while the US has 340,746,610 people. So no review of the book is forthcoming. I don’t like to criticize other photographer’s books, except for maybe an occasional quibble, and I’m not even mentioning the book or even its author, although the quote at the top is a hint, of sorts, of the writer’s name.
By not mentioning the book or author I’m not depriving you of anything because I know, from experience, that the photography book that anyone writes may not be the photography book that’s published. Case in point: The way I write how-to books is to present information in one chapter that will be useful to the reader in the next or later chapters. That way, the information builds from one chapter to the next. The editor of one of my books, decided to juggle the order of chapters so the first chapter in the published volume was originally chapter seven but you wouldn’t get any helpful information that was (originally) earlier in the book to help you understand that chapter until later in the juggled book. I asked the publisher to put the editors name of the cover so the credits would read “Joe Farace with Mr. X…” so that I could direct any complaints to him. They said no.
What I’m Reading
Since the unnamed photography book was quickly returned to the Library, I dove into my personal library of more than 3200 books and came up with David Handler’s 2012 book, The Snow White Christmas Cookie. This is the ninth in his eleven-book series. The book follows the crime solving adventures of a female Connecticut State Trooper and her movie critic boyfriend.
The books are set in an historic and mythical New England village of Dorset, Connecticut If you are even slightly interested in the “cozy” mystery genre I urge you to pick up and read the entire series. At one point, this particular book pushes the edges of the cozy format somewhat but never devolves into “hard boiled” territory. If you’re interested, here’s a list of the books with links to purchase them. You can start at the beginning—The Cold Blue Blood— or you can pick up any of the series whatever you can find them online, used book stores or your local library. They are all a delight to read. PS. If you enjoy David Handler’s writing style, you might want to read any (or all) of the books in his Stewart Hoag & Lulu series. (Lulu is a basset hound.) They are a stylish read in a “Nick and Nora” style that grows more “Nck and Nora” as the 14-book series progresses.
I just finished reading
On Deck
t by Mike Lupica that is the 45’th Spenser book and the first written by Mr. Lupica. I look forward to reading this book when it arrives from Barnes & Noble. In the meantime, the next SciFi book club pick is The Mountain In the Sea by Ray Naylor. I purchased a copy of the book at Books Are Awesome and that may be the next book I get to if I finish Rick Factor before the Spenser book arrives. Look for (hopefully) some thoughts on my SciFi book club’s latest selection in the next episode on this little book club.
A note from Joe: If you click any of the links for any books that are mentioned in these posts, Amazon pays me a small commission BUT it does not increase the cost of the books (or movies) to you. It all goes to help support this blog and cover the expense of operating it. And if you do, many thanks!.