I've Made a List of Books at Shepherd.com

My first list of five recommended books is now live at Shepherd.com. Take a look to learn more about these novels that bear much in common with my own in their themes of creativity, self-discovery, and (re)invention. All (including my own In Search of the Magic Theater) are available for order through Shepherd.com's affiliate links to Bookshop.org and Amazon.com. And while you're on the site, you can explore for other authors' lists of favorite books on pretty much any topic or theme!

I'll also be creating a list of recommendations related to Magnetic Woman, but first I've got to decide whether the theme linking them will be surrealism, Czech modernism, or something else!

Have You Heard About Shepherd.com?

Shepherd.com is a relatively new site designed to help readers find books on topics or themes that interest them. Founded by entrepreneur Ben Fox, this startup is intended to provide a more satisfying way of discovering books than that offered by Goodreads or other existing sites.

How does it work? It's kind of an exciting concept--authors create curated five-book lists on a theme connected to their own book and say something about the five books, their own book, and themselves. The staff at Shepherd.com then get to work and create a page for each list with links for readers to be able to buy each book at either Bookshop.org or Amazon.com.

Readers can browse by Wikipedia topic or favorite book or author, and can also see the latest new lists or go to "shelves" of lists arranged by larger topics like France, Family, or African Americans. As more and more authors create lists, the more different kinds of old and new books readers can discover on the site. Here are some lists that caught my eye:

Mitch Horowitz's Best Books on the extra-physical potentials of the mind (because you know you want to know more about consciousness and ESP, right?)
Karen J. Hasley's The best Regency books that showcase women who have more on their minds than romance (not that romance is eschewed here)
Stacey Levine's The best fiction that writes against narrative convention (I want to read everything on this list!)
Tamsin Mori's The best middle grade children’s books with wonderful weather magic (isn't this such a cool and unexpected list topic?)
Hussein Fancy's The best books that capture the paradoxes of medieval Spain (because medieval Spain is fascinating, in part because Christians, Muslims, and Jews lived together in peace)

My first list will be appearing early next week! It's called The best novels about creativity, self-discovery, and (re)invention.

"Discovering a new book should be a magical experience where the search is part of the fun. ... We give readers fun ways to find amazing books."

Thoughts on BookTok

Jane Friedman, publishing guru (and I'm not saying that sarcastically because she really is, and is fabulously informative), notes on Instagram:

BookTok has helped authors sell 20 million printed books in 2021, according to BookScan. So far this year, those sales are up another 50%. NPD Books said that no other form of social media has ever had this kind of impact on sales. As a result, publishers are being influenced more than they’re doing the influencing, according to Emma Quick, senior marketing manager at Bonnier Books UK. As is often observed, BookTok is full of readers’ emotional, visceral reactions to books. Strong reactions require provocation: plot twists that make you angry enough to throw the book across the room, or endings that make you bawl your eyes out.

On the one hand, I think it's great that readers become passionate about books and want to promote then on TikTok videos. I mean, if you're an author who appeals to the BookTok demographic, that's likely to result in lots of sales even if you never once go near TikTok.

On the other hand, TikTok's demographic is heavily teen and under-thirty--a limited slice of the readership pie. What's more, even among that age group not everyone wants to read a steady diet of books that prompt sobbing and book-throwing. Even a reader who enjoys a quiet tear over a sad moment in a book may not want to weep copiously or feel buffeted by hurricane-quality winds of emotion.

And so, while I'm pleased that lots of teens and younger adults are reading and loving to discover and discuss books, I won't be so pleased if publishers decide that they need to base their acquisition strategies on what makes fifteen-year-old girls the most histrionic. We already have way too much of a tilt in US publishing toward insisting that novels begin at some exciting point and escalate from there. Again, nothing against novels that do this, and nothing against highly emotional teen readers, but the world of books and readers encompasses so much more. Just as it's good to have books that excite strong feelings, it's also good to have books that are calm, cozy, or thought-provoking. Both thinking and feeling are important, just as rest needs to balance intense activity.

As a side note, I wonder whether Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (infamous in its day for prompting numerous suicides) or the works of Dostoevsky (also known for their emotional effect) are currently inciting any BookTok videos.

The Reader of Dostoevsky, 1907, by Emil Filla

Using Overdrive Through Your Library

These days, many of us are reading e-books that we get from our local libraries. I may have been late to the party on this, as I didn't get an e-reader (in my case, a Kindle) until the pandemic hit, when the library became off-limits physically for a significant period. I've found, however, that checking out e-books is really great! They're available in several forms, and I never have to worry about returning the books overdue--they're renewable but unless I renew, they're simply no longer readable on my device. Overdrive, which is the system that my library uses, keeps a record of what I've checked out, so I can easily get a book again if I should have renewed but didn't.

I'm sure the above is old news to many of you. But do you know how to take your Overdrive checkouts to the next level?

If you read a lot of classics plus newer books that are not bestsellers, you may be frustrated that you aren't finding everything you'd like at the library, even via Overdrive. I know that I've found it quite tedious to look up book after book that's on my Goodreads want-to-read list and find that none of them show up on my library's Overdrive. The author's name usually does, but none of their books.

Each library chooses which books it wants from Overdrive's catalog. In other words, when you're on your library's Overdrive site, you aren't searching Overdrive in totality--you're just searching within what your library has decided, in its wisdom, that local borrowers are likely to want. But you can request the library offer books from Overdrive that it does not currently show!

I just did this today, as I'd discovered (via a simple Google search) that my forthcoming novel In Search of the Magic Theater is listed in Overdrive. I wasn't at that point looking to see if it was in Overdrive, I was just looking for any pre-publication reviews that might have surfaced, and discovered that the Somerset County Library (New Jersey) has it listed in Overdrive. So although they won't have the book until it launches June 1, they've already got it in their system. I therefore went over to my own local library's Overdrive site and typed in my name in Search. While my name didn't show up in search, I was nonetheless able to get the e-book of In Search of the Magic Theater to come up as something I could recommend to the library, which I then did.

Therefore, I tell you, go forth to your local library's website and proceed to its Overdrive site (while not all libraries use Overdrive, it is a very commonly used e-book service). Tell it that you recommend In Search of the Magic Theater and whatever else you may be itching to read that isn't already in its catalog!

Don't Forget to Check NetGalley!

If you read and review via NetGalley, this post is for you! It's also for you if you're up for helping get new books noticed.

My novel In Search of the Magic Theater--a tale of music, theater, generational tensions, strong women, and a bit of romance--is still available for pre-publication review on NetGalley. Reviews that appear prior to publication, whether in Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, NetGalley, Goodreads, or elsewhere, help readers learn about books they may be interested in. That encourages pre-orders, which encourages more support from publishers. The more buzz, the better!

Get Ready... Goodreads Giveaway Coming!

That's right, if you're on Goodreads, in just days you'll have the chance to enter my giveaway of ten advance reader copies of In Search of the Magic Theater! The giveaway will run till the beginning of May, so sign up for a chance to win your copy.

Now On NetGalley and Edelweiss

As the publication date for In Search of the Magic Theater nears (June 1!), pre-publication reviews become important. Reviewers who use the NetGalley or Edelweiss platforms can now get advance reader copies there.

In Search of the Magic Theater begins as something of a female version of Hesse’s renowned Steppenwolf, but its dual narrators find themselves grappling with unexpected challenges in their search for creative and personal fulfillment.

BOOK CLUB POTENTIAL: Lots of topical discussion points relating to gender roles, generational tension, love and marriage, pursuing one's dream, drug use, power dynamics.
FOR READERS OF WOMEN'S FICTION: Two strong female protagonists deal with issues of personal identity, career, and family/friend/romantic relationships.
FOR PERFORMING ARTS FANS: Set in the world of theater and music, this lively work features the loves and friendships of an experimental playwright, a classical cellist, and guitarists who span classical, jazz, and rock.

An Edgar Could in the Works for Erin Flanagan's Deer Season

Deer Season, the debut novel by Erin Flanagan, my colleague over in the English department, has been nominated for an Edgar!

The Edgar Allan Poe Awards, presented by the Mystery Writers of America, celebrate the best mystery fiction, nonfiction and television published or produced each year. Deer Season was one of five nominees for the category Best First Novel by an American Author.

Here's a handy list of Edgar winners in all categories for the past decade.

You can order Deer Season from the publisher, University of Nebraska Press, or wherever books are sold.

Meet the 2022 Debuts!

Over at Facebook, the 2022 adult traditionally published debut novelists have a lively group where we exchange ideas and information about how to promote our books to the readers who will love them. Which is why I'm doing lots and lots of brief blog posts this year highlighting debut novels! I want to do my part to help everyone's books be a success.

We now have a website, https://2022debuts.com/, where you can learn more about us and about our books, which include mysteries, romcoms, thrillers, fantasy, science fiction, women's fiction, literary fiction, and pretty much anything else you can think of--something for pretty much any reader. Many of us are on Instagram and/or Twitter as well, posting about books and reading and many other things. Below, you can see just a few of us whose names begin with K!

The Taste of Ginger

With 2022 being the year my novel In Search of the Magic Theater comes out, I plan to blog with special attention to other novels launching during this year. Since there's no way I can mention (much less read and review) all worthy novels, I'll be focusing on two sets of authors: members of the 2022 Debuts group and fellow Regal House authors. With luck I'll manage to highlight most of these books while also announcing scholarly books by friends and keeping you abreast of developments with my own books and anything else of interest I can manage to write about.

The Taste of Ginger, by Mansi Shah, kicks off an exciting round of 2022 adult traditionally published debut novels, of which my own In Search of the Magic Theater will be one. The Taste of Ginger launched January 1 and has already garnered high praise for its tale of an immigrant who returns to India and her estranged family after years in the US, grappling with her two cultures and their different expectations.

I'm looking forward to reading The Taste of Ginger!

2022 Debuts Winter Roll Call Day 12

Day 12 of the 2022 Debuts winter roll call... writing quotes! Early in In Search of the Magic Theater, narrator Kari ponders the husband she left:

Some Comp Titles for In Search of the Magic Theater

In publishing, as in real estate (but unlike in theater), we talk about comps. Comparables. Comparisons. And as the debut novelists of 2022 are doing themed posts all through December about our forthcoming books, one of them is for our comps. Some of us are posting on Instagram, others on Facebook, and others, no doubt, on Twitter or TikTok. My post on Instagram ran into a computer glitch of some sort, so I'm doing it here too.

Two of my comps are "old" but perfect, two are recent enough that we're using them as "official" comps (published in the last five years). So...

1) Hermann Hesse's STEPPENWOLF was the inspiration for my novel IN SEARCH OF THE MAGIC THEATER, which will be out June 1. I switch the genders of the main characters and set the novel in 1999. Mine is also happier overall than STEPPENWOLF and gives the landlady's niece a major role.

2) Robertson Davies's THE LYRE OF ORPHEUS. Not only is Davies one of my favorite authors, but he wrote so well about the arts in general. THE LYRE OF ORPHEUS is about a group of quite different people (who don't all even like each other) collaborating on finishing an opera by the Romantic writer and composer E.T.A. Hoffmann. I took many useful lessons from this novel in writing the theatrical portions of my own novel (along with having worked in theater myself and having composed small musical pieces in the distant past). Oh, and also, like LYRE OF ORPHEUS, the theater piece in my novel includes text from long-dead authors and lots of music.

3) Jan Alexander's MS. MING'S GUIDE TO CIVILIZATION. Jan is now a friend and we're in a writing group together, but I first learned of her and her novel through a mutual friend. MS. MING sounded like a book I needed to read--two young women, one American and the other a poor kid from China scraping a not-so-savory living in the US, get involved with the mythological Monkey King and scheme to improve the world--and it also led me to my publisher, Regal House! So MS. MING means a lot to me. It's about women's lives, about big dreams, about myth, and it's lively and fun and often satirical.

4) Carmen Boullosa's THE BOOK OF ANNA. This too is a good comp for my novel, as it uses a classic novel (ANNA KARENINA) as a launching point for a new and wildly imaginative work that also includes a work of fiction by the character Anna Karenina.

Follow along with the hashtag #2022Debuts to see what my other fellow debuts are saying and give a follow to @debutauthors, which will showcase all our books coming out in 2022!

In Search of the Magic Theater is now listed on Goodreads (cover art to come), so now is a great time to mark it as "want to read"--not only does this help make the book more visible on the system (those algorithms!) but when I do a giveaway of paper Advance Reader Copies, everyone who marked it as "want to read" will be notified to sign up for the giveaway.

I'd post a picture of the front cover, but we're waiting on the cover reveal till a little closer to publication, so how about a look at the spine?

Burning and Dodging

Julie Wittes Schlack has a novel coming out in December, Burning and Dodging! As you might guess, photography is one of its topics--as are, figuratively, both burning and dodging. I had the privilege of reading it several months ago, and can recommend it as a wonderfully complex, engaging tale. It is one of my very favorite new novels.

If you pre-order now through the publisher, you'll benefit both Julie and Black Rose Publishing (Julie gets a higher royalty than through, say, Amazon, and the publisher knows people want to read it).

Oliver's Travels

I've been meaning to mention Clifford Garstang's new novel Oliver's Travels, which came out recently from our mutual publisher Regal House and is getting some very good reviews!

Ollie Tucker, a recent college graduate and philosophy devotee, obsesses about truth and the source of knowledge, questioning everything he hears from those close to him. He entangles himself in a ridiculous yet sad relationship with a young woman named Mary, who is suited to him only in that she's equally eager to pursue a life with someone with whom she has so few common interests. Meanwhile, hoping to become a writer, Ollie invents an alter ego named Oliver, who lives an adventurous and cosmopolitan life. But in addition to Ollie's problems with Mary and his dysfunctional family, he's gnawed by a possible repressed memory of his mysterious uncle Scotty (who may or may not be dead) that threatens his relationships and his sexuality. He can't quite remember, and he knows his memory is unreliable. What is the truth? What should he do?

Juliana Converse has written an excellent review at Lit Pub if you'd like to know more before getting your own copy (paperback, e-book or special edition hardcover) from Regal House or your local independent bookstore. It's a funny and sad book with lots of heart.

50 Classic Short Novels I've Read (or Not)

This morning, waking up early to cough a week or so after I thought I'd shaken a minor unidentified ear-nose-throat virus (it began in my ear), I chanced to see what sort of news my smartphone had to offer. I try to avoid doing this, but like many things in life, it's an addictive practice and admittedly provides me with a fine array of news not just about covid-19 and the ex-president, but about Stonehenge, ancient hominins, camping, fungus-infected ants preserved in amber, and advice columns by at least three different people.

Of late it's been offering up a lot of literary and writer-oriented stuff, and so this morning I found myself devouring a list on Lithub of short novels (under 200 pages) written before 1970.

Now, although I am trying very hard to read fiction by current authors, I'm more the kind of reader who goes for underappreciated gems that have nonetheless passed the test of time. It's no surprise that I'm a historian of modern rather than contemporary art. Anyway, while as the list-maker (Emily Temple) admits, it's sort of a white-male-dominated list, it's still an exciting list and I was thrilled to see so many familiar and new titles.

I'm going to break up the list into what I've read, what I've meant to read (or at least knew of), and what I've never heard of.

Read
Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel: The list began with this! I'm stunned. I read this just after graduating from college, when I was interning at an experimental theater and checking out books from the Mill Valley public library. I read a lot that summer, most of it pretty famous (from Joyce's Ulysses to all of Raymond Chandler).
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles: Not sure how old I was when I read this. High school? Junior high? Grade school?I read all of the Sherlock Holmes stories at least once. Probably ought to read them again.
Italo Calvino, The Cloven Viscount: Ah, what a delight. I discovered Italo Calvino just before starting college, thanks to (of all things) a book review in Time. I really need to reread this. It's been too long. I love Italo Calvino.
Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar: Did I read this in high school or in college? I read a fair amount of Brautigan and Kurt Vonnegut all around the same time. It's what we did in the 1970s.
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice: First read this in 1980, for a class. I read it while sunbathing nude in a meadow, which I put into the pandemic novella I wrote last year because such things belong in fiction. Of course, it could be argued that I should have read it at the beach instead. It's the kind of thing I would read at the beach if I hung out at beaches. Grim, diseased, with long sentences.
Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle: Probably read this in high school. The Haunting of Hill House was the Shirley Jackson I read many times as a child, but I read other Shirley Jackson books in high school.
Françoise Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse: I read this in junior high or high school, probably the latter. My recollection of it is not all that clear; time to reread.
Franz Kafka, The Trial: First read this in high school, when I devoured Kafka.
Djuna Barnes, Nightwood: I believe I picked this up in or just after college. Another of those curiously influential books twisting my mind.
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea: I love Jean Rhys, but this is my least favorite of her books. I've only read it once. I did give my mother a copy since she loved Jane Eyre, but I have no idea what my mother thought of this take on the characters.
Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means: Guessing that I first read this is my twenties, when I read practically every Muriel Spark novel that then existed (and which all, in the library copies, showed Spark in what seemed a bizarrely outdated and extravagant style of hair and makeup). These days I read this and several other Spark novels frequently and do not read certain of the others at all.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby: I suppose I must have first read this in high school, back when I was somewhat baffled by the idea of someone's voice sounding like money. Like coins? Like paper money? I wasn't sure.
Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin: Curiously, this is one I only read quite recently, and enjoyed it. I haven't read all that much Nabokov. I always enjoy The Real Life of Sebastian Knight; I liked Lolita well enough back in my teens or twenties but found it rather horrifying more recently; I was not that wild about Ada.
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange: Read this in college, or possibly high school. I know I saw the movie in college. The invented slang intrigued me.

Meant to Read Someday, or Knew Of, or Read Others by the Author
John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men: Never got around to this; read The Red Pony and The Grapes of Wrath.
George Orwell, Animal Farm: Yeah, I know I should. And it almost seems like maybe I did.
James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice: I am pretty sure I somehow missed this.
Nella Larsen, Passing: Knew of this because I read Jessie Redmon Fauset's Plum Bun, which gets discussed in relation to Passing.
Albert Camus, The Stranger: Somehow never got around to it.
Kate Chopin, The Awakening: Started it in high school, apparently got distracted and didn't finish it.
Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich: I have no idea why I haven't read any Tolstoy yet. Wait, I did read something he wrote on art, thinking I might assign it to students.
Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man: I read an awful lot of Isherwood in high school, but not this one. Saw the movie.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground: Read a lot of Dostoevsky in junior high, but I don't think this was among them. Could be wrong.
Anna Kavan, Ice: I've read other works by Kavan, but never heard of this one.
Jean Toomer, Cane: I've known who Jean Toomer was for ages, but never looked for or run across his books.
Knut Hamsun, Hunger: Ought to read it, haven't yet.
James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room: Unsure why I haven't ended up reading any James Baldwin yet.
Willa Cather, O Pioneers! One of those books my mother read growing up that I haven't gotten to yet. I did read at least one Cather short story long ago.
Herman Melville, Billy Budd. Didn't realize this was short. Moby Dick has been on my to-read list.
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49: Not sure why I didn't read any Pynchon back in my twenties.
George Eliot, Silas Marner: This always sounded like something that might bore me.
Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's: This might be a nice antidote to In Cold Blood, which I've read at least twice. Saw the movie on an airplane shortly before the pandemic, oddly enough.
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart: Have heard this is good (I mean, before reading the LitHub list).
N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn: Know of the author, haven't yet read him.
Philip K. Dick, Ubik: Read a few others by Dick and mostly enjoyed them; not this one yet.
Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart: Read one of her books in my twenties and have never run across any others. The one I read was destroyed by salt water and I'm baffled as to which one it was.
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God: Keep meaning to read this...
Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome: One of those books that I suspected would be dull and so have not read.
Joan Lindsay, Picnic at Hanging Rock: Saw the movie, didn't know it was based on a book.
Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop: OK, I know I should read Carter's fiction as well as her nonfiction...

Somehow Completely Off My Radar
Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo
James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World
Kenzaburo Oe, A Personal Matter
Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country
Robert Walser, Jakob von Gunten
Leonard Gardner, Fat City
Chester Himes, If He Hollers Let Him Go
Charles Portis, Norwood
Barbara Comyns, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead

Readers are invited to add to the list (not doubling up on authors). A quick look at my shelves didn't offer much. I was surprised that my copy of Heinrich Böll's The End of a Mission was slightly over 200 pages, and I forgot to check if it was pre-1970 (it is). Giorgio Bassani's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is just under 200 pages. I lost a lot of books to salt water, long ago.

How Do Libraries Get Books?

Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes at libraries--how purchasing choices are made and how books, especially e-books, come to be available? Author Maggie Lynch writes about The Importance of Library Distribution on her blog and notes that with the pandemic, libraries have adapted to changes in demand by providing stronger e-book offerings. As a reader who waited until the pandemic to get a Kindle, I can attest to my public library's growing interest in e-books!

Now, speaking of e-books, you may wonder whether Magnetic Woman is available as an e-book. The answer is, unfortunately, no. Rights for the art for e-book editions would have been even more expensive than what I had to pay (that's me, the author, not my publisher!) for print rights. Besides which, do you really want to read an art history book on a screen if you can read it on paper? Probably not, although I do think it would be nice to have a copy handy on an e-reader for travel.

Book Reviewers Wanted!

Do you review books for a magazine, journal, blog, podcast, or newspaper? Or are you the book review editor for one of these? Maybe you commission book reviews for an H-Net list or another scholarly list.

Now is the perfect time to request a review copy of Magnetic Woman from University of Pittsburgh Press! What could be better than settling down with a beautifully designed book that combines art, surrealism, the Czech avant-garde, a reticent and gender-ambiguous creative figure, and the erotic? (Okay, some of you would rather curl up with your cat or dog and a cup of tea, and that's fine too. But if you do review books...)

University of Pittsburgh Press's publicity team wants to hear from you!

Short Fiction at Unlikely Stories!

One of my stories has just come out in the online journal Unlikely Stories. It has the (possibly pretentious? you decide) title "Terpsichore, not by Michael Praetorius." That's because I'm one of those peculiar people who listens to a good deal of early music, not because it is actually about early music. Give it a read!

In Support of Independents: Beasley Books

In the spirit of supporting independent bookstores during a time of crisis, I offer you the Summer 2020 catalog for Beasley Books Chicago-based Beasley Books offers "more than 300 items in diverse fields: Modern First Editions, Mysteries, African American Literature, Radicalism (including titles on the Civil War in Spain,) Jazz & Blues and Art & Photography." Beasley Books also has a special interest in and connection to Surrealism.