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Book Review: 2008-08 - The Lizard King by Bryan
Christy

post from Emerging Writers Network on 20 November 2008 02:44:00 AM. © Emerging Writers Network

2008-008

The Lizard King by Bryan Christy

2008 Knopf 241 pages

978-0-446-58095-3 $24.99

(I bought this one)

The subtitle of this book is "The True Crimes and Passions of the World's Greatest Reptile Smugglers" and it's a pretty amazing world. Christy, a freelance writer that has worked for magazines from Playboy to National Geographic in the past, uses both his taste for adventure and his law degree in writing this book.

The Lizard King is reminiscent of The Orchid Thief (Orlean, Random House, 1998) and Used and Rare (Goldstone & Goldstone, St. Martin's Press, 1997) in how Christy has chosen a specific topic, this time around the reptile industry, and while covering various aspects of it, ends up writing about obsession.

In this case, Christy focuses heavily on Michael Van Nostrand, owner of Strictly Reptiles, a multi-million dollar business run out of Hollywood, FL, and Special Agent Chip Bepler of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Their relationship reminded me a bit of that of the characters played by DiCaprio and Hanks in the movie "Catch Me if You Can," as Bepler spends five years of his life determined to catch Van Nostrand smuggling or doing something illegal with regards to reptiles.

While Christy may have begun this book with an interest in reptiles himself, the story lent itself into further exploration of how CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) works and into smuggling of all species, not just reptiles. The sections that go into detail about CITES tended to bog down a little, though it seems to be information Christy really couldn't tell another way, nor leave out.

It's the sections specifically about reptiles though, when Christy begins describing them in detail, the colors, the shapes, where they're from, and how smuggler would get them from their native lands to the United States, that propel the reader from beginning to end.

Between these descriptive sections, and stretches about the cat and mouse games that Van Nostrand and Bepler played with other, and profiles of some of the major players in what is an international roster of smuggling and collecting talent, Christy had a can't miss story to tell, and he's a good enough writer to not get in the way of that great story. One need not be interested in reptiles to enjoy The Lizard King. In fact, even if you're the type to squirm in the reptile house at the zoo, you still just might enjoy this one in your own reptile-free house.

4 stars

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00808-the-lizard-king-by-bryan-christy.html

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Matthiessen, Gordon-Reed Win National Book Awards

post from The Millions on 20 November 2008 02:35:00 AM. © The Millions

81-year-old Peter Matthiessen has taken home the National Book Award for fiction in something of an upset. His book, Shadow Country (excerpt), as the Bloomberg notes, came about after he "rewrote and compressed portions of his novels about the murderous Florida sugar-cane farmer Edgar J. Watson -- Killing Mister Watson, Lost Man's River and Bone by Bone -- into a single 892-page volume published by the Modern Library."

While Matthiessen's win was perhaps a slight upset over Marilynne Robinson, whose Home was a sequel to Pulitzer-winning Gilead, the bigger upset was on the non-fiction side, where Annette Gordon-Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (excerpt) beat out The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer. Mayer's indictment of the Bush administration's anti-terror tactics grabbed plenty of headlines this year, but The Hemingses of Monticello, despite being less obviously timely, was highly regarded for moving the ball forward in pursuing the thorny truth behind Thomas Jefferson and his slaves. Indeed, Jill Lepore made a very compelling case for the book in the New Yorker in September.

Rounding out the winners, Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems by Mark Doty (poem) won the poetry category and the award in young people's literature went to What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell.

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Book Review: 2008-007 - The Legal Limit by
Martin Clark

post from Emerging Writers Network on 20 November 2008 02:10:00 AM. © Emerging Writers Network

2008-007

The Legal Limit by Martin Clark

2008 by Knopf 368 pages

978-0307268358 $24.95

(I bought this one)

The Legal Limit is Martin Clark's third novel, following The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living, and Plain, Heathen Mischief, and he's continued to develop as a writer from book to book to book.

His debut showed Clark to be a master at developing interesting characters, and giving them some crazy shit to do, and with novel number two, he did a much better job of wrapping all of that craziness up at the end. With The Legal Limit, Clark has tempered the craziness a bit, thought that is not at all to say that this doesn't have a high-octane plot. He's still put together a great roster of characters, but this time around they seem to fit a little better together. And beyond the characters, he's fully developed the city, Stuart, VA, that everybody resides in. This may partially be due to the fact that Clark himself is a circuit court judge in said city, and possibly partially due to the fact that per Clark's Part One and Part Three of this book, the tale he tells is a true one.

Whatever the reason for the nudge, this novel has Clark writing at his absolute best. The setting and characters and even rural descriptions remind me of the best of Ron Rash's Appalachian-based novels, but as noted earlier, the plot is one that grabs hold of you and announces early on you should strap the seat belt on pretty tight.

At 368 pages of this fast paced plot, an attempt at a full summary seems futile, but to get it started, Clark gives us two brothers, Mason and Gates Hunt. Mason's in law school and Gates is the former high school football superstar that didn't make it in his one year at the state college trying to hold on to his aging Corvette and similarly aging relationships. A murder occurs, and accident or not, Mason helps Gates cover it up.

Clark shines in his writing of the relationship that these two brothers have, both in positive and negative times, as well as his showing the relationships many of the characters have with each other - these two with their mother, delving into their youth and dealings with their father, Mason with co-workers through the years, and his relationships with his wife and daughter. He also does a fantastic job in examining the legal system both inside and outside the box. Clark's years of sitting on the bench allow him a nuance in these matters that I haven't seen in any other author's work.

It's the combination of all of the above that make this book one of the lengthier titles you just may sit down with and read straight through in one sitting. I think Clark has done everything he intended with this novel, and he certainly leaves the reader thinking about things once that final page is turned.

5 stars

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Giveaway admin

post from Lizzy's Literary Life on 20 November 2008 02:05:41 AM. © Lizzy's Literary Life

Amazingly, I have an unclaimed giveaway!So here’s the random number generator rerun:Here are your random numbers:3 Timestamp: 2008-11-20 06:49:41 UTC.Janice, Charles Cummings is on his way to you. Lucky girl! The Glenfarron giveaway was restricted to British entries - which means that Jonathan Falla is on his way to Jennifer Dee. Lucky girl, also! Would the winners, [...]

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http://lizzysiddal.wordpress.com/2008/11/20/giveaway-admin/

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Introduction to Statistical Signal Processing

post from Free download engineering | science | technology books on 20 November 2008 02:00:55 AM. © Free download engineering | science | technology books

File : pdf, 2.9 MB, 477 pagesby Robert M. Gray & Lee D. Davidson(ee.stanford.edu)TOC1 Introduction2 Probability2.1 Introduction2.2 Spinning pointers and flipping coins2.3 Probability spaces2.4 Discrete probability spaces2.5 Continuous probability spaces2.6 Independence2.7 Elementary conditional probability2.8 Problems3 Random variables, vectors, and processes3.1 Introduction3.2 Random variables3.3 Distributions of random variables3.4 Random vectors and random processes3.5 Distributions of random [...]

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Here Are Your 2008 National Book Awards

post from mediabistro.com: GalleyCat on 20 November 2008 12:53:57 AM. © mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

Here's Peter Matthiessen, accepting congratulations from Dan Simon of Seven Stories Press just a few minutes after winning the National Book Award for fiction for his novel, Shadow Country. The decision came as a surprise to many in the audience; waiting for his coast, one veteran editor allowed that the portion of the 900-plus-page novel he had read was of the highest literary quality, but that he had still been sure the prize would be going to Aleksandar Hemon for The Lazarus Project, a view many in the ballroom had echoed earlier in the evening. (Many GalleyCat readers felt the same way; in our pre-ceremony polling, Hemon had come in second behind Marilynne Robinson, with Matthiessen a close third.)

Menaker described Matthiessen's win as "a provocative choice," but the mood of others in the audience ranged from polarizing to deflated. Graywolf Press publisher Fiona McCrae, who had been rooting for her own book, Salvatore Scibona's The End, took a more philosophical view of the evening, noting the gap between younger writers like Scibona, Hemon, and Rachel Kushner and Matthiessen and Robinson, then pointed out that Scibona had dodged a bullet by not winning for his debut novel, thus reducing the critical pressure on subsequent boosk—and she was sure (just as that editor had been of Hemon) he would have many more opportunities ahead of him.

In the other categories:

Nonfiction: Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello
Poetry: Mark Doty, Fire to Fire
Young People's Literature: Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied

GalleyCat readers successfully predicted Doty's victory, while Blundell was their second choice in the YA category; as with Matthiessen, Gordon-Reed was third on their list for nonfiction.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media

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Judy Blundell, A Dark Horse Even to Herself,
Comes Through

post from mediabistro.com: GalleyCat on 20 November 2008 12:21:57 AM. © mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

When we caught up with National Book Award nominee Judy Blundell (left) during the dinner break at last night's ceremony, we asked what it was like being at the ceremony as a shortlisted author rather than as a judge for the young people's literature category, as she had been two years ago. She confided that she was enjoying herself "because I know I'm not going to win." She'd read the books by all the other nominees (including E. Lockhart, at right), and she thought they were all wonderful, and she was just glad to be in their company. (GalleyCat readers had a bit more faith in her; sure, they thought Laurie Halse Anderson would take the prize, but they had Blundell right behind her.)

And then she won! Well, as she told the audience, "When I started in publishing, I was a hopeless and underconfident person—not much has changed." She's actually written more than 100 other novels, but What I Saw and How I Lied is the first that she's published under her own name. She made sure to thank her editor at Scholastic, David Levithan, "for giving me back my voice," telling her that he wanted her to just tell the story she wanted to tell, instead of her usual work method of writing to editorial specification (sometimes with formal guidelines, as in her Star Wars tie-ins, and other times with broader instructions to write something that had, say, vampires in it.)

continued...

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media

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National Book Awards on Wall Street

After the stock market plunged more than 400 points yesterday, hundreds of writers and publishing folks gathered at Cipriani Wall Street--celebrating the National Book Awards just blocks from the New York Stock Exchange.

GalleyCat headed to Wall Street, interviewing Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell, NBA finalist Salvatore Scibona, NBA Executive Director Harold Augenbraum, and literary blogger Edward Champion about what the economic crisis means to them.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media

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01234.asp?c=rss

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WBBT Day 3: "The 1940s appears to be the only
five-year decade in American history. The war ends, and boom -- now it's the Fifties. At least according to most history books."

Here is your Wednesday interview schedule:

Ellen Klages at Fuse Number 8: "'ve said before that writers are magpies -- the world is full of shiny things that I need to line my nest, many of them on eBay. In various parts of my (oh-so-cluttered) house are: an ad for the Kix Atomic Bomb Ring (from the Sunday comics); the ring itself (more than 15¢, these days....); six or seven different spinthariscopes (yes, they still work); a 1939 Royal typewriter; a hectograph; a can of Atomite; a model of a V-2 rocket; a 1948 Alamogordo High School yearbook; postcards of White Sands; and a box of old bottle caps, broken tin toys, pieces of Erector sets, marbles, paper labels, Mason jars, and cigar boxes."

Emily Jenkins at Writing and Ruminating: "In That New Animal the adult figures are insensitive to the needs of the child figures, as they are in a number of my other books (Daffodil, Daffodil Crocodile, Toy Dance Party, Skunkdog), but my primary concern is not a lesson for the grown-ups; it is the emotional experience of the child. Or dog. Or stuffed animal. Or rubber ball."

Ally Carter at Miss Erin

Mark Peter Hughes at Hip Writer Mama

Sarah Darer Littman at Bildungsroman: "

MT Anderson at Finding Wonderland

Mitali Perkins at Mother Reader

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ChasingRay/~3/458121517/wbbt_day_3.html

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TT: So you want to see a show

Here's my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.

BROADWAY:
? Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (comedy, G, suitable for bright children, reviewed here)
? August: Osage County (drama, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)
? Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)
? Boeing-Boeing (comedy, PG-13, cartoonishly sexy, reviewed here)
? Equus (drama, R, nudity and adult subject matter, closes Feb. 8, reviewed here)
? Gypsy (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Mar. 1, reviewed here)
? The Little Mermaid (musical, G, entirely suitable for children, reviewed here)
? A Man for All Seasons (drama, G, too intellectually demanding for children of any age, closes Dec. 14, reviewed here)
? South Pacific * (musical, G/PG-13, some sexual content, brilliantly staged but unsuitable for viewers acutely allergic to preachiness, reviewed here)