Stumbled on this great illustration which combines two of my favorite things literature and drinking …

Boston’s (Ob)literati: How to hoist a pint like this town’s greatest writers — past, present, and future via WORKS : The Illustrations of Philip Cheaney.

Here are the five paths:

1. Traditional publishing: where you query and submit to agents and editors in an effort to land a contract that pays an advance and royalties (and typically involves nationwide bookstore distribution).
2. Partnership publishing: one might consider this the evolution of traditional publishing, where authors are positioned more as partners, receive higher royalties, but usually no advance.
3. Fully-assisted publishing: the old “vanity” self-publishing model, where you write a check and get your book published without lifting a finger. I don’t recommend this, but it’s still a significant part of the self-publishing market, now dominated by Author Solutions.
4. Do-it-yourself (DIY) publishing with a distributor: while this applies to either print or e-books, today this usually involves e-publishing your work (to reduce financial risk and investment involved with print), and using a service provider or distributor to reach all possible online retailers—and/or to provide some level of assistance.
5. Do-it-yourself (DIY) direct publishing: when an author doesn’t put any middlemen between him and the retailer selling his books. Often, this option is combined with #4 above; for example, someone might sell direct through Amazon KDP, and complement it with distribution to all other retailers through Smashwords. This is possible because most distributors and online retailers of e-books work on a nonexclusive basis.

For more detail read the blog post or click on the image above for the full size version.

(via HuffPost books)

SYNC is a program that gives away two complete audiobook downloads–a current Young Adult title paired thematically with a Classic or Required Summer Reading title–each week to listeners ages 13+ while SYNC is in session.

SYNC is in session this year from May 30 – August 21, 2013.

Sound cool, no? Well, apparently way back in April the SYNC 2013 Titles Were Revealed.

Just to give you a tast, here are a few of the pairings:

May 30 – June 5, 2013
Of Poseidon by Anna Banks, read by Rebecca Gibel (AudioGO)
The Tempest by William Shakespeare, read by a Full Cast (AudioGO)

June 6 – June 12, 2013
The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, Book 1: The Mysterious Howling by Maryrose Wood, read by Katherine Kellgren (HarperAudio)
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, read by Wanda McCaddon (Tantor Audio)

I for one plan on trying to participate. Follow the link above to get plugged in.

No writer—except perhaps for his father, Michel Shaara and his Pulitzer Prize-winning historical novel, The Killer Angels, better brings the Civil War to life than Jeff Shaara. The multiple-award-winning, New York Times bestselling author began a new Civil War trilogy in 2012 with A Blaze of Glory, about the Battle of Shiloh. A Chain of Thunder: A Novel of the Siege of Vicksburg is the second book , and depicts the turning point of the Civil War through not just the well-known personalities like Grant and Pemberton. Shaara’s unique skill is in bringing the soldiers themselves alive, in getting the reader to feel what it was like on that bloody battlefield where over 19,000 soldiers lost their lives. Jeff lives in Florida.

Details

Who: Jeff Shaara

When: Monday, June 03, 2013 7:30 pm

Where: Columbus Museum of Art, 480 E. Broad Street, Columbus, OH 43215

Cost: $20 for adults; $18 for students and seniors

My headline is intentionally provocative (a blogger’s got to get his clicks) but I found the compare and contrast technique of Anne Applebaum rather interesting.

Of Sheryl Sandberg, author of Lean In: Women, Work, and the will to Lead, she says:

She has indeed done something new: She has written the first truly successful, best-selling “how to succeed in business” motivational book to be explicitly designed and marketed for women. She has done so cleverly, using language intended to appeal to women—“ongoing encouragement and development” as opposed to “battle-tested business techniques.” As part of her pitch to women, she also claims to be telling a larger story about gender and society, about which more in a moment. But this is not a book that belongs on the shelf alongside Gloria Steinem and Susan Faludi. It belongs in the business section.Despite her gender, the similarities between Sandberg and Welch or Iacocca, for example, are more profound than the differences. Lean In, like Winning or Talking Straight, is neither a proper autobiography nor a work of journalism. Sandberg has conducted no original research. Instead she deploys autobiographical anecdotes, backed up by social science studies and material from other people’s books. Some of the social science studies are dubious. Sandberg claims, for example, that studies show that “couples who share domestic responsibilities have more sex.” Alas, other studies show precisely the opposite.2 But that isn’t the point: this is a motivational tract, not a scientific paper.

Of Hanna Rosin, author of The End of Men and the Rise of Women, in contrast:

Unlike Lean In, Hanna Rosin’s The End of Men is very well documented, meticulously researched, and based on the author’s extensive reporting, not her personal life story. It also draws almost exactly the opposite conclusion. In The End of Men, Rosin argues that the real crisis facing America today is not the dearth of women bosses, but the dearth of men at all levels except at the very top.

She then asks this question regarding Lean In:

Once again: would two hundred and fifty female Fortune 500 CEOs make a big difference to American women? Maybe a little bit, with things like pregnancy parking. Would they work doggedly to change American legislation in order to provide better access to child care, early education, and other programs that would make working life easier for women and men alike? Not necessarily. Would they help American men find employment in the changing economy, so they can help support their wives and families? Not very likely. Would they help the women around the world who suffer real hardship solely because they are women? On the evidence of this book, not at all.

Seems clear to me that Applebaum is arguing for less celebrity based inspirational books by and for women and more well researched books and ideas about how to actually address the very real problems men and women are facing.

Love the illustration that accompanies this review.  It is a portion of the cover art from The Human Division by John Scalzi.  And the review is pretty interesting too.  Paul Di Filippo on :

Entertainingly exemplifying the maxim that “All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means,” The Human Division is the type of intelligently crafted and inventive military-political science fiction that reminds us that though we might be able to pinpoint a genre’s takeoff point, nobody can predict how far it will fly.

Speaking of Modesty Blaise, see last post, here is the trailer for the 1966 film. It struck me as unintentionally funny but perhaps I was just a litte stir crazy on a Friday afternoon.

The Impossible Virgin, Peter O’Donnell (1971)

“In 1953, O’Donnell created his comic-strip character Modesty Blaise as a female version of Bond; the strip was sexy and violent in a way unknown to stateside comics pages. A street urchin who grew into a powerful organized-crime leader, Modesty (and her platonic tough-guy sidekick Willy Garvin) is now reformed, sort of, and working for the British Secret Service. The novel Modesty Blaise (1965) was O’Donnell’s novelization of his (mostly ignored) screenplay for Joseph Losey’s 1966 film of the same name. The warm critical and popular response to Modesty in novel form led to a long-running series. Alone among such fun Bond-era spies as The Avengers and The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Modesty enjoys an enviable body of quality prose fiction. Modesty rarely engaged in Cold War themes, but in The Impossible Virgin she does.”

An interesting glimpse into the culture and issue of the time. Tracing a character from comic strip to movie to novels over the course of decades.

A Romero original from one of the later Modesty Blaise storylines (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

via USC Rossier Online:

In an effort to support “March into Literacy” Month and our youth, we have created a both fun and informative infographic, “The Most Loved Children’s Books.” In it, we have recounted our favorite books as a way to celebrate children’s literature throughout the years.

How God is described today strikes many as mean, primitive, backward, illogical, tribal, and at odds with the frontiers of science. At the same time, many intuitively feel a sense of reverence and awe in the world. Can we find a new way to talk about God?

Pastor and New York Times bestselling author Rob Bell does here for God what he did for heaven and hell in Love Wins: he shows how traditional ideas have grown stale and dysfunctional and reveals a new path for how to return vitality and vibrancy to how we understand God. Bell reveals how we got stuck, why culture resists certain ways of talking about God, and how we can reconnect with the God who is with us, for us, and ahead of us, pulling us forward into a better future—and ready to help us live life to the fullest.

I am not sure the lack of controversy exactly explains why I found this one less captivating and engaging. Instead, I think part of it is subject matter, I am more interested in eschatology than belief/unbelief, and part audience. This feels very much like a book written to an audience that has rejected God secure in their science and rationalism as the only intelligent options but maybe with a hint of doubt lingering underneath or sense that this choice leaves something out. That is not really me so I read the book outside the target audience to a greater degree than with Love Wins.

But with that audience in mind, there is a lot to like about What We Talk About. Bell has an accessible, conversational tone with a sense of humor and good will but also a contagious sense of awe and purpose. Instead of trying to overpower the hyper-rationalist scientism of our day with cold hard facts and data driven logical arguments he tries to use the joy of discovery and the complexity of life on this planet to undermine this brittle world view too often described as “science.” He playfully but persistently points out that not only is there no necessary conflict between faith and science but that what we think when we think “science” is  out-of-step and out-of-date with the bigness, wildness and weirdness of actual science. Current science is more inline with God than we might have imagined.

I like the way JR Forasteros laid out Bell’s ideas in his review:

Rob offers three concepts: God is with us, for us and ahead of us. Contrary to the distant god of Modernist Deism, God is working around us, near us, accessible to us. But Rob is clear that this is not pantheism. God is not everything. We are not God. God is with us.

Contrary to the moralistic god of Modernist Humanism, God invites us to discover the persons we were created to be. God came among us as Jesus not to give us a list of rules, to legislate us into persons God could tolerate, but to show us the way back to life. But Rob is clear that this is not Prosperity Gospel. Jesus’ good news is radical, counterintuitive.

Contrary to the primitive, tribalistic god who can’t keep up with Modernity, a god of the gaps whose realm constantly loses ground to the onslaught of Science, God is ahead of us, calling humanity forward to be a better people. Every day is a chance to move another “click” forward as a people.

As noted here, Bell does a good job of attempting to explain how culture and world views change over time and thus so must approaches to God and the implications of His call on our lives. Bell very much views history as having meaning and direction. God acts like yeast in the dough of history, expanding our understandings and bringing meaning and purpose to life. God is pulling us forward to deeper and deeper meaning and towards humanity as He intended it to be.

Truth is not relative in the sense of different for each person but it is something that requires stages of growth and understanding. Each generation must wrestle with truth and apply it to their worlds even as they seek to know truth more deeply and more fully.

The danger lurking underneath this story is that it is easy to align our own “progressive” understanding of politics, culture and history and claim that God himself is behind these ideas and movements. This is the temptation that says that new and threatening views are always mocked at first and so any “progressive” view that is questioned, or any slipper slope that is pointed out, is simply “reactionary” and “on the wrong side of history.” If hardened into ideology it also falls into presentism and assumes that in every area we are moving forward and thus more knowledgable than our predecessors.

I don’t think Bell is actually the caricature of a liberal that many think him to be but I do believe that the current cultural pressure flows in that direction and it is a significant temptation to those who are, like Bell, trying to open up new lines of thinking and reach new audiences in order to break up stereotypes and assumptions about God, belief and the Christian life.

I should also note that if you are looking for a traditional or straightforward presentation of the gospel or a broad systemic theology you won’t find it. Bell is not making the case for Christianity in that way but rather trying to get those who feel in their guts that there is more to life than what we can see, hear or feel-what we can test in a lab-to open their hearts and minds to a bigger understanding of God. Many I am sure will see it as more happy-go-lucky liberalism without the necessary elements of sin and the cross. But I think this misunderstands the message and the audience. And Bell clearly discusses the tragic implications and repercussions of sin and offers Jesus as the only solution but The Roman Road it is not (and that’s the point to some degree).

For those open to it, I think Bell offers some fresh ways of talking about the way we see the world and what we think we know. And about how the way we see God in history impacts our actions and perspective. I would think it would be a great conversation starter for those who are not open to more conventional approaches to God and church. And that is no small thing.

Let me quote from JR again:

WWTAG sounds exactly like the conversations I have over and over with people who genuinely want to know God but can’t comprehend the god presented to them by the Church. Rob offers the Church new ways to talk about God that are still wholly faithful to the Church’s historic witness to Jesus.

And we need new ways to talk about God. Not because God has changed. But because we have.

Some may find this uncomfortable but it is important and true in my opinion.

Related articles

• Rob Bell’s ‘Ginormous’ Mirror