And now I am going to brag.

Publisher’s Weekly on IRAQIGIRL:

IraqiGirl: Diary of a Teenage Girl in Iraq. Haymarket (Consortium, dist.), $13 paper ISBN 978-1-931859-73-8

In 2004 in Mosul (the third largest city in Iraq), a 15-year-old girl started a blog detailing her life in the midst of the Iraq War. Her journal encompasses the day-to-day trauma the American invasion has caused her city, her family and friends. “Today is like every day in Iraq. No electricity, no fun, and no peace,” writes Hadiya (all Iraqi names in the book are pseudonyms). Her struggle against helplessness is agonizing, though her view modulates somewhat over time (her blog is still active, but the book covers her writings only through 2007). “I sense that my country is still beautiful in spite of everything that has happened to it,” she says during a hopeful moment. Poems and photographs accompany her thoughts on her academic struggles, Islam and growing up in a war zone; comments from her blog are interspersed, and Hadiya responds to others in several entries (“Another anonymous said, ‘You certainly don’t deserve this life.’ I want to ask you something—is this really a life?”). Hadiya’s authentically teenage voice, emotional struggles and concerns make her story all the more resonant. Ages 12–up. (July)

If you happen to be in the San Francisco area this week, please consider heading to Modern Times independent bookstore this Thursday, July 30, at 7 PM. IRAQIGIRL’s developer (i.e., the guy who discovered the IraqiGirl blog, had the idea to make it into a book, and assembled the initial manuscript), and former human shield in Baghdad, John Ross, will be talking about how the book came to be and reading some selections.

And now having shamelessly promoted the book, I’m going to even more shamelessly brag on behalf of the press publishing it. Here’s Library Journal, post-BEA:

Small presses, big books

Essays by Arundhati Roy and Wallace Shawn, plus reflections on the contemporary world by Noam Chomsky and Breyten Breytenbach. Top picks from a big New York house, right? Wrong. These authors are all being published this fall by Chicago-based Haymarket Press, truly a small press that thinks big and my top find of the convention. Roy’s Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers (Sept.) argues that Hindu nationalism and economic reform are thwarting India’s democratic efforts, turning the country into a police state. Shawn’s Essays (Sept.), his first collection and ranging over his entire career, move from the act of playwriting to considerations of privilege, while Breytenbach’s Notes from the Middle World (Nov.) considers the artist’s role in a shrinking global environment. Chomsky’s Hopes and Prospects ponders political activism in the Western Hemisphere.

And now I am going to stop bragging. For this week, anyway! Real posts coming up.

Friday “Why?”: Why vampires?

I happened to be staying with a friend while furiously (pun?) reading BREAKING DAWN, the fourth and final book in the Twilight series, which meant I didn’t really see much of my friend. In one of my brief pauses in reading, though, at about 4 AM, he asked me why I thought vampires are all the rage.

Photo from the West Warwick Public Library

I gave him a very supply-side answer: Parts of the publishing industry are in crisis, I said. October was the biggest month ever for bookstores returning stock to publishers.* Some small presses are folding altogether. Borders is bankrupt but still operational, and massively cutting down on the number (and hence, variety) of books it carries so it can face more covers outward on the shelf.

“Midlist” authors (i.e., everyone who’s not the big bestsellers — nobody ever talks about “bottom-list”) are getting fewer promotional resources; if you don’t happen to have the backing of an enthusiastic small press that pumps their efforts into it, good luck getting a book tour as a smaller-name author.**

In this context, I said, we should expect a lot more copycatting. Publishers are desperate to find the next big bestseller. So once TWILIGHT was such a hit, the incredible vampire glut we’re in now was inevitable.***

Fine, he said, but why was TWILIGHT such a hit? Why vampires? Is there something about the craziness of right now, with its wars and economic insecurity, that gives young people a death lust, or what?

For that, I did not have a good answer. Hence, the Friday “Why?”. What do y’all think?

* Here’s an explanation of the completely insane system of bookstore returns the entire publishing industry operates under. [Caveat: I hesitated to link to this blog because the blogger has written some posts I found really offensive; specifically, at least two where she labels any criticism of the Israeli state, or support for Palestinian self-determination, as anti-Semitic. But it is a good explanation of what happened to the publishing industry in October 2008, which was the first big wake-up call of how this current economic depression may affect publishing. (Not the last word, though; Amazon's sales are up 18% this month... cheap entertainment and all?) So I'm linking it with this caveat so readers can decide for themselves whether they want to click.]

** Incidentally, everything I said above is all the more reason to support independent publishers you like, if you value diversity of ideas. Myself, I work with Haymarket Books (which, by the way, is one of the enthusiastic small presses that does tour its authors). Among other things, on a project you’ll be hearing much more about on this blog soon.

*** Even if that means publishing endless terrible, terrible books. VAMPIRE ACADEMY, I’m still looking at you!