Gilded Covers

In a front page article, the New York Times describes how publishers have been putting more and more effort into the design of a hardcover books, to help them compete with e-books.

Unfortunately, the article doesn't dive into the economics, and I'm not sure if this approach makes sense for publishers.  In general, the same publisher will hold both the hardcover rights and the electronic rights to a new release. Once production costs are taken into account, it may well be more profitable for publishers to push readers toward the e-book format.

In any case, the efforts to keep printed book alive are working, for now.  According to the article, the English translation of Murakami's 1Q84 has sold 95,000 copies in hardcover, compared to 28,000 in e-book.  Other recent books featured in the article include:

• 11/22/63 (Stephen King)
• Decoded (Jay-Z)
• The Sense of An Ending (Julian Barnes)

Although the article doesn't mention it, I suspect that many hardcover books are given as gifts.  While many people buy e-books for their own consumption, they are unlikely to give e-books as gifts.  And of course, a beautiful book makes a better gift.

Are there books that you are planning to give -- or that you want -- this holiday season?

Related posts:
1Q84: Hardcover

Review: The Sense of an Ending (Julian Barnes)

In recent years, a certain type of literary fiction has become in fashion.  An elderly narrator recalls the story of his life (and I say "his" because these do tend tend to be books by men), beginning in youth and moving forward.  The narrator's purpose, perhaps only vaguely sensed by the reader at first, is to make sense of some particular "event" that formed a turning point in his life.  The nature of that event will only become clear toward the end of the novel.  When it does, it drives home the point that memory is fallible: it consists of stories we tell to make sense of our lives, but that do not always correspond to to fact.

This isn't new stuff: Proust understood as much, and since the 1990s it has been a hot topic in psychology, criminal science, and other disciplines.  But it's also rich a vein for writers to explore.  I am sure you can think of several examples -- the ones that come to my mind include The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, The Sea by John Banville, Out Stealing Horses by Per Pettersen, and now, The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes.

The Remains of the Day, of course, won the Booker Prize in 1989, The Sea won the Booker in 2005, and The Sense of an Ending is being tipped as the frontrunner for the 2011 award, which will be announced later tomorrow.  If Pettersen had been a citizen of the British Commonwealth or Ireland, he no doubt would have been a contender as well.

I will say this: Barnes is the best writer about old age that we have today, far better than the repetitive, randy, Philip Roth.  As his narrator, Tony Webster, delves into his past in 1960s England to make sense of a friend's suicide, Barnes (finally) shows that he is a master of such old-fashioned skills as atmosphere and plot.  In short, I found this slim novel very difficult to put down; indeed, I nearly finished it in one sitting.  But was it great?  Barnes is treading territory that has been well-covered before, and he fails to use the device to connect to the greater concerns of, say, The Remains of the Day.

I've not yet read any of this year's other Booker contenders, so I can't say whether Barnes deserves the nod this year.  I will say that this book is a fine way to spend an evening, and one that will leave you thinking about your own memories for some time after.

UPDATE: It has just been announced that Julian Barnes has won the Man Booker Prize for The Sense of an Ending.  Congratulations!

Related Posts:
Fall Reading List
Quote from "Out Stealing Horses"
Pulse

Fall Reading List

The Cat's Table, by Michael Ondaatje, is getting rave reviews from the New York Times, the New York Times Sunday Book Review, and just about everyone else.  Despite the fact that I felt the New Yorker excerpt didn't work as a short story, I will be picking this up.

So, my fall reading list (with publication dates in parentheses) is shaping up as follows:

The Cat's Table, Michael Ondaatje (10/4)
The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes (10/5)
The Stranger's Child, Alan Hollinghurst (10/11)
1Q84, Haruki Murakami (10/25)
The Prague Cemetery, Umberto Eco (11/8)
The Angel Esmeralda, Don DeLillo (11/15)

Holy crap - after a dry summer, what an embarrassment of riches! And on top of that, when it comes time for a break from fiction, there's the new biography of Hemingway due on 10/17, Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost.  Definitely, there's no need to sit around bemoaning the end of the baseball season.

Are there any upcoming new releases that I am missing?