Dibs

An apparent ritual slaughter in an historic Parisian church, with gory bits scattered around the altar, blood seeping into the fifteenth-century stone and a hunky but deep and emotionally vulnerable forensic sleuth scouring the scene ten years later for clues — so is there a new wave of Catholic-France-related murder mysteries or what? May paces his tale of a burst-open cold case with teasingly professional precision, languishing over the occasional glut of visual detail (“a tall, thin man with longish brown hair swept back to the upturned collar of his white shirt … carried a light summer jacket carelessly across his shoulder, and his trousers, belted at a slim waist, were immaculately creased, gathering in fashionable folds around neat, black leather Italian shoes”). Before this book, Glasgow-born May wrote a series of forensic thrillers based in China. Before that, he created, wrote and produced TV shows for the BBC and ITV, racking up a thousand credits in fifteen years. One of his shows, the early-’90s soap opera Machair, was in Gaelic.

Grade: B+

We were startled to see that billionaire speculator George Soros — affectionately known as “the man who broke the Bank of England” — has apparently adopted a lucrative new career: novelist. According to the Louisville Courier-Journal on Sunday, June 11, “Novelist George Soros, an international financier and philanthropist, and Joan Didion, a writer celebrated in the worlds of journalism, literature and film, will come to Louisville this fall as part of the Kentucky Author Forum…. Soros, 75, addresses the threats of nuclear proliferation, global warming, terrorism and the breakdown of international cooperation in his novel ‘The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror.’” A quick peek at Amazon.com reveals that said book is no novel at all but rather a nonfiction treatise about George W. Bush’s shortcomings. Freaky to think about plot and foreshadowing for a minute there, though! A bit more sleuthing revealed that philanthropist, John Kerry supporter and convicted inside-trader Soros — loved by some but accused by others of being personally responsible for massive financial collapses not only in the UK and Eastern Europe but also Asia — is the son of a famous Esperanto writer, Tivadar Soros. In 1946, teenaged George — one of the world’s few native Esperanto speakers, taught to speak the synthetic, invented “international language” from birth — used his participation in an Esperanto convention outside the Iron Curtain to escape his Soviet-occupied native Hungary. He has written other books such as The Crisis of Global Capitalism, none of which are novels.

How much do you want North Korea to know about science and technology? “In a bid to boost development of science and technology, North Korea held an international science [and] technology book fair in Pyongyang,” reports the Korea Times. “According to the North Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the 5th Pyongyang International Science and Technology Book Fair opened on June 4 attended by of 32 organizations from 14 countries. Held at the Three-Revolution Exhibition Hall, valuable scientific and technological books … were on display…. Indicating the event’s importance, Choe Thae-bok, secretary of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party of North Korea … attended the opening ceremony.” Uh — great! They could sure use a few books on nutrition science, medical science, computer science, and nautical science for those planning an escape by sea. But ixnay on the uclearnay iencescay, mmkay?

Saigon doctor and internationally renowned “faciotherapist” Bui Quoc Chau is outraged because a book he wrote in 1984 about treating patients based on the locations of their facial moles has recently appeared in Spanish, French and German editions with someone else’s byline instead of his. The byline is that of Le Quang Nhuan, one of Chau’s former students. Chau — an acupuncturist who invented “faciotherapy,” aka dien chan, more than twenty years ago and has allegedly taught it to 10,000 practitioners around the world — has emailed the offender asking for an explanation: “I want everything to be equitable and will claim back my rights,” he said, according to Vietnamnet. In English, the book’s title would translate to Dien chan, Treatment Methodologies Based On Facial Spots.

Summer Hayes owns over 1,200 My Little Ponies. Remember those little mass-produced plastic horses with lush plastic manes that were marketed with corporate precision to preteen girls in an era of soulless toys and synthetic identity? Neeeiigh! Which one was your fav? April Mist, Heatherwinds, Misty Blue, or Penny Candy? Indiana collector Hayes has been stocking up on MLPs for twenty years and has now written a book, The My Little Pony G3 Collector’s Resource, to guide fellow collectors through bidding for MLPs on eBay and hunting elsewhere for the winsome plastic creatures. “Many twenty-somethings are rediscovering the toys of their childhood and instead of throwing them out, they have decided to accumulate more,” explains the press release for Hayes, who has a whole room in her home stuffed with ponies, play sets and other accessories. Next month in San Francisco, she will be a guest speaker at this year’s My Little Pony Fair. Hasbro manufactures an exclusive line of MLPs especially for fair attendees.

You saw this coming. It was just a matter of where and when. The latest answer is: India! Members of the Mizoram Producers’ Guild, a filmmakers’ organization in the northeastern satate of Mizoram, protested both the book and film versions of The Da Vinci Code, calling them blasphemous, and burned Dan Brown in effigy, according to the Hindustan Times. Bamboo-producing Mizoram State is mostly populated by members of the Mizo ethnic group, and is 87 percent Christian. Mizoram also has the second-highest literacy rate in India: 88.8 percent, second only to Kerala.

Fifty years ago, animals with the wrong numbers of heads or legs would have been taxidermed and turned into sideshow exhibits. But now one such creature appears on daytime talk shows. Does that mean we’re more kindhearted — or that we still love gawking at sideshow freaks but we just can’t admit that’s what we’re doing? In 2003, the Stringfellow family acquired a little brown puppy with only one front leg. They named her Faith. Soon afterward, Faith’s withered remaining front leg was amputated. The Stringfellows taught her to walk, hop, and stand on her hind legs — then they turned her into a brand, self-publishing a book called With a Little Faith through Xlibris and establishing a “Faith the Biped Dog” Web site. Now they’ve taken their freaky creature on the road. Oklahoma English professor Jude Stringfellow has appeared with Faith on Oprah and Montel, pimping the pooch as proof that disabilities can be overcome. (For aesthetic reasons, it’s just lucky that Faith is a female dog.) The Web site includes zany photographs (Faith in a tiny T-shirt! Faith outfitted with white feathered wings for Christmas!) and commentary from Stringfellow, who remembers how her son found the puppy: “The mother dog was actually trying to terminate Faith’s life when Reuben lifted her weak body out from under the mother dog; he brought her home to me knowing I had a heart like a marshmellow.” So many authors out there yearn for a chance to appear on Oprah, because it tends to make authors rich. But now the secret is revealed: Don’t be a literary genius. Just get involved with something that makes people go, “Eeeeuw!” — and tell them they’re being inspired. It worked for James Frey.

C. Max Magee’s entertaining literary blog with the unlikely name The Millions consistently serves up relevant book news and incisive commentary on selected new books. Touching on both the content of the books themselves and their significance within the culture at large, The Millions makes itself an indispensable read for the savvy book-blog aficionado. The Millions’ incredibly plain and unremarkable blog design harks back to the simplicity and text-only clarity of the earliest blogs, back in the mists of time — say, oh, three or four years ago. But hey — it’s only fitting that a blog about words has no need for distracting pictures.

Grade: A-

Intellectuals — ya gotta love ‘em. Who would have thought to write an academic treatise linking the ouevre of zombie-film maestro George Romero with classic themes of hell and death from literature and religion? Well, who better but a professor of religious studies whose previous books include The Truth Is Out There: Christian Faith and the Classics of TV Science Fiction? If you can settle down and stop laughing at the concept, Paffenroth presents refreshingly readable analyses of Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead and other classics, giving the brainy film fan much to chew on, e.g.: “Zombies … violate the natural world of physical and biological laws. Since they are not fully alive, zombies … cannot reproduce on their own. They are more like a cult of cannibalistic Shakers (an eighteenth-to nineteenth-century Christian sect who believed in celibacy for all members, not just clergy)…. Zombies fulfill the worst potentialities of humans to create a hellish kingdom on earth of endless, sterile repetition and boredom.” See? It’s fun.

Grade: A

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When he wasn’t busy rehearsing, playing riffs, engaging in affairs with thirteen-year-old girls, scribbling in his journal or metal-detecting, ex-Stones bassist Bill Wyman was snapping photographs. Selections from his 22,000-image archive will go on exhibit at the San Francisco Art Exchange tomorrow, launching an international tour. The photos depict Wyman’s famous friends as well as landscapes. He plans to compile his faves into a book this year. It will follow his previous efforts, Rolling with the Stones and The Stones: A History in Cartoons, the latter of which will have its US release this October. Always busy, Wyman — born William Perks in 1936 — was 47 when he began a relationship with 13-year-old Mandy Smith. Her mother approved. Six years later, Smith and the rocker wed. Soon thereafter, Wyman’s 30-year-old son from a previous marriage married Smith’s mother, who was then 46. (This gives a whole new meaning to the title of that classic Stones hit, “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby?”) The “oldest Stone” is also an avid amateur archeologist who has invented a new type of metal detector for kids which will go on the market later this year.