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Get Lit
L.A. Confidential author James Ellroy is in Philly this evening, giving a reading at the Free Library. A.D. Amorosi gushed about his new novel, Blood's a Rover, in CP's Kaleidoscope:
Knopf, $28.95, Sept. 22
From the snap-brim-sharp author who brought you the staccato cadences of The Black Dahlia comes what James Ellroy's called a ghastly tale of political malfeasance and bad juju. The finale to his Underworld USA trilogy, Blood's a Rover brings something scummy, cold, rapier fast and deeply corrupt: From its first pages, Ellroy comes out shooting, splashing blood across the stinking corpses of Howard Hughes' Las Vegas, Richard Nixon's 1968 run for the White House and J. Edgar Hoover's abusive grasp of the FBI.
Ellroy's latest is a whopper — some 600 pages of blood-splashing. We've got a copy to give away, and all you've gotta do is be the first to answer the following trivia question:
By what nickname is James Ellroy most commonly called?
E-mail carolyn.huckabay@citypaper.net for a chance to win, and in the meantime, get yourself over to the Free Library.
Thu., Sept. 24, 7:30 p.m., free, Free Library, Central Branch, 1901 Vine St., 215-567-4341, freelibrary.org.
[...] story at http://citypaper.net/blogs/clog/2009/09/24/get-lit-win-a-copy-of-james-ellroys-bloods-a-rover/ « beau brummel shoe [...]
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| Random House, 144 pp., $17, Sept. 1 |
Today we're giving away a copy of New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus' The Death of Conservatism — just in time for his talk tonight at the Central Branch of the Free Library.
Here's what freelibrary.org has to say about Tanenhaus, whose appearance tonight is part of the Meelya Gordon Memorial Lecture Series:
Tanenhaus is the author of the National Book Award finalist Whittaker Chambers, a biography of the man whose accusations sparked the post-war crusade against suspected American communists. His new book, The Death of Conservatism, argues that modern conservatism is a counter-revolutionary movement with two sides: "realistsâ who believe in tradition and "revanchistsâ who often find themselves at war with the United States.
Mr. Tanenhaus will be interviewed on-stage by Carlin Romano, critic-at-large for The Chronicle of Higher Education.
To win a copy, answer this trivia question:
Sam Tanenhaus can be heard chatting with authors and critics on what weekly podcast?
E-mail carolyn.huckabay@citypaper.net for a chance to win.
Sam Tanenhaus reading/signing, Tue., Sept. 15, 7:30 p.m., $14, Free Library, Central Branch, 1901 Vine St., 215-567-4341, freelibrary.org.
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| Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 291 pp., $25, Sept. 9 |
As promised, I'm back today with a Get Lit Wednesday special: I've got a shiny-new copy of Michelle Huneven's Blame, a novel about a woman's recovery from alcoholism, to give away to a faithful summer reader.
Entertainment Weekly gave Blame an A- this week. Here's a snippet of the review:
Patsy McLemoore is a newly minted college professor in Southern California with long legs, a Colgate smile, and seemingly limitless academic promise. She's also a blackout alcoholic. When the 29-year-old wakes up from one obliterated evening in county jail, she is met with sickening news: She has killed a young mother and daughter with her car, a brutal, irreversible crime that she can only hazily recall.
What follows is a chronicle of her imprisonment, and subsequent lifelong search for atonement — until a lightning-bolt revelation forces her to reassess nearly everything that came before. It's a plot that, in the kind of foil-embossed paperbacks you pick up at the airport newsstand, could easily turn hamfisted or hokey. But the award-winning Michelle Huneven unfurls her tale with unflagging emotional nuance: Patsy emerges as smart, self-aware, and very much flawed, neither a monster nor a redeemed angel.
To win a copy, answer me this:
According to official Alcoholics Anonymous data, how many people are members of AA worldwide?
E-mail me at carolyn.huckabay@citypaper.net for a chance to win.
[UPDATE, 1:20 p.m.]: Congratulations to Clog reader Jackie, who correctly responded that 2 million people around the world are members of Alcoholics Anonymous (in more than 180 countries, y'all).
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| Graywolf, 244 pp., $22, September |
I was too busy finishing The Kite Runner (finally) last week to give any books away, and that's just selfish. So watch the Clog tomorrow for an additional Get Lit trivia game (I'll be offering up a copy of Michelle Huneven's Blame).
In the meantime, there's this: Stephen Elliott's The Adderall Diaries: A memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder, which explores the author's drug dependency/writer's block/obsession with a real-life murder case. Yesterday, CP news intern Morgan Davis reviewed the book for our A&E blog, Critical Mass, and was none too pleased:
The premise of the book is exciting — a murder mystery as written through the memoir of an unrelated man. Elliott approaches the book with a clear idea of what he wants. Heâs going to examine Reiser and Sturgeon and break apart the red herrings in the case (like Sturgeonâs outlandish murder confession), all while examining his own troubled life and making comparisons between the two. But the result, much like Elliottâs life, is more jumbled mess than brilliant exposé.
Throughout the book, Elliott feels unfocused on anything besides how miserable his life is. The story begins with Elliottâs childhood, setting the stage for turmoil with a tale about his lying, seemingly psychotic father. From there, the author jumps from mini-story to mini-story, telling about his troubled youth, his drug addictions, his self-destructive love life and lack of inspiration to write, all while occasionally throwing in something about Reiserâs trial. By the time you actually get to the play-by-play description of the trial, you feel like Elliottâs dragged you on a bad acid trip while watching his home movies.
Burn! But I think you should decide for yourselves.
Here's your trivia question:
What Arizona Cardinal received a four-game suspension as the result of using Adderall to enhance his performance?
E-mail me at carolyn.huckabay@citypaper.net for a chance to win. And remember, there's always tomorrow.
[UPDATE, 1 p.m.]: Congratulations to Clog reader Liza C., who correctly answered that Ben Patrick is the Adderall-addled Cardinal.
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