People of the Book
A Blog about Book Publishing from a Catholic Perspective

A reader is intrigued by the book Saints Behaving Badly, which tells the stories of colorful sinners who became saints. But she asks a good question:

Did any of these saints fall on their road of conversion and then get back up? Most, if not all of these saints had awful backgrounds before knowing Christ. But what about those who fell even after coming to know Christ or entering the Church and had to make that painful journey to get back up and go again? Are these not just as courageous and maybe even more humble? Or are there any known saints who we know of who had to do this?

Lots of saints struggled mightily with their character defects and the effects of past serious sin. But how many fell into serious sin after their conversions? The gospels give us Peter, who denied Jesus. There must be others. I just can’t think of any. Can you?

The Sacred Space website, run by the Irish Jesuits, has been visited more than 22 million times since 1999 by people looking for a place to pray in cyberspace. Prayer sites on the internet tend to be light on content and heavy in images of clouds, water, and paths in the woods. Not Sacred Space. The site is content-rich, offering daily readings, weekly themes, and a sophisticated framework for daily prayer that is steeped in the Ignatian tradition. But praying in front of a computer isn’t for everyone. Now Ave Maria Press has published the Sacred Space: The Prayer Book, a year’s worth of the website’s material, arranged for every day in 2007, printed on paper, and bound between two covers. Prayer the old fashioned way.

“It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come out, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.

“You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.

“Today, October 2nd, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone.”

–A. Bartlett Giamatti

The World Series ended, fittingly enough, with a Tiger hitter striking out with men on base. It was one of the many hundreds of strikeouts racked up by this team of hackers during this magical season. An aggressive approach to hitting looks wonderful when it works, when the pitching is mediocre and uncertain, when the sliders flatten out and the fast balls drift into the middle of the plate. Then the balls fly over the fences and into the gaps between outfielders. But when the opposition pitching is good, as it was in the World Series, the advantage, already with the pitcher, swings even more strongly in favor of the man on the mound. He doesn’t have to throw a strike when the batter is coming up to swing at the first good pitch he sees. When he gets ahead in the count, the good pitcher can toy with the aggressive hitter’s mind. The St. Louis Cardinal pitching was very good. We were treated to a succession of Tigers swinging at balls in the dirt and staring in awe at unexpected slow curves that landed in the strike zone.

The Tigers scored eleven runs in five games. Not nearly enough to win. They also committed eight errors. Five of these were by Tiger pitchers. Four of them were damaging and two were catastrophic, costing games four and five. The team that had done the little things right throughout the playoffs suddenly stopped playing the game smartly and smoothly.

My son and I went to the first game of the Series last Saturday at Comerica Park. We were all happy and a little dazed. “The Tigers in the World Series. I can’t believe it,” people said in the stands and in hot dog lines and on Woodward Avenue outside the ballpark. In the World Series, with this team of free-swinging Venezuelans, Midwesterners, Dominicans, and Puerto Ricans, with these cheerful young pitchers who throw so hard, led by the crusty old-school manager. Yes, we’re in the World Series with these terrific Tigers who, one suspects, will be even better next year.

That’s the hard question Booksquare asks, and it’s a good one. It’s easier and cheaper to buy books from Amazon. Readers might visit publishers’ sites for “information, discussion, interaction,” but these are in short supply. “Most publishing house websites read and feel like they’ve lost a long, hard battle with the marketing department as vetted by public relations and legal. There isn’t an ounce of genuine emotion on these sites.”

Novelist Josie Brown discusses the traditional “Five P’s” of marketing as they relate to books: product, packaging, price, promotion and place. But she adds a sixth: partnership. “Authors and publishers are in fact business partners. That’s what the contract you both signed contends:”

Business partners DISCUSS things. Like how much money will be allocated toward marketing and promotion, and where and how those efforts will take place. . . .They look at ACTUAL costs together, and they review sales figures together, too–on a WEEKLY basis, not every six months.

They do what they can to extend the shelf life of their products, instead of discarding them after 30 or 90 days.

And they meet together with the sales team, to discuss the product’s (the book’s) strengths and selling points.

If more publishers actually treated their authors as partners, more books might be successful.

Steven Riddle argues J.K. Rowling is writing a great Christian story. “Thus, embedded, entangled, and completely blended throughout her series of novels, Rowling gives us lessons and views of how Christianity really operates. ‘But no one ever goes to Church or prays, or anything Christian.’ And of course, as anyone knows, that is less than nothing as an objection because the same holds true for both Tolkien and Lewis, her forbears in the art of bringing the truth of Christianity to the unsuspecting reader.” Meanwhile, J. K. Rowling is writing the last of the Harry Potter stories, and Potterland is alive with rumors that Harry dies in the end.

Who said this: “I don’t have to worry about what people think of me, whether they hate me or not. People hated on Jesus. They threw stones at him and tried to kill him, so how can I complain or worry about what people think?”

Karl Rove
Tom Cruise
Terrell Owens
Snoop Dogg

That’s one of the celebrity religion quotes featured in the Dallas Morning News “Faith of the Famous” quiz. Take the quiz here. If you think you’re on top of pop culture religion, you might be humbled. My score was 45 percent. There. I’ve admitted it. Take the quiz and put your score in the comment box here.

I didn’t get the question above. If you’re not going to take the quiz, see the answer here.

We read serious novels because they cast light on moral questions, but why are novels with fine moral sentiments often so painful to read? Robertson Davies, the late Canadian novelist, had some perceptive things to say about this familiar and vexing question in a lecture recently reposted on the First Things website. “Morality which is applied cosmetically to catch a particular taste is found in many books, but not in the best books,” he said. Moral wisdom must spring from deepest truths about human beings. It is found there by the intuitive genius of the novelist and it emerges in stories involving real human beings. Moral purpose thus demonstrated strikes the reader are profoundly true because “morality is part of the structure of man.”

Catholic author Therese Borchard has launched a new blog on Beliefnet.com to help fellow sufferers from depression and anxiety. It’s called Beyond Blue. Borchard has suffered frightfully from these afflictions. But, lost in her dark night, “I felt my way through the woods to the campfire, where a crowd of fellow depressives welcomed me. They taught me which voices to listen to (Go for it!), which to ignore (You’re a failure.), and how to get out of bed the days your sickness has attacked every muscle in your body.” She hopes her blog will help others that way.

Here’s the first paragraph of Stephen Barr’s review of Richard Dawkins’s new book. Barr on the mound. Dawkins at the plate. This pitch is coming at the batter’s head:

A small price that I have paid for the privilege of writing book reviews for First Things is that I have ended up reading four of Richard Dawkins’ books. That is more than anyone should have to read, for though Dawkins writes extremely well, his repertoire of ideas is quite limited. Indeed, everything that Dawkins has to say about the world, aside from his popular expositions of science, could be explained to an intelligent person in a few minutes; it doesn’t take a whole book, let alone all the books he has written. Having nothing new to say, he has decided to say the old things with increasingly unrestrained boorishness.

Read the whole thing.

Publishers are finding that they sell more books when customers are able to browse them online at Amazon and Google. Sales of Penguin books included in the Amazon “Search Inside” program increased 7 percent last year, the company said. The sales director of Oxford University Press says that “Google Book Search has helped us turn searchers into consumers.” Microsoft has now joined Google and Amazon in the book scanning business, deploying a machine that scans up to 2,400 pages an hour. Blogger Booksquare says it’s time for publishers to drop their opposition to digitization and start making use of it.

Fr. Jim Martin, SJ is a featured “preacher and teacher” on the revamped Beliefnet.com website. A couple of months ago, blogger Rocco Palmo nominated him as the successor to Fulton Sheen. Fr. Martin doesn’t have Bishop Sheen’s eyes, but he does have some of the master’s poise and popular touch. Look at him here. Fr. Martin is often heard on National Public Radio and he’s the author of the well-received book My Life with the Saints. The Beliefnet videos show the increasing sophistication of video on the internet. They are well-written and slickly produced. Philip Yancy, another writer I like, is also a Beliefnet “preacher and teacher.” Beliefnet’s package also includes advertising, which is cleverly done as well.

Worried about keeping up with all the good books being published? Humorist Alex Beam offers a four-step primer to absorbing books without actually reading them. One strategem is to listen to what people are saying:

In the old days, back when people read books, you could pick up quite a bit of information just by chatting. I found that Frank McCourt’s heart-rending memoir, “Angela’s Ashes,” was a terrific book not to have read, because everyone else had. “I couldn’t believe those living conditions,” someone would say to me over lunch. “Yes, and the little children dying,” I would answer. “It was so, so sad.”

It was a transcendent, indelible baseball moment: two outs, bottom of the ninth, two men on, game tied, the American League pennant on the line. Forty thousand roaring fans on their feet. Huston Street, Oakland’s closer, on the mound. He glares at the batter, Magglio Ordonez, the Tigers slugger, who has been struggling in the playoffs. The count is 1-0. Street sets, pitches, Mags swings –

I saw it when it happened, and I saw the moment replayed on television maybe 25 times: the perfect swing, the ball arcing up, up, up into the chilly night air, then down into the frenzied crowd in the left field stands. A walk-off, three-run, game-winning, series-winning, pennant-winning home run. Pandemonium in Comerica Park – pure joy for Tigers fans everywhere. Add the name of Magglio Ordonez to Carlton Fisk, Joe Carter, Bill Mazeroski, Bobby Thompson, Aaron Boone, and Kirk Gibson in the pantheon of post-season home run heroes.

The moment was all the sweeter for the superb play that led up to it. The Tigers had scrapped back to tie the game after falling behind 3-0. They did all the little things right: double plays, advancing runners, taking the extra base, laying off bad pitches and swinging at the good ones. Most of the time it made no difference, but a couple of times smart play mattered. The Tigers’ first run scored after Santiago, a backup infielder playing only because another was injured, sacrificed a runner from second to third with nobody out. In the top of the eighth inning, Oakland loaded the bases with two outs. Wil Ledezma came in from the bullpen, threw hard stuff to a batter who has trouble with fast balls, and got him to pop up.

Baseball teams don’t run plays like football teams do. Pitchers and hitters have an idea of what they would like to do, but things seldom work out the way they plan. The batter reacts to what is pitched to him. When he makes contact, chance and luck play a large role in what happens next. Successful teams play hard and play smart. They do the right things, especially the little things, and wait for the game itself to create the moments when victory can be achieved. Ordonez stood at the plate in the ninth inning yesterday only because the Tigers had done many difficult, subtle, and smart things to put him there.

“Fundamentally sound” is the baseball cliché for doing the little things right. My son and I went to the game on Friday – the first playoff game in Detroit in 19 years. Kenny Rogers and two other Tiger pitchers shut out the A’s on two hits. The infield turned three double plays behind them, the last one with the bases loaded in the eighth. In the very first inning, the Tigers executed a flawless hit and run that led to the only run they would need. Hit and runs are hard to pull off. The risks are great, but so are the rewards. A lot can go wrong. This time, everything went right. Everything is going right for the Tigers now. The World Series opens in Detroit on Saturday.

Brian Doyle writes the honest truth in his introduction to Best Catholic Writing 2006: “There’s a stunning amount of terrific Catholic writing. There’s a startling number of voices, very many of them honest, eloquent, angry, and hilarious.” Doyle serves up a rich banquet of essays, articles, poems, profiles, reviews, and blog musings in this year’s collection. The book received a starred review in Publishers Weekly, which you can read here. Look at the contents page here.

I especially liked Peggy Noonan’s account of John Paul II’s first visit to Poland and Robert Ellsberg’s appreciation of his friend and mentor Dorothy Day. Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post writes about Flannery O’Connor, one of my favorite writers. But nothing in the book is as surprising, or as funny, as Douglas Beaumont’s hilarious blog post “The Existence of Chuck Norris.” Read it here.

The Times reviews the new Sony E-Book Reader. It’s not the killer app that will makes printed books obsolete, but “Sony got the big stuff right: the feel of the machine, the pleasantness of reading, the clarity of type.” But the machine has problems: no ability to search or highlight texts, baffling controls, no links, a blink that occurs whenever a page is “turned” and problems reading PDF documents.

Conclusion: it’s a specialized product. “It will make certain niche groups very happy: gadget freaks, lawyers with massive document stashes, doctors and pilots who check hefty reference texts, high school students with 35-pound backpacks and anyone who likes to read by the pool for 20 weeks at a time.”

From the Catholic Book Publishers Association:

Hardcovers

1. Celebration of Discipline, 25th Anniversary Edition
Richard Foster. Harper San Francisco

2. The Rhythm of Life
Matthew Kelly. Beacon Publishing/Fireside

3. Catechism of the Catholic Church
Doubleday/Our Sunday Visitor/USCCB Publishing

4. Freeing Celibacy
Donald Cozzens. Liturgical Press

5. Mother Angelica
Raymond Arroyo. Doubleday

6. The Seven Levels of Intimacy
Matthew Kelly. Beacon Publishing/Fireside

7. The Holy Longing
Ronald Rolheiser. Doubleday

8. Rediscovering Catholicism
Matthew Kelly. Beacon Publishing

9. My Life With the Saints
James Martin. Loyola Press

10. The Book of Courage
Matthew Kelly. Beacon Publishing

Paperbacks

1. Catechism of the Catholic Church
Doubleday/Our Sunday Visitor/USCCB Publishing

2. Waiting in Joyful Hope 2006: Daily Reflections for Advent and Christmas
Katherine L. Howard. Liturgical Press

3. United States Catholic Catechism for Adults
USCCB Publishing

4. Mere Christianity
C.S. Lewis. Harper San Francisco

5. Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church
Libreria Editrice Vaticana, USCCB Publishing

6. The Screwtape Letters
C.S. Lewis. Harper San Francisco

7. Handbook for Today’s Catholic
A Redemptorist Pastoral Publication. Liguori Publications

8. Full of Grace
Johnette S. Benkovic. Servant Publications

9. Secularity and the Gospel
Ronald Rolheiser.Crossroad Publishing

10. A Year of Sundays: Gospel Reflections 2007
C.S. Lewis. Harper San Francisco

The murders of the Amish girls have provoked some serious writing about Christian forgiveness. Rod Dreher’s excellent column in the Dallas Morning News teaches me again that Christianity is a truly radical faith with demands that seem impossible. That’s something I tend to forget. See also this discussion on prayer at dotCommonweal.

Jason Epstein was editorial director at Random House for many years, so it’s worth listening to his ideas about how the struggle between the internet and traditional publishing will shake out. He thinks that publishers will eventually make their peace with Google’s project to digitize the books of the world. “How money is to be made from this vast project remains unclear,” he writes, but

sooner or later Google and its avatars will become not only the world’s multilingual library of libraries but a universal bookstore offering millions of titles to readers worldwide and monetization will follow, raising the theoretical possibility that every book ever printed in whatever language may indeed be accessed wherever Internet connections exist.

Epstein thinks that most books will be routed to a “machine not much bigger than an ATM which will automatically print, bind, and trim requested titles on demand that are indistinguishable from factory-made books, to be read as books have been read for centuries.”

Read the whole thing.

The Tigers dispatched the mighty New York Yankees from the American League playoffs in decisive, shocking fashion this weekend. The games at Comerica Park on Friday and Saturday were not even competitive as the Tigers won 6-0 and 8-3. The All Stars and future Hall of Famers in the Yankee lineup looked confused and overmatched, surprised at what they were seeing from the Tiger pitchers. Inning after inning, they popped up, grounded out weakly to short and second, and flailed desperately at pitches two feet out of the strike zone. This week, Kenny Rogers, Jeremy Bonderman, Joel Zumaya, and Todd Jones raised the art of pitching to a high level. Can there be any more exhilarating feeling for an athlete than that felt by a pitcher, walking off the mound in the ninth inning with a big lead in a playoff game, to the roars and cheers of a hometown crowd? That’s what Rogers and Bonderman did Friday and Saturday. Bonderman brought the curtain down on the Yankees on Saturday. But the guy who got carried off the field in triumph was a graying, 61-year-old man named Jim Leyland (above), the Tigers manager. For some of us fans of a certain age, that was a special treat.

The Tigers now play the Oakland A’s for the American League championship, what my brothers and I (and Jim Leyland) grew up calling “the pennant.” It’s more baseball, and a team to care about.

The American Institute of Graphic Arts posts its choices for the best book designs of 2005 here. Inspiration for designers everywhere.

Here is a useful overview of the world of evangelical Christian publishing. It’s popularly known as the CBA, for the Christian Booksellers’ Association. This post is by a fiction editor for a CBA publisher and it emphasizes fiction, which is a rapidly-growing part of Christian publishing. This recent post updates this one, a more detailed overview of the industry that the editor wrote a couple of years ago.

How bad is it in publishing these days? So many excellent books by popular writers are being published this fall that publicists and marketing directors are reaching out to bloggers to get attention for their titles in a crowded marketplace. The editor-in-chief of Random House now understands the internet: “For me the Web is like a teenager’s room. It can be very messy, and you don’t quite know how to bring order to it. But you can’t ignore it. You have to deal with it,” Daniel Menaker tells the L.A. Times. A bookseller in Pasadena sees more clearly: “”There’s no downside to a plethora of good books. Not for sellers, for customers, or anyone.”

Blogger Tom Kreitzberg doesn’t think much of a recent new book on reviving Catholic traditions. It’s indiscriminate: “The Swedes do St. Lucy’s wreaths? The Italians do St. Joseph’s tables? The Poles bless food baskets on Holy Saturday? Great, let’s do them all!” Let’s be judicious, even a little picky, and above all, make some changes. “I’d caution against a too-dogmatic approach, as though adapting a custom to our time and place is somehow a betrayal — you can bet the peasants who first made it a custom had no hesitation to change things around.”

Read the whole thing.

This publishing season is marked by a host of books about American evangelicals and the intersection of religion and politics. Peter Steinfels reviews five books highly critical of the religious right here. He finds some things to praise, but warns that “the idea, increasingly voiced by left-of-center activists and intellectuals, that religion is the driving force of the administration’s policies and the leading threat to American democracy is exaggerated and misplaced.” Catholic News Service reviews two new books that survey American evangelicalism and explain it to outsiders. Read it here.