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

Newspapers and magazines have been steadily trimming the space they devote to book reviews in recent years, a circumstance that many writers and publishers loudly deplore. Pat Holt refuses to share the indignation.

Holt, a publishing veteran and former book review editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, says that it’s time for critics to evaluate what they’re doing. Reviews are “stuffy, dreary and plodding,” she writes. “Our audience zips around the Internet with tremendous agility and speed, and what do we give them? . . . The same old 16-300 column inches that digress and meander and oh, so slowly get to the point.”

Holt says that the comments readers post about books on Amazon and other retail websites often have more passion and useful opinion than the dull and self-indulgent reviews in leading journals and Sunday newspapers.

I think she’s largely correct. I read reviews. But when I want to know whether I might like a new book, I’ll scan the customer reviews on Amazon first. And quite often they’re more informative than traditional reviews.

Holt has some good ideas to revive books reviews. Read them here.

St. Louis University was recently sued by a plaintiff who argued that public funding for a sports arena at the Jesuit university unconstitutionally entangled the state with religion. The school won the suit by claiming that it was not controlled by the Jesuits or the Catholic Church, but was merely affiliated with them. In court papers, the university said that it does not require employees or students “to aspire to Jesuit ideals, to be Catholic or to otherwise have any specific religious affiliation.” Only 35 of the 1,275 faculty-staff members at the university are Jesuits. Fewer than half the students who attend SLU identify themselves as Catholic. The state court found that “the university is not a religious institution simply because it is affiliated with the Jesuits or the Roman Catholic Church.”

These claims have led to a predictible round of Jesuit-bashing in the Catholic blogosphere (as well as some snide comments about “Jesuitical” hair-splitting in legal arguments.) But they’ve also triggered some understandable concern about the Jesuit and Catholic identity of schools like SLU. Are Catholic schools Catholic? It’s a vexed question. Every Jesuit institution that I know about is working hard to clarify and strengthen the institution’s Jesuit identity. But it’s clear that in higher education at least the Jesuit influence on the character of the school is limited and often indirect.

Blogger Matthew Fish makes the interesting point that these facts “point to the importance of having patience with the present attempts of the Society of Jesus to continue to faithfully live out its charism and renew itself, particularly in its educational apostolates.” He’s right. But such patience isn’t always evident among the critics of the Jesuits.

Fish is the author of this extraordinary post that defends the Jesuits against critics who see little that is good in the Society of Jesus. Much of Fish’s commentary argues that the flexible attitudes of the Society flow directly from its founder, Ignatius Loyola. Continual review and adaptation “was of capital importance because of the incredible stress Ignatius put on finding and following God’s will, discerning where the Good Spirit is leading, implying that in fact it is quite easy to be mislead by other spirits. . . . Also implied is that God’s will is a changing thing, and one must always be attentive. A fortiori, this is true of the Order itself. Ignatius was not tied to an ideal in his mind, but rather was quite gifted at pragmatically adjusting to current needs, as well as inductively arriving at principles and rules based on his and others changing experience.”

A list from the Catholic Book Publishers Association.

The six Harper San Francisco titles, including the two top hardcovers, aren’t exactly “Catholic” books.

Also of note: only one title by Matthew Kelly on the lists. For years the Cincinnati-based author and speaker has had multiple titles on these monthly lists.

HARDCOVERS

1. Religious Literacy
Stephen Prothero. Harper San Francisco

2. Amazing Grace
Eric Metaxas. Harper San Francisco

3. A Book of Hours
Merton & Deignan. Ave Maria Press

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

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

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

7. With Jesus Every Day
Christoph Cardinal Schoenborn. Crossroad Publishing

8. The Catholic Priesthood and Women
Sara Butler. Liturgy Training Publications

9. Crossing the Desert
Robert J. Wicks. Ave Maria Press

10. Perfectly Yourself: 9 Lessons for Enduring Happiness
Matthew Kelly. Beacon Publishing/Ballantine

PAPERBACKS

1. Not By Bread Alone: Daily Reflections for Lent 2007
Sherri L. Valee. Liturgical Press

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

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

4. Sacred Space for Lent 2007
Jesuit Communication Centre, Ave Maria Press

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

6. The Great Divorce
C.S. Lewis. Harper San Francisco

7. Good News about Sex & Marriage
Christopher West. Servant Books

8. United States Catholic Catechism for Adults
USCCB Publishing

9. The Kinsey Corruption
Susan Brinkman. Ascension Press

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

Religious book sales were up 39 percent in February to nearly $40 million, according to the Association of American Publishers. Net sales for all books for the month were up 12.6 percent and 10.2 percent for the year.

Among the strongest categories:

–E-books rose 44.7%, with sales of $2.5 million
–Adult hardcovers rose 43.4%, with sales of $111.9 million
–Children’s/YA hardcovers also rose 43.4%, with sales of $37.4 million
–Religious books jumped 31.8% ($39.5 million)
–University press hardcovers were up 6.8% ($5.4 million)
–Children’s/YA paperbacks increased 5.7% ($34.1 million)
–Adult paperback were up 3.2% ($97.6 million)
–Higher education rose 3.2% ($10.3 million)

Weaker categories were:

–University press paperbacks, down 0.2% ($4.5 million)
–Audiobooks, down 0.5% ($10.5 million)
–Professional and scholarly books, off 7.3% ($36.2 million)
–El-Hi basal and supplemental K-12 sales, off 10.1% ($79 million)

Read the AAP’s press release here.

The huge popularity of the bestselling book The Secret has triggered a backlash. Publishers Weekly reports that at least three books debunking Rhonda Byrne’s book will be published in the coming months, with more to come. It brings to mind the skeptical reaction to The Da Vinci Code. When the movie was released last year, there were 35 anti-DVC books on the market.

The Secret looks like The Next Big Thing in spiritual publishing. “We’ve been flooded with proposals for Christian ‘response’ books, and most of them aren’t very interesting or good,” said Joel Fotinos, director of religious publishing for the Penguin Group and publisher for its Tarcher imprint. “We’ve also been flooded with proposals all saying they are the next Secret, and most of those haven’t been that good either.”

Now that the last book in the “Left Behind” series is out, publishers are busy satisfying a robust audience for Christian-themed fiction. Harper SanFrancisco, a Harper Collins imprint, is launching a line of Christian “inspirational fiction” for women, called Avon Inspire. The editor of the books calls them “gentle reading, safe reading. They end with a kiss and a proposal. … It’s ‘Sex & the City’ without the sex.”

The quote comes from a San Francisco Chronicle article that surveys the familiar but still-impressive growth of Christian publishing. One stat: from 2002 to 2005, religious book sales jumped from $588 million to $876 million

The semester is drawing to a close. Looking for a parting gift for your teacher, or your child’s teacher? Here’s a gift idea: My Best Teachers Were Saints by Susan Swetnam.

Swetnam is an English professor at Idaho State University. Like many teachers, she was deeply influenced by certain “master teacher” mentors when she was young. When things got tough in the classroom, she would often ask herself what her mentors would do. Over the years, Swetnam’s mentor support group gradually grew to include saints of the Catholic Church, a remarkable number of whom were teachers. Her book is about how these saints give lessons on how to overcome the unique problems of the teaching profession.

Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth sells 50,000 copies on its first day on sale in Europe. The book will be published in the U.S. on May 15. Pre-order your copy here.

The LA Times remarks on the surge of high-quality literary novels with acolayptic themes. Among them is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Books & Culture features a review-essay by Andy Crouch about religious environmentalism.

Many writers are freely giving their books away on the web. The idea is to find readers, to gradually build an audience, to gain a following, and to eventually sell books.

Is giving books away on the web a good idea? Recently, an officer of the Science Fiction Writers of America denounced writers who do it. His outrage was greeted with outrage, and a report of the flap on MediaBistro.com quotes writers making some interesting points. Says one:

Ebooks and podcasting and the like are just the tip of the iceberg. So, um, get used to it. It used to take years, maybe decades, to build an audience,” she explained. “This happens much more quickly now, sometimes at head-spinning speed. The downside is more bad writing is making it out there onto the internet; the upside is that good writers can find an audience, too. The other downside, of course, is that you might not be making much money at it—but honestly, most writers never did.”

A new book by J.R.R. Tolkien will be published this week, nearly 34 years after the author’s death. The book is titled The Children of Hurin, and it was assembled by the author’s son Christopher from his father’s outlines, notes, and unfinished drafts, including a version written as an epic poem. Adam Tolkien, Christopher’s son, says that the book “might be compared to a sort of literary Director’s Cut, the long version of the story assembled from all the best footage available.”

The story is set about 6000 years before the tales of Middle Earth told in The Lord of the Rings. Houghton Mifflin, J.R.R. Tolkien’s longtime U.S. publisher, is keeping details of the story under wraps until it is published on Tuesday. The Wall Street Journal hints that it’s a dark tale involving “tragic themes such as suicide and unknowing incest.” A Tolkien scholar says that the hero “never turns to evil, but everything that he touches gets destroyed. Irony drives the entire plot.”

BCActionPoet.org is a new website that combines poetry and imagery in high style. The site features Billy Collins, probably America’s most famous good poet, reading 11 of his own poems, each set to short, beautiful animated films by different artists. Collins is direct, wise, and often very funny. Check out “Forgetfulness,” “Today,” and “The Country.”

From my friend and colleague Joe Paprocki:

I’ve provided some information for catechists on my blog (www.catechistsjourney.com) about how to respond to the assertions of The Secret. That post can be found here.

Check out the rest of Joe’s blog too.

Jana Riess thinks so. The book is The Secret, the mega-bestseller that claims that bad things happen to good people because they think negative thoughts. Jana, who writes about religious books for Publishers Weekly, has extremely negative thoughts about The Secret. Read them here.

The gospel writers “were not telling the story of Jesus’s resurrection as a happy ending,” says N.T. Wright. “They were telling it as a startling new beginning.” It will affect the world in surprising ways: “Gangsters and drug-dealers get radically converted and set on fire with God’s love, while pale churchmen drone their disbelief and warn against extremism.”

We all know we need new creation but nobody knows where to find it. Easter offers an answer so striking that most mock at it and even the churches often don’t know what to do with it. Forget the eggs and the bunnies. Read the story again, say your prayers, and watch for surprises.

Read the whole thing.

Novelist and publisher Debra Murphy is inviting friends to pray a novena for a Catholic literary revival. Her prayer invokes the intercession of St. Francis de Sales, Cardinal John Henry Newman, and Pope John Paul II — writers all. You’ll find the prayers here.

Murphy’s publishing house, Idylls Press, is scouting for serious Catholic fiction. Idylls just published Farrell O’Gorman’s novel Awaiting Orders, favorably reviewed here in America magazine. Like Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy, the reviewer says, O’Gorman “is trying to explore how a Christian message of hope and redemption can attain credibility” in the modern world.

The new issue of Dappled Things is up. This is an online literary magazine “dedicated to providing a space for young writers to engage the literary world from a Catholic perspective.”

The title of the Books and Culture review of the third volume of the collected letters of C.S. Lewis is “They Didn’t Have Email.” Indeed. Editor Walter Hooper collects 3,228 of Lewis’ letters in the three books. Lewis sat down at his desk and carefully wrote his letters. Writers today dash off emails. Will books like this be possible in the future? The collected emails of Dan Brown?

Finally, Kingdom Come, the last volume of the extraordinary “Left Behind” series, hits the bookstores this week, just in time for Easter. After 12 years and 16 books, Jesus finally prevails over Satan. This may be the end of the story, but it’s not the end of the “Left Behind” publishing phenomenon. The marketing manager for publisher Tyndale House says, “In three to four years, we’ll relaunch the whole series with new covers. In that sense, the series will never really die.”

In the big inning, God created Heaven on Earth. And it was without form, and void. God separated the dirt from the grass. He called the grass Outfield and the dirt He called Infield. God made the Infield a 90-foot square and the Outfield not less than 400 feet to center and 320 feet down the lines. He declared this Fair Territory. All other territory, God then declared, was Foul.

And God divided the players into two teams of nine players each, under direction of a manager, to play The Game on His field. God called some of these players Pitchers and some of them Hitters. He placed a Pitcher precisely 60 feet, 6 inches from a Hitter. Then God commanded that it’s one, two, three strikes you’re out at the ol’ Ballgame.

And God granted jurisdiction of The Game to lesser Gods, whom He called Umpires. God said the Umpires are infallible, blessed with Heavenly authority, whose judgment is not to be questioned under penalty of expulsion from The Game. And God looked at his creation and He was pleased. Then God created the Infield Fly Rule to confuse nonbelievers.

And God said, Let there be light beer, and there was. And, God said, let there be peanuts and hot dogs and overpriced souvenirs and let there be frosty chocolate malts with little wooden spoons that you can buy nowhere else except at this Heaven, which God called a Ballpark, and there was. God looked at His creation and it was good.

And the Lord God formed, from the dust, a collection of elite players in His own image. The Lord God then breathed the breath of life into His creation. God called this creation the National League.

And God said, It is not good for the National League to be alone. The Lord God shall make it a mate. And thus, while the National League slept, God took several of its top players and created the American League.

And God blessed The Game, saying, Be fruitful and multiply. Put teams in every city with deserving fans, God added, even if this occurs at the expense of starting-pitching depth.

From time to time, God understood, The Game would be corrupted by the Serpent. The Serpent was more cunning than any other beast and he would take many wicked forms: the Black Sox, segregation, the Designated Hitter, the Reserve Clause, dead balls, juiced balls, spit balls, corked bats, George Steinbrenner, AstroTurf, the 1981 strike, collusion, lockouts, Pete Rose, the 1994 strike, greenies, cocaine, HGH, Andro, steroids, $20 parking, corporate mallparks, Scott Boras, Donald Fehr, and Bud Selig.

But, God said, the goodness in The Game shall always prevail. As needed, the Lord shall bestow upon The Game a Savior. And the Savior, like the Serpent, can take many forms. The Savior shall remind Fans how blessed The Game truly is. The Savior shall be called by many names, including Cy, Matty, Honus, Big Train, the Babe, Wrigley Field, Fenway Park, Lou Gehrig, Branch Rickey, Jackie Robinson, Buck O’Neil, Hank Greenberg, Red Barber, Harry Carey, Vin Scully, Jack Buck, Satchel Paige, Bill Veeck, Roberto Clemente, Ernie Banks, Hammerin’ Hank, Cool Papa, Dizzy, Lefty, Whitey, Stan the Man, Big Klu, the Say Hey Kid, Campy, Duke, the Mick, the Splendid Splinter, the Gas House Gang, the Big Red Machine, the Damn Yankees, Pudge Fisk, Pudge Rodriguez, Yaz, Pops, the Wizard of Oz, Fernando, George Brett, Moonlight Graham, Roy Hobbs, Wild Thing Vaughn, Bingo Long, the Ryan Express, Donnie Baseball, Rickey, Eck, the Big Unit, the Cactus League, Cal Ripken, Tony Gwynn, Camden Yards, Rotisserie Drafts, Web Gems, Derek Jeter, Dontrelle Willis, Vlad Guerrero, and, from the Far East, Ichiro. And, God guaranteed, there are many more to come.

God looked upon His creation and He was very pleased. And God spoke, yelling, PLAY BALL!

The Times looks at the increasing popularity of pre-publication book tours, where an author and publisher wines and dines booksellers and chain store executives months before a book is published. “Unlike the postpublication book tour, which focuses on publicity and public appearances, the pre-publication tour is meant to win the hearts of the front-line soldiers in the bookselling trenches.”

The piece focuses on Steven Hall, the British author of The Raw Shark Texts, his first novel. It sounds like the book can’t miss. One blurber praised it as “the bastard love-child of The Matrix, Jaws and The Da Vinci Code.”