When I first heard that there was going to be a documentary made about what it is like to work at the New York Times, I may have squealed. Loudly and repeatedly. Just maybe.

Although I’ve never wanted to work at the Times, that newspaper — for better or for worse — is the standard of journalism in the United States. During my first visit to New York for the Book Blogger Convention in 2010, I was one of those total dorks that took a photo in front of the New York Times building (well, Care took the photo, I just posed like a total fan girl).

Anyway, Page One: Inside the New York Times is documentary and supplementary essay collection that looks at the world inside the newspaper. As a pair, I think the movie and book work well together. Although I’m very familiar with the rise and fall and reinvention of contemporary journalism (thanks, MA program), I think the movie does a nice job outlining the current conflict for a person who hasn’t spent the last three years paying attention to the dramatic media landscape.

The movie centers on the NYT media desk, editor Bruce Headlam and reporters David Carr, Richard Pérez-Peña, Tim Arango, and Brian Stelter. They’re a fun group to watch, and I especially loved getting this insider look at how “expert reporters” go about doing their job. (In one of the special features, David Carr admits that making antagonizing cold calls to sources freaks him out — I’m SO GLAD it’s not just me!).

The conclusion of the documentary is one that I totally agree with: Good journalism isn’t going to disappear, but the way we get news is changing (in some ways for the better, in some ways for the worse) and news organizations will need to address those changes in order to survive. I appreciated that the documentary isn’t alarmist, but it certainly doesn’t sugar coat the major problems news organizations face.

[continue reading…]

Title: The Nobodies Album
Author: Carolyn Parkhurst
Genre: Fiction, Mystery
Year: 2010
Acquired: Library
Rating:

Review: The Nobodies Album is not a book I would have picked up if not for the recommendation of a trusted blogger, Rebecca (The Book Lady’s Blog). Rebecca is one of my go-to sources of literary fiction recommendations — if she likes a book. there’s a better-than-average bet that I’m going to enjoy it too. I think we’ve all got a blogger like that, right? Anyway, when I read Rebecca’s review of The Nobodies Album, I was intrigued enough to pick up a copy from my local library.

The book starts out with deceptively simple plot: Octavia Frost, a bestselling novelist, is on her way to her editor to deliver a manuscript of her most recent book — a novel comprised of rewritten endings to her previous books — when she learned that her estranged, musician son Milo has been accused of murdering his girlfriend. Octavia immediately flies out to San Francisco to be near Milo, even though she doesn’t quite know what to do once she gets there. The book follows Octavia’s dual mission to reconnect with her son and use her novelist’s instinct for plot to see if she can figure out what happened the night Milo is accused of murder (a night he can’t entirely remember).

As I wrote in a recent post on Book Riot, once I started reading this book I just couldn’t stop. I picked it up in the middle of my early January reading slump at about 9:30 on Sunday night, and didn’t put it down until I finished about three hours later. It takes a special sort of book to keep me from going to bed. I value my sleep more than a lot of things.

I have a bit of a literary weakness for novels that pull together different types of stories, which is one of the things The Nobodies Album does best. It’s a book that is part murder mystery, part relationship exploration and part meditation on writing and our role in rewriting our own stories. There are a lot pieces moving around, but Parkhurst seems to effortlessly blend them together in a way that I can’t quite explain. I’d love to read this book again, when I’m not quite so sleep deprived, to see if I can parse it together more clearly.

I’m really glad to have stumbled across The Nobodies Album. It hit a lot of my literary buttons and helped jump start my reading at a time when I was struggling to get through a book. Even of literary mystery isn’t normally your genre of choice, this book is worth checking out.

Other Reviews:

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Title: The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt
Author: Caroline Preston
Genre: Fiction (Graphic Novel)
Year: 2011
Acquired: Library
Rating:

Review: The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt is a perfect example of a book where an innovative approach to storytelling takes an otherwise pretty traditional story and makes it into something special. In this case, author Caroline Preston uses an extensive collection of vintage memorabilia to create a vintage Smash Book for a young woman coming of age in the turbulent 1920s.

At the opening of the book, our heroine, Frankie Pratt, is a new high school graduate contemplating her future. For a graduation present, her widowed mother gives Frankie a scrapbook and her father’s old typewriter. Although Frankie has a scholarship to Vassar, she has to turn down the offer to stay hope and help her mother on the farm. After an innocent affair puts Frankie’s reputation on the line, her mother finds her way to send Frankie to college. At Vassar, Frankie meets luminaries of the time period and continues to try and find her calling, first in New York, then Paris, and finally in what seemed like the most unlikely place of all.

Like I said, the plot of The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt is a pretty simple one. In novel format, I doubt this book would have been anything to write home about. But the way Preston incorporates a host of vintage pieces — everything from letters to postcards to fashion spreads to candy wrappers — gives the book so much character. As I read, I was torn between wanting to savor every page and speed ahead to find out what cool new pieces Frankie was going to put in her book.

I also loved the way Preston seemed to effortlessly meld the different pieces together. For being a book put together by an author years later, the book feels almost entirely authentic. It’s fascinating. On her website, Preston talks about her love for vintage ephemera and how she had to collect over 600 difference pieces to put Frankie’s story together. She even used an actual 1915 Corona Portable typewriter to type out the notes Frankie inserts — how cool is that?

If you can find a copy of this book to, at the very least, page through to check out the beautiful illustrations, I highly recommend doing so. The story isn’t amazing, but the way it’s told make this book shine.

Other Reviews: Just One More Page… |

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Title: What It Is Like to Go to War
Author: Karl Marlantes
Genre: Nonfiction
Year: 2011
Acquired: Book Expo America
Rating:

Review: I think one of the reasons I’ve procrastinated on writing this review is because I just don’t quite know what to say about What It Is Like to Go to War. Karl Marlantes’ nonfiction follow-up to his widely-regarded novel Matterhorn a fascinating hybrid of a nonfiction book — part memoir, part history, part manifesto — that explores a central conflict from Marlantes’ time as a Marine:

The Marine Corps taught me how to kill, but it didn’t teach me how to deal with killing.

Marlantes has an impressive intellectual background, and he pulls from a huge range of sources to develop his thesis about how we can help the young warriors (a deliberately chosen descriptor for soldiers) we send to war as they fight and when they come home. As Marlantes explains near the end of the book:

Throughout this book I have attempted to honestly share my experiences of combat with an eye toward how I might have managed those experiences with more wisdom and psychological, spiritual, and ethical maturity. I have argued that had I been more conscious when I was fighting in Vietnam, I would have contributed just as effectively, or even more effectively, tot he war aims of those in power. I would have wreaked less havoc and pain and still gotten the job done.

As I read, I felt a bit like I was sitting down and trying to have a discussion with someone who clearly knows more and has thought more about a topic than I have. That’s not to say the book in inaccessible, because it’s certainly not. Marlantes makes his arguments clearly and without condescension. But I also ended up not really knowing what to say in response to many of his arguments except, “Yes, absolutely!” I’m very curious to read and hear what other soldiers or military experts might have to say in response — any good sources to seek out, let me know!

What It Is Like to Go to War is a meditation on what it is like to be a warrior, and a compelling argument about what we can to do help young warriors when they return from battle. It’s a wide-ranging and thoughtful book that I hope will make the rounds among the sorts of people who can make the types of decisions that will most help the young men and women we send to war.

Other Reviews:

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