HUMOR
Novel for FallDIJON, FRANCE 12 October 2010 |
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A very quick glance through the book releases slated for Fall tells us that this year, perhaps more than any other, the literary novel as a form that we’ve come to know and cuddle up to, has taken a grand leap into the next century. We at The World’s Best Little Bookhouse are pleased to offer a sampling of upcoming titles from first-time authors that move well beyond traditional book forms, call into question the very purpose of reading itself and, in turn, stand poised to capture our wide-open hearts.
Thunderous Applause
By Scooter Lom
Original Paperback
Following one family over seven generations, across three centuries and nine continents in pursuit of the American dream, our first title ferries readers on a unique, overwhelming journey. This is due in part to its rich character detail. It is also due to the fact that the book runs just over 18,000 pages long. Thunderous Applause sits as a monument to the love of the written word with a reinforced spine thick enough for the book to serve as its own podium. Stacked lengthwise, your average bookshelf has room for little else. Readers who make the commitment to tackling the story will likely have grown and aged in ways beyond imagining before reaching the conclusion. First-run copies will be sold together with a wheeled carrying case, complete with a viewing window that shows anyone who cares to look as you cross the street or consult the airport’s excess weight fee chart that you are indeed reading the novel that everyone is talking about this season. Narrated in a voice all its own, the first 15,000 pages are a sheer marvel of pacing.
The Joy of Patience
By U.H. Hoesmith
Hardcover and Acer saccharinum
A tale of several sisters overcoming every imaginable odd. This book has, quite simply, been grown on a tree. Not the paper, but the whole book complete with dust jacket and binding has been cross-bred with a silver maple and planted up and down the Atlantic seaboard just prior to last year’s winter frost. The trees have been bearing copies are now being harvested during what we certainly hope will continue to be an especially dry autumn. By early November, the books will be tumbling into people’s laps on park benches and getting raked into piles that are sure to take up a cherished place in yards across the country and then, we believe, homes. 100% biodegradable and requiring only light refrigeration, early reviews describe the dialogue as “a revelation.”
Sometimes a Great Lotion
By Buss Lerdwood, M.D.
Hardcover
This promising tome does what it sets out to do: moisturizes and hydrates as you read. Born out of widespread reader discomfort that comes with interminably holding paper in hands, each page of the book has been coated with a light glaze of almond milk hand cream and essential oils, keeping skin healthy and never once requiring the licking of fingers before turning a page. It’s already responsible for the coining of the year’s new buzzword: an engrossing page-glider. Comes with a complimentary bookmark that says “I’d shake your hand right now, but I’m reading.” Set sometime during the 17th or 18th century.
Like and Like Again
By Leslie Boris
ebook
This lively work follows the love affair of two persons who meet during a hostage crisis that leads to inevitable heartache and bloodshed. The story is delivered to readers entirely through Facebook comment notifications. Those who embark on this emotional journey will receive several lines of the novel each time they are pinged that someone has commented on their “wall.” Serialized for readers to dip into the story briefly while waiting for other fields to load, the book contains a cliff-hanger at the end of each nano-installment. No part of the text will appear on the wall itself, of course, as that would be intrusive.
The Sharing and Caring Generation
By Deerok Grant
ebook
Another ebook entry. This eminently-downloadable title comes equipped with a virus that seeks out all other ebooks currently on the reading device, exacting disastrous content changes to the competing texts, such as starting each sentence with the word “Anyway” or splitting all infinitives. Rumors of the virus spreading from the machine and entering actual reader’s bloodstream are exaggerated. Describing the prose as infectious is meant to be figurative here, mostly. Anyway, the isolated cases where it has been literal have been isolated. Anyway, everything is well under control. Set during the heyday of the dotcom years and recounted in second-person, the author is famously reclusive.
I, Who Dealt It
By Charlton Shemplocks
Original Paperback
Amidst the swell of hi-tech books, there’s something for the traditionalists as well. This thrilling modern-day fantasy tale releases a patented, chemically-enhanced book scent. Catering to readers’ market-tested affinity for the smell of books, copies of this novel produce up to three times the aroma of a standard paperback. Readers are requested not to drive or attempt to install Apple software updates immediately after enjoying more than a chapter. The fantasy-world conjured in the pages is brilliantly-realized. Also, over a third of the book consists of acknowledgements.
The Holy Bibla
By Name Withheld
Gilded Hardcover
More than any other, here is the title everyone has been waiting for. The book has already sold half a million copies in pre-orders, in many cases from individuals buying copies in bulk whom, based on our own research, have made this the only book they will purchase this year. It tells the story of Bibla, a man with dark secrets that are gradually revealed and will have significant ramifications at a later date. We can only assume his tale has already generated such interest because of how the author has so beautifully woven together the various narrative threads. A minor note: early complaints report typographical errors, however we feel confident that our in-house proofreaders are among the industry’s best.
The Toeheaded Boy in the Attic Did it
By Inga McMasterton
Original Paperback
Here’s a book where the key plot twist is revealed in the title. Vivid imagery throughout.
Wee
By Bill Brothers
ebook, and more
For the true dreamers and seekers among us, this title offers several layers reimagining what we mean by the word “novel.” The author began with the words of the story and then – for the initial evolution –recorded performers reading the text aloud. Secondly, that oral recording was wed to corresponding, digitized images. Lastly, and in a final clarion call to arms in the name of contemporary fiction, these words and images were made to be controllable by the reader themselves, using a device that could be held in the hand. The story therefore contains multiple outcomes, providing readers with choices as they attempt to solve the intricacies and challenges of the plot. Points are also allotted at the epilogue of the book. This highly-addictive read can be enjoyed again and again, for days on end. It is our belief this work will change the face of publishing as we know it, and that, in the future faster galloping toward us, all novels will be read this way. Then again, who can say for sure.
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Oh, Nathaniel,
this was wonderful.
I would have to start out with: “Once a Great Lotion,” since my skin is terribly dry, after which I would be ready for attacking Scooter Lom’s tome, at least in part, until my eyes go bad.
(Perhaps I will read “The Joy of Patience” after Dr. Lerword’s book, since Scooter’s is such a commitment….)
Thanks, Irene. I think it’s a safe bet to start out with the lotion one. Faulkner’s short story Dry September was first published that way if I’m not mistaken.
I really want a copy of the Toeheaded Boy in the Attic Did It.
The supense is killing me!
What a fantastic list. The scary thing is it’s not so far from reality to be fantastical.
I’m with Irene – I want the page glider as well….
Excellent post!
yeah, it’s weird how the toeheaded boy in the attic did it really leaps out and demands to be read. not even kidding.
I’m with you. I can almost see the cover.
Yeah there’d be some great cover possibilities here. And we’d be allowed to judge the book by it, in this case.
Finally!
@Ben Loory,
But WHY did he do it?
There lies the plot.
when you live in an attic, things point a certain way…
Coincidently, “When you live in an attic, things point a certain way…” is the title of the self-help version of this book.
I know a guy whose aunt was grounded by her father until she was 21.
The thing was, five years previous, he had moved up to the attic and refused to come down.
So how did he enforce the banning?
I don’t know. I just don’t know. And it boggles my mind.
Hopefully she doesn’t write a book about it, because it sounds like it could blow the Toeheaded Boy right out of the water.
I’m partial to “I, Who Dealt It.”
I’m partial to that one too. I may be hanging onto the title for future use, in fact. Something memoirish.
You know, I downloaded a sample of Lom’s Thunderous Applause to my Kindle. Which was interesting, because, given that Kindle samples are approximately 10% of the overall book, it covered at least the first hundred pages.
Gotta say: not impressed. Could’ve used a better editor (I mean, surely, at least 10 of those 18,000 pages were superfluous). Hell, cutting every use of “very,” which is a lame descriptor if ever there were one, would have probably cut 100. And those 18,000 pages? I think it’s going to take my next six generations to finish the seven-generation epic.
I was going to make Meets Girl parody of your parody, but it’s late. Which is sad. I’m missing an opportunity here.
Funny thing is with a 18,000 page novel, any 10 pages you take out somehow wildly derails the entire story. Now if it’s 19,000, sure, you can cut and compress wherever you want.
I’d like to see a Meets Girl parody, but who meets her? Maybe the Bibla?
@Will,
I am very, very disappointed that your very manly gravitar is missing.
Please hurry very quickly and replace the very manly gravitar with another equally very virile photo.
(Then write your parody, regardless of how very tired you are.)
I was so tired I forgot the ‘m’ in my email address. So no responses, either. That’ll teach me. I hope this is fixed now?
Meets Girl
By Will Entrekin
ebook and more
A manly novel by a manly man with a manly gravatar, Meets Girl crosses the story of Faust with the sad reality of unrequited love to blow up the novel itself. Serialized on the author’s site; available for download on the Kindle, nook, and iPad; even, in a quaint acknowledgment of readers who still like wood pulp, available as a paperback. Perhaps the most ecologically friendly of the offerings; you’ll never find it on any shelf but your own, as it’s printed only when you order it, a sort of technological equivalent of personalization. Preorders come with handmade, gourmet, spectacularly tasty chocolate, though we’re not sure why. Sadly, the book–though delicious–is not edible.
Also:
Subversia
By D.R. Haney
ebook/comments/
An immensely talented novelist who also writers ludicrously popular essays for the Nervous Breakdown–where one would imagine he have a medically inspired nickname but is instead called Duke (a nod to Bowie et al.?)–Haney brings his wit and verve to a collection of writings some of which were originally published online, making this particularly book serialized in retrospect. That’s some time-travel level shit, yo. Each piece is followed by several pages that double as postcards, so that readers can–just like online–comment on each piece and then use the postal service to correspond with each other. The final essay is a phone number that turns out to be Haney’s personal cell: readers who call are treated to the author reading the final essay aloud, after which follows what insiders are calling a “conversation” but which in reality mirrors real-time commenting.
Thanks for these stunning additions to the list. By the sounds of both of these titles, I imagine Scooter Lom has already sunk into a mild if not deep depression realizing he’s been bested once again. Though hopefully the inclusion of the tasty chocolate with the Meets Girl preorder will help him to remember simpler pleasures.
As for the other title, I think I’ve heard of this Haney guy. I plan on writing a comment to him on a papyrus scroll that will be delivered via Pony Express. It’ll be worth it.
Yo, it’s all being done by carrier pigeons and shit. So sayeth Doc, the artist formerly known as Duke.
Oh, and Will, you should look into publication by Flatmancrooked. Your book probably will be edible if they’re behind it. Also, when planted, it will grow a tree or a bicycle or both.
I understand that Thunderous Applause was recently picked by Oprah for her book club, even though Scooter Lom had expressed qualms about having Oprah’s corporate seal being attached to his previous bestseller, Verbose Christmas.
God bless Oprah for being so forgiving.
Excellent, Nat. What I just picked up yesterday:
Loping With Dull Shears
By Julius Murrow
Original Paperback
Number twelve in this ongoing memoir series sees Mr. Murrow revisiting another difficult childhood incident, resulting in the ingestion of even more vodka. But with the help of a perceptive therapist and the love of “stuffy,” a favorite childhood bear, Murrow is able to turn the corner on his sublimated pain and find value in his new position as an advertising copywriter. By the final chapter, the audience is cheering, if not tearing-up, as Murrow discovers a new way to describe a pencil skirt in under twelve words.
I don’t know how this was left off the original list but thank god that error’s been remedied. Murrow gets me every time, especially the sixth memoir of the series, or no, I think it was the eighth. Either way no one describes the vodka dry heave better.
Yes, Lom also expressed qualms about making the cover of Time, and the movie adaptation of his book starring Seth Rogen and T.I., and the statue of himself he personally had commissioned in front of the Library of Congress.
Also this year I will be wishing everyone a very verbose Christmas. Wait, make that unwishing.
These are a riot! I’m hoping Sometimes a Great Lotion might be one in a series which includes something like Sometimes a Great Loofah, etc.
Thanks, Cynthia. I believe the plans are to put these two titles together in a holiday bundle, for sale at Bed, Books and Beyond.