Project Sweet Life by Brent Hartinger

The great summer that Dave, Victor and Curtis have planned is about to be ruined. Apparently their fathers do not realize that in the summer of your 15th year, getting a job is supposed to be optional. It should be their last summer of sleeping in,playing video games and hanging out at the beach. Instead the three friends are forced to get jobs and make money.

Dave decides this is the worst thing ever, so the friends plot to quickly make the money they would have made in their jobs and then slack away the rest of the summer. Of course, all of this goes wildly awry and Dave has to do more work keeping up appearances than if he just took his fake life guarding job in the first place.

This is a fun book about spending the summer with friends, creating crazy schemes and learning responsibility. Hartinger injects a great sense of humor into his characters and their camaraderie is quite convincing. The plot is not exactly realistic yet Project Sweet Life is a light, fun read.

The Drop was Rocked!

The fabulous readergirlz dropping books at Children's Hospital in Seattle. GLW participated by helping to hook-up some pubs with the girlz and get more books to more sick kids. As the second component of Teen Book Day, lots of folks left books for teens in places across the country - I hope some found them in YOUR neighborhoods and are reading tonight.

King of the Screwups

You know what they say, "Nobody's good at everything, but everybody's good at something." What if your "thing", your big talent, was screwing up over and over again? Meet Liam Geller, King of the Screwups. To be fair, Liam is good at lots of things, like knowing how to put together the perfect outfit, and having girls fall for him, and being Mr. Popularity without even working at it. Unfortunately, none of these things matters to his dad, the super-successful CEO of MoneyVision. He wants Liam to smarten up, stop his "delinquent" behaviour and start seriously thinking about his future. All of this comes to a crisis point when Liam crosses the line in a big way and gets caught in the act. He gets kicked out of the house and his father's brother, a gay glam-rocker DJ, gives him a place to stay for a while. The place? A trailer in upstate New York. His new roommate? "Aunt" Pete. Liam decides this is exactly the opportunity he needs to become the son his father always wanted. He is going to be a huge nerd and make his father proud... or will he screw that up too?

K.L. Going succeeds brilliantly with King of the Screwups, offering readers pure satisfaction in this hilarious and charming portrait of imperfection. Liam's story might seem like one you've read before, the "coming-of-age / stuck-in-a-small town" narrative that is built for both comic and heart-warming moments, but Going takes it all to a new level. A huge part of the strength of the story is Liam's voice - he's sharp, super-funny but still realistic, and self-deprecating. He's not the only memorable character. "Aunt Pete" is a complete original, and the relationship between uncle and nephew is one of the most entertaining and heartwarming aspects of the novel. This novel offers more than great comedy. It takes a critical look at how parental expectations can damage a kid's sense of identity and really mess up a family. I also think the book could inspire interesting conversation about definitions of masculinity and what it means to be popular. Bottom line? A book that makes you think and entertains on every page.

King of the Screwups reminded me of the best kind of quirky indie movie, where the character keeps struggling because he can't get out of his own way, but then in the end, he realizes that his way of doing things has been the right way for him all along. Read King of the Screwups to find out how Liam stumbles his way to enlightenment.

Author Interviews, part II: Terra McVoy

Okay, so, a good friend of yours writes a book. And it's a girl book--full on, pink cover and everything. But you want to be nice, so you read it so you can give her your opinion. But then something weird happens. You like the book, despite the pink, despite the teen girl characters. Even, it seems, despite the fact that the author is your friend.

This is what happened to me with Pure, Terra McVoy's new YA novel. I like it enough that I've actually said to a mutual friend, "I like Terra and all, but Pure is a really good book!"

Anyways, she's now in the midst of a full-on book promotion blitz, but I had some time to ply her with a few questions. Interview after the jump--


Terra Elan McVoy's first novel, Pure, is about a group of high school girls who, back when they were in middle school, took purity pledges--promised before their friends and their church youth groups leaders and their parents, to keep their virginity until marriage. They all wear "purity rings," symbols of this pledge, and in a way, symbols of their friendship. Only now they're in high school, and things have changed--like the fact that one of them decides that she doesn't need to be quite so pure...

From the description, and from the book cover, you can probably tell that the guyslitwire readership is not exactly the main audience for Pure. But I love this book for two reasons, and both are tied into the fantastic characterization on the author's part. First, these girls are real. They've got their drama, but they aren't the empty, one-issue, one-care, one-dimensional characters that seem to populate books in the same category. Second, as much as the plot screams S-E-X!, the book is really about faith, and I can't think of another YA book that handles characters with faith quite as well as this.

Guys, I may not be able to convince you to go out and buy this book, but if you have a chance--if you see it in the library, or your sister or friend has it lying around, then make a cover for it (like this, or maybe design one on a website like this, where I made this funny image) and read it. Anyways, here's what author Terra Elan McVoy had to say:

Justin: Given that this is primarily a book directed at a teen girl audience, what might a teen guy get from reading Pure? Put another way, nowadays there are so many books for so many different demographics of teens and adults, why read outside that at all?

Terra: I totally agree that there is a lot of amazing stuff out there to read, and honestly far be it from me to keep guys from those books! But I do hope that some guys read Pure, mainly because I know that they struggle with all kinds of pressures to fall in line with everyone else, just the same as girls. So since this book is mainly about making your own decisions—about how hard it can be to figure out what you really believe without the influence of friends or family, it’s my hope that there are one or two guys out there who can relate to that. (Even if it is wrapped in a superpink cover.)

Justin: I connected so much with the characters in your book, especially the direct, honest way they wrestle with their faith. It felt very fresh to me, in part because other books I read that touch on religion or faith, whether aimed at a YA or an adult audience, seem to treat the subject in a very pat way--religion is either good or bad, it either has all the answers or none at all. What's up with that, and was that in your head at all when you wrote Pure?

Terra: Well I think you say it perfectly when you mention that people often think of religion as either good or bad, all or nothing, without acknowledging the whole messy gray lot in the middle that most people of faith find themselves in. I think that in the last decade we’ve heard very loud voices from both extremes, while the sort of “normal” person—the person who’s wanting to be true to his faith (or perhaps discover it), but is finding that occasionally kind of difficult—doesn’t get heard much. Before I started writing I found this crazy statistic that said some huge number of teenagers were actively involved in their churches. And I was like, “Where’s the book for that kid? The one juggling youth group and mission trips and getting a driver’s license and sports and dating and curfews and all that?” That’s a hard kid to be, and is who I wanted to give some voice to in Pure, absolutely.

Justin: Pure, from the book description, sounds like it could be a "social issue" novel, but I write above how you steer clear of having the "hook" define the characters and everything they do, and instead let the characters stand on their own. Why do you think there are so many books coming out now that are based around "problems with teens today," and, to be frank, why are a large number of these books so bad?

Terra: Well I’m not sure I can speak in great sweeping statements about the quality of what’s out there, but in my long life with literature, it’s been my impression that teen books love to focus on teen problems in general, partly because that’s what teens have always wanted to read. Look at The Outsiders, or A Separate Peace—there’s some high high drama in those books! And melodrama is hard to pull off, no matter how you slice it. But to get to the root of your question, I think the difference now is that teen culture has become popular culture, so us adults are a lot more aware of all of it. Also there are fewer obstacles now to writing about more extreme problems—problems like suicide and sex and cutting and drugs—so you see more books about those topics. But I don’t think teens are necessarily more troubled today than they used to be. Look at Holden Caufield! He’s essentially the first teenager in literature, and he’s in a mental institution! We are just in a freer society where we can discuss the issues more openly, and in more gross detail.

Justin: When we were teens, I think there were more books aimed at guys than at gals. Nowadays, that seems reversed. Were there any books you read at the time that might have been considered "boy books" that you loved or deeply affected you?

Terra: Well I always kind of associate fantasy books with boys—even though I know a lot of girls who are into fantasy and sci-fi —and when I was in high school I of course got into Stephen King (his short stories were my favorite) and also Dean R. Koontz. One of my favorite books then (that is still one of my favorites now) was The Talisman that King co-wrote with Peter Straub. In so many ways that’s like the perfect fantasy novel. I also read this book by Robert McCammon called Swan Song that is, I swear, one of my top 20 favorite books, ever. Lord of the Flies is pretty boyish and that had a big affect on me too of course. But I realize these are all “adult” books that I’m saying. To be honest, I don’t think I ever read any “YA” books for boys, except maybe A Separate Peace—but I don’t even know guys who like that book.

Justin: Finally, you also manage a kidslit bookstore. What do you say to the whole notion that guys don't read? Is it about the books being written, the books being published, the way books are presented to teen guys, all of the above or none? Or, asked another way, who or what is standing between guys and great books: parents and their expectations? Teachers and their crappy assignments? Booksellers and librarians for their misguided assumptions? Give us a scapegoat.

Terra: For one thing, guys do read. I know they do. But I think they are shier about it than girls. I mean, one of the biggest differences that I’ve observed (not that I’m an expert) between boys and girls is that girls often like to be more socially vocal about what they’re doing, and how they feel about it. And books are kind of one of those things where everyone wants to know all about what you’re reading and, more importantly, what you think about it. So I imagine that part of what can turn guys off from books is all the talking that can go on around them. You can’t just, like, read a book and love it or hate it. If your mom sees you reading something she’ll be all like, “What are you reading? What do you like about it? Who’s it by?” and try to engage you for 45 minutes. But if she sees you playing a video game she’ll just roll her eyes and tell you your 20 minutes are almost up or whatever. So, if you aren’t reading, you can be left alone a little more. I mean, a book can kind of be an invitation for a conversation, right? And one of the things I really dig about a lot of guys is how they really can handle their own solitude—how they are just okay with it in this great way instead of constantly needing some chattering companion. And while I’m not thrilled about making big sexist generalizations, I think if we just give guys access to books that they care about (and there are tons and tons of possibilities), and then leave them alone and not bug them with a bunch of discussion questions about how they feel, then we’ll see them reading more. It won’t have to be a big secret for them.

At least, that’s what I think. And you know what they say about opinions! But thank you so much for these questions, Justin—this was really fun!

Thank you Terra. Especially for the clever and graceful way you avoided the pitfalls of my leading questions, leaving me exposed as the curmudgeony ass I'm getting to be in my late thirties!

You can find Terra's website here, and her book anywhere books are sold (including your local independent bookseller). As a final aside, she has the most expansive knowledge of picture books, chapter books, middle-grade and YA books of anyone I know, and if you're ever stuck for a recommendation, she's the best at coming up with exactly the right book for whatever mood you're in.

Author Interviews part I: Alan Gratz

Today I've got two great interviews with authors. The first post is an interview with Alan Gratz, author of The Brooklyn Nine, Samurai Shortstop, and his great mystery series starring the hard-boiled, ever-hopeful teen detective Horatio Wilkes, which includes the books Something Rotten and Something Wicked.

The second is with first time author and good friend Tara McVoy, whose new YA novel, Pure just came out in hardback. So, without further ado, Alan Gratz after the jump!


Last month, I reviewed Alan's newest book, a baseball epic titled The Brooklyn Nine. A friend asked me what it was about, and, after I described it, he said, "So is it like James Michener?" I wanted to say no, but the more I thought about it, the book is structured like a Michener novel--only not nearly so sprawling because of his tight, baseball-inspired format: Nine generations of kids in Brooklyn, 150 years of Brooklyn baseball. As I mentioned last month, I think this book is awesome. Anyways, despite our hectic schedules (I think Alan was on a book tour at the time) we found time to exchange some questions and answers:

Justin:What was your inspiration for Brooklyn Nine? This is probably the most cliched question ever, but I ask it here because the book is so distinct-- Nine generations, nine distinct stories, yet still a novel. I guess I'm wondering what came first, the story, the structure, the characters...?

Alan: In this case, the structure of the novel came first. That's unusual for me, and The Brooklyn Nine turned out to be an unusual--and challenging!--project for me. The idea of nine generations as nine "innings" in a book seemed like a fun idea, and I knew I wanted to begin with modern baseball's beginnings in the 1840s. Beyond that, the only time period I really worked hard to hit was the 1940s, so I could get a girl in there playing baseball in the pro women's league that emerged during World War II. For the rest of the innings, I let the family's natural generations dictate the time and place of each story as much as I could. Some of the time periods I then had to learn more about--the 1890s, the early 1900s, the 1920s--ended up being some of my favorites, even though I had zero idea what I'd be writing about when I began my research. I looked at each era in terms of Brooklyn history, baseball history, and American history, and tried to find the most interesting--and untold--stories from those times. Sometimes that meant staying away from good stories that had already been told--in particular, Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier and the Dodgers winning the 1955 World Series. Both of those events were hugely important to the nation and to Brooklyn itself, but I had other stories of race and victory I wanted to tell.

In some of the eras, I struggled to decide which story to tell. The other factor in all this was of course the history of Snider/Flint family, and I had to make sure that each story was always about them, not about baseball or America or Brooklyn. Those things had to provide the backdrop, but the stories had to belong to the kids. That was a difficult thing to remember sometimes. :-) I ended up rewriting one or two "innings" over and over again until I found the kids' stories.

I should also add that I looked to my own family's history for inspiration in this novel. The Gratz family history is certainly not as exciting as the Snider/Flint family history, but my family can trace our line back to Louis A. Gratz, who immigrated from Germany to America in the 1860s and worked his way up in the Union Army before settling down to start a family in Knoxville, Tennessee--where I'm from. Louis is partially the inspiration for the kids in the first and second innings, and the boy fighting in the Civil War is named after him. Later, I used my father's experiences growing up in the 50s to help me write "Duck and Cover," and I used my own childhood memories to write the 1981 inning. (Although I was most definitely not a good baseball player...)

Justin: This is your second baseball novel. Your first, Samurai Shortstop,
isn't exactly your average baseball book either. What's your connection to the sport, and why write about it? Is it a challenge to create a "new" baseball story?

Alan: I played youth baseball off and on as a kid, but I was never very good at it. I became a bigger baseball fan in high school, and I even worked out over a summer to try out for the varsity team my senior year--but of course by that time athletes at that level have been playing consistently since they were kids, and I didn't have much of a chance. I was also pretty heavily into fantasy baseball then--and this was back in the day before web-based games, when we used to send off our weekly moves to a stat service that would mail back hard copies with our team stats on them! But my fondest memories have to be getting home from school and plopping down on the couch to watch afternoon Cubs games on WGN, even though I was a Reds fan. Baseball was made to be played in the bright summer sun.

As to why I write about it--and why baseball seems to be written about in fiction more than any other sport--that's a more difficult question. In Samurai Shortstop, I saw baseball as a way to bridge the cultural gap between an Eastern culture and Western readers. Because so little of 1890s Japanese culture would make sense to my readers, it helped to have at least one area of common ground--and that common ground was the dirt of a baseball diamond. Even if nothing else about the Meiji Era makes sense to my Western readers, the baseball will--it's their gateway into that world.

In The Brooklyn Nine, baseball's long and storied past worked as a parallel to a family's history. I think that's what drew me to baseball in this case--that it's been around so long, and is filled with ups and downs, triumph and tragedy, joy and heartache, just like the generations in a family. I'm certainly not the first writer to see those aspects in it. But baseball, like most family histories, doesn't have an overall story. It doesn't have a beginning, a middle, and an end. (At least I hope it doesn't have an end.) It's a series of smaller stories, linked by a shared heritage. Everything that has come before has shaped the present, and the present will only shape what is to come after that, and after that. I don't want to get too mystical about it--it is, after all, a professional sport, with all the greed and cold-hearted business practices that go with it--but since its inception, baseball has captured the imaginations and loyalty of its players and fans, and that will always lend it an air of enchantment.

Justin: You wait a long time (multiple generations) before giving us full-on, play-by-play baseball. I thought this really amped up the tension and drama of the game. So what makes for good baseball fiction? Does baseball inherently make for good stories? Who's written the best baseball fiction, in your opinion?

Alan: Believe it or not, I hadn't originally planned to ever tell a story in The Brooklyn Nine that was just a baseball story--that is, a story that takes place entirely on the baseball field. But I came to realize the book needed that, and the eighth inning seemed the perfect place for it. I had avoided a purely baseball story because I wanted the novel to be about so much more than just baseball, and the way to do that, I felt, was to keep baseball in the background, ever-present, but never the story itself. But in the eighth inning, baseball is the story. Michael, the boy pitching the perfect game, realizes that in the end. It's not about him, or his friends, or the opposing team; this story is baseball's story, and he's just a part of it. After saying the opposite thing all along--that baseball was just a part of this family's story--it felt great to pull back and offer a counterpoint to that. That baseball is something bigger than all of us, something eternal, a perfection and purity we can only hope to taste. But there I go getting all mystical again.

What makes good baseball fiction? That's tough. Just how much drama can be drawn from a baseball diamond day after day? I suppose that's a question Major League Baseball tries to answer. As I point out in Samurai Shortstop, there's the one-on-one drama of pitcher versus batter in every out, and then the larger drama of the team living and dying together. It seems to be both an individual sport and a team sport at the same time, where single heroes can appear bigger than their teams, but cannot win without the help of their teammates. Perhaps all team sports are like that, but baseball seems to highlight it more than others. So there's lots of drama to be found on the diamond, but are there any new stories to tell there? Can we find anything novel in a sport that has been around for almost two hundred years? I suppose that's like asking if there are no new boy-meets-girl stories to tell. Boys and girls have been meeting and falling in love since the dawn of life, but it seems we can find endless permutations in the formula. Perhaps baseball is the same. Ultimately, I guess, it's not really about the baseball, just as a romance isn't really about the romance. It's about the characters--and the characters are always new.

Who's written the best baseball fiction? I really enjoyed John Ritter's The Boy Who Saved Baseball, and was surprised it didn't earn recognition by the Newbery committee the year it came out. Michael Chabon's Summerland was a lot of fun. I also loved James Sturm's The Golem's Mighty Swing, a graphic novel about a barnstorming Jewish baseball team called the Stars of David. For non-fiction, George Will's Men at Work, Robert Whiting's You Gotta Have Wa, and Robert Adair's The Physics of Baseball are all great explorations on a theme. And dare I mention Samurai Shortstop and The Brooklyn Nine? :-) There are lots more, of course, but those are some of my favorites.

Thanks Alan! Here's a link to his website, which has info about all his books, including some interesting extras and background material.

Coming next: my interview with author Terra McVoy...

The messy, brilliant origins of Indiana Smith... er... Jones

In 1978, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan got together for several brainstorming sessions about a movie with a "Clark Gable-type" who carries a whip. The result was, of course, Raiders of the Lost Ark. They recorded the marathon sessions, then had them typed up. Recently, the transcript found its way onto the internet, where you can download it here.

Okay, first a little fanboy hyperventilating. When Indiana Jones made it to the theaters (and then repeated endlessly on the new-fangled VHS machines we had back then) I was at the prime age for him to be so much more than a movie character. Running around on the playground, bullwhipping Nazis then swinging to safety, was an integral part of my childhood, ranking in importance somewhere between my mother's love and the pet turtle I kept in a cardboard box on the front porch.

To a guy like me, this is just incredible. I love that Spielberg hated the name "Indiana." I love reading the initial brain spark that leads Lucas to the final shot in the movie. He rambles for pages coming up with not much of anything. Then out of nowhere, he says, "The end sort of, is that he takes the Ark... It's crated up, no one even looks at it. They crate it up put it in an Army warehouse somewhere. That's how it ends, very bureaucratic... The bureaucracy is the big winner in the film."

(I also think it's interesting that that final iconic scene is one of the very first they come up with.)

But even if you're not humming John Williams' score thirty years later, this is still a pretty amazing document. Nobody really knows what was going through Shakespeare's head while he was writing Midsummer Night's Dream, or when Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn. But here is 125 pages of three artists at the top of their games working through the creative process in all it's messy, manic beauty.

They start with the spirit of the thing. They know they want to recreate the adventure serials that had been integral parts of their childhoods, and build a movie around that idea.

Nobody bothers with actual research until pretty late in the game. Before that, they're just spitballing ideas as fast as they can. Most of what they come up never made it into the final film. They initially imagined Indy as a bounty hunter instead of an archeologist, which would have sucked. Also, at one point he was going to fight both Nazis and samurai warriors, which would have been so awesome my six-year-old eyeballs might have burst into flame.

Two Nasty Poetry Collections

These two aren't particularly new, but they are vastly entertaining, each in their own way.

First up, Revolting Rhymes, from Roald Dahl, author of such classics as James and the Giant Peach, Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

As you might expect from Dahl, his take on well-known fairy tales is a bit, well, twisted. In Revolting Rhymes, Dahl presents us with fractured and semi-frightening versions of six favorite fairy tales, told in rhyming verse. He begins the "real" story of Cinderella (in which the Prince proves to be a homicidal maniac), Jack and the Beanstalk (the moral of the story? "take a bath"), Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (actually, seven ex-jockeys with a betting habit), Goldilocks and the Three Bears (about Goldie's breaking and entering), Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf (in which Red goes a-hunting), and the Three Little Pigs (in which Red goes a-hunting again). Some of the words used dabble in the four-letter variety of the naughty type (not of the "George Carlin dirty words" type, but still, "hell" and "slut" and others make an appearance); as a result, some folks have asked for it to be banned and/or relegated to the adult section. But if you liked Dahl's stories when you were a kid, his poems are just the thing for you.

My second selection today was designed for an older crowd, and includes some truly revolting rhyme from folks who generally write fantasy, science fiction and horror:

If you like slightly naughty, decidedly macabre poems (and who doesn't?), check out Now We Are Sick: An Anthology of Nasty Verse, edited by Neil Gaiman and Stephen Jones, with illustrations by Andrew Smith and Clive Barker. The poems are from thirty of the world's best-known sci-fi, fantasy and horror writers. Most of them are somewhat funny (in a very black-humor sort of way). I am particularly fond of Galad Elflandsson's pirate poem The Good Ship "Revenger", Something Came Out of the Toilet by Harriet Adam Knight,the delightful Things that Go Bump in the Night by Ian Pemble and Diann Wynn Jones's A Slice of Life, which evokes a Sweeney Todd-like school lunch program.

Here's a sample from "Something Came Out of the Toilet" by Harry Adam Knight:

Something came out of the toilet,
Slimy and shiny and thick.
It looked like a gelatinous drainpipe
And smelled quite distinctly of sick.

It had some sort of hole at its top end
Like a mouth or a hollowed-out eye
Or a nostril that maybe it ate with
Or an ear through which it might spy.

Now We Are Sick is separated into the following sections: "Nasty Habits", "In Loving Memory", "Less Welcome Tenants", "Night Fears", and "Adults Only", and it is bookended by an "Introduction" and and "Epilogue". Many of the poems contain humorous content (of a sort); all of them include material that some (okay, many) people will find objectionable or disturbing, which is part of what makes this collection so much, well, fun.

For the Lewis Carroll fans out there, I particularly recommend "You Are Dead, Father William" by Colin Greenland (who specifically says his poem is "After Lewis Carroll" - Carroll's poem, "You Are Old, Father William" was actually a parody of Robert Southey's poem, "The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them"). Here's how Greenland's parody starts:

"You're deceased, Father William," the young man said,
"And your skin has become very green.
But you stroll down the boulevard toting your head:
Don't you think this is a trifle a obscene?"

"In my youth," grinned the spectre, "I read many books
By Campbell and Barker and King
Which convinced me that lipless, cadaverous looks
were demonstrably every year's thing."

ROCK THE DROP!

Don't forget that this week is Teen Book Drop week where readers, authors and illustrators are asked to "rock the drop" and leave a book where a teen can find it. From the readergirlz blog:

You know rgz, GuysLitWire, YALSA, and publishers are dropping 8,000 new young-adult novels, audiobooks, and graphic novels into hospitals for teens across the country on April 16th, 2009.

Now it's time to focus on YOU! We invite all of you teen readers and YA authors to participate in Operation TBD. Help spur reading on a national scale! Leave a YA book in a public place on April 16th. Look at the joy you can share when a teen finds your book!

So what right now? You need a bookplate!

Click for bookplates!

Then leave a comment here telling us what you are going to drop in your community. Want to tell us where? Think about taking a photo when you drop your book. You can upload it during the TBD Post-Op Party, a live chat in another blog post that night at 6 PM Pacific/9 PM Eastern. You never know who you might bump into...

Are you an author? Drop a comment here with your title and link to your site. We'd love to celebrate your work as you leave a free copy in your town! Mark your calendar for the Post-Op Party.

Spread the news about this blog! Report in now to rock the drop!

Are You A Record Breaker?

If you’re anything like me, you spent some period in your life thinking that The Guinness Book of World Records was the coolest book ever. It wasn’t a book that was ever assigned in school, and it didn’t even need to be read straight through! It’s a book that folks keep going back to for fact checking, to get ideas of crazy things to try, or just see what wacky fact you can find to impress your friends with. And those pictures! The man with the beard of bees. The guy with the long fingernails. The tallest, shortest, fattest, fastest, highest—Guinness had it all (and still does). We’re all familiar with the Guinness Book. But do you know how it came about, how it has evolved over the years? What does it take to get IN to the book? Getting Into Guinness: One Man’s Longest, Fastest, Highest Journey Inside the World’s Most Famous Record Book won’t get you any closer to breaking a record yourself just by reading it, but reading it just might inspire you to try.

Larry Olmsted takes a multi-pronged approach in his (unofficial and unsanctioned by the Guinness people) look at Guinness. He chronicles the humble beginnings of the book as a marketing ploy for the beer company (yes, that IS where the name came from) to help settle bar bets and arguments in pubs all over Ireland and Britain to its current status as the world's best-selling copyrighted book. Along with this history, Olmsted talks about the evolution of the book itself, how categories and focus have changed over the years, and about some of the most unique records and record breakers. Some of the most interesting chapters recount Olmsted’s own attempts to set and break his own records—one for golf, and one for marathon poker playing. One of the final chapters recounts dangerous Guinness pursuits, some of which have now been retired as records, or banned entirely. Alas, the rules officials seem to be working with their own special logic when it comes to “too dangerous”. While tug of war, kissing cobras, and “youngest” anything (surgeon, pilot) are no longer considered, categories like keeping planes from taking off with your bare hands and dangling poisonous snakes from your mouth are still ok. The appendices at the end of the book are fun to read by themselves, and quite interesting. Olmsted details some of his favorite records in one, and another is a timeline of the book and its evolution, from its conception in 1954 to the company’s February 2008 sale to the same company that owns rival Ripley’s Entertainment (of Believe it Or Not fame). Recent years have seen more of an emphasis on celebrities and on color photographs, but even in its earlier years, Guinness evolved by putting more emphasis on human achievements (rather than mechanical or natural world ones), because that is what people wanted. And people always wanted more! From copycat books to television shows all over the world, Guinness World Records has reaches most corners of the globe. Arguably, the Guinness Book and accompanying television shows featuring record breakers and record attempts were the beginning of what we know today as reality TV. But you might be most interested in the chapter about what it really takes to get your name into the book. Olmsted details the process of applying to break a record (or having a new one accepted), all of which must be done through the Guinness web site, with further communication occurring via fax. He gives some helpful hints, though there will never be a guarantee that your record will be approved (or broken by someone else first!), and even if it is approved, and you achieve your goal, only about 10 % of records are actually published in the book! You might be particularly interested in checking out the new Guinness Gamer’s Edition. Getting Into Guinness is a fun read whether you just want to learn more about the history of the book and the people involved in creating it and making it famous, or if you have a special skill that you think just might make you a record breaker yourself. Start growing those fingernails now!

Tough Little Canadian

Seems like a good time to talk about Wolverine, as his movie is going to be leading off the imminent season of summer blockbusters. Star of movies, cartoons and pretty much every monthly comic Marvel produces, there's not much doubt that he's the most popular super-hero around. Why? I figure it's got a lot to do with the fact that he's about the toughest thing around, though his life has basically been one horrible, torturous loss after another (and nothing makes a better hero than fighting on when things are at their darkest). That and his claws. People really seem to love those claws.

With the movie in mind, I encourage you to have a look at Weapon X (by Windsor-Smith), which was the very first attempt to attribute some kind of origin to the little Canadian. Part of his appeal, no doubt, was the fact that his past was steeped in mystery, and this story cleverly reveals a little, but not too much. What we have here is basically the tale of the nefarious Weapon X project as it carries out a grim experiment on this feral mutant which, in the end, goes horribly, horribly awry. You get tantalizing snatches of Wolverine's background and the full explanation of the admantium bones and claws so central to the character's mythology. The art, by the way, is appropriately sinewy and gritty and recalls Windsor-Smith's early work on another savage hero, none other than Conan the Barbarian.


While you're at it, have a look at Wolverine: Origin (by Jenkins and Kubert). This one went much further back and examined Logan's earliest life, covering not only the discovery of his mutant powers, but also the secret of his relationship with archenemy Sabretooth (also appearing in the movie) and explains why Wolverine has a soft spot for red-heads.

The movie script delved deeply into both those books for inspiration. But, if you're looking for the best Wolverine story out there, that's got to be Wolverine Volume 1 (by Claremont and Miller), which collects his first solo miniseries from 1982. This is two superstar creators (Claremont made the X-Men what they are today and Frank Miller, well, between Dark Knight Returns, Sin City and 300, I can't imagine you don't know who he is) working at the absolute height of their talents. Wolverine goes to Japan and winds up tangling with the deadly Ninja clan known as The Hand, as well as a beautiful assassin who maybe friend or foe, or even both. This truly shows Wolverine off at his best, when he was still cloaked in mystery, when his tough, noir-ish voice-over felt fresh and crackled with menace. This has got a seriously brutal final battle, which powerfully reflects the character's dark nature, and it has a last panel that will make you shake your head in surprise.

Right, so, there's your Wolverine. Next month, the the subject of the movie I'm most excited about this summer: Star Trek.