Entertainment on the brain

After Hurricane Katrina, Obie Joe decided to load up the minivan for a trip to the hometown. What better bulk than dozens of books slated for one of NOLA's recently reopened schools?

A woman in the neighborhood responded to our call for donated books. In her living room, boxed and labeled, were hundreds of books.

"What can I say? I'm a romance novel junkie. I love a good story," she shrugged. Turns out she bought and read about 30 books a month, which is about the average for romance novels.

Pulp fiction, romance, sci-fi, historical fiction....all easily derided as detriments to "true" literature, yet for the readers of these forms, the story is key, and they could care less about the aspirations of the form.

Ms. Obie Joe loved today's Lev Grossman's editorial in The Wall Street Journal reminding us that literature shouldn't exult in distancing itself from the reader. Perhaps one of the reasons why Young Adult as well as graphic novels are gathering huge contingents of new fans might be a response to the lack of good stories found in grown-up lit.

(credit: Jon Krause, Wall Street Journal for graphic)

TIP: Start your own book club - online

Some books are tougher than others as candidates for book clubs. 

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace would qualify. Fans of the books, unwilling to be the pariahs at their own book clubs, have formed an online book club to scale the 1,000-plus page book. Readers gather at 75-page benchmarks every week for three months. Community, complex discussion, and the thrill of suffusing one in a worthwhile book. 

So, why not start an online book club of your own? If you think of it, your Reader Guide is one step forward to your own online book club. But make the content matter, and follow-through. Peruse the structure of the Infinite Jest site in its straightforward blog format:

• The last 10 Posts

• Archives

• The last 10 Comments (many in the wonderfully DFW loquacious way)

But the site's searchability is what Ms. Obie Joe likes best. The search box rocks, but the categories section is particularly astute. 

TIP: Cultivate your live line cranks

The news was startling: President Kennedy was reported shot during a motorcade in Dallas. Walter Cronkite of CBS Evening News was having trouble finding a clear phone line for an outgoing call. In the newsroom, he picked up one of the lines, but a caller was already live. From his autobiography, A Reporter's Life:

I reported (ed: can you imagine how many times that word appeared in his book?) that she had reached our newsroom. 

"I want to complain," she complained, "of your having that Walter Cronkite on the air at a time like this, crying his crocodile tears when we all knew he hated Jack Kennedy."

With all of the outraged dignity I could muster, I told her: "Mrs. Llewellyn-Arbuthnot, you are speaking to Walter Cronkite, and you, madam, are a damned idiot."

One of the first jobs a J-school grad gets is triaging the calls from the newsroom's live line, be it newspapers, radio or TV. What happens on the journey from live line to the news editor is an expression of what was wrong with traditional media, and why Ms. Obie Joe has trouble shedding tears for newspapers who refuse to update themselves to the new media. As in, allowing, and welcoming input from their audiences. The type of derogatory comments and dismissive responses from editors who received the message slips from the live line exampled the 1,001 reasons why traditional media lost their audiences. 

Many authors and publishers snapped on to blogs and other social networks as a way to reach out. But regardless of your format, watch your live lines. Treat those who e-mail you, leave comments, and generally reach out with a welcome mat. Many times their feedback and accolades will fuel your own literal lifeline. Granted, sometimes the life lines -- comments, generally -- do get out of hand. The battles among commenters have been brutal for Stephenie Meyer, Haven Kimmel and Jacquelyn Mitchard, and each has either frozen or shut down the participatory parts of their sites in the past year.

But if you are willing to start your line, push that Cronkite button. Gently.