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Umbrellas Across America, Part One

February 10, 2010 by jedediah | 3 comments

A few updates from the road. I had some extra time in Chicago, so before my reading at 57th Street Books on Monday, I went with my friend Sondra (http://snailsaregood.blogspot.com) to visit the Art Institute of Chicago, which is free in February (thanks, Big Shoulders!).
We explored the excellent collection of impressionist art—look at those umbrellas!—as well as the American wing, and then spent some time in the Thorne Miniature Rooms, which make one wish for a shrink ray. I saw the work of Ivan Albright for the first time; his Picture of Dorian Grey is appropriately nightmarish, and it’s hard to stand in front of it for long. The Art Institute has on display some iconic works of American art, which are always worth seeing in person, I think, because the experience can breathe fresh life into the images. There’s one bench with a view of both American Gothic and Nighthawks—I highly recommend sitting on that bench for a while.
The reading at 57th Street Books was an intimate affair—there was a blizzard on its way—but those in attendance had some great questions, and I made everyone who came a bookmark. Every one of them, that is, except the gentleman who left a bit early, as though to avoid the matter of bookmarks altogether.
A blizzard kept me in Chicago an extra day, and that’s when the extraordinary news came in that The Manual of Detection is a finalist for the Hammett Prize. Here’s the full lists of nominees:
Megan Abbott, BURY ME DEEP (Simon & Schuster)
Ace Atkins, DEVIL’S GARDEN (Putnam)
Jedediah Berry, THE MANUAL OF DETECTION (The Penguin Press)
Walter Mosley, THE LONG FALL (Riverhead)
George Pelecanos, THE WAY HOME (Little, Brown)
I’m deeply honored to be in such fine company. More information on the Hammett Prize is available from the International Association of Crime Writers.
I’ve now arrived in Seattle, where I just signed books at Seattle Mystery Bookshop, and made more bookmarks, and received an umbrella for my troubles. I was also asked to blog from the bookshop, and the results are here. http://seattlemysteryblog.typepad.com/seattle_mystery/2010/02/on-bookmarks-umbrellas.html
Next, I’m reading at Elliott Bay tonight at 7pm. If you’re in the area, I hope you’ll come by. It’s raining, but you have lots of umbrellas in Seattle. Just look at this tube of official Seattle lip balm I found today.

A few updates from the road. I had some extra time in Chicago, so I went with my friend Sondra (snailsaregood.blogspot.com) to visit the Art Institute, which is free in February (thanks, Big Shoulders!).

The French sure know how to promenade.

The French sure know how to promenade.

We explored the excellent collection of impressionist art, visited the American wing, and then spent some time among the Thorne Miniature Rooms, which make one wish for a shrink ray. I saw the work of Ivan Albright for the first time; his Picture of Dorian Grey is appropriately nightmarish, and it’s hard to stand in front of it for long. The Art Institute has on display some iconic works of American art, which are always worth seeing in person, if only because the experience can breathe fresh life into too-familiar images. There’s one bench with a view of both American Gothic and Nighthawks—I highly recommend sitting on that bench for a while.

The reading at 57th Street Books was an intimate affair—there was a blizzard on its way—but those in attendance had some great questions, and I made everyone a bookmark. Everyone , that is, except the gentleman who left a bit early, as though to avoid the matter of bookmarks as soon as I brought it up.

That blizzard kept me in Chicago an extra day, and that’s when the extraordinary news came in that The Manual of Detection is a finalist for the 2010 Hammett Prize. Here’s the full lists of nominees:

  • Megan Abbott, BURY ME DEEP (Simon & Schuster)
  • Ace Atkins, DEVIL’S GARDEN (Putnam)
  • Jedediah Berry, THE MANUAL OF DETECTION (The Penguin Press)
  • Walter Mosley, THE LONG FALL (Riverhead)
  • George Pelecanos, THE WAY HOME (Little, Brown)

I’m deeply honored to be in such fine company, and it’s especially exciting to see Megan Abbott on the list. I had the opportunity to do a reading with Megan last year, and I’ve been a fan of her work ever since. More information on the Hammett Prize is available from the International Association of Crime Writers.

I’ve now arrived in Seattle, where I just signed books at Seattle Mystery Bookshop. I made some more bookmarks there, and wrote about that and some other things for the store’s blog.

Tonight at 7 I’ll read at The Elliott Bay Book Company. If you’re in the area, I hope you’ll come by. It’s raining, but if this tube of lip balm I found today is any indication, then there are plenty of umbrellas in this town.

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Memorandum

January 26, 2010 by jedediah | 3 comments

To: J. Berry

From: Great & Mysterious Powers

Re: The Crawford Award

By the time you see this, you may or may not have slept. The phone call you received last night from Gary K. Wolfe, esteemed science fiction editor and critic (not to be confused with Gary K. Wolf, creator of Roger Rabbit), left you giddy, disorientated, and exhilarated. You were, after all, at a gas station somewhere off Connecticut’s Merritt Parkway when Mr. Wolfe informed you that you’d been named winner of the 2010 IAFA Crawford Award for your novel, The Manual of Detection. You were also parked in a 15-minute parking space—and are these, you couldn’t help wondering as they passed, those fifteen minutes?

Afterward, you went into the gas station, wandered the isles for a while, forgot what you were doing there, and left. You called your brother and mumbled incomprehensibly. You sent a text message to a friend. That text message consisted of the letter “a,” repeated perhaps two dozen times, followed by the letter “h” and several exclamation points. Minutes later, you remembered how to drive, continued onward to New York, missed every exit you were supposed to take, and regained consciousness somewhere in Chinatown. Luckily, you knew the way from Canal Street to your sister’s apartment in Brooklyn, and your sister knew the way from there to a good bar.

The second person perspective has never much appealed to you, but certainly you’ll allow us to communicate this much: that receiving the Crawford Award is one of the coolest things you can imagine happening. No wonder you can’t sleep.

Now get yourself together: the paperback’s out today and you’re giving a reading in a few hours.

•

Some additional information, now being reported by Locus:

The award committee shortlisted Deborah Biancotti’s collection A Book of Endings, Kari Sperring’s novel Living with Ghosts, and Ali Shaw’s novel The Girl With Glass Feet, and wanted to commend two other authors whose works were ineligible this year but were highly regarded: Robert V.S. Redick, whose The Red Wolf Conspiracy appeared in 2008 and whose The Ruling Sea appears in 2010, and Michal Ajvaz, whose The Other City originally appeared in Czech in 1993 but was first translated into English by Gerald Turner in 2009.

I’m thrilled and honored to be among the nominees, and deeply grateful to the members of the IAFA for this recognition.

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