Friedman’s not the first person to remind us that self-promotion—or “building a platform”—in the digital age is a nuanced and long-term project, a leap-of-faith investment, whose dividends are hard to quantify. But she hits the nail on the head nonetheless. Be creative, she is is saying. Participate. Bring something of immediate value to the table, and (this is critical) be willing to give it away.

Most importantly, it has to be about more than selling books—or whatever your goal might be. It has to be about what you stand for, and who you are.

Self-promotion, with integrity. Is that it? Coincidentally, this is the title of a great piece in Publishing Perspectives about Stephen Elliot and the interesting and innovative ways he has generated a following, both as founding editor of the online magazine The Rumpus and as author of The Adderall Diaries. With his house-to-house reading tour, his weekly personal e-mail to 5,000 subscribers, a self-designed iPad app for his book, and other outside-the-box initiatives, Elliot seems to exemplify much of what Friedman is talking about.

But it’s also notable that he is willing and able to live on $25,000 a year (in a co-op with a communal bathroom, no less) and that he disavows any aspiration to become a best-selling author. By his own account, Elliot will be content to know that he has made an impact on a relatively small but devoted readership and that his books will remain in print. The new literary model, the Elliot case study suggests, is not just about improvisational marketing strategies; it’s also about rethinking your definition of success.

I was going to write about Portland State University’s partnership with Hewlett-Packard and Lulu to create print-on-demand books, but then I came across this video. It may not be more newsworthy than the new print-on-demand machine, but it is much funnier, and sometimes that’s what you need.

I suppose the video clip IS somewhat newsworthy, though, since I was not even aware that pop star Justin Bieber had published a memoir. Well, until just recently I was not even aware of Justin Bieber at all! He’s not just another pretty face, dear readers! He sings and dances, and he is a published author. Lest you think I am being too sarcastic, here’s a confession: I saw Justin Bieber on the season finale of Shaq Vs., and I actually found him to be quite charming.

It’s supposed to be a bad economic climate for brick-and-mortar bookstores, and it seems booksellers are closing their doors left and right. It might come as a surprise, then, to hear about the opening of a new bookstore, one funded by the federal government. The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), responsible for all sorts of government publications since 1861, recently opened a retail bookstore in Washington, D.C. The store is actually a reopening of sorts, since a GPO bookstore has been in existence since 1895. The new store was redesigned to mimic more closely contemporary booksellers. The redesign and renovation were handled in-house by GPO employees.

If you don’t live in D.C., you can always order books online. The GPO bookstore offers thousands of titles that cover a vast array of subjects, everything from the history of the United States to national parks and technical manuals. To illustrate the diversity of the bookstore’s collection, here are the top five best sellers from July 2010.

1. Federal Benefits for Veterans, Dependents and Survivors, 2010
2. Reports of the United States Tax Court, Volume 131, July 1, 2008, to December 31, 2008
3. Civics Flash Cards for the Naturalization Test, 2009
4. Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories, 2009
5. International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis as Approved by the World Health Organization, 2007

Also in keeping with modern times, the GPO has a Twitter feed as well as a blog.

I have to confess that I have not really understood the point of book trailers. It seems counterintuitive to market a book with a video, but perhaps I just need to rewire my brain. Well, if more book trailers were like the one above for Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story, then I would completely be on board. It’s clever! Funny! Heart warming! Of course, not all authors are connected enough to have celebrity authors and famous actors appear in their book trailers, but I think there’s a lesson in the trailer nonetheless: it’s okay to have some fun.

There are probably plenty of writers out there who kind of dread book tours, but author Jim Lynch isn’t one of them, or at least he isn’t at the moment—he has found a way to combine pleasure with work. An avid sailor, Lynch cruised from his home in Olympia, Washington, to various booksellers in the San Juan Islands (in the Seattle area) during a weeklong tour at the end of July. He promoted two of his novels on the tour: The Highest Tide, his first novel, and Border Songs, recently issued in paperback.

Lynch’s sailboat is a 1970 Bristol 32. He kicked off his tour on July 24 on Shaw Island as guest speaker at the Shaw Island Historical Society Annual Meeting. His final stop was on July 31 in Anacortes at Watermark Books. Lynch also made stops on San Juan Island, Lopez Island, Orcas Island, and Lummi Island. This month he will be traveling on land in Oregon and Washington. For more information visit his website. Also check out this article about his nautical tour in the Wall Street Journal.

Book clubs are pretty amazing things. I don’t belong to one at the moment, but I would say 80 percent of my friends are members of book groups. I really believe there is a book group for everyone. There are highly structured book groups, very laidback ones, clubs that read only classics, I could go on and on. Well, I just learned of a public book club in Minneapolis called Books & Bars. The group meets once a month at Bryant Lake Bowl, a theater that is adjoined by a pub and bowling alley.

Books & Bars has a moderator, comedian Jeff Kamin, and each session boasts about 70 attendees. Among the book club’s sponsors are independent bookseller Magers & Quinn and satirical newspaper The Onion. Participants are encouraged to purchase the selected books from Magers & Quinn and to enjoy food and drink at Bryant Lake Bowl during the gatherings. And even though it’s a book club, reading the book selection is not a requirement.

Upcoming book selections include The Magicians by Lev Grossman, Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, and illustrated novel Blankets by Craig Thompson.

If you like the idea of super compact books that will fit into your pocket but aren’t keen on reading books on a small digital device such as an iPhone, there is still hope! U.K. company TankBooks has come up with a very clever and visually appealing way of packaging miniature books—inside specially designed boxes that look like flip-top cigarette packs.

The company currently offers six titles, all classics, by Joseph Conrad, Ernest Hemingway, Franz Kafka, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Leo Tolstoy. The books can be purchased individually or as a set (the set comes in a nice tin), and yes, they will ship to the United States. And while the cigarette box-packaged books may be addictive, they won’t be harmful to your health. Seems like a win-win!

Do you attend bookstore readings? I am fortunate to live in Portland, Oregon, home to many bookstores, including the venerable Powell’s Books. I could probably go to a bookstore reading on a daily basis, and I often read through the listings in the local paper with great interest. The truth, though, is that I rarely go to bookstore readings. I never gave it much thought other than to attribute it to laziness, but then I saw this article, “The Dreaded Question: What is a ‘Reading’?” in the Huffington Post. The piece is by bookstore owner Alex Green, who talks about how the label “reading” is not quite accurate. He writes that “many of us are reluctant to attend a reading because we don’t know what one is, and we become afraid that something egregiously uncomfortable, or boring, is going to happen.” Green then goes on to explain that readings, at least at his bookstore, are engaging and lively discussions.

Green’s article made me question why I don’t attend more bookstore readings, and I think he is right—I think they are going to be kind of boring. I fully expect the author to read a chapter or two from a book, and thanks, but I can do that on my own at home. I would rather know about the author’s writing process or reasons for writing a particular book, or maybe I want to know the author’s favorite flavor of ice cream. If Green is correct that “readings” are actually conversations between authors and readers, then I could get on board, but really, it’s hard to know what to really expect. So, what do you think of bookstore readings? Do you attend? Look forward to them? What do you like about readings?

*The photo is from the last “reading” I attended. It was at Powell’s Books for my friend Amy Karol, author of Bend the Rules Sewing and Bend the Rules with Fabric. At the “reading” she displayed and discussed some of projects in the book, took questions, signed books, and hosted a cakewalk, so no, it wasn’t a typical reading.

The Audio Publishers Association (APA) has solicited a number of authors and narrators to help celebrate Audiobook Month. The participants will blog, tweet, and otherwise promote their way through June to generate interest in audiobooks. Among the authors lending a hand is David Sedaris. Sedaris has a distinct and, to many, instantly recognizable voice. He recorded some promos for National Audiobook Month. Other author advocates include Jennifer Egan, Deepak Chopra, James Patterson, Chelsea Cain, and Cory Doctorow.

First there was the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile and then the Peeps Fun Bus, and now there’s the Penguin Anniversary-mobile. The automobile, which commemorates the 75th anniversary of Penguin Books, will be touring the United States and making stops for anniversary parties at bookstores. The Penguin Car, a flaming orange Mini Cooper emblazoned with the Penguin logo, will also be transporting authors to book signings and celebrations.

Penguin will donate a set of 75 of its most prominent titles to a library or literacy organization in each scheduled stop along the anniversary tour. In June the Penguin Car will visit Minnesota, New York, South Carolina, Kentucky, and California. Though Penguin’s official anniversary date is July 30, the anniversary tour will continue through the summer. At the end of the anniversary celebration, the Penguin Car will be auctioned off, and proceeds will be donated to a literacy group.

Another fun part of Penguin’s celebration is Penguin Ink, which pairs six tattoo artists with six Penguin titles. The tattoo artists designed new covers for the titles, which include Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee, From Russia with Love (yes, it’s a James Bond title) by Ian Fleming, and The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace.

Visit Penguin’s special anniversary website here to follow the Penguin Car and read about the history of Penguin Books.

Some of the published titles are already well-known works, such as Natsume Soseki’s Botchan and Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories. The selected works cover a number of genres, including mysteries, poetry, short stories, and novels. Upcoming titles (for which, I believe, the publishing rights are still available), include an introduction to contemporary Japanese poetry, fantasy novel The Mandala Way by Masako Bando, historical novel Tokyo Seven Roses by Hisashi Inoue, and literary biography A Thousand Strands of Black Hair by Seiko Tanabe.

Thanks to the very informative Three Percent blog, which focuses on international literature, for clueing me in about JLPP! I’m definitely going to check out some of these books.

I have a confession to make. I like books, and I like movies, but I do not like movies based on books. I guess I should clarify—if I have read a book on which a movie is based, I almost always prefer the book. There is no snobbery or elitism involved here (and if you knew the kinds of books I generally read, you would have no doubt I am telling the truth); rather, for me, books paint a fuller picture, something a movie cannot fully accomplish. Ironic, I know, since books have words and movies have images, but books have details and nuances and, I don’t know, magic that fill the brain.

Here is an impressive and fascinating database of movies based on books. How many have you seen? Seeing a movie after I have read the book is a disappointment because I have already “seen” it in my head, and the movie can never match up, but if I see the movie first, it kind of ruins the book for me. Just glancing at the database, there are a number of movies I have seen and really enjoyed, but I never read the books on which they were based. They include After Dark, My Sweet, the 1990 film based on the Jim Thompson noir novel, and Dead Zone, the 1983 film starring Christopher Walken (!) that was based on Stephen King’s novel of the same title.

Then there are the films I didn’t completely love but that everyone I know adored, like Princess Bride and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The books were so rich and imaginative that the movies just couldn’t live up to my book-reading experiences. There are also the movies that are so different from the books on which they were supposedly based that there is no comparison to make. I saw the Bourne movies with Matt Damon and thought they were really fun, so I decided to read the books. The only similarities are that some of the character names are the same. So I was able to enjoy both. The same goes for the movie Clueless, a fun and ridiculous movie that was loosely based on Jane Austen’s Emma.

What about you? Are there any movies others liked but you didn’t because you read the books first? Movies you loved, but you hated the books?

Anyone who ever looked at picture books as a child knows that books aren’t just about text. Visual images can be just as powerful as the written word. I find myself drawn to books that celebrate visual images, whether they are photographs, graphic designs, or hand-drawn artwork, so I was excited to discover viction:ary, a Hong Kong-based publisher that specializes in collaborative image books.

viction:ary’s books cover a range of topics, including tattoos, architecture, fonts, and logos. The firm’s latest offering is Nice to Meet You Too: Visual Greetings from Business Cards to Identity Packages. It’s a sequel to, you guessed it, Nice to Meet You, which was published in 2006. I learned about this book via Yuko Uemura, a graphic and textile designer whose screenprinted towels I have purchased. Her business card is featured in this edition.

Here are a few more covers to tantalize you:

Musikraphics, a book that shares designs related to music, such as album covers and music posters.

Tattoo Icons, complete with trial tattoo stickers!

Current shirt selections include George Orwell’s 1984, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye (I think that was the cover of the edition I read!), Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, and plenty more. Shirts come in both men’s and women’s styles, and hey, wouldn’t these make great gifts?

I stumbled upon a great blog called Curious Pages that features interesting children’s picture books. The subtitle for the site is “recommended inappropriate books for kids,” which should give you an idea of the types of books highlighted. The images of and from the featured books are entertaining enough, but what makes the blog posts even more engaging is the commentary—funny and somewhat irreverent.

If you are a fan of illustrated books and dry wit, check out Curious Pages.

In the world of literary translators, Edith Grossman is a rock star. She is known for her mastery of translation, which includes the seemingly insurmountable ability to merge translated language with cultural nuance and style. Grossman is responsible for the English translations of a number of titles by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, including Love in the Time of Cholera, as well as the 2003 translation of Miguel de Cervantes’ classic Don Quixote.

Though many acknowledge that translation is an art form, there are plenty of others who hold translation in lesser regard, not giving it the credit it is due. It’s possible they consider translation a technical task, something a translator can plow through, dictionary in hand. Grossman takes offense to this, and she details the importance of translation in her forthcoming book, Why Translation Matters (release date March 30, 2010).

Works in translation are not wildly popular in the United States. According to research firm R. R. Bowker’s 2005 report, translated works make up only about 3 percent of book releases in the United States each year. Works translated from English, on the other hand, are plentiful (double-digit percentages) in other parts of the world. This is partly due to the dominance of the English language in print.

But all is not lost, as works translated to English do have an audience in the United States. Take, for example, the popularity of such books as Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (translated from French) and of the crime genre “Nordic Noir,” including The Man from Beijing by Henning Mankell (Swedish) and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (Swedish).

To read more about Grossman and translation, see this article.

The long list for the Orange Prize for Fiction was announced last week. One of the top literary awards in the U.K., along with the Man Booker Prize and the Costa Book Award, the £30,000 prize is given to a woman author of any nationality for the best original novel written in English.

Culled from a pile of 129 contenders, this year’s long list is comprised mostly of British authors, but there are also three from the U.S. (including Lorrie Moore and Barbara Kingsolver), as well as lone representatives from New Zealand and Morocco. In addition to the works of established authors, the list features seven debut novels, including Rosie Alison’s The Very Thought of You, which has, until now apparently, not received a single review from a British national newspaper.

See the full list here.

The Orange Prize is making news this year because of some provocative comments made by the chair of the judge’s panel, author and TV producer Daisy Goodwin, who complained that she’d been inundated by “misery literature”—a surfeit of rape, child abuse, and bereavement—that made her feel like a “social worker” on the verge of slitting her wrists.

“There was very little wit, and no jokes,” Goodwin told the Independent.

“I was surprised at how little I laughed,” she told the Guardian, charging that such novels represent little more than a repackaging of the highly marketable “misery memoir” and that publishers are “lagging behind what the public want.”

Goodwin also made repeated references to the neglected value of reading as “pleasure” and her desire to be absorbed in a “pleasurable” book. Some took her remarks as a call for lighter fare, but I think she is getting at something else when she says that, to be compelling, a story must have more than an “issue” at its core. Although Goodwin’s comments were inelegantly delivered, it seems legitimate to insist that a literary novel must be defined by its artistry—in its prose, in its ideas, and in the keen, unique subjectivity of its narrator or protagonist—not merely by its graphic depiction of violence or misfortune. Perhaps it was not the content of the “misery” novels that Goodwin objected to but rather the writing itself.

I’m particularly interested in the question of humor and how women might use it more, even in their darkest stories. Granted it’s not easy to be funny about personal tragedy, but it’s worth trying, as humor can transform a narrative of victimization into one of resistance and self-possession.

We have a deep interest in translated works here at Thomas Riggs & Company. Not only are we planning to publish translated books but we also have personal interests in various languages (one coworker even uses French software). The other day we were discussing the power and difficulty of translation; when translating works of fiction or poetry, how literal should the translator be? How much liberty is the translator allowed? Language is infused with cultural nuances, so how are those translated? So, yes, it’s very complex, which is why good translators should be applauded.

The 2010 Best Translated Book Awards just announced its winners, and the fiction and poetry winners both came from independent presses. The fiction winner was The Confessions of Noa Weber, a book in Hebrew by Gail Hareven, translated by Dalya Bilu and published by Melville House Press. Bilu has been translating Hebrew literature for some time and is highly respected in her field. The poetry winner was The Russian Version by Elena Fanailova, translated from Russian by Genya Turovskaya and Stephanie Sandler and published by Ugly Duckling Presse. Turovskaya, a poet herself, immigrated to the United States from the Ukraine, and Sandler is a professor at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.

Here’s a list of the other fiction finalists, in case you need more titles to add to your reading lists!

Ghosts
by César Aira
translated by Chris Andrews
published by New Directions
language: Spanish

The Twin
by Gerbrand Bakker
translated by David Colmer
published by Archipelago
language: Dutch

Anonymous Celebrity
by Ignácio de Loyola Brandão
translated by Nelson Vieira
published by Dalkey Archive
language: Portuguese

Wonder
by Hugo Claus
translated by Michael Henry Heim
published by Archipelago
language: Dutch

The Weather Fifteen Years Ago
by Wolf Haas
translated by Stephanie Gilardi and Thomas S. Hansen
published by Ariadne Press
language: German

The Discoverer
by Jan Kjærstad
translated by Barbara Haveland
published by Open Letter
language: Norwegian

Memories of the Future
by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
translated by Joanne Turnbull
published by New York Review Books
language: Russian

Rex
by José Manuel Prieto
translated by Esther Allen
published by Grove
language: Spanish

The Tanners
by Robert Walser
translated by Susan Bernofsky
published by New Directions
language: German

For a list of the poetry finalists and more information about the Best Translated Book Awards, go here.

The Second Pass, an online journal devoted to reviews, essays, and blog posts about books, is celebrating its first birthday. Founded by Brooklynite writer/editor John Williams, the site is building a reputation for its thoughtful and unpretentious coverage of all kinds of titles, from underpublicized debut novels (see Carrie Tiffany’s Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living) to obscure works by best-selling giants (see Stephen King’s nonfiction treatise on the horror genre, Danse Macabre).

On the occasion of the anniversary, in the spirit of The Second Pass’s commitment to championing little-known titles, Williams asked contributors to write about their favorite out-of-print books. The founder reflected, “one of my main goals [in launching the site] was to approach reading the way that readers do, not necessarily the way that publishers and even many other reviews do. Publishers naturally want to tell you about what’s new or what’s evergreen. But most readers know the pleasure of somehow discovering and falling in love with a book that has fallen from view. And no status is farther from view than the dreaded ‘out of print.’”

The resulting list is wonderfully eclectic and edifying. Standout titles for me are Julian Cope’s “LOUD and FAST” Krautrocksampler (1995) and Wilfrid Sheed’s “deeply smart, hysterically funny, and impossible to resist quoting” Essays in Disguise (1990).

The Second Pass has compiled some other interesting/provocative lists, too, including The 2110 Club (books from the last 10-15 years that are likely to be read a century from now) and Fired from the Canon (a list of hallowed tomes for which life is too short).

The site has already expanded my reading horizons.

Perhaps you didn’t notice, but next month Soft Skull Press is releasing The Bad Life, the English translation of Frédéric Mitterrand’s “memoir” La mauvaise vie (2005). Over the last few months the author has become controversial, and in response Soft Skull published a defense of the book on its blog.

We’d just like to say that what is most surprising to us regarding the situation is that Mr. Mitterrand’s story has for quite some time been public knowledge to the French people, and in the most high-profile fashion. The Bad Life was published four years ago and became a bestseller in France. The controversial passages have been known to us all along and, among other things, it was the frankness and thoughtfulness with which Mr. Mitterrand discussed his life that drew us to the project. Whether you agree with Mr. Mitterrand’s story or habits, he approaches them with a compelling and thought-provoking honesty and we continue to stand behind this elegant and brave book in the same way we have since undertaking to publish it here. As a publisher, Soft Skull has always embraced controversial conversations.

So, then, who is Frédéric Mitterrand, and what did he do to cause such a scandal?

Monsieur Mitterrand is the nephew of the former French president François Mitterrand. In June 2009, after many years as a documentary maker, writer, and television presenter, he became the French minister of culture and communication under the current president, Nicolas Sarkozy, supposedly at the urging of Sarkozy’s wife, the singer and former model Carla Bruni. France is famous for looking the other way when politicians and other personalities transgress moral norms in their personal lives. Hardly anyone in France seemed to care when Mitterrand’s book appeared in French in 2005, even though what he says about paying for prostitutes in Thailand is hardly accepted behavior in France.

Tous ces rituels de foire aux éphèbes, de marché aux esclaves m’excitent énormément. La lumière est moche, la musique tape sur les nerfs, les shows sont sinistres et on pourrait juger qu’un tel spectacle, abominable d’un point de vue moral, est aussi d’une vulgarité repoussante. Mais il me plaît au-delà du raisonnable. La profusion de garçons très attrayants, et immédiatement disponibles, me met dans un état de désir que je n’ai plus besoin de refréner ou d’occulter. L’argent et le sexe, je suis au cœur de mon système ; celui qui fonctionne enfin car je sais qu’on ne me refusera pas.

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All the rituals of the market for young men, the slave market, excite me enormously. The light is awful, the music gets on your nerves, the shows are dreary, and such a spectacle, abominable from a moral standpoint, could also be judged as a hideous vulgarity. But it pleases me beyond reason. The profusion of boys, very attractive and immediately available, puts me in a state of desire I no longer need to restrain or hide. Money and sex, I am at the heart of my system, that which functions in the end because I know that no one will refuse me.

In France the book was critically acclaimed and sold well, but something changed in 2009. Mitterrand, now a politician, threw himself into an international controversy: the arrest in Switzerland of director Roman Polanski, a French citizen, who had fled the United States in 1978 after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a thirteen-year-old girl. Mitterrand called the arrest “frightening.” Unfortunately for Mitterrand, what he seemed to be admitting in his book—sex with underage boys—was immediately identified with Polanski’s crime, sex with an underage girl. Both French Socialists (the party of his uncle) and the ultra-right-wing Front National attacked him for pedophilia and “sex tourism.” It was left to President Sarkozy’s party, the right-wing UMP, to defend its minister of culture. The party’s spokesman, Xavier Bertrand, expressed his support in a typical French way. “On n’est pas obligé d’utiliser la vie privée des gens à des fins politiciennes” (“One is not obliged to use someone’s private life for political ends”).

Hardly surprising, the issue ended up being more complicated than it first seemed. Most importantly, the book is, as its French publisher (Éditions Robert Laffont) states, a roman d’inspiration autobiographique (“novel of autobiographical inspiration”). In other words, it’s a mixture of memory and imagination. The controversial material is found on only a few pages. The book covers a much longer period of his life and concerns something more general, as Mitterrand hints at here when referring to himself in the third person.

Autrefois on aurait dit qu’il s’agissait de la divulgation de sa part d’ombre ; aujourd’hui on parlerait de “coming out.” Il ne se reconnaît pas dans ce genre de définition. La mauvaise vie qu’il décrit est la seule qu’il a connue.

**************

In the past one would have said it was a matter of revealing his dark side; today one would speak of “coming out.” He doesn’t recognize himself in this type of definition. The bad life he describes is the only life he knew.

Mitterrand eventually went on French television to discuss the controversy. He denied having sex with underage boys, saying gay men often call other men “boys.” He echoed misgivings expressed in the book, saying payment for sex was “an offence against the idea of dignity, human dignity.” And ultimately, as when the book first appeared in 2005, many (though not all) French people admired his honesty in discussing the issue. To this day he remains the minister of culture and communication.

Of course, I don’t know whether Mitterrand is telling the truth. But I give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s a smart man (if you understand French, see the video below), and it doesn’t seem bright to mention in a “memoir” that you committed what would be a serious crime in your own country. France, of course, prosecutes people who have sex with minors.

But what about the book itself, its quality and literary merit? As we have learned so many times before, art is not a reflection of the moral rectitude of the creator. Art, in this case an arrangement of words, stands on its own. On the back of the French edition, a blurb describes the work as “délicat, pudique jusque dans l’impudeur” (“delicate, discreet to the point of indiscretion”). In reading the book, I was absorbed by the author’s elegant style, his search for understanding, of himself and of things around him, whether real or imagined. I found it to be an impressive and moving confession of an unsettling and at times disturbing life.