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"There's so much that happens in real life that we don't understand and we can't even fathom. I don't really see the point of making up crimes. The crime genre is the perfect tool to understand why crimes happen," explained our special author guest this morning.

Today's guest on the Morning Media Menu was David Peace, one of the most critically acclaimed mystery novelists in the world. He is the author of The Red Riding Quartet (about the Ripper murders in England), The Damned Utd (which was recently turned into a film), and Tokyo Year Zero. He was chosen as one of Granta's 2003 Best Young British Novelists and won the French Grand Prix de Roman Noir for Best Foreign Novel.

Press play on the embedded player below to listen. The show will be archived around the mediabistro.com network all morning.

He talked about adaptations of his novels and his new American release, Occupied City--a retelling of a mass murder in Japan. He also pondered his own place in the mystery genre. "I make no bones about it. To me the greatest mystery or crime writer of the last 25 years is James Ellroy. When I started out, his LA Quartet really raised the bar--in taking the history of Los Angeles and America and found a new purpose for the crime novel," he explained.

Peace concluded: "White Jazz pushed the boundaries you could tell a story, the pace of telling stories ... I'm always trying to write a book better than Mr. Ellroy. I've yet to do it. But that's my hope."

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Meet the Super Bowl commercial that launched a thousand literary blog posts. During the most watched television show ever, Bud Light unveiled the beer ad embedded above, poking fun at book clubs, male readers, female readers, and book reading in general. The ad shows a couple fun-loving beer drinkers crashing a book club, playing with all sorts of stereotypes about American readers.

Our post on the topic generated a wide range of reader responses. One reader wrote: "If ya' can't laugh at yourself... I'm a writer and reader (and book club member) and don't drink much beer, but it didn't bother me a bit. If we all took ourselves a bit less seriously, we'd save time (and have more fun!)"

Another reader took offense at the offense: "I enjoy drinking bud light because its cheap and I can drink a lot of it while I'm not being an organic chemist, which frankly requires more intelligence and betters society significantly more than being a stuck up literary snob."

Reader Deborah performed a quick literary fact-check: "They were also apparently discussing Little Women but the plot she was giving to him sounded like no version of Little Women I've ever heard before!"

Paul Oliver wrote: "The scariest part of the commercial is the hero. I have noticed a clear trend in commercials making men out as increasingly simple or buffoonish. Ever see the Dominos commercial where a woman is ringing door bells in a home improvement store to try them out? Yeah, the men come running from everywhere in the store in belief that Dominos pizza was just delivered."

The late, great novelist Nathanael West weighed in on his posthumous Twitter feed: "Undrinkable beer. Nobody in the ad would be one of my readers."

Finally, C.J. West contributed some book club intelligence: "The makers of Bud Light are trying to be funny here ... Who cares if they got the background on the book right? They're trying to be funny. I've visited many book clubs to talk about my books and NEVER has there been a man in attendance. The men of the house run when the ladies start coming in. If you are offended by this, I think you're taking yourself a little too seriously."

What do you think?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

One of the single most charming things I've ever seen is this video, in which actor Brian Cox teaches a bit of Shakespeare to toddler Theo, w... Read the rest of this post

Painter Glennray Tutor is a photorealist. I particularly like his series of marbles and romance comics.

Photorealism always seems to get a bad rap in our comments from those who dismiss the practice as having no artistic value other than precision. But I like this quote from Tutor’s site:

“It’s easy to dismiss photo-realist work as an exercise in surface obsession, but Glennray Tutor, a Jedi warrior of the style, has to be admired for his dedication to what Yeats called ‘the fascination with what’s difficult.’”

The marbles, comics, canned goods, candies, and toys — all rendered in bright, saturated colours — evoke a sense of childhood wonder, especially when you look at his body of work, and not just individual pieces.

Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | No comments
Tags: Art, Glennray Tutor, photorealism

Cartoonist Diana Tamblyn has scanned in some illustrations from the 1938 book French Canada: Pictures and Stories illustrated by Hazel Boswell. Diana writes:

My Grandmother had many of these illustrations framed and had them hanging up in her home as they depict scene from Quebec where she grew up.

I grew up seeing them and when she passed away, I inherited them, and they now hang in our home.

I realized I knew nothing about the artist, and so many years later I still found them enchanting. Thanks to some sleuthing and trusty Google, I found they were illustrations from a book written and illustrated by Hazel Boswell called “French Canada: Pictures and Stories”, and was printed in 1938.

It was very popular in its day. I tracked a copy down on Abebooks and thought I would share the wealth with scans of all the illustrations. Enjoy!

Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | No comments
Tags: canada, Canadian, folk art

I've interviewed Matt de la Peña over at sarazarr.com. The formatting is a bit complicated to cut and paste to LJ like I normally do, so you'll have to travel one click....

http://www.sarazarr.com/archives/1535

This evening, another snow storm is coming our way here in New Jersey. We appear to be located on the border between "major" and "crippling" snowfall, if our local forecast is to be believed. It will be a classic Nor'easter, with the snowstorm that's currently in Chicago joining forces with the storm tracking across the south, so that we'll end up with a very strong snowstorm that includes some blizzard conditions (which requires visibility of 1/4 mile or less and winds in excess of 30 m.p.h. for a period of 3 hours or more, as it turns out).

What is more appropriate on a day like today than a poem about a blizzard by one of New Jersey's native sons?

Blizzard
by William Carlos Williams

Snow:
years of anger following
hours that float idly down —
the blizzard
drifts its weight
deeper and deeper for three days
or sixty years, eh? Then
the sun! a clutter of
yellow and blue flakes —
Hairy looking trees stand out
in long alleys
over a wild solitude.
The man turns and there —
his solitary track stretched out
upon the world.

The poem is written in free verse. Given his use of the word "anger" and his time period extending to 60 years, I have to note that Williams was not restricting himself to writing about a snowstorm, but is also speaking about the accumulation of a life, and he compares looking back at his footsteps in the snow to looking back at the course of his life.

Enjoy the latest music video from Webuyyourkids. It’s for Paul Dempsey’s song, Bats.

Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | No comments
Tags: Animation, music video, video, Webuyyourkids

1. My new column went up last week at Bookslut and included several titles of the "coming-of-age" variety. In particular please note Tales From the Madman Underground by John Barnes, a recent Printz honor recipient that I have not heard nearly enough about around the blogosphere. Go. Read. You will fall so hard and fast for this one that you really will not believe it.

2. Other titles in the column (all of them fabulous) are: Age 14 (gritty WWI drama); Stunt (spec fic/family drama mashup from one of my favorite small presses all about missing parents, bad parents and a discovered grandparent who is a trapeze artist); Shine, Coconut Moon (or what I like to think of as an Indian twist on the Gilmore Girls, including post-9/11 drama); A Very Fine Line (manages to be about clairvoyance, home schooling, cross dressing and family secrets all at once - plus BONUS crushing on the teacher); and the Colors gn trilogy from First/Second which is as pretty as it gets and very funny and also all about growing up in Korea. Nicely done, each and every one.

3. In the midst of January chaos there was also a new issue of Eclectica. (Read here to see how my editor is still waiting on one of his adopted children to arrive from Haiti - they have been in the process for Evans for about two years now). I had three review pieces for kids up in the issue, including one on Myths, one on learning books (that you don't realize are teaching you things and thus are supposed to be boring) and one on biographies of many people I did not know much of anything about. Amazing what you can learn reviewing picture books!

4. Oh - and bonus, another review of Shine, Coconut Moon from Eclectica contributor Niranjana Iyer.

5. I just finished reading Raina Telgemeier's delightful MG graphic novel Smile. I didn't intend to do more than give it a quick glance (it showed up unrequested) but after turning just a few pages I was completely sucked into this one. It follows the real story of the author's trials and tribulations after falling and severely damaging her two front teeth at the age of 12. All through middle school she is alternately tortured and healed by a variety of dentists, orthodontists, etc. and must deal with the physical discomfort and all too familiar emotional dramarama. Nothing truly exceptional happens in this book except growing up but it's told so well that you can't resist it. In terms of plot it is a perfect MG vacation book - add a sandwich, some chips and lemonade and this the 2010 winging in the hammock version of The Penderwicks. The bonus here is the fantastic multicultural cast - Telgemeier has truly drawn Raina's school in about the most realistic manner I've ever seen with all shades of brown and beige portrayed with great fun and aplomb.

Smile is a true winner - could very well be a dark horse award winner later this year (I'm thinking the Cybils are doing to love this one.)

6. Bonus - See much more about Smile at Raina's website.

7. Cory Doctorow YA SF alert! F