BookPage: Burning Questions

January 1996

Haven't heard from your favorite author in a while? Curious to know if another book is on the way? Send us a note (email and snail mail address below) and we'll see what we can find out for you. Each month the BookPage Burning Questions staff goes to the ends of the Earth and back again to find the answers to our readers' most burning questions. The answers are printed each month, both online as well as in our print edition. Go ahead, try to stump us!

More Hannibalism on the way?

Dear Burning Questions:
Thomas Harris (Silence of the Lambs, Red Dragon, and Black Sunday) was to have published a new book in the last year or so. Is the newest book still pending? When may we expect to see it?

Waiting with bated breath,
Margaret Fox Hester
Atlanta, Georgia

According to our sources, Mr. Harris is indeed at work on a new book, but like few authors, he has the luxury of turning in a manuscript when he's good and ready. Apparently, he's not good and ready yet. We'll keep you posted.

Don't say we didn't warn you

Dear Burning Questions:
Can you help? I am trying to order subscriptions to other publications reviewing new books and books to be published. Ideas?

Cheryl Fox
Richmond, Virginia

We understand that this publication meets all your new book information needs and that you're inquiring about other publications simply to confirm this fact. Here are a few suggestions.

There is that weekly publication that comes out of New York, called something like The New York Times Book Review. It seems pretty good. But they don't run pictures of book covers, and we do. Call 1-800-631-2580 to subscribe.

The New York Review of Books. They don't run pictures of anything much at all, and they tend to run articles with titles like "Macedonian Birth Pangs." Some reviews even have footnotes-yikes! $49.50 per year. Write Subscriber Service Dept., POBox 420382, Palm Coast, FL32142-9205.

Hungry Mind Review. Again, no book cover pictures, but hey, they're in Minnesota. Anybody who can put up with weather like that is OK by us. $10 per year. Write Hungry Mind Review, 1653 Lincoln Ave., St. Paul, MN 55105-9942.

Just remember: the publication you hold in your hands is the exclusive purveyor of BQs, not to mention book reviews with pictures of the books.

Just call us Sancho Panza

Dear Burning Questions:
I've written Marilyn Vos Savant twice enquiring after the binary computer thing in AD2000. No one yet really confirms my concern, but I've asked my computer-literate friends and all but one say: no problem. Is there a problem?

Yours quixotically,
C. Jeanne Wagner
Dayton, Ohio

Our first instinct is to agree and say no problem. But must confess we're not sure what the problem actually is. What is the binary computer thing in AD 2000? We welcome comments from computer-literate readers.

By the way, we may not have the world's highest IQ the way Ms. Vos Savant does, but by gum, at least we'll answer your letter. (She really does have the world's highest IQ--it's in the Guinness Book of Records and everything. She's the "Ask Marilyn" columnist in Parade magazine and author of The Power of Logical Thinking, due in March from St. Martin's Press).

Miss Smiley's Sense of Feeling

Dear Burning Questions:
Hi. There's a Scandinavian writer (I think he's Danish . . .) called Peter Hoeg. One of his novels is Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow. He published another recently, and this is where I need your help--what is the title and ISBN, and who are the publishers? Thanks a lot.

Annamarie Evans
Bloemfontein, South Africa
via the Internet

We like your title better, but the book is actually called Smilla's Sense of Snow. (Not nearly as friendly, is it?)

Hoeg's latest is A History of Danish Dreams (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $24, ISBN 0-374-17138-6), published this past October.

Kudos time

We would have included this last month but for an unfortunate eggnog episode.

The Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation has named ten recipients of the 1995 Whiting Writers' Awards. The awards of $30,000 each, which have been given annually since 1985, recognize and give early financial support of writers of exceptional talent and promise. Recognized are:
Andre Aciman, nonfiction writer. He is the author of a memoir, Out of Egypt (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995).
Michael Cunningham, novelist. He is the author of A Home at the End of the World and Flesh and Blood (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1990 and 1995).
Lucy Grealy, nonfiction writer and poet. She is the author of Autobiography of a Face (Houghton Mifflin, 1994) and a book of poetry, Everyday Alibis (Jean Duval Editions, 1989).
Suzannah Lessard, nonfiction writer. She has recently completed her first book for the Dial Press, The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family.
Reginald McKnight, fiction writer. He is the author of I Get on the Bus, a novel, and The Kind of Light That Shines on Texas, short stories (Little, Brown, 1990 and 1992).
James McMichael, poet/scholar. His most recent book of poetry, The World at Large, Poems 1971-1996 (University of Chicago Press) will be published this year.
Mary Ruefle, poet. Her new book of poetry, Cold Pluto, will be published by Carnegie-Mellon University Press.
Russ Rymer, nonfiction writer. He is the author of Genie: A Scientific Tragedy (HarperCollins, 1993).
Matthew Stadler, novelist. He is the author of The Dissolution of Nicholas Dee (Scribner, 1993) and The Sex Offender (HarperCollins, 1994).
Melanie Sumner, fiction writer. Her first book is Polite Society (Houghton Mifflin, 1995).

Robertson Davies

We note with sadness the death last month of Robertson Davies, the great Canadian writer beloved by so many. Despite a long career and endless acclaim, he was a modest man, according to a new biography, Robertson Davies: Man of Myth (Viking, $35, 0-670-82557-3). Biographer Judith Skelton Grant writes:
"On a publicity tour for The Lyre of Orpheus he was incredulous at the warmth of the welcome he received in the United States: readings sold out halls designed for eight hundred or a thousand, hundreds lined up to get their books signed, fans recognized him in the street, and everywhere he was 'Acclaimed as a writer of world significance.' He found most of it 'a very nervous-making experience. I don't truly believe it. I don't bask in it. I don't find it feeds or nourishes me and neither does Brenda. We both find it slightly embarrassing.'"

Go ahead, stump us. With our new enhanced sleuthing ability, there's nothing we can't find out. But we still prefer those really easy questions.

Write us with your BQs: Burning Questions, 2501 21st Ave. South, Suite 5, Nashville, TN 37212. Or email us at Burning_Questions@bookpage.com.

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