Jessa asks "Is Nabokov usually classified as an American writer?"

Or, to answer the question rhetorically, was Joseph Brodsky an American poet?

The permalink to Jessa's article is behaving badly, so just go to the main page and find the July 15, 2002 entries from there. This is the second time this week I've had this problem on a Blogger site. What's up with Blogger permalinks?

Sarah Caudwell was the pseudonym of English barrister Sarah Cockburn, who wrote four witty (and veddy British) mystery novels featuring the adventures of four Lincoln's Inn barristers and Oxford law professor Hilary Tamar.

Her novels are a delightful mix of classic British mystery tropes in the tradition of Tey and Sayers, with a decidedly modern twist and a charming epistolary style.

Four, though. Only four novels in twenty years. And then, alas, she passed on prematurely.

As a consequence, some rabid fans (vide myself) have become obsessively completist about her work in the mystery genre.

After finding no decently thorough catalogue of her oeuvre online, I have taken it upon myself to collect this Completist's Guide to the Works of Sarah Caudwell.

The Novels:

Thus Was Adonis Murdered (1981) The Shortest Way To Hades (1985) The Sirens Sang Of Murder (1989) The Sibyl In Her Grave (2000)

Note: The novels are best read in chronological order. All are currently in print in mass-market paperback editions in the U.S.

Other Works:

Collaborative Works:

Hitt, Jack, Caudwell, et al. The Perfect Murder, HarperCollins, 1991. OUT OF PRINT

Note: This very amusing book is an expansion of an article from Harper's magazine that gathered together 5 mystery writers with moderator Jack Hitt for an imagined correspondence imagining the "perfect" murder. I don't have bibliographical details at hand for the article, but the book extends the article's content significantly anyway. Highly recommended book.

Short Fiction:

"An Acquaintance with Mr. Collins",

—Suit of Diamonds, ed. Anon., Collins, 1990. NOT IN PRINT —The Oxford Book of Detective Stories, ed. Patricia Cross, Oxford University Press, 2000. IN PRINT

"The Triumph of Eve", Women Before the Bench, ed. Carolyn Wheat, Prime Crime, 2001. IN PRINT

Puzzles:

"Cryptic Crime Acrostic" (with Michael Z. Lewin), 2nd Culprit (1993), ed. Liza Cody, Michael Z. Lewin, Chatto & Windus, 1993. NOT IN PRINT

"Cryptic Crime Acrostic" (with Michael Z. Lewin), 3rd Culprit (1994), ed. Liza Cody, Michael Z. Lewin & Peter Lovesey, Chatto & Windus, 1994. NOT IN PRINT

If you have anything to add to this list, please let me know.

I recommend checking Amazon's used listings, alibris, Half.com, and your local used booksellers for the out of print books. Most of them are readily available on the used market.

I've never been a big fan of most of Amazon's so-called features. I've entered some 500+ of my books, 300+ CDs, and a few dozen DVDs into the My Collection feature, with ratings, and still their "My Recommendations" feature generally provides incredibly unhelpful suggestions.

One might think their new "Recommend another book in addition to or instead of this book feature," which allows customers to suggest books to each other, would represent both an awareness of the problem and its brilliant solution.

Think again.

I've been following the development of this so-called feature via the Bookslut blog, but for those of you who haven't, let's sum up:

1. Anyone can post a recommendation of another book to "buy instead", even the author of the other book being recommended.
2. There's a delay in the posting of such recommendations, but no apparent editorial review or automated checking for scamming of the system.
3. Thus, enterprising authors such as this one shoot to the top of the Amazon bestseller list by riding on the coattails of other--established--bestseller books.

There have always been problems with Amazon's existing features anyway: many low-selling books would be scammed with multiple anonymous ("A reader") reviews that were actually foils for the author, and some enterprising (read desperate)authors would even exploit the review feature to recommend their books over other, completely unrelated books.

This, however, takes the whole thing to a new level. When it works, the system does work -- e.g. 2 helpful readers suggest buying Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens in addition to the hardcover edition of Gaiman's American Gods. When it doesn't work, however, it's an abject failure.

For example, 1 reader recommends this completely unrelated CD instead of the paperback edition of House Of Leaves. Another recommends this book, which is also recommended by 3 "people" instead of A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius. There, 5 "people" also recommend Birdseed Cookies instead.

In this New York Times article, Birdseed Cookies author Janis Jaquith confesses: Ms. Jaquith, a 49-year-old commentator on a public radio station in Roanoke, Va., said she was initially put off by the idea of recommending one book over another. "I thought, `That is really mean-spirited,' " she said.

But then she concluded that glomming onto another book was actually a kind of compliment to its commercial success. She recommended her book instead of those by the public radio commentators David Sedaris and Garrison Keillor, and she urged her family and friends to do the same with other books. I must say, this "conclusion" is horse-pucky, tripe, bat guano, and to put it bluntly, overwheening bullshit.

Were it a gentle reader unacquainted with and unmotivated by Ms. Jaquith, that might arguably be a compliment. Were it even someone acting at the behest of Ms. Jaquith, but recommending "in addition" to the book rather than "instead", that might arguably pass for a compliment in some twisted sense.

But in no way can I find it complimentary to suggest one's own novel instead of another's in a place of public commerce. This is akin to hiring a crier to stand in the local bookstore announcing "This book _____ is better than anything by Tom Clancy! Buy this book!" It's simply unethical and unsportsmanlike, especially when Amazon already provides ample designated space on the page for the publisher and author to add comments, synopses, book jacket quotes, or whatever.

Amazon seems to be in no hurry to fix the problem, but I don't see it as even half their fault, anyway. The problem much larger than a broken, unpoliced new feature lies in writers apparently unable to police their own behavior.

Certainly the publishing world is an exceedingly difficult and disheartening milieu in which to work, and clever self-promotion is a powerful tool in achieving literary recognition. There are, however, lines that should not be crossed, and this is one of them.

If it were my book, I wouldn't find it complimentary in the least.