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Full disclosure: I’m on vacation and the house I’m in does not have broadband or DSL or Fios…it has DIAL-UP Internet access. This works perfectly well for email, but it doesn’t work at all for videos. I’m unable to watch my interview with Willy Vlautin, and since we recorded it a few weeks ago, I can’t remember everything that’s in it, either. My apologies — but I’ve got plenty to tell you about Vlautin, and as my friend Kurt says: “It’s aaaaall good.”

Vlautin, as I mentioned in Monday’s giveaway post, is the frontman for Richmond Fontaine, a Portland, OR-base alt-country band that to my ears combines a hint of old Cowboy Junkies with an echo of Union Station (without Alison Krauss).

It’s not often that an author interview is just as memorable for the conversation about music as about books, especially when the author is as lauded as Willy Vlautin, but he and I immediately connected on artists we love. In fact, we had so much in common the Vlautin spent the half hour while I was interviewing his fellow Morrow author Ross Raisin downloading his special Tom Waits mix onto a CD for me.

He’s a cool guy. Vlautin. Waits, too, but mainly Vlautin. I hope you enjoy our interview.

Also, take a look at the video Brad Beenders made for DOC HOLIDAYS, a song from the NORTHLINE soundtrack. Not only will you get to hear Richmond Fontaine; this version features Willy reading an excerpt from the novel NORTHLINE. Go to site »

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This week’s book is a real treat: in our giveaway, not only will you receive Northline, the new novel from Willy Vlautin (whose debut The Motel Life won rave reviews; it was one of The Washington Post’s Top 25 Books of 2007) — you’ll also receive a CD with a full soundtrack to the book, written by Vlautin and recorded by his alt-country band Richmond Fontaine.

We’ve got the usual ten copies of this book to give away, but I’m going to ask something of you this time that’s not simply a comment. If you will leave a comment (I’ll tell you what I’d like to see in a moment) and allow us to add your email address to a list for our soon-to-come whizbang newsletter (there are a lot of fun updates and changes around the corner for this site…as they say, Watch This Space in September and October), I’ll add a brand-new hardcover from my grab-bag pile for you, too.

As you may have noticed, we’ve been getting caught up on our giveaways. Pretty soon everyone who ever signed up for a free book here will have received them, I hope! If you’re still missing one, please give us until the end of the summer…if you haven’t gotten your book by then, let us know: thereadingwriter at gmail dot com.

Now, which book that you’ve read would you most like to have a soundtrack to? Tell us, give us your email addy (allowing us permission thereby to add it to our newsletter list), and may the first ten respondents enjoy Northline!

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A while back I told you about Chocolate for Readers; now I’ve found out about a delightful new appliance via Slashfood. This waffle iron is actually made from a refurbished and (obviously) repurposed typewriter. You pour the batter in, press down, and out pops a little QWERTY keyboard.

I could actually see this being a fun way to get a child to eat something. You could put alphabet cereal in the key wells, even spell out a name or a phrase.

You could literally…wait for it…eat your words!

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Last Friday I mentioned that things had gotten a bit out of hand with my book closet. I did manage to clean it on Friday evening, and on Saturday Mr. Bethanne and I hauled two enormous boxes of paperback books to our local library. (I actually saved all of the hardcover books, many of which have never been cracked open, for grab-bag giveaways, so watch for those!)

We were, at the same time, putting together some new furniture for our younger daughter, whom I’ve written about here — take a peek, please, since she’s just written her first book review. It was time to decide, as we moved her desk here, her dresser there, which books would be given away and which books would be given pride of place on her newly clean bookcase.

We made decisions about what would be kept jointly, and once they’d filled the shelves, it was her choice what to keep and store versus what to give away. She was quite decisive. The Amelia books all stayed; anything about Barbie went. Cookbooks held no interest, but anything fact-based and encyclopedic does. (This cracked me up, since our entire house might be filled with cookbooks if I had anything to do with it; they’re one of my favorite things to read.)

Thus, the bookcase did not stay cold and empty for long. How do you decide what to keep and what to toss when you’re cleaning out your own shelves?

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It’s that time again; the time when I have to face that fact that if I don’t let go of a few volumes, I won’t have room for any more. Well, I suppose I could start taking over other areas of the house, but when I do that, there’s some squawking — and that’s just from the miniature Schnauzers. (They prefer not to have the air vents blocked until they get groomed.)

I generally bundle all of my excess reading material into tote bags and haul it to our nearest library. When I do that, there’s always a friend who says “Wow, give some of it to me!”

I’d like to explain why that doesn’t often happen. I’m always happy to choose one or two books for someone whose reading taste I know well, and I’m also always happy to lend or give a specific book that someone else asks for (especially if they’ve read about it one of my blogs). However, the times I’ve brought a bag of 10 or 20 books to someone, they usually wind up picking through them and sending me back to my house with 8 or 18 books.

When I need them gone, I need them gone! Remember, if I could, I might keep each and every book I receive. I’d prefer to have a house featuring bookshelves on every wall. If I’m giving away books, it’s not because I want to let someone go shopping in my stash…it’s because I no longer have any room for the overflow.

The library? Well, they don’t pick through, or question. They know that their Friends of the Library bookcarts are scanned by all manner of readers. There’s a lid for every pot, and a reader for every book. When I can act as a matchmaker, I do. But sometimes I have to purge.

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You’ve probably never heard the book Achtung! Panzer by Heinz Guderian discussed before in a general books blog, but Alan Furst and I were tickled to discover that it’s still in print, since the volume figures in Furst’s new novel, The Spies of Warsaw.

I’ve already told you that this is one of my own favorite reads of 2008, but I have to also tell you that this is one of my favorite interviews of 2008. Furst is engaged, engaging, enthusiastic, and smart. I wish we could post a longer version of the interview, because he didn’t give a dud answer.

Please take a peek, enjoy, and don’t forget: there’s a giveaway in progress!

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Over at My Other Blog, I found something curious today: I’d meant to post a link to a list in which a blogger had taken several “Top 100 Novels” lists and unified them according to his own methodology and talk about why these kinds of lists were often specious, useless, and silly.

But if you’ll read my post, you’ll see that I found the “Unified Top 100 Novels” to be an exercise in nostalgia. I’ve read all but one, and that reading has been spread out over decades (more than a couple, fewer than several). However…

A certain Mr. Bethanne has informed me that my Other Blog post seemed like “braggadocio.”

Hmph!

My point, readers (and I usually do have one, even if it takes a while to reach it), was that NeilB’s list brought back some happy memories. Reading tends to do that for me. Anything book-related tends to do that for me. It’s why I’m like this. It’s why I do this.

I’d like to defend myself by saying that this unified list is by no means a list of the best books ever, nor is it a list of What to Read Now. I found it, and I was amazed (and disturbed; remember that I said that, Mr. Bethanne!) to see how many of the titles on it I’d read. This doesn’t make me well-read, and it doesn’t make me a scholar, either.

I’m not an academic. I’m a reader. An unusually fast and furious reader, but not the smartest reader on the block. I’ll leave that title to my esteemed and very kind colleague Michael Dirda, who has not only read all 100 books on the unified list already — he’s written about most of them, too.

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This week we’re showcasing one of my favorite books this summer: The Spies of Warsaw by Alan Furst. I’d only read two of Furst’s books before this one, which is wonderful news for me, because now I have the pleasure of going back and reading his eight others. Goody, goody…

Let me tell you why I enjoyed this book so much: Furst really does live up to his reputation as one of the finest war novelists writing today. I’m sure that there are some critics and readers who would slot Furst as a thriller writer — and don’t get me wrong, some of today’s thriller writers are penning truly fine novels. I’m not shying away from calling Furst a thriller writer from snobbery, but because his books seem to be more about an era and its conflicts than about suspense (although there is some of that, too).

Here’s a synopsis of the plot.

Here’s an excerpt from the book.

And now, here’s my giveaway question of the week: What’s your favorite spy OR detective novel? (Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys count, too!)

The twist: I’m going to randomly select ten giveaway recipients from the first 20 responses I get. Speed counts, but luck does, too! Happy responding, and hope your own summer reading has been delightful.

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