If one of your resolutions for the new year is to improve your conversational skills — and no offense, but maybe it should be — then I have the book for you. Friend of (and contributor to) this site Daniel Menaker has a book out next week called A Good Talk: The Story and Skill of Conversation. In it, he writes in his trademark funny and erudite way about the history of conversation and the ways in which we might improve our talking game. Menaker recently sat down with a very special guest to discuss the project:

I’m celebrating the end of the decade on Martha’s Vineyard with some friends. The other day, we went to a library here that’s having a book sale. Well, sale is the wrong word, because these books are free.

We found the lovely volume pictured at left, Babies Are Human Beings. You might think this is common knowledge, given how human babies seem, but apparently this was groundbreaking in 1938 when the book was first published.

Of course, the book’s argument is more subtle than its title suggests. According to the flap copy, “Here, for the first time, parents have been taught to face the facts: babies are not carbon copies of their parents. Each child has a personality of his own from the first day of his life.”

Mostly, we liked the cover. And the great caption for the cover’s photo, which is reprinted facing page 80. That caption: “Strangers may make grotesque faces at him in well-meant attempts to elicit his smile . . .”

AbeBooks has put together a “Weird Book Room” on its site, and the result is some head-spinning fun. For instance: 50 Ways to Use Feminine Hygiene Products in a Manly Manner, with a photo on the cover of a man bird hunting, about to shoot. Oooookay.

The most fertile category for out-and-out craziness is the crafts and games books, which includes: The Lost Art of Towel Origami (lost for a reason, one assumes), the Gangsta Rap Coloring Book, and the honeymoon favorite Erotic Dots: Join the Dots to Create 60 Sexy and Exciting Pictures.

A best cover is almost impossible to choose (the one for Why do I Vomit? is pretty great), but I might go with the image for Soldier Bear, the “true story of the Syrian brown bear who was the mascot of the 22nd Transport Company of the Polish Army, during the Second World War.”

Visit the Weird Book Room now, and frequently. (I’ve seen this in several places now, and I don’t remember who to credit for the initial find. So, thanks to the bookish Internet in general.)

I’m heading out of town for the week starting Monday morning. There will be some posts on the blog and a couple of updates to the Shelf in the next few days. But like the rest of the world, I won’t be back to full speed until next week. I hope you’ve all been enjoying the holidays.

Meanwhile, a spambot who recently dropped by the site wants to know: “How much money does Wisconsin make a year from speeding tickets, and where does that money go?” Something to ponder. (I’m thinking of sharing some of the best spambot material from time to time. The comments that aren’t in Russian are sometimes entertaining. Heck, the ones in Russian might be the most entertaining, but I wouldn’t know.)

Near the end of each year, I like to think of what books that have been on my shelves for a while I’ll get around to reading in the next 12 months. Below are five that I hope to get through. If you have any reading projects for the new year, please feel free to share.

Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
The Bell by Iris Murdoch
The James Family by F. O. Matthiessen
A Hazard of New Fortunes by William Dean Howells
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

I recently suggested that Todd Bridges’ forthcoming memoir, Killing Willis, is an early contender for Best Book Title of 2010. Well, you can add another finalist to the list. Another collection of personal ads from the London Review of Books is being published in February, and the title is Sexually, I’m More of a Switzerland.

Meanwhile, there’s now a Twitter feed of LRB personals. Here are a few of the best from recent days:

I bet a friend £18 I’d find a woman here and have sex with her. Reply and have sex with me, I’ll cut you in at 37%. English Professor, 63.

I’m placing an ad in this column. Things are worse than I thought. Not as bad as they are for you, F, reading this and about to reply. M, 34.

The celebrity I resemble the most is Potsie from Happy Days. What feels so right can’t be wrong. Man, 46. Box no. 2480.

F,45. Ready to begin again with M willing to provide time-sheets/supporting documentary evidence for every minute spent out of the house.

There’s enough lithium in my medicine cabinet to power three electric cars across a sizeable desert. Man, 33. Officially Three Cars Crazy.

Many people carry scars from past relationships. Not me: mine come from Chinese buffets. Clumsy, argumentative dim sum enthusiast (M, 45).

There are 289 species of octopus. I can, and will, name them all during the act of love. M, 58. Box no. 6759.

I grazed my knee writing this advert. Accident prone F, 35. Box no. 4311.

The Millions kindly asked me to participate in its Year in Reading series, which asks people to name the books they enjoyed most in 2009, regardless of publication date. My answers can be found here.

OK, this is strange. Bear with me.

Inspired by Natalia Antonova’s recent essay about Lolita, I finally read the novel. (I know.) Its language is stunning, even if its plot is not, and I was surprised, among other things, by how funny it is. It reminded me, in a few ways, of another favorite book of mine, Money by Martin Amis. (I realize that if I had read them in the order I should have, I would say that Money reminded me of Lolita, not the other way around.)

Anyway, to continue this circuitous path to a point (of sorts), Maud Newton recently asked readers what lines might best represent their favorite novels. And the first response from a reader was this line from Lolita:

Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

When I was reading the novel, this line tripped me up. It appears in the very first paragraph. (Not a good time to be tripped up.) Naturally, it spurred me to say “Lolita” to myself and feel this “trip of three steps down.” Problem is, when I say “Lolita,” the first two syllables find the tip of my tongue against my teeth, and on the last syllable it moves back to my palate. The exact opposite of what Nabokov describes. L’s are teeth sounds, T’s are palate sounds. In fact, say the word “palate” itself. See?

Or is this just me? Am I deformed? Do I have an undiagnosed speech impediment? Or for a Russian like Nabokov would the physical process of saying the word be different? I’m genuinely confused. I still love the book, but I don’t like when facts are changed for reasons of style. The sentence reads wonderfully, but is it true?

The latest Backlist feature collects nine books that contributors to this site believe might be read a hundred years from now. We set out to avoid obvious choices—books that camped out on the bestseller list or were festooned with prizes. So, do you have a favorite book from the past decade or two that hasn’t received the love and respect you think it deserves? But that might be receiving it a century from now? Let us know in the comments.

I’m traveling today, so posting will be light. A new group-written feature is almost ready for the Backlist, and should be up sometime tomorrow…

A friend sent me this obituary, calling it a “nonfiction ode to Calvino.” It recounts the life of Giorgio Carbone, who believed that Seborga, a small town in Italy, “was an ancient principality, cruelly robbed of its sovereignty.”

After convincing his Seborgan neighbors of their true significance, Giorgio Carbone was elected prince in 1963. He gracefully accepted the informal title of His Tremendousness, and was elected prince for life in 1995 by a vote of 304 to 4. Voters then ratified Seborga’s independence, which, by the prince’s interpretation, it already had.

Prince Giorgio established a palace, wrote a Constitution, and set up a cabinet and a parliament. He chose a coat of arms, minted money (with his picture), issued stamps (with his picture) and license plates, selected a national anthem and mobilized a standing army, consisting of Lt. Antonello Lacala. He adopted a motto: Sub umbra sede (Sit in the shade).

I spent part of the weekend creating an index for the site. It’s conveniently found by clicking on the word “Index” on the navigation bar at the top of the home page. It contains links to all the books reviewed on the site, alphabetical by author. It will be continually updated.

Book design has been all the rage for a while now. I think it’s completely reasonable to trace the trajectory of that rage along with the rise of the design-obsessed McSweeney’s over the past decade. Professionals might disagree. In any case, new design projects have been legion so far this century: There’s Penguin’s graphic-art covers for classics; Penguin’s Great Ideas series; Harper Perennial’s Olive Editions; and the lovely unity of the NYRB Classics. Among many others.

Given all this, I’m wondering why no one has reimagined The Great Gatsby. The cover has thrived since it was created in the mid-1920s by Francis Cugat, who was commissioned to make it for the book. Fitzgerald loved it, and I’m sure many designers do, too. I just think it’s tacky. The deep red and blue, the green tear falling, the nude figures reflected in the eyes. Especially uninviting is the most prominent current edition, which features a white border around the original image.

Does anyone else think this American classic could use a new look? Any other books that are overdue for a makeover?

In his list of the best books he read this year, David Shields mentions The Unquiet Grave by Cyril Connolly (writing as “Palinurus”). It’s a gem of a book, and Shields’ listing of it reminded me of its opening paragraphs:

The more books we read, the sooner we perceive that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence. Obvious though this should be, how few writers will admit it, or having made the admission, will be prepared to lay aside the piece of iridescent mediocrity on which they have embarked! Writers always hope that their next book is going to be their best, for they will not acknowledge that it is their present way of life which prevents them from ever creating anything different or better.

All excursions into journalism, broadcasting, propaganda and writing for the films, however grandiose, are doomed to disappointment. To put of our best into these forms is another folly, since thereby we condemn good ideas as well as bad to oblivion. It is in the nature of such work not to last, so it should never be undertaken. Writers engrossed in any literary activity which is not their attempt at a masterpiece are their own dupes and, unless these self-flatterers are content to write off such activities as their contribution to the war effort, they might as well be peeling potatoes.

Former Diff’rent Strokes star and troubled child actor Todd Bridges has a memoir coming out in April. It’s an early contender for best title of 2010. It’s called Killing Willis.

(On a related note, if you haven’t seen the “creepy” opening credits of Diff’rent Strokes with alternate music, you’ve missed one of the funniest things ever.)

At The Millions, Anna Clark interviews translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, a longer and more satisfying interview with them than recent ones I’ve seen. A taste:

TM: What are the greatest misconceptions about Tolstoy?

RP and LV: The greatest misconception might come from believing what Tolstoy said about his artistic work after his “conversion to true Christianity,” as he called it; that is, from believing what he preached in the series of tracts and polemical works he wrote after 1880. He was never able to practice what he preached. He remained a deeply divided and contradictory man all his life. And that nourished his artistic work. We took a phrase from W. B. Yeats as the epigraph for our introduction to Anna Karenina: “We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.” That is even more true of Tolstoy in his later works, because his inner quarrel was more intense.

Joe Queenan notices something about the books he hasn’t read:

I recently scrutinized my library to see how many unread books had disgusting covers. The results were staggering. In one bookcase sat rows and rows of beautiful Penguin classics. Beneath them sat my favorite works of fiction, all of which had very nice packaging . . . And beneath them were a few dozen gorgeous art books.

But in the next room, in the cabinet where I keep my unread books, I was stunned to realize how many of these neglected works were eyesores. Some were bland or ugly because they dated from earlier eras or because they came from England. Particularly ghastly was the 1951 Modern Library hardcover edition of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, which looks like a trash-bagged Malevich drawing; a putrid aquamarine collection of Patrick White stories called The Cockatoos; and an uninspired 1976 Portable Dorothy Parker, adorned with a photo that made Parker look like the least amusing woman that ever lived, with the possible exception of Ayn Rand.

As the repetitive Best of ‘09 lists continue to pile up (OK, OK, I like Lorrie Moore, too), I was hoping someone would do something like this, and Jill Lepore is the perfect person for it. She has listed the Top Ten Books of 1709. The task of whittling them down was far less onerous than it is these days:

Something north of a hundred and fifty thousand books were published in 2009. That number daunted me, so I got to thinking of a year, three centuries ago, when, in all of the British mainland colonies, only thirty-one books were printed (if you discount a handful of broadsheets, proclamations, and volumes of laws). The pickings are slim—and grim [ . . . ] All but three books published in 1709 were religious tracts, printed in Boston, and nearly all of them have to do with the day of judgment.

One of the ten books has this catchy title: Solemn Advice to Young Men Not to Walk in the Wayes of Their Heart and in Sight of Their Eyes; but to remember the Day of Judgment. Read the full list here.

Over at the Huffington Post, Second Pass contributor Alexander Nazaryan makes the case for the novel he thinks best represents the first decade of the century:

No novel better captures the background dread of everyday life these days—terrorism jitters, credit-default swaps, mutant flu strains—than Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland. Like The Great Gatsby—to which it bears obvious resemblance—Netherland compresses the American experience into a critical mass, and then proceeds to pick it apart. . . . Netherland has been called a post 9-11 novel, but that isn’t quite true: it is a post-American novel, announcing the conclusion of what Time founder Henry Luce called in 1941 the American Century.

Slate has created a slide show featuring the best entries for its “write like Sarah Palin” contest. Runners-up include this one, by Kaylyn Munro, which certainly sounds like the way Palin speaks:

The minute I was on that stage in Florida with all those lights in my eyes and the smell of Alaska still on my fingertips and my family, too, all around out there, I was where I dreamed of all those years on the basketball court and in Alaskas’s God given beauty which we must cherish and use as God gave it us to use and in honor of the troops, also.

The second-place entry came from Steve Aydt:

Here’s a little news flash for your Department of Media: Superman’s parents chose life and he was adopted in small-town USA by real Americans who run our factories, harvest our meat-bearing animals, and wave Old Glory down at the courthouse and the churches, not in Washington D.C. by cynical power-brokers and liberal scientists.

Read all twelve finalists, including the winner, at Slate.

The Casual Optimist catches up with Jacob Covey, Art Director for Fantagraphics, the comics and art publisher that consistently turns out beautiful work:

If the publishing industry is a zoo, then Fantagraphics is the monkey house. It’s not a conventional workplace and you could get tetanus from walking barefoot but it’s a place where everyone is laboring out of love and there’s a lot of receptivity to trying new things and having your ideas heard. Much more so than I think is possible at most publishers. I have immense respect for the history of the company as an archivist of great work and I have the opportunity to deal with our publishing decisions on a regular basis. It’s satisfying in that way — but the office itself is a neglected three story house with 30 years of dusty artwork, ancient paste-ups, and discarded razor blades strewn about. So it’s not for everyone.

Footage of Vladimir Nabokov commenting on the cover art for various editions of Lolita:

More video clips of Nabokov here.

(Via John Gall)