It is the season for giving.
Well this is it, the last blog of the year. No pressure though, it’s really just another one in a pretty decent sized list of them. After reading Bills' post from yesterday it got me thinking about the Gothic. In specific Bill touched upon the Gothic being like a family. I have always joked about Laura being my sister and Kathy being the cool aunt whose house you wanted to go to but now I think there’s a touch of truth to it. The feelings I have for the people I work with are stronger than those I have for friends, and it’s different than being someone’s best friend. It’s hard to put a finger on it. In reality I spend at least 8 hours a day here and 7 of those are with these people. It would be hard for even the most unwilling person to not form a bond of some sort.
So as the Gothic has become my extended family, I thought I might gift them via this blog with some things I would give them if they existed yet, so step with me for a second into the future when things are vastly different. I think I’ll do this via seniority:
Laura: Stephen Fry in America (she’s been waiting for this forever), all the VH1 reality shows made from 2009 forward on BluRay DVD, a BluRay DVD player, a digital cable tuner enhancer (so she can finally get her DVR from Time Warner for all the reality shows I don’t gift her), and finally soundproofing for her walls (so the neighbors will stop waking her up in the middle of the night)
Kathy: Free Range Knitter and It Itches (two books about one of her favorite hobbies), (I was going to include a book here but man she has enough books to read so instead) free time to read, Febreze for Cars (she knows what I mean), the complete Boston Legal on DVD (so good), a robot shredder to filter it’s way through the massive amount of papers on her desk and shred the unnecessary ones.
Bill: a functioning mailing list, Then We Came to the End (if he hasn’t read it already, right up his alley), (speaking of alleys) that wicked cool bowling ball that Bill Murray uses in Kingpin (two words: awesome), a pair of earphones that muffle out the inane drubbing of student employees talking about parties and such, a big book of really hard crosswords (this guy plows through the easy ones around here)
Our Customers: a new layout that is more organized and easier for you to find the book you’re after in that subject, the end of construction (thanks for hanging in there with us), a wonderful sitting area that is both comfy and functional, lots of free time to read and enjoy your favorite authors brand new story or idea.
I could list our student employees here as well but the list would be too long to read then (if it’s not already). Our students are like my cousins they come over and visit we have a great time and they go home (and we probably annoy Aunt Kathy somewhere in there).
In closing, thanks for a wonderful 2008; you make working here worth getting out of bed for. See you in ’09.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008
Last List of the Year (I promise)
Well, it’s my last post of the year. We’re shutting down for the winter break after tomorrow, and we’ll be closed until the 4th while we do some renovating. No, we’re not getting that tiki bar I’ve been promising you all. That’s going to have to wait until the summer break. Instead we’re going to rearrange the front of the store to give us more space to display our wares. Wares, in this case, means really cool books and stuff.
So I won’t be writing again for a little while. I don’t know exactly why, but this fact ratchets up the pressure somewhat. Last post of ’08? Better make it good, Verner. (Perhaps Arthur's having said those exact words to me early this morning has something to do with my minor freak-out at sitting down to knock this post out. Thanks, Arthur.)
Like a lot of you, I’d imagine, I’ve spent the last week or so shopping for presents for the people closest to me. I like to give presents. I do it as much for myself as for the intended recipients. It makes me feel good. Oddly, the fact that I work in a bookstore makes me somewhat hesitant to give books as presents. I don’t want my friends and family to feel that I simply grabbed the nearest book off the shelf on my way out the door. (For the record, though, this is exactly what I do, with mixed results. Giving one’s elderly aunt a copy of I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell is not to be recommended, I can promise you.)
Still, I do always end up giving at least one book to most of my family members. Maybe I’m projecting –I certainly like to receive books as presents; hint, hint—but giving someone a book feels like a commitment to an ongoing conversation. Here, you’re saying, I’m giving you this thing, and you can use this thing to help you make new thoughts, and then we can talk about those thoughts.
So anyway, I’ve been shopping for presents, and it’s had me thinking about friends and family and books, and what I guess I’m getting around to (finally) is that the dénouement of this year has brought about my joining what is basically a family here at the Gothic. A good bookstore finds its staff mingling with its regular customers in a way that is very much like a family. Most often we get along; sometimes we scrap it out a bit, and we’d all be a little bit lost without each other.
Please, please don’t think that I’m fixing to buy all of you presents, Gothic Shoppers. I’m really far too cheap for that. (Nor you, fellow Gothickers; most of you owe me ten bucks already as a result of that SIBA Book Awards betting pool we had going there for a while). But I am thinking about you all as we close out the year.
(WARNING: LIST APPROACHING)
In fact, I think I’m going to close this sucker out with a list of some, though not all, of my favorite bookselling moments since meeting you all:
Talking translation and Junot Diaz with Claudia.
Swapping pulp fiction favorites with Brian and learning from him about the great Ted Lewis, whose books sorely need reprinting. (Get on it, Serpent's Tail!)
Finding that one good “book on books” gift for Stu.
Listening to Barry wax eloquent on the silliness of words that can be mentioned neither on television nor on this Blog.
Betting with Kathy over whether we’d sell our copy of The Hemingses of Monticello. (We did; though I won’t tell you how each of us bet. We’ve got another bet going on a forthcoming Dylan book.)
Talking graphic novels and holiday gifts with a couple of totally normal-seeming customers, only to find out that they were both in the killer band Veronique Diabolique (check these guys out if you haven’t already).
Selling two copies of Stanford’s Battlefield within a week of finally getting it into the store, with each customer having heard of the book from Duke’s own Tony Tost. (Nice one, Tony)
Talking eyeglasses and jazz books with Dr. Carter.
Competing with my fellow Gothickers over who could sell more “Staff Picks” books. (Laura’s in the lead, in case you’re curious.)
Watching Arthur and one of our regular customers, Annie, work themselves into a frenzy over the collected oeuvre of Garth Nix.
Seeing the look on Lt. Awesome’s face when he told me that he’d sold a copy of Lonesome Dove. (Please, please come buy more copies; it will make him happy.)
Watching Sara pick out kids’ books with the eye of a true connoisseur.
Selling a copy of The Launching of Duke University to the proud father of an enrolling freshman.
And, of course, launching this blog. It’s been a pleasure posting with you guys. Thanks to all of you –customers and booksellers alike—for making me feel welcome here. Happy New Year to all of you.
So I won’t be writing again for a little while. I don’t know exactly why, but this fact ratchets up the pressure somewhat. Last post of ’08? Better make it good, Verner. (Perhaps Arthur's having said those exact words to me early this morning has something to do with my minor freak-out at sitting down to knock this post out. Thanks, Arthur.)
Like a lot of you, I’d imagine, I’ve spent the last week or so shopping for presents for the people closest to me. I like to give presents. I do it as much for myself as for the intended recipients. It makes me feel good. Oddly, the fact that I work in a bookstore makes me somewhat hesitant to give books as presents. I don’t want my friends and family to feel that I simply grabbed the nearest book off the shelf on my way out the door. (For the record, though, this is exactly what I do, with mixed results. Giving one’s elderly aunt a copy of I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell is not to be recommended, I can promise you.)
Still, I do always end up giving at least one book to most of my family members. Maybe I’m projecting –I certainly like to receive books as presents; hint, hint—but giving someone a book feels like a commitment to an ongoing conversation. Here, you’re saying, I’m giving you this thing, and you can use this thing to help you make new thoughts, and then we can talk about those thoughts.
So anyway, I’ve been shopping for presents, and it’s had me thinking about friends and family and books, and what I guess I’m getting around to (finally) is that the dénouement of this year has brought about my joining what is basically a family here at the Gothic. A good bookstore finds its staff mingling with its regular customers in a way that is very much like a family. Most often we get along; sometimes we scrap it out a bit, and we’d all be a little bit lost without each other.
Please, please don’t think that I’m fixing to buy all of you presents, Gothic Shoppers. I’m really far too cheap for that. (Nor you, fellow Gothickers; most of you owe me ten bucks already as a result of that SIBA Book Awards betting pool we had going there for a while). But I am thinking about you all as we close out the year.
(WARNING: LIST APPROACHING)
In fact, I think I’m going to close this sucker out with a list of some, though not all, of my favorite bookselling moments since meeting you all:
Talking translation and Junot Diaz with Claudia.
Swapping pulp fiction favorites with Brian and learning from him about the great Ted Lewis, whose books sorely need reprinting. (Get on it, Serpent's Tail!)
Finding that one good “book on books” gift for Stu.
Listening to Barry wax eloquent on the silliness of words that can be mentioned neither on television nor on this Blog.
Betting with Kathy over whether we’d sell our copy of The Hemingses of Monticello. (We did; though I won’t tell you how each of us bet. We’ve got another bet going on a forthcoming Dylan book.)
Talking graphic novels and holiday gifts with a couple of totally normal-seeming customers, only to find out that they were both in the killer band Veronique Diabolique (check these guys out if you haven’t already).
Selling two copies of Stanford’s Battlefield within a week of finally getting it into the store, with each customer having heard of the book from Duke’s own Tony Tost. (Nice one, Tony)
Talking eyeglasses and jazz books with Dr. Carter.
Competing with my fellow Gothickers over who could sell more “Staff Picks” books. (Laura’s in the lead, in case you’re curious.)
Watching Arthur and one of our regular customers, Annie, work themselves into a frenzy over the collected oeuvre of Garth Nix.
Seeing the look on Lt. Awesome’s face when he told me that he’d sold a copy of Lonesome Dove. (Please, please come buy more copies; it will make him happy.)
Watching Sara pick out kids’ books with the eye of a true connoisseur.
Selling a copy of The Launching of Duke University to the proud father of an enrolling freshman.
And, of course, launching this blog. It’s been a pleasure posting with you guys. Thanks to all of you –customers and booksellers alike—for making me feel welcome here. Happy New Year to all of you.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Divinity School Authors on Holiday Short Lists
Friday's Guest Blogger
Stuart Wells covers book news and continuing education for the Office of News & Communications at Duke. He’s also in charge of news release production and distribution and the gathering of Duke-related news clips.
Zeroing in on good nonfiction can be a challenge, but I’m glad to report that help is on the way -- at least over the next two weeks -- in the form of year-end holiday gift guides.
One of my favorites appears in The Christian Century’s Dec. 16 issue. The magazine has a special Christmas section of books, DVDs and CDs as recommended by the magazine’s editors, film reviewers and music critics, as well as Mary Harris Russell, a specialist in children’s literature at Indiana University. As you would expect, the list begins with theology and Bible topics, but then quickly ranges farther afield, from current events to fiction, from classical music to popular holiday CDs (and Tony Bennett, at 82 years young, isn’t taking a backseat to anyone).
Books by two Duke authors are included among the nine theological picks. Divinity School professor J. Kameron Carter’s “Race: A Theological Account” (Oxford University Press, September 2008) is singled out as not only offering a sharp analysis of a racialized Christian theology, but constructing a way forward to a “new theological imagination for the 21st century.” The book is also getting good buzz at the popular readers’ site.
Just one book down on the magazine’s list is “Scripture, Culture and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible” (Cambridge University Press, 2008) by Carter’s Duke Divinity colleague Ellen F. Davis. Professor Davis argues persuasively that the Bible provides “vision and principle” for land use in our time. Read Davis’s lively essay in "The Green Bible" and you will begin to appreciate a new way of reading the good book, an Earthly perspective that elevates issues of stewardship, care and justice.
I would be interested in hearing from this blog's readers as to where they first hear of good nonfiction: The New York Times Book Review, perhaps, or even Publishers Weekly, which has been a great source for me over the years.
I scan PW’s full list of new nonfiction with an eye out for the big red star next to any of their mini-reviews. That’s exactly what appeared a few weeks back next to the title of Duke theologian Stanley Hauerwas’s exceptional new book, “Living Gently in a Violent World: The Prophetic Witness of Weakness” (November 2008, IVP Academic Books), written with Jean Vanier, founder of L'Arche, a network of homes where people with and without mental disabilities live together as family.
Publishers Weekly says Hauerwas’s discussion of the political implications of gentleness in the last chapter “is worth the entire book.” I would say the same thing about Hauerwas’s meditation earlier in the book on the significance of place and community and what we mean by “progress.” I took delight in his story about a thirty-six-inch snow at Notre Dame that spoke volumes about a loss of community.
The book is part of a new series edited by Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice, codirectors of the Duke Divinity School Center for Reconciliation, that pairs academics and practitioners to examine issues of Christian life and thought.
Read the starred review
Hauerwas, a professor of theological ethics, is also the subject of a nice Publishers Weekly profile that notes that he has been writing steadily for nearly 40 years and keeping Library of Congress cataloguers busy (48 books and counting).
Hauerwas tells interviewer LaVonne Neff that of all his books his favorite is “The Peaceable Kingdom” (Univ. of Notre Dame, 1991), an introduction to Christian ethics that stresses community and nonviolence.
For Hauerwas, peace “looks like Jean Vanier having his arm around an elderly woman at Mass, a woman who has been cared for—for years—by people simply being present to her. That's peace.”
Read the full profile.
Stuart Wells covers book news and continuing education for the Office of News & Communications at Duke. He’s also in charge of news release production and distribution and the gathering of Duke-related news clips.
Zeroing in on good nonfiction can be a challenge, but I’m glad to report that help is on the way -- at least over the next two weeks -- in the form of year-end holiday gift guides.
One of my favorites appears in The Christian Century’s Dec. 16 issue. The magazine has a special Christmas section of books, DVDs and CDs as recommended by the magazine’s editors, film reviewers and music critics, as well as Mary Harris Russell, a specialist in children’s literature at Indiana University. As you would expect, the list begins with theology and Bible topics, but then quickly ranges farther afield, from current events to fiction, from classical music to popular holiday CDs (and Tony Bennett, at 82 years young, isn’t taking a backseat to anyone).
Books by two Duke authors are included among the nine theological picks. Divinity School professor J. Kameron Carter’s “Race: A Theological Account” (Oxford University Press, September 2008) is singled out as not only offering a sharp analysis of a racialized Christian theology, but constructing a way forward to a “new theological imagination for the 21st century.” The book is also getting good buzz at the popular readers’ site.
Just one book down on the magazine’s list is “Scripture, Culture and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible” (Cambridge University Press, 2008) by Carter’s Duke Divinity colleague Ellen F. Davis. Professor Davis argues persuasively that the Bible provides “vision and principle” for land use in our time. Read Davis’s lively essay in "The Green Bible" and you will begin to appreciate a new way of reading the good book, an Earthly perspective that elevates issues of stewardship, care and justice.
I would be interested in hearing from this blog's readers as to where they first hear of good nonfiction: The New York Times Book Review, perhaps, or even Publishers Weekly, which has been a great source for me over the years.
I scan PW’s full list of new nonfiction with an eye out for the big red star next to any of their mini-reviews. That’s exactly what appeared a few weeks back next to the title of Duke theologian Stanley Hauerwas’s exceptional new book, “Living Gently in a Violent World: The Prophetic Witness of Weakness” (November 2008, IVP Academic Books), written with Jean Vanier, founder of L'Arche, a network of homes where people with and without mental disabilities live together as family.
Publishers Weekly says Hauerwas’s discussion of the political implications of gentleness in the last chapter “is worth the entire book.” I would say the same thing about Hauerwas’s meditation earlier in the book on the significance of place and community and what we mean by “progress.” I took delight in his story about a thirty-six-inch snow at Notre Dame that spoke volumes about a loss of community.
The book is part of a new series edited by Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice, codirectors of the Duke Divinity School Center for Reconciliation, that pairs academics and practitioners to examine issues of Christian life and thought.
Read the starred review
Hauerwas, a professor of theological ethics, is also the subject of a nice Publishers Weekly profile that notes that he has been writing steadily for nearly 40 years and keeping Library of Congress cataloguers busy (48 books and counting).
Hauerwas tells interviewer LaVonne Neff that of all his books his favorite is “The Peaceable Kingdom” (Univ. of Notre Dame, 1991), an introduction to Christian ethics that stresses community and nonviolence.
For Hauerwas, peace “looks like Jean Vanier having his arm around an elderly woman at Mass, a woman who has been cared for—for years—by people simply being present to her. That's peace.”
Read the full profile.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Versus List
We decided to do a versus on the list idea that Bill had on Monday. Below you will find the fruits of that labor, catgorized for your convience.
Each list will be shown in the following format:
Arthur's Pick/Bill's Pick
Fantasy
1. The Lord of the Rings / Magic for Beginners
2. The Once & Future King / Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire
3. The Lion,the Witch, & the Wardrobe / Hard-Boiled Wonderland & the End of the World
4. A Game of Thrones / American Gods
5. Eye of the World / The Once & Future King
Books Featuring Talking Animals
1. Watership Down / Funny Papers
2. Animal Farm / The Magic Pudding
3. Charlotte’s Web / The Lion,the Witch,& the Wardrobe
4. Redwall / Cricket in Times Square
5. The Lion,the Witch,& the Wardrobe / Animal Farm
Coming of Age Books
1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn/ Edisto
2. Lord of the Flies / Catcher in the Rye
3. To Kill a Mockingbird / To Kill a Mockingbird
4. Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl / Wait Until Spring, Bandini
5. Squanto: Friend of the Pilgrims / Coal Black Horse
The Intersection of Science & Religion
1. The Language of God / The Sparrow & Children of God
2. Inherit the Wind / Inherit the Wind
3. On the Origin of Species / Creation
4. The Bible (Green Edition) / On the Origin of Species
5. Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast / The Brick Testament: Stories from the Book of Genesis
The World Under George W. Bush
1. The Looming Tower / Get Your War On
2. The Faith of George W. Bush / Man Without a Country
3. The President of Good and Evil / The 9-11 Report – A Graphic Adaptation
4. Bush at War / 1984
5. The Great Deluge / Catch 22
Featuring Food
1. Fast Food Nation / Smokestack Lightning
2. Two for the Road / Cooking With Fernet Branca
3. United States of Argula / Serious Pig
4. What Einstein Told His Cook / Babette’s Feast
5. Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages / How to Eat Fried Worms
Agree with us? Of a different mind than us? Feel free to leave us your comments and list below.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
The Power of Love
Let’s talk about love.
I know it’s not Valentines Day but I have been giving it a lot of thought lately. How does this apply to books you might ask? Well don’t worry I’m going to hit you with the book knowledge below.
I have to start this off by briefly talking about one of the forbidden topics here, religion, specifically faith. I consider myself to be a man of faith. I believe in the Bible, Jesus, and everything included in that. Don’t worry I’m not trying to convert you in this blog. I just needed to say that because the book I am recommending below is at its heart a religious book. That being said, if you shy away from it because of that, you might be missing out on some truths about love that could help you out in the long run.
The book I have been vaguely referring to is The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. Chapman has identified five ways we define love. That seems kind of narrow and a tad vague but when I tell you the five perhaps it will make more sense. The five love languages according to Chapman are: Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, Physical Touch, and Words of Affirmation. They are essentially ways in which a person can show you they love and care about you.
Quality Time is really self-defined, it means spending time with someone you love. You might be saying, who wouldn’t want to spend time with someone they love? Well that’s not the point here; the point is do you need someone to spend time with you to show you they care for you. Essentially does love=time spent together to you. Some people just crave time with the people they love and need this to be reciprocated in order to feel that complete bond that love entails.
Receiving gifts also seems rather straightforward. Is it by the amount of things someone buys you that you define the strength of their love. I know at it’s heart this seems superficial but every year we run out to florist in droves to buy flowers and we certainly make a big deal of Mother’s Day, Christmas, and birthdays. Some people need gifts as a way of showing them love. I would argue that it’s not so much about the gifts in this case but about the thought when you saw said gift. To the receiver, the gift means they were on your mind and that means love.
Acts of Service means doing something for the one you care about. I firmly believe my wife is an acts of service lover. She quantifies my love for her by the amount of things I do to help her out. Again, this may seem on the surface a selfish thing but we all get overwhelmed from time to time and who wouldn’t like a helping hand. By giving an acts of service person a helping hand you are acknowledging that you have been paying enough attention and care enough about them to provide the helping hand. This is immediate heart fuel to an acts of service lover.
Physical Touch is easy enough. Some people prefer their love to be immediate and rely on physical contact to show it. Holding a hand, putting your arm around someone at the movies, or a gentle hand on a knee are all signs of love to a physical touch lover. I’m pretty sure that this precludes all public displays of affection, as making out in the restaurant though physical touch is not the kind of touch we're talking about here. We're talking about an intimate touch that says to the partner you are on my mind and I love you.
Words of Affirmation are easy to say but hard to do. Our society doesn’t really encourage anymore. We are a society of faultfinders. We are waiting for someone to screw up so we can tell him or her about it. When we do give affirmation words they are usually hollow and meaningless like when we ask someone how there doing. Do we really care how there doing? Most of the time people just say fine anyway and when they don’t we are certainly not listening to them after that. I believe after examining myself from all angles I am largely a Words of Affirmation lover. I quantify how much a person cares for me by their words. That being said, I know when the words are genuine and when they’re just placating or hollow.
In closing, the book has way more than the simple examples I gave you above. I believe Chapman has reached into the root of our love process and found some hidden truths. If you read the book I am almost positive you will see yourself predominately in one of the camps above. I was skeptical and I found my love home. I think that to reach a true intimate relationship that is fulfilling we have to give our partners a little bit of all of the five love languages but make sure we add a touch more of the one they most quantify love with.
Do yourself a favor and read the book, even you guys. Love is not just for the ladies anymore. If you want help in the love process it never hurts to have a little more knowledge.
Monday, December 15, 2008
We List You A Merry... oh never mind
A customer here at the Gothic recently confessed that she loved this time of year. I assumed her enthusiasm had to do with the impending holidays, but she corrected me:
“It’s because all of the best-of lists are coming out!”
I know what she means. The last couple of weeks have seen the publication of the New York Times’ 10 Best Books List, (as well as its Top 100 List, if you aren’t satisfied with just 10), Three Percent’s Best Translated Novels list, NPR’s compilation of lists from critics and booksellers alike, and Salon.com’s lists of best fiction and nonfiction.
There’s plenty more where that came from. The pop culture blog Largehearted Boy has a terrific list of best-of lists (Not ranked, sadly. I guess that would be too meta.) I can’t get enough of these kinds of things. It doesn’t matter what the category is. I don’t garden, golf, fish, or knit, but I’d read a top-ten list of books in any of those categories, and I’d find it fascinating.
Booksellers, much like the manic record store clerks in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, are natural list makers. It doesn’t take much to draw us into an argument over which books would make the list of best hard-boiled crime novels (The Big Nowhere, The Underground Man, 1974, Red Harvest, The Long Goodbye) or the best uses of rock and roll in a novel (Perfect Circle, Glimpses, Idoru).
The problem is that we need more categories. We’ve argued all the standards to death. I’m hereby calling on my fellow bloggers (I’m calling you out here, Arthur and Kathy) as well as my co-workers at the Gothic to come up with some new lists for us to waste time debating. We can follow up (read: argue like wild dogs) in future posts.
(Lieutenant Awesome, who is sitting behind me eating Lance Crackers as I type, is yelling out suggestions even now: Best Graduation Books! Best Airplane Reading!)
Here are a few to start us off. As we come up with nominees for these lists, I’ll link to them:
Best Novels Featuring Animals that Talk to Humans
Best Books With Titles of Five or More Words
Best Books Made Into Terrible Movies
Best Time-Travel Books
Best Books (Fiction or Non-Fiction) Featuring 1+ Scenes of Skateboarding
Books Featuring Twins
And, of course: Books of Lists.
Happy List Season, Gothic Shoppers!
“It’s because all of the best-of lists are coming out!”
I know what she means. The last couple of weeks have seen the publication of the New York Times’ 10 Best Books List, (as well as its Top 100 List, if you aren’t satisfied with just 10), Three Percent’s Best Translated Novels list, NPR’s compilation of lists from critics and booksellers alike, and Salon.com’s lists of best fiction and nonfiction.
There’s plenty more where that came from. The pop culture blog Largehearted Boy has a terrific list of best-of lists (Not ranked, sadly. I guess that would be too meta.) I can’t get enough of these kinds of things. It doesn’t matter what the category is. I don’t garden, golf, fish, or knit, but I’d read a top-ten list of books in any of those categories, and I’d find it fascinating.
Booksellers, much like the manic record store clerks in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, are natural list makers. It doesn’t take much to draw us into an argument over which books would make the list of best hard-boiled crime novels (The Big Nowhere, The Underground Man, 1974, Red Harvest, The Long Goodbye) or the best uses of rock and roll in a novel (Perfect Circle, Glimpses, Idoru).
The problem is that we need more categories. We’ve argued all the standards to death. I’m hereby calling on my fellow bloggers (I’m calling you out here, Arthur and Kathy) as well as my co-workers at the Gothic to come up with some new lists for us to waste time debating. We can follow up (read: argue like wild dogs) in future posts.
(Lieutenant Awesome, who is sitting behind me eating Lance Crackers as I type, is yelling out suggestions even now: Best Graduation Books! Best Airplane Reading!)
Here are a few to start us off. As we come up with nominees for these lists, I’ll link to them:
Best Novels Featuring Animals that Talk to Humans
Best Books With Titles of Five or More Words
Best Books Made Into Terrible Movies
Best Time-Travel Books
Best Books (Fiction or Non-Fiction) Featuring 1+ Scenes of Skateboarding
Books Featuring Twins
And, of course: Books of Lists.
Happy List Season, Gothic Shoppers!
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Happy books
We have an assortment of holiday books (which are on sale for 30% off by the way) but I have two favorites. They are both by, of all people, Lemony Snicket – and they aren’t unfortunate or unpleasant, in fact they are quite charming. The first one is The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming, A Christmas Story (illustrations by Lisa Brown). A latke, which runs away from a hot pan of oil, keeps running into Christmas things, lights, candy canes, a pine tree and has to keep explaining himself until he finds a new home. The second is The Lump of Coal (art by Brett Helquist). It is the story of a lump of coal who can think, talk and move itself around. His adventures are hilarious. Obvious I can’t tell you much else without ruining the story, but as it says on the back jacket, “Miracles can happen, even to those who are small, flammable, and dressed all in black.”
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Books for Lt. Awesome
One of our student coworkers here at the Gothic (we’ll call him Lieutenant Awesome) recently asked me what books I’d recommend for a reading list of classic American literature. It’s an interesting question, and it’s sparked a lively but fun debate here at the store. We’ve expanded the parameters of the category to include some writers from other countries, and several of us have gotten in on the game. In the first of what is going to be a series of occasional dual (or duel, depending on the topic) postings, Arthur and I are going to come up with a few recommendations.
Me first:
In coming up with a reading list like this, it’s easy and tempting to simply run down the list of canonized “great” authors and pull from their works. And in fact, some of these authors are just the ones I’d recommend. But I feel inclined to tailor my list to what I feel are Lt. Awesome’s tastes, so I’m going to draw from some contemporary authors, too.
Lt. Awesome is interested in war and history, so my initial recommendations are going to organize themselves around that interest.
First, I’d recommend Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls. Not only is it a tersely but elegantly written book on war, it’s a good jumping-off point for modern American fiction. You can go from this book to other great books on war (see below), immerse yourself in Hemingway’s contemporaries, such as Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, or Sherwood Anderson (all killer-diller writers), or pursue Hemingway’s stylistic trajectory and pick up books by the great pulp writers such as Hammett or Thompson.
I’ll also put Lt. Awesome onto All Quiet on the Western Front. Remarque’s book on German soldiers fighting in World War I is widely considered to be the greatest book ever written on war and its effects on those who wage it.
For a more contemporary writer –and war—I’ll suggest Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. O’Brien uses language that is both tough and compassionate to describe the inner lives of a company of soldiers in the Vietnam War. The book is a classic of war writing, and a classic of modern American fiction.
Finally, for something of a palate cleanser, I’m going to suggest Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. It’s technically a war novel too, I guess. It’s also great fun to read, and it’s a good introduction to what can be done with the twin weapons of absurdity and articulate cynicism. So it goes.
Right, those are my kick-off picks. There are many, many more authors I’d recommend that have been left off this list. I hope we return to this subject soon.
Ready, Arthur? Hit me:
Okay, my turn.
Sticking with the military theme for Lt. Awesome my recommendations fall along similar but alternate lines.
First, I would suggest Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. I found the book to be wonderful. It does such a good job of showing what a giant bureaucracy an army can become. It is at times dark and sinister yet still amusing, and at times outright audacious in the absurdities that befall these poor airmen.
Next, I would go with the Red Badge of Courage. Set during the civil war, this novel follows a single soldier as he faces the horrors of battle. The novel is so well written and you become so invested in the protagonist that by the end you are totally immersed in a time that none of us were alive for. The novel also speaks to a functioning army comprised of many soldiers acting towards one conclusion.
Though it may seem oddly out of place amongst all these war novels, I have recommended to the lieutenant that he read To Kill a Mockingbird. When I came into the conversation it was built on a premise that the lieutenant wanted to read classic American literature. Mockingbird is such a wonderful book about dark subject matter. Rape, racism, and class and gender wars all play a part in Mockingbird. Though no actual war is fought I still think the book should be considered a classic and no thorough reading should go without it.
Next, I would recommend a play Inherit the Wind. It was one of the first plays I ever read and is again about a different kind of war, the war of evolution and religion. It is a great piece that when well acted can leave you with much to think about. The playwright does an excellent job of remaining neutral and there is no clear cut winning side in the play.
Lastly, I recommend a book about a war of the future in 1984. Orwell’s’ classic shows a bleak world where a Big Brother watches you. Your every move is monitored and cataloged. Some would say we are not to far away from this with the passing of the Patriot Act; others would digress with an argument of freedom versus safety. The novel under the current conditions our country faces holds up well, and is as pertinent today as it was when it was written.
Whatever choices he makes I applaud the lieutenants desire to further his knowledge of literature and encourage him to go forth and conquer these great books.
Me first:
In coming up with a reading list like this, it’s easy and tempting to simply run down the list of canonized “great” authors and pull from their works. And in fact, some of these authors are just the ones I’d recommend. But I feel inclined to tailor my list to what I feel are Lt. Awesome’s tastes, so I’m going to draw from some contemporary authors, too.
Lt. Awesome is interested in war and history, so my initial recommendations are going to organize themselves around that interest.
First, I’d recommend Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls. Not only is it a tersely but elegantly written book on war, it’s a good jumping-off point for modern American fiction. You can go from this book to other great books on war (see below), immerse yourself in Hemingway’s contemporaries, such as Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, or Sherwood Anderson (all killer-diller writers), or pursue Hemingway’s stylistic trajectory and pick up books by the great pulp writers such as Hammett or Thompson.
I’ll also put Lt. Awesome onto All Quiet on the Western Front. Remarque’s book on German soldiers fighting in World War I is widely considered to be the greatest book ever written on war and its effects on those who wage it.
For a more contemporary writer –and war—I’ll suggest Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. O’Brien uses language that is both tough and compassionate to describe the inner lives of a company of soldiers in the Vietnam War. The book is a classic of war writing, and a classic of modern American fiction.
Finally, for something of a palate cleanser, I’m going to suggest Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. It’s technically a war novel too, I guess. It’s also great fun to read, and it’s a good introduction to what can be done with the twin weapons of absurdity and articulate cynicism. So it goes.
Right, those are my kick-off picks. There are many, many more authors I’d recommend that have been left off this list. I hope we return to this subject soon.
Ready, Arthur? Hit me:
Okay, my turn.
Sticking with the military theme for Lt. Awesome my recommendations fall along similar but alternate lines.
First, I would suggest Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. I found the book to be wonderful. It does such a good job of showing what a giant bureaucracy an army can become. It is at times dark and sinister yet still amusing, and at times outright audacious in the absurdities that befall these poor airmen.
Next, I would go with the Red Badge of Courage. Set during the civil war, this novel follows a single soldier as he faces the horrors of battle. The novel is so well written and you become so invested in the protagonist that by the end you are totally immersed in a time that none of us were alive for. The novel also speaks to a functioning army comprised of many soldiers acting towards one conclusion.
Though it may seem oddly out of place amongst all these war novels, I have recommended to the lieutenant that he read To Kill a Mockingbird. When I came into the conversation it was built on a premise that the lieutenant wanted to read classic American literature. Mockingbird is such a wonderful book about dark subject matter. Rape, racism, and class and gender wars all play a part in Mockingbird. Though no actual war is fought I still think the book should be considered a classic and no thorough reading should go without it.
Next, I would recommend a play Inherit the Wind. It was one of the first plays I ever read and is again about a different kind of war, the war of evolution and religion. It is a great piece that when well acted can leave you with much to think about. The playwright does an excellent job of remaining neutral and there is no clear cut winning side in the play.
Lastly, I recommend a book about a war of the future in 1984. Orwell’s’ classic shows a bleak world where a Big Brother watches you. Your every move is monitored and cataloged. Some would say we are not to far away from this with the passing of the Patriot Act; others would digress with an argument of freedom versus safety. The novel under the current conditions our country faces holds up well, and is as pertinent today as it was when it was written.
Whatever choices he makes I applaud the lieutenants desire to further his knowledge of literature and encourage him to go forth and conquer these great books.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Horseshoes, Hand Grenades, and …Hardbacks.
I like a near miss.
It’s always a joy, of course, to read a book and simply not be able to imagine its being any better. As I’ve indicated in previous posts, I felt that way about Erickson’s Zeroville, as well as about Padgett Powell’s Edisto.
But once in a while I’m somewhat cheered by reading a book that comes close to pulling off what its author seemed to intend but that ultimately falls short. It feels like a sign that the author is reaching to articulate something just beyond his or her capacity. It’s like getting to watch someone learn how to write.
I remember reading a relatively early book by Denis Johnson, Resuscitation of a Hanged Man. This was back in the early 90’s, and Johnson’s star was just starting to rise. Later in the 90’s he would publish the knockout book of stories, Jesus’ Son, and just last year he won the National Book Award for his breakout novel, Tree of Smoke. At the time, though, he’d published but three novels, of which Resuscitation was the most recent. I’d been pulling for Johnson over the course of his first couple of books, and I had high hopes for the new one. But when I finished it, what I thought was: Wow, almost.
Rather than disappointed, though, I felt kind of elated, because he’d almost done it. He’d gotten closer to writing a masterpiece than he had before, and I could feel the momentum of his progression towards …something. Maturity, maybe? A stronger command of his obvious talent? Anyway, he was getting there, and I was getting to watch.
Writing is a peculiar art form. I’ve always considered all of the arts –painting, music, sculpture, dance—to be attempts to express what is ineffable about the human condition. Literature, counterintuitively, is an attempt to express the ineffable using words, which means that a near miss is something impressive in itself.
Sometimes, when a writer acknowledges the impossibility of what he or she is trying to accomplish, but proceeds anyway, something amazing happens. I’m thinking here of Joan Wickersham’s powerful, painful book The Suicide Index. Wickersham’s father committed suicide after a long but largely hidden struggle with depression. As anyone who has survived such an incident will tell you, trying to put the aftermath of such an event into words is nearly impossible. For a writer, coming face to face with the possibility that there simply might not be language available to describe her experience could have rendered her mute. I’m surprised she didn’t just publish a blank book.
Instead, she made a study of the uselessness of trying to use language to impose order on the chaotic effects of her father’s suicide. Structuring her book as an index –that most ordered of documents—she articulated not merely the experience itself but the failure of trying to do so.
Wickersham’s book caught the notice of a lot of critics. It garnered a surprise nomination for the National Book Award, and landed on the best books of the year lists of Salon.com, The Boston Globe, the L.A. Times, and the Washington Post. It’s a brilliant book on a tough subject, certainly, but I think that the attention the book earned had to do with something more, something left unsaid in the reviews. I think that Wickersham produced a book that, whether deliberately or not, goes to the very heart of what all writers try to do. She nakedly exposed the struggle to bend language to the purpose of saying what can't be said.
She wrote a near miss, and did so brilliantly.
It’s always a joy, of course, to read a book and simply not be able to imagine its being any better. As I’ve indicated in previous posts, I felt that way about Erickson’s Zeroville, as well as about Padgett Powell’s Edisto.
But once in a while I’m somewhat cheered by reading a book that comes close to pulling off what its author seemed to intend but that ultimately falls short. It feels like a sign that the author is reaching to articulate something just beyond his or her capacity. It’s like getting to watch someone learn how to write.
I remember reading a relatively early book by Denis Johnson, Resuscitation of a Hanged Man. This was back in the early 90’s, and Johnson’s star was just starting to rise. Later in the 90’s he would publish the knockout book of stories, Jesus’ Son, and just last year he won the National Book Award for his breakout novel, Tree of Smoke. At the time, though, he’d published but three novels, of which Resuscitation was the most recent. I’d been pulling for Johnson over the course of his first couple of books, and I had high hopes for the new one. But when I finished it, what I thought was: Wow, almost.
Rather than disappointed, though, I felt kind of elated, because he’d almost done it. He’d gotten closer to writing a masterpiece than he had before, and I could feel the momentum of his progression towards …something. Maturity, maybe? A stronger command of his obvious talent? Anyway, he was getting there, and I was getting to watch.
Writing is a peculiar art form. I’ve always considered all of the arts –painting, music, sculpture, dance—to be attempts to express what is ineffable about the human condition. Literature, counterintuitively, is an attempt to express the ineffable using words, which means that a near miss is something impressive in itself.
Sometimes, when a writer acknowledges the impossibility of what he or she is trying to accomplish, but proceeds anyway, something amazing happens. I’m thinking here of Joan Wickersham’s powerful, painful book The Suicide Index. Wickersham’s father committed suicide after a long but largely hidden struggle with depression. As anyone who has survived such an incident will tell you, trying to put the aftermath of such an event into words is nearly impossible. For a writer, coming face to face with the possibility that there simply might not be language available to describe her experience could have rendered her mute. I’m surprised she didn’t just publish a blank book.
Instead, she made a study of the uselessness of trying to use language to impose order on the chaotic effects of her father’s suicide. Structuring her book as an index –that most ordered of documents—she articulated not merely the experience itself but the failure of trying to do so.
Wickersham’s book caught the notice of a lot of critics. It garnered a surprise nomination for the National Book Award, and landed on the best books of the year lists of Salon.com, The Boston Globe, the L.A. Times, and the Washington Post. It’s a brilliant book on a tough subject, certainly, but I think that the attention the book earned had to do with something more, something left unsaid in the reviews. I think that Wickersham produced a book that, whether deliberately or not, goes to the very heart of what all writers try to do. She nakedly exposed the struggle to bend language to the purpose of saying what can't be said.
She wrote a near miss, and did so brilliantly.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Chiropterology
Lie down and make yourself comfortable on the couch.
I’ve been reading a lot of Batman recently, to be specific the Long Halloween and Dark Victory. Reading these books back to back was a wonderful experience that got me thinking about who Batman is and why we identify with him. I will preface the below blog with the foreknowledge that I am one of the 7 individuals below the age of 40 that has not seen the Dark Knight movie that is all the rage. I’ve heard it was good though.
Growing up I took to comics like a duck takes to water, actually more like a fish takes to water. Comics always seemed natural and homey to me. I loved just about all comics but my favorite by a long shot was Spider-Man. Spidey appealed to me because he was a normal guy thrust into abnormal circumstances (in this case getting bitten by a radioactive spider). I must admit my knowledge of the mythos of Batman is not as extensive as Spideys’ but I am not unfamiliar with the back-story. So I offer the two as a compare and contrast. Let’s dissect them and see what makes these “heroes” tick.
A hero is only as good as his back-story and the case of these two there are striking similarities. Bruce Wayne’s (Batman) mother and father were gunned down in a back alley of Gotham city when he was a young boy. He was terrified and felt totally helpless to prevent the killings. He ended up being raised by his family’s butler, Alfred. Peter Parker’s (Spidey) parents are never really mentioned, we just know they are not there. He ended up being raised by his Aunt May and his Uncle Ben. He like Wayne had a pleasant childhood. Parker’s lasted longer as he was in his teens before the startling events that led to Spider-man occurred. Also, unlike Wayne, Parker had an opportunity to avoid the death of his Uncle Ben at the hands of a gunman. The future gunman actually ran by Parker on his way out of a building. Parker could have easily stopped the gunman as by that time he had his spider powers but he neglected to by indicating it was “not his problem”. The subsequent killing of his uncle left Parker with a desire to use his powers responsibly.
Therein lies our first difference between our heroes. Spidey is a hero born from a responsibility to use his powers to protect others. Batman is a hero born out of a sense of helplessness. He was helpless the night his parents died and he will never be helpless again. Not only will he never be helpless again, he will help those who are helpless.
Secondly, both characters lack a true father in their stories. Parker was raised by his Uncle Ben and Wayne by Alfred. Parker as Spider-man continues to show an almost immature thought process, cracking jokes while fighting the evildoers. Wayne as Batman doesn’t do jokes. His whole persona is dour and he fights evil with a dark countenance. Their actions in the way they fight crime to me is an indication of where they stand as men whose fathers left them early. Parker seems to have stagnated in his adolescence; it was the best time of his life when his uncle was still alive and he was a typical teen. Wayne has shut himself down, becoming unfeeling like the world that took his parents away. His logic being if he chose to love and feel again he might have to experience the pain of loss again.
Thirdly, if we look at their superhero personas we can learn a lot about what makes them heroes. Spider-man’s suit is bright red and blue. It proclaims to the evildoers and citizens alike that someone different is here to save them. Parker created his suit by hand and even invented the web shooters that spray his webs. His suit is functional and somewhat fun. Batmans' suit is gray and black. It proclaims to evildoers that someone is here that they need to fear. Wayne even says he adopted the bat as a symbol to strike fear into the hearts of those who would do harm to innocents. Batman is seen often with a utility belt. It seems at times the belt has everything: grenades, gas masks, anti poison pills, etc. I believe this stems from a desire of Wayne to never again be caught unprepared, as he was the night of his parent’s attacks.
Finally, the last differences between the two heroes are their friends and villains. Spider-man’s friends are many - MJ, Flash Thompson, The Human Torch, etc. His villains are all similar in that they pick a theme and build a costume to fit it. Their motivations are usually profit and or self-improvement. Batman has only a few friends, mainly the men who have donned the mantle of Robin over the years; his villains are all treacherous and deadly. They are insane men and women who are out to destroy Gotham City or the world. One of the prominent buildings in Gotham is Arkham Asylum. It houses all the lunatics that make up Batmans’ pantheon of foes.
In conclusion, I think we are drawn to Batman as a character because first he is a regular guy like us. He has no superpowers. He has risen above the regular through sheer will of mind and cleverly created gadgets. Secondly, unlike Spider-man we cannot always be sure Batman’s intentions are purely good. When reading the comics you begin to wonder if this will not be the time Batman crosses the line and kills one of his villains. Finally, I think we are drawn to him because he is flawed as a human being. He is a young boy who has never recovered from a tragic event that occurred when he was a child. We have all faced a trauma of some sort and are ready and willing to identify with our fellow sufferers.
In closing, I urge you to read the comics I mentioned above. They are extraordinarily well written and can be used to formulate your own opinions about Batman. I for one now look on Batman and Spider-man with different eyes. I am not sure either can be seen as a “hero”. After reading the Batman comics I think the only true hero in them is Jim Gordon, Gotham’s police chief. He is a steadfast honorable man, maybe the last one Gotham has and certainly one our real world can use more of.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
In a rut....
I’m in a rut and I can’t get out. You know how sometimes you’re hungry but nothing appeals to you? Well, I’m horrified to say that has been happening to me about books lately (and we know it’s not because I don’t have plenty), but I think I may have just found the answer. We just got in a new book by Ali Smith called The Book Lover. Everything in this anthology is something that she has loved reading over the course of her life. There are famous authors and not so famous ones. There are pieces she loved as a child as well as pieces she’s loved as an adult. There are poems as well as prose. And there are people I’ve never heard of in it – which to me is the most appealing aspect of the book. I’ll keep you posted!
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Readership Up
I can remember when I first realized I liked reading.
I was one of those people who read because I was forced to for English class. I remember reading Moby Dick, Anna Karenina, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and of course the Odyssey. Some I liked and some I didn’t care for. I wish I could tell you reading all that classic literature prompted me to become an avid reader but regrettably it did not.
So what then prompted by lush desire for reading? I was sitting in my high school library working on an awful project about Albert Camus and the rise of existentialism in The Stranger when I suddenly realized I didn’t really like the book or Camus very much. I randomly started wandering the library. I arrived in the fiction section where I went to the first part of the alphabet my eyes resting on Richard Adams’ Watership Down. I read the back cover of the book, bunnies huh? Still it did seem slightly interesting and certainly better than The Stranger. So I checked it out.
I went home later that evening on the bus where I fished the book out of my bag. I started reading and was 3 chapters in before I got off the bus. I can scarcely remember eating dinner such was the pull of these rabbits plight. Before I knew it, it was time to hit the sheets for the evening. I had worked my way through just over half the book and my desire was to stay up and finish it but I knew the practicality of that was not good, so I let it go for the evening.
I’m pretty sure I dreamed of the black river. (A highway to the poor rabbits, a river some didn’t make it across) I don’t know if I actually was a rabbit or not but I knew what it felt like I guess.
When I awoke the next morning I really didn’t want to go to school. I just wanted to read the book. I knew the trouble that awaited me for skipping so I trudged off. The bus ride again allowed me to reacquaint myself with my rabbit friends. I don’t recall much of school that day until lunchtime where I again started reading. Looking back I must have seemed quite the nerd, sitting on the wall reading a book with a fluffy white bunny on the cover but then I honestly didn’t care.
It was at this ill-fated lunch that things took a turn for the worse. One of my bunny friends died. I was crestfallen. I loved the character of that bunny so much that it was like Richard Adams reached through the book and slapped me in the face. The lunch ending bell was ringing and my eyes were watering from the loss. I had to lumber off to English class. It was there I received more bad news my report about Camus was due by the end of the week. It was loss heaped on loss. How could I go back to the morbid depression of The Stranger when I had the morbid depression of Watership Down to finish?
Well I’d love to tell you I returned to Camus and aced that paper but that would be a lie. I finished Watership Down; it was an amazing book (and still is) and left me hungry to read more. In the subsequent weeks, I finished Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Lord of the Rings, and the Chronicles of Narnia. Notice anything missing from that list?
I got a 75(D) on my Stranger report but I was okay with that.
Monday, December 1, 2008
What Makes It All Worthwhile
The thing is: bookselling is something of an uphill battle. You have to have a sense of mission to keep at this quixotic endeavor, and many of us do. But the stronger the sense of mission one has, greater is his potential for getting discouraged.
Now, folks have been proclaiming the death of reading for as long as I’ve been in the business. Video games, cable television, IPods, texting: each of these in its ascendancy –according to pundits, educators, and codgers alike—has spelled the demise of biblio-centric culture. I don’t really buy into all that hysteria. When you read that more kids lined up for the release of the last Harry Potter book than lined up for the last installment in the Star Wars series, it’s hard to argue that books are fading into obscurity.
Still, I can’t deny that it’s getting harder to put good books into people’s hands. It’s increasingly rare for someone to walk into the Gothic and ask for a recommendation, and it’s rarer still for the mainstream publishing industry to release a book that makes a missionary of you.
It can wear you down.
But there are days when it’s all worthwhile. A newly invigorated Lost Roads Publishers has reissued three books by the great American poet Frank Stanford, and I’ve ordered them for our store. Stanford was a major poet, the best I’ve ever read, and he’s been all but ignored in the canon of American literature. Once in a while I’ll run into a fellow fanatic (Duke’s own Tony Tost is one), but for the most part, his work remains unknown to most readers.
Stanford’s books have been out of print for so long that it’s criminal. I’ve had to talk to customers about him as though he were some sort of imaginary friend. There are books of his that I’ve never even seen. Soon, though, I’ll be able to force our unsuspecting customers to read The Singing Knives, You, and, most importantly, The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You, Stanford’s 400-page poem that, until this edition, had never been published in a corrected, annotated edition.
Do these reissues constitute a major, significant moment in the world of publishing and bookselling? Maybe not, but, given the chance, I can put these books into people’s hands and be excited about doing so.
That’s enough, for now.
Now, folks have been proclaiming the death of reading for as long as I’ve been in the business. Video games, cable television, IPods, texting: each of these in its ascendancy –according to pundits, educators, and codgers alike—has spelled the demise of biblio-centric culture. I don’t really buy into all that hysteria. When you read that more kids lined up for the release of the last Harry Potter book than lined up for the last installment in the Star Wars series, it’s hard to argue that books are fading into obscurity.
Still, I can’t deny that it’s getting harder to put good books into people’s hands. It’s increasingly rare for someone to walk into the Gothic and ask for a recommendation, and it’s rarer still for the mainstream publishing industry to release a book that makes a missionary of you.
It can wear you down.
But there are days when it’s all worthwhile. A newly invigorated Lost Roads Publishers has reissued three books by the great American poet Frank Stanford, and I’ve ordered them for our store. Stanford was a major poet, the best I’ve ever read, and he’s been all but ignored in the canon of American literature. Once in a while I’ll run into a fellow fanatic (Duke’s own Tony Tost is one), but for the most part, his work remains unknown to most readers.
Stanford’s books have been out of print for so long that it’s criminal. I’ve had to talk to customers about him as though he were some sort of imaginary friend. There are books of his that I’ve never even seen. Soon, though, I’ll be able to force our unsuspecting customers to read The Singing Knives, You, and, most importantly, The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You, Stanford’s 400-page poem that, until this edition, had never been published in a corrected, annotated edition.
Do these reissues constitute a major, significant moment in the world of publishing and bookselling? Maybe not, but, given the chance, I can put these books into people’s hands and be excited about doing so.
That’s enough, for now.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Thanksgiving (and yet another attempt to find out what you’re reading….)
I once read someone (maybe it was Judith Viorst?) say that her father’s idea of being safe and secure was having money in the bank, that her mother’s was always having enough toilet paper, and hers was knowing you’d have enough hot water no matter how long you showered. Mine has always been having enough unread books to make it through a snowstorm or a long illness or whatever catastrophic occurrence might keep me from being able to get to a bookstore and get more. As anyone who knows me will tell you, my chances of running out of books are slim to none – surface areas to put them on is a whole other matter. I need more time, not more books, so I’m thankful for a long weekend. Here’s what's going to the beach in my suitcase: Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates, Lauren Goff’s Monsters of Templeton, and Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger. What’s in yours?
LOLaplooza
Wth
Did you hear that? What is that deafening peel of thunder, that terrible groan of suffering, that indistinguishable cacophony of cries? That’s the death of the English language as we know it.
Spend more than five minutes with anyone between the ages of 10-18 and you will see their thumbs blazing across the touchpad of whatever high tech electronic device they use to communicate with others of their ilk. This by itself is not a bad thing. I’m all for communication. The problem I have is with the content of said messages.
“OMG!!! Lol!! I’m afk for a sec Ill brb”
Pause for a second and allow that to resonate in the deep strata of your brain. I think there’s a noun in there somewhere. A verb? Well maybe not. In fact as I write this piece the spell checker has just had its second seizure.
I don’t claim to be Shakespeare here but that sentence above is typical of many conversations going on right now on computers and phones around our great big world. With each passing generation I fear that our language will become more and more infiltrated by this genre of dialogue.
So, what’s going on here? Are these words just to long to type on tiny keyboards or is their something more insidious afoot? I think the answer lies somewhere between tiny keyboards and outright laziness. Our society has made it so convenient for us to do practically anything. I mean we have drive thru liquor stores now. We have a remote for practically everything in our home. Even my beloved books are being made more palatable through the use of compact disks and now these reading devices. Couple that with a nonchalant attitude and you have cyber speak, leetspeak, or Internet slang.
I begin to wonder what some of the older classics might sound like with this particular brand of communications.
Gone with the Wind: “FMD I don’t gad.”
Catch 22: “ Just bc your paranoid don’t mean they aren’t ay”
Hamlet: “Alas, poor Yorick! Ikhm.”
Maybe I’m being a tad unfair to this generation. Maybe I have just become one of those old people who refer to kids as whippersnappers. I don’t know but what I do know is this. Teens are going to continue to lol, brb, and afk themselves silly but we have to instill in them at an early age the need to write whole complete sentences and paragraphs. If left to their own desires the books of tomorrow will be much shorter because it will be filled with abbreviations.
The responsibility of this falls to us as parents, teachers, and fellow communicators. We have to start now by encouraging them to write, by not taking the easy shortcuts when writing ourselves, by setting an example and expecting them to live up to it. We need to bring back the hand-written letters and stop relying solely on e-mail for our communications. Just because the devices are getting smaller doesn’t mean our words have to. It starts with us and maybe we can find a happy medium of cyberspeak and real English.
As A.A. Milne said: “You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”
Ltr,cya!
Did you hear that? What is that deafening peel of thunder, that terrible groan of suffering, that indistinguishable cacophony of cries? That’s the death of the English language as we know it.
Spend more than five minutes with anyone between the ages of 10-18 and you will see their thumbs blazing across the touchpad of whatever high tech electronic device they use to communicate with others of their ilk. This by itself is not a bad thing. I’m all for communication. The problem I have is with the content of said messages.
“OMG!!! Lol!! I’m afk for a sec Ill brb”
Pause for a second and allow that to resonate in the deep strata of your brain. I think there’s a noun in there somewhere. A verb? Well maybe not. In fact as I write this piece the spell checker has just had its second seizure.
I don’t claim to be Shakespeare here but that sentence above is typical of many conversations going on right now on computers and phones around our great big world. With each passing generation I fear that our language will become more and more infiltrated by this genre of dialogue.
So, what’s going on here? Are these words just to long to type on tiny keyboards or is their something more insidious afoot? I think the answer lies somewhere between tiny keyboards and outright laziness. Our society has made it so convenient for us to do practically anything. I mean we have drive thru liquor stores now. We have a remote for practically everything in our home. Even my beloved books are being made more palatable through the use of compact disks and now these reading devices. Couple that with a nonchalant attitude and you have cyber speak, leetspeak, or Internet slang.
I begin to wonder what some of the older classics might sound like with this particular brand of communications.
Gone with the Wind: “FMD I don’t gad.”
Catch 22: “ Just bc your paranoid don’t mean they aren’t ay”
Hamlet: “Alas, poor Yorick! Ikhm.”
Maybe I’m being a tad unfair to this generation. Maybe I have just become one of those old people who refer to kids as whippersnappers. I don’t know but what I do know is this. Teens are going to continue to lol, brb, and afk themselves silly but we have to instill in them at an early age the need to write whole complete sentences and paragraphs. If left to their own desires the books of tomorrow will be much shorter because it will be filled with abbreviations.
The responsibility of this falls to us as parents, teachers, and fellow communicators. We have to start now by encouraging them to write, by not taking the easy shortcuts when writing ourselves, by setting an example and expecting them to live up to it. We need to bring back the hand-written letters and stop relying solely on e-mail for our communications. Just because the devices are getting smaller doesn’t mean our words have to. It starts with us and maybe we can find a happy medium of cyberspeak and real English.
As A.A. Milne said: “You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”
Ltr,cya!
Monday, November 24, 2008
The American Mystery
On NPR’s Morning Edition today, there was an interview with Junot Diaz, author of the excellent Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. He had a lot to say about his experiences growing up as a Dominican immigrant in America. Towards the end of the interview, he made the point that what unites and defines us –all of us—as Americans is the desire to answer the question of what it means to be American.
I have to say that while most of the interview was a little tedious (Diaz seems as impressed with himself as everyone else is impressed with him), that last point resonated with me. See, while trying to come up with something for my regular Monday gig here on The Gargoyle, I’d been thinking a lot about mystery novels.
Some of us here at the Gothic Bookshop are big fans of mysteries (or crime novels, as a few of us like to call them, just because it sounds tough). Whether they’re cozies, hard-boiled novels, or straight-up procedurals, we eat them up. A lot of our customers go for mysteries, too, so we do our best to keep the newest and best examples of the stuff on hand. Of course, these novels are great fun to read, but I wonder if there’s something else that draws us towards these books, something that has to do with what Junot Diaz was talking about in his interview.
Mysteries have been a vital part of the American canon almost since its inception. Fairly or not, Edgar Allen Poe is universally credited for creating the genre with his stories featuring the cunning detective, Dupin. Early masters of hard-boiled detective writing not only were wildly popular but had broad global influence over the styles of contemporaneous and later writers. James M. Cain's influence on Camus’ The Stranger is the most well-known example**, but there are plenty of others. Many of our most important contemporary writers of fiction, as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, draw heavily on the genre. Michael Chabon, in his award-winning (and freakin’ awesome) book The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, uses the framework of the procedural mystery novel to explore themes of identity and alienation in modern Jewish culture.
And it’s not just out-and-out mystery novels, either. (Here comes one of my sweeping, only partially accurate pronouncements, so buckle up.) I would argue that the mystery is at the heart of all great American literature. The Scarlet Letter, The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird –these are all, at the core, novels dealing with secrets, slowly revealed. In other words: mysteries.
Maybe Junot Diaz is right. Maybe none of us knows what it means to be American, and maybe we’re all trying to figure it out. Maybe that’s why as writers and readers we turn to the story structure of the mystery novel again and again, and why we’ll keep doing so until we finally get the answer.
I sort of hope we never do.
** In the interest of full disclosure, I have to acknowledge that I originally credited Dashiell Hammett with influencing Camus. My good friend & bowling teammate "The Rev" reminded me that it was in fact James M. Cain. Thanks, Rev!
I have to say that while most of the interview was a little tedious (Diaz seems as impressed with himself as everyone else is impressed with him), that last point resonated with me. See, while trying to come up with something for my regular Monday gig here on The Gargoyle, I’d been thinking a lot about mystery novels.
Some of us here at the Gothic Bookshop are big fans of mysteries (or crime novels, as a few of us like to call them, just because it sounds tough). Whether they’re cozies, hard-boiled novels, or straight-up procedurals, we eat them up. A lot of our customers go for mysteries, too, so we do our best to keep the newest and best examples of the stuff on hand. Of course, these novels are great fun to read, but I wonder if there’s something else that draws us towards these books, something that has to do with what Junot Diaz was talking about in his interview.
Mysteries have been a vital part of the American canon almost since its inception. Fairly or not, Edgar Allen Poe is universally credited for creating the genre with his stories featuring the cunning detective, Dupin. Early masters of hard-boiled detective writing not only were wildly popular but had broad global influence over the styles of contemporaneous and later writers. James M. Cain's influence on Camus’ The Stranger is the most well-known example**, but there are plenty of others. Many of our most important contemporary writers of fiction, as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, draw heavily on the genre. Michael Chabon, in his award-winning (and freakin’ awesome) book The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, uses the framework of the procedural mystery novel to explore themes of identity and alienation in modern Jewish culture.
And it’s not just out-and-out mystery novels, either. (Here comes one of my sweeping, only partially accurate pronouncements, so buckle up.) I would argue that the mystery is at the heart of all great American literature. The Scarlet Letter, The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird –these are all, at the core, novels dealing with secrets, slowly revealed. In other words: mysteries.
Maybe Junot Diaz is right. Maybe none of us knows what it means to be American, and maybe we’re all trying to figure it out. Maybe that’s why as writers and readers we turn to the story structure of the mystery novel again and again, and why we’ll keep doing so until we finally get the answer.
I sort of hope we never do.
** In the interest of full disclosure, I have to acknowledge that I originally credited Dashiell Hammett with influencing Camus. My good friend & bowling teammate "The Rev" reminded me that it was in fact James M. Cain. Thanks, Rev!
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Enough About Us
What are YOU reading?
You all have us at a disadvantage. All you have to do is go to the Gothic Bookshop website or come by the store and look at the staff picks table to know what we’ve read lately and enjoyed, but we’d like to know about your favorites. No, really. We are interested. So tell us between now and Dec. 1st – and if your favorite is picked at random, we’ll put it on the staff picks table for the month of December with your name and recommendation on it and you’ll win a $10 gift card to the Gothic.
You all have us at a disadvantage. All you have to do is go to the Gothic Bookshop website or come by the store and look at the staff picks table to know what we’ve read lately and enjoyed, but we’d like to know about your favorites. No, really. We are interested. So tell us between now and Dec. 1st – and if your favorite is picked at random, we’ll put it on the staff picks table for the month of December with your name and recommendation on it and you’ll win a $10 gift card to the Gothic.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Fallings, Nothing More Than Fallings
Winter is coming!
No, I don’t mean that literally, though there were a few flakes in the air today. That is an often thrown about line from one of my favorite fantasy novels. It got me thinking about autumn and about how much more satisfying everything seems to me in the fall/winter seasons; food tastes better, warmth feels warmer, friendships seem deeper, and you guessed it reader books seem more profound.
I have been a long time lover of fantasy novels. While other people were reading the classics like Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby, and Wuthering Heights, I was reading The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time. I cut my teeth on fantasy novels. They were the books that gave me a hunger to read. They were the books that made me choose them over television or comics even. I have always had a love affair with fantasy.
So when I say a book like A Game of Thrones is one of my favorite pieces of fantasy you can consider me somewhat of an expert. I don’t claim all knowing Nostradamus like foresight but I do consider myself to be a good recommender in this subject.
The thing that sets Thrones apart from some of the other books in the fantasy genre is complex. Many fantasy novels follow a similar thread. An evil overlord thrusts some young child who is more powerful than they realize into a dangerous situation. Along the way the child is befriended and aided by a wise elder mentor, a strange magical creature, and a rag tag army of misfits and such. In Lord of the Rings for example, the child is Frodo, the evil overlord is Sauron, the elder mentor is Gandalf, and so on. In no way is this a judgment on Tolkien. I firmly accredit Tolkien for starting this “ Great Fantasy Novel Blueprint”.
Back to Thrones, Thrones throws out the single young hero thread by allowing us access to many protagonists. In fact, George R.R. Martin allows us to read the book from 8-12 point of view characters. Some of these characters are protagonists, some antagonists, some fall in a grey area in between, and some start off in one and switch to another. Such is his skill as a writer that in Thrones you may hate a character and by book 3 understand completely why he chose the path he went down.
The many point of view characters allows us not to get fixated on one character as a main entity. Instead we are given a handful of characters that we can identify with on different levels. In Thrones for example, one of the first characters we are introduced to is the head of the Starks of Winterfell, Eddard. Eddard is a family man; he has a loving wife, many kids, and a great family castle called Winterfell. Eddard is someone who you identify as a good man in the books immediately and you want him to succeed in whatever endeavors the writer puts before him.
Eddard is not the only character we get a point of view from. There are his sons and daughters, the king of the land, his bastard son, a strangely grotesque misshapen dwarf who is heir to a large family of Westeros (the land of the books), the dwarfs evil and malicious brother and sister who are quite fond of one another. The differing points of view allow you to judge each character individually. Obviously you will have characters you root for more than others, some that you look forward to reading about more than others.
As an example I identified largely with Jon Snow, Eddards' bastard son. Eddard loves him and treats him like a real Stark but he is keenly aware that he’s not a Stark and this is not his place. There is also Tyrion, the aforementioned dwarf. Tyrion has a brash attitude, he already knows people will be inclined to dislike and underestimate him. He uses this to his advantage by living up to their expectations and saying things that would be considered rude or socially unacceptable.
The deep characters are set against a wonderful world. Martin uses magic very limitedly in Thrones. One of the point of view characters comes from a family of dragon raisers but no dragons have been seen in the land in many years. There are no over the top magicians, magic swords, spell battles, or wands. The weapon of choice in Thrones is political maneuvering and swords and shields.
As a last point to my appreciation of this book, there is a long-standing rule of fantasy that the antagonist is usually going to survive the peril the writer places him in. If not the sequel gets harder to write. Martin makes it obvious by the end of Thrones that he has no problem killing point of view characters dead. This is in a way good and bad. Its good in that there is always a sense of peril for the characters you’re invested in. It’s bad in that he might very well kill one, leaving you frustrated and genuinely angry.
Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and A Feast for Crows are some of the finest fantasy I have ever read. I could go into more detail about them but I would recommend you just read them yourself but do so knowing that you will get angry, frustrated, laugh, feel joy and perhaps even cry. That is what separates a great fantasy novel from a good one.
So when the skies darken and the snow starts to fall, pull out a nice thick fantasy novel like Thrones and allow yourself the pleasure to slip away into another world, after all this ones just to hard sometimes.
Monday, November 17, 2008
There's Something Happening Here... And Over There. And There.
Here’s what I didn’t do on Friday: I didn’t spend any valuable work time reading through some killer comic books.
If I had spent any of Friday reading comic books (Yeah, I know I’m supposed to call them graphic novels. So sue me. They’re long comic books.), I probably would have spent a lot of the weekend thinking about the particular power that what’s known as sequential art seems to have. The argument over whether comics constitute a valid art form or a worthwhile contribution to the canon of great literature seems to be done. Comic books have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize and nominated for the National Book Award. Plenty of critical works have been published, including books on sequential art as a medium and those on the undeniable influence that comic books have had on contemporary writers.
So I’m not here to tell you that comic books are worth reading. We can all agree on that.
I have been thinking, though, about why I’d encourage parents and teachers to get good graphic novels into kids’ hands. Why? Not because comics are just for kids. Many, if not most, of the book-length comics being published these days are for adults. No, it’s because more than any other art form, comic art is best able to explore the tension between what’s being said in any given moment and what’s actually happening in that moment. And learning that there’s often a difference between the two—both in literature and in real life—is a lesson that young people need to learn as early as possible.
Think about a panel in your average comic. You’ve got your speech balloon and your action within the scene. Inside the speech balloon is something like, “I’ve always preferred cats.” This line can have varying levels of meaning, depending upon what we see happening in the scene. If the person speaking is a nice old lady petting a sleeping kitty perched on her lap, the line sounds sweet and innocuous. But if we read her line of dialogue while the illustration shows us that same cat killing a bird, we quickly come to understand something disturbing about her character.
Comics aren’t by any means the only kind of literature that can pull off something like that. Hemingway was brilliant at it, certainly. But there’s something concentrated and immediate in the way that good comic art can illuminate that kind of tension. It’s why, say, the graphic novel adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline is somehow something more than the book, where the upcoming movie adaptation is likely to be something less.
It’s also why we’re expanding our graphic novels section. (There, I said it. Happy?) Writers and readers seem to have discovered the power of comics, and there are more and more books in the genre for us to stock. I hope our Gothic Shoppers will come in and let us recommend a couple of titles, both for themselves and for their kids, siblings, nephews, or students.
In typically contrary fashion, when thinking about comics’ ability to remind us that often what we think is going on is not in fact all that is going on, I found myself remembering not my beat-up, reread copy of Alan Moore’s Watchmen(the best of the genre, by far), but of one of those old-fashioned, text-only, fiction-type books. Padgett Powell, in his masterpiece of southern fiction, Edisto (finally, thankfully, to be reissued by FSG this winter), has his adolescent main character give us these lines to remember: So that’s me. This is my motto. Never to forget that, dull as things get, old as it is, something is happening, happening all the time, and to watch it.
Reading comic books helps us to be better watchers.
If I had spent any of Friday reading comic books (Yeah, I know I’m supposed to call them graphic novels. So sue me. They’re long comic books.), I probably would have spent a lot of the weekend thinking about the particular power that what’s known as sequential art seems to have. The argument over whether comics constitute a valid art form or a worthwhile contribution to the canon of great literature seems to be done. Comic books have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize and nominated for the National Book Award. Plenty of critical works have been published, including books on sequential art as a medium and those on the undeniable influence that comic books have had on contemporary writers.
So I’m not here to tell you that comic books are worth reading. We can all agree on that.
I have been thinking, though, about why I’d encourage parents and teachers to get good graphic novels into kids’ hands. Why? Not because comics are just for kids. Many, if not most, of the book-length comics being published these days are for adults. No, it’s because more than any other art form, comic art is best able to explore the tension between what’s being said in any given moment and what’s actually happening in that moment. And learning that there’s often a difference between the two—both in literature and in real life—is a lesson that young people need to learn as early as possible.
Think about a panel in your average comic. You’ve got your speech balloon and your action within the scene. Inside the speech balloon is something like, “I’ve always preferred cats.” This line can have varying levels of meaning, depending upon what we see happening in the scene. If the person speaking is a nice old lady petting a sleeping kitty perched on her lap, the line sounds sweet and innocuous. But if we read her line of dialogue while the illustration shows us that same cat killing a bird, we quickly come to understand something disturbing about her character.
Comics aren’t by any means the only kind of literature that can pull off something like that. Hemingway was brilliant at it, certainly. But there’s something concentrated and immediate in the way that good comic art can illuminate that kind of tension. It’s why, say, the graphic novel adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline is somehow something more than the book, where the upcoming movie adaptation is likely to be something less.
It’s also why we’re expanding our graphic novels section. (There, I said it. Happy?) Writers and readers seem to have discovered the power of comics, and there are more and more books in the genre for us to stock. I hope our Gothic Shoppers will come in and let us recommend a couple of titles, both for themselves and for their kids, siblings, nephews, or students.
In typically contrary fashion, when thinking about comics’ ability to remind us that often what we think is going on is not in fact all that is going on, I found myself remembering not my beat-up, reread copy of Alan Moore’s Watchmen(the best of the genre, by far), but of one of those old-fashioned, text-only, fiction-type books. Padgett Powell, in his masterpiece of southern fiction, Edisto (finally, thankfully, to be reissued by FSG this winter), has his adolescent main character give us these lines to remember: So that’s me. This is my motto. Never to forget that, dull as things get, old as it is, something is happening, happening all the time, and to watch it.
Reading comic books helps us to be better watchers.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Read Anything - Just Read
Read Anything, Just Read
Recently I went out to dinner with a friend and her twelve year old granddaughter, whom we will call “A”. She had told “A” that she could bring along a book to read when she got bored listening to the adults talk. Amazingly enough, the book wasn’t hauled out until almost time for dessert, but while we were all talking, my friend asked me if I thought kids should be able to read whatever they want to. Why of course was my response! She looked a tad taken aback so I asked why – what is bothering you? Well, first she wasn’t really in favor of a book that “A” had been reading called TTFY because it was written entirely in internet messages using ‘text speak’ and she didn’t think it was a good example of writing. “A” defended herself about that one. She explained to her grandmother that she knew better than to write a paper in that language and that she read a lot of other books, many that were classics or bestsellers and written in proper English. My friend then went on to say that she also wasn’t sure about “A” having just read ANGELS AND DEMONS, so I told her a story.
My mother was an elementary school librarian and usually quite over protective of me, her only child, but that over protectiveness ended when it came to books and reading. I always read a lot and by the time I was in the seventh grade, I was reading books from the adult section of our public library. One day my father emerged from the bathroom with the copy in his hand of James Baldwin’s ANOTHER COUNTRY that I had been reading and left in there. He looked at my mother and said “Are we letting her read this?” “Yes, dear, we let her read anything she wants to.” He looked skeptical but returned the book to where I had left it. I have always been so thankful to her for that. Then, I didn’t know what half the words in that book even meant – pimps weren’t a subject that ever came up in conversation where I came from – but it was one of the many books that opened up other worlds to me, made me want to read more, learn more, go places and do things.
So, let them read whatever they want. You don’t know where it will lead.
When books fall open
And you fall in
A great adventure
Will begin. *
*from a poem entitled “When Books Fall Open” © Makennarella
Recently I went out to dinner with a friend and her twelve year old granddaughter, whom we will call “A”. She had told “A” that she could bring along a book to read when she got bored listening to the adults talk. Amazingly enough, the book wasn’t hauled out until almost time for dessert, but while we were all talking, my friend asked me if I thought kids should be able to read whatever they want to. Why of course was my response! She looked a tad taken aback so I asked why – what is bothering you? Well, first she wasn’t really in favor of a book that “A” had been reading called TTFY because it was written entirely in internet messages using ‘text speak’ and she didn’t think it was a good example of writing. “A” defended herself about that one. She explained to her grandmother that she knew better than to write a paper in that language and that she read a lot of other books, many that were classics or bestsellers and written in proper English. My friend then went on to say that she also wasn’t sure about “A” having just read ANGELS AND DEMONS, so I told her a story.
My mother was an elementary school librarian and usually quite over protective of me, her only child, but that over protectiveness ended when it came to books and reading. I always read a lot and by the time I was in the seventh grade, I was reading books from the adult section of our public library. One day my father emerged from the bathroom with the copy in his hand of James Baldwin’s ANOTHER COUNTRY that I had been reading and left in there. He looked at my mother and said “Are we letting her read this?” “Yes, dear, we let her read anything she wants to.” He looked skeptical but returned the book to where I had left it. I have always been so thankful to her for that. Then, I didn’t know what half the words in that book even meant – pimps weren’t a subject that ever came up in conversation where I came from – but it was one of the many books that opened up other worlds to me, made me want to read more, learn more, go places and do things.
So, let them read whatever they want. You don’t know where it will lead.
When books fall open
And you fall in
A great adventure
Will begin. *
*from a poem entitled “When Books Fall Open” © Makennarella
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
What I Will Drop Everything For
There are only a couple of authors whose newest releases will make me put aside whatever else I'm reading at the time, often more than one title, and focus only on that one book until it's finished. One of them is Bill Bryson. While you can't really go wrong with any of his titles, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid has a special place in my heart.
It's his memoir of growing up in Des Moines, Iowa in the fifties. That might sound small, specific, and boring, but it's the opposite. It's warm, generous, sweetly nostalgic without being sappy and, because it's Bill Bryson, riotously funny. Even if, like me, you didn't grow up in the fifties or in the midwest, you may find your own memories jogged - perhaps of stories your parents or grandparents told, or of a store or restaurant that's been in business forever and seems slightly out of time.
But be careful - you might just find yourself wanting to move to Des Moines.
It's his memoir of growing up in Des Moines, Iowa in the fifties. That might sound small, specific, and boring, but it's the opposite. It's warm, generous, sweetly nostalgic without being sappy and, because it's Bill Bryson, riotously funny. Even if, like me, you didn't grow up in the fifties or in the midwest, you may find your own memories jogged - perhaps of stories your parents or grandparents told, or of a store or restaurant that's been in business forever and seems slightly out of time.
But be careful - you might just find yourself wanting to move to Des Moines.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
The Vetting Process
I have never been in combat.
I have never taken up arms against an opposing army. I have never felt a man die in my arms. I have never “killed a man just to watch him die”. I have never been drafted or volunteered or been evacced. For all these things I consider myself lucky but I know there are plenty of men and women who have.
I know there have been many bloody and epic wars in the history of my country that I have been amazingly blessed to not have any fought in during my formulative years. I know men and women have lost their lives in defense of my country. I understand that the blood of those people’s sacrifices earned the freedoms I enjoy today.
Why then do I blog on this today? Because today is Veterans Day and if not for the radio I listened to this morning it might have passed without me even knowing. To many of us Veterans Day has become an inconvenience. The Post Office is closed. My bank is shut down. I am more bent out of shape that I had to park so far away from where I work, or that I’m having to pay more for my water due to a drought that has long been over, or that the #1 player of my favorite college team was injured in practice. Have I given a thought today to soldiers and their families at all?
The answer is regrettably no. On a typical Veterans Day I would not give a second thought to veterans, which is a point of shame to me. I owe the fact that I can go to the post office or the bank to these soldiers. The fact that I have a job, a car, and a house is due in no small way to these very veterans that I don’t even acknowledge.
As a non-historian, my knowledge on World Wars One and Two is limited to what I read in history text and saw in movies. The experiences of the Korean & Vietnam Wars were lost to me. Even the Persian Gulf, which was during my lifetime, is not something I know much about. I am a history idiot, or to be politically correct, “Historically Challenged.”
So my challenge to myself today and to you as a viewer of this blog is twofold. One, let’s read more about our history to better understand the significance of this day and these veterans that we should be honoring. Two, let’s go out and find a veteran and thank him or her for their commitment to our country, to our freedoms, and to us. If you have any trouble finding a veteran, I bet many can be found at your local Veterans Hospital.
Let’s start this year honoring and acknowledging what we have here, a land of the free and a home of the brave.
I have never taken up arms against an opposing army. I have never felt a man die in my arms. I have never “killed a man just to watch him die”. I have never been drafted or volunteered or been evacced. For all these things I consider myself lucky but I know there are plenty of men and women who have.
I know there have been many bloody and epic wars in the history of my country that I have been amazingly blessed to not have any fought in during my formulative years. I know men and women have lost their lives in defense of my country. I understand that the blood of those people’s sacrifices earned the freedoms I enjoy today.
Why then do I blog on this today? Because today is Veterans Day and if not for the radio I listened to this morning it might have passed without me even knowing. To many of us Veterans Day has become an inconvenience. The Post Office is closed. My bank is shut down. I am more bent out of shape that I had to park so far away from where I work, or that I’m having to pay more for my water due to a drought that has long been over, or that the #1 player of my favorite college team was injured in practice. Have I given a thought today to soldiers and their families at all?
The answer is regrettably no. On a typical Veterans Day I would not give a second thought to veterans, which is a point of shame to me. I owe the fact that I can go to the post office or the bank to these soldiers. The fact that I have a job, a car, and a house is due in no small way to these very veterans that I don’t even acknowledge.
As a non-historian, my knowledge on World Wars One and Two is limited to what I read in history text and saw in movies. The experiences of the Korean & Vietnam Wars were lost to me. Even the Persian Gulf, which was during my lifetime, is not something I know much about. I am a history idiot, or to be politically correct, “Historically Challenged.”
So my challenge to myself today and to you as a viewer of this blog is twofold. One, let’s read more about our history to better understand the significance of this day and these veterans that we should be honoring. Two, let’s go out and find a veteran and thank him or her for their commitment to our country, to our freedoms, and to us. If you have any trouble finding a veteran, I bet many can be found at your local Veterans Hospital.
Let’s start this year honoring and acknowledging what we have here, a land of the free and a home of the brave.
Monday, November 10, 2008
BECAUSE I SAID SO
Gothic Shoppers, if you haven’t yet read Jonathan Lethem’s front-page New York Times review of Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, do so immediately. Not only will you have the pleasure of being introduced to one of Latin America’s greatest writers (if you don’t already know his work), you’ll get to read a seriously good piece of critical writing.
What’s impressive to me about Lethem’s review is that he’s able to be so eloquent about Bolaño’s book despite the fact that he’s clearly ga-ga over it. When I encounter a book that knocks me out that way, I practically lose the power of speech (My co-workers may wish to contradict me on this, but for now I’ll run with it.)
Now, as booksellers, we pride ourselves on being able to find the one book that’s the right fit for the customer in front of us. The more difficult a request is, the happier we are. The perfect book for a one-armed leftist gun-nut with a soft spot for kittens? Check. A birthday present for a vegan teenager with a fondness for vampires, speed-metal, and needlepoint? Got you covered. We live for these kinds of questions. One of my favorite bookselling memories is of working at the now defunct Europa Books in Austin, TX, with some seriously killer booksellers. A customer wandered in and asked, “What’s the saddest book ever published?” We all stared at him for about five seconds before telling him to come back in a week. Thus began a raging debate among staff, customers, people on the street, booksellers in other stores, in other towns. I don’t now remember what book we settled on, though I do remember arguing at various points for both Remains of the Day and Dirty Work. Heck, I don’t even remember if the customer ever came back into the store. What I do remember is the joy of trying to find The Right Book For That Guy. That’s one of the great pleasures of bookselling.
But sometimes I’ll read a book that just floors me, and the right book/right customer thing falls by the wayside. From that point on, there is no right book except for THE book. I go from being a bookseller to being an evangelist, and as I mentioned before, I lose my ability to talk intelligently. All I can do is put the book in someone’s hand and say: READ THIS. If asked why: BECAUSE I SAID SO.
We’ve all felt like this from time to time, I’d guess, and not always about books. When I first saw Soderberg’s The Limey, or first heard Duke Ellington’s Stompy Jones, I picked up the phone and called everyone I knew to suggest (demand) that they become converts like me. When I do get that feeling about a book, though, my need to get people to read it is somehow more urgent than what I experience with a movie or a piece of music. Maybe it’s because I’ve made it my career to get books into people’s hands, or maybe it’s because of a sense I have that any book, without a little help, could go entirely unread before going out of print.
The last book I felt this way about was Steve Erickson’s Zeroville (my review can be found here). I picked up the book purely because it was published by one of my favorite independent presses, Europa Editions (no connection to the aforementioned store). I wasn’t ten chapters into it before I was forcing it into the hands of my good friend and fellow bookseller David Felton. Together, we forced that book on as many people as possible, usually –though not always—with great results. We were manic over the book. We drove our friends nuts. We were in the grip of a fever and hellbent on contagiousness. We tried to be as eloquent as Lethem is in his review, but the best we came up with was: THIS BOOK IS AWESOME.
I guess what I’m saying, Gothic Shoppers, is that it’s possible you’ll walk into our store at some point and see a wild-eyed bookseller, clutching a hardback, coming at you like the freaking Ancient Mariner. He may be babbling incoherently, gesturing wildly, or just running around you in circles. Don’t be afraid; it’s okay. He’s just got a book he needs you to read.
BECAUSE HE SAID SO.
What’s impressive to me about Lethem’s review is that he’s able to be so eloquent about Bolaño’s book despite the fact that he’s clearly ga-ga over it. When I encounter a book that knocks me out that way, I practically lose the power of speech (My co-workers may wish to contradict me on this, but for now I’ll run with it.)
Now, as booksellers, we pride ourselves on being able to find the one book that’s the right fit for the customer in front of us. The more difficult a request is, the happier we are. The perfect book for a one-armed leftist gun-nut with a soft spot for kittens? Check. A birthday present for a vegan teenager with a fondness for vampires, speed-metal, and needlepoint? Got you covered. We live for these kinds of questions. One of my favorite bookselling memories is of working at the now defunct Europa Books in Austin, TX, with some seriously killer booksellers. A customer wandered in and asked, “What’s the saddest book ever published?” We all stared at him for about five seconds before telling him to come back in a week. Thus began a raging debate among staff, customers, people on the street, booksellers in other stores, in other towns. I don’t now remember what book we settled on, though I do remember arguing at various points for both Remains of the Day and Dirty Work. Heck, I don’t even remember if the customer ever came back into the store. What I do remember is the joy of trying to find The Right Book For That Guy. That’s one of the great pleasures of bookselling.
But sometimes I’ll read a book that just floors me, and the right book/right customer thing falls by the wayside. From that point on, there is no right book except for THE book. I go from being a bookseller to being an evangelist, and as I mentioned before, I lose my ability to talk intelligently. All I can do is put the book in someone’s hand and say: READ THIS. If asked why: BECAUSE I SAID SO.
We’ve all felt like this from time to time, I’d guess, and not always about books. When I first saw Soderberg’s The Limey, or first heard Duke Ellington’s Stompy Jones, I picked up the phone and called everyone I knew to suggest (demand) that they become converts like me. When I do get that feeling about a book, though, my need to get people to read it is somehow more urgent than what I experience with a movie or a piece of music. Maybe it’s because I’ve made it my career to get books into people’s hands, or maybe it’s because of a sense I have that any book, without a little help, could go entirely unread before going out of print.
The last book I felt this way about was Steve Erickson’s Zeroville (my review can be found here). I picked up the book purely because it was published by one of my favorite independent presses, Europa Editions (no connection to the aforementioned store). I wasn’t ten chapters into it before I was forcing it into the hands of my good friend and fellow bookseller David Felton. Together, we forced that book on as many people as possible, usually –though not always—with great results. We were manic over the book. We drove our friends nuts. We were in the grip of a fever and hellbent on contagiousness. We tried to be as eloquent as Lethem is in his review, but the best we came up with was: THIS BOOK IS AWESOME.
I guess what I’m saying, Gothic Shoppers, is that it’s possible you’ll walk into our store at some point and see a wild-eyed bookseller, clutching a hardback, coming at you like the freaking Ancient Mariner. He may be babbling incoherently, gesturing wildly, or just running around you in circles. Don’t be afraid; it’s okay. He’s just got a book he needs you to read.
BECAUSE HE SAID SO.
Friday, November 7, 2008
What I knew about Napoleon(and why I don’t have time for golf)
Friday's Guest Blogger: Every Friday, we are going to have a guest blogger blog about whatever they'd like. I will include a little introduction here for each guest.
Today's guest is a reader and long time customer of the Gothic. He has chosen to remain anonymous but I think you will find this nonetheless interesting.
-Arthur-
Heard at the dinner table.
Man to my right, ‘What really blew me away was Napoleon’s chess set. They actually had Napoleon’s chess set. Can you believe it? The one he used at Saint Elba, where he died in exile.’
‘No. No.’ The woman to my left, ‘He was exiled to the island of Saint Helens.’
My two dinner companions were just about to step over the boundary of polite conversation and start an argument, and spoil our friendly dinner. The man had been describing his visit to Biltmore, the huge Vanderbilt mansion in Ashville, North Carolina. In one of the rooms he had seen a chess set that had supposedly belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte when he was banished to an island.
I happened to know that they were both right—and wrong. I was in a position to be the peacemaker.
‘You’re both right’, I said. ‘He was exiled in 1814 to the island of Elba, between northwest coast of Italy and his native island of Corsica, by the allied governments that had been fighting him. But early in 1815 he managed to escape and return to France. He was defeated again, this time at Waterloo. The allies wanted to be certain he could not escape again, so they had him taken to the island of Saint Helena, nearly in the middle of the South Atlantic, more than a thousand miles from the West Coast of Africa.’
Both of my dinner companions were elated: they were both ‘right’ and had demonstrated their erudition. I did not correct their little mistakes concerning the names of the islands.
But after a few moments the man turned to me and said, ‘I did not know that you were an historian.”
“I’m not’, I said.
‘You must be a geographer, then’ the woman said.
‘No, I’m not. I am a medical research scientist at Duke.’
‘Well, then, how do you know all this?’ they both asked.
‘I guess I just like to read’ I said. ‘And to know things.’
‘How interesting’ the man said. ‘I like to play golf.’
copyright©2008 bwallen
Today's guest is a reader and long time customer of the Gothic. He has chosen to remain anonymous but I think you will find this nonetheless interesting.
-Arthur-
Heard at the dinner table.
Man to my right, ‘What really blew me away was Napoleon’s chess set. They actually had Napoleon’s chess set. Can you believe it? The one he used at Saint Elba, where he died in exile.’
‘No. No.’ The woman to my left, ‘He was exiled to the island of Saint Helens.’
My two dinner companions were just about to step over the boundary of polite conversation and start an argument, and spoil our friendly dinner. The man had been describing his visit to Biltmore, the huge Vanderbilt mansion in Ashville, North Carolina. In one of the rooms he had seen a chess set that had supposedly belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte when he was banished to an island.
I happened to know that they were both right—and wrong. I was in a position to be the peacemaker.
‘You’re both right’, I said. ‘He was exiled in 1814 to the island of Elba, between northwest coast of Italy and his native island of Corsica, by the allied governments that had been fighting him. But early in 1815 he managed to escape and return to France. He was defeated again, this time at Waterloo. The allies wanted to be certain he could not escape again, so they had him taken to the island of Saint Helena, nearly in the middle of the South Atlantic, more than a thousand miles from the West Coast of Africa.’
Both of my dinner companions were elated: they were both ‘right’ and had demonstrated their erudition. I did not correct their little mistakes concerning the names of the islands.
But after a few moments the man turned to me and said, ‘I did not know that you were an historian.”
“I’m not’, I said.
‘You must be a geographer, then’ the woman said.
‘No, I’m not. I am a medical research scientist at Duke.’
‘Well, then, how do you know all this?’ they both asked.
‘I guess I just like to read’ I said. ‘And to know things.’
‘How interesting’ the man said. ‘I like to play golf.’
copyright©2008 bwallen
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Aw, Schlocks
Don’t worry, Arthur, we’re not going to try to smarten you up any. You’re already smarter than I am, and I can only barely stand knowing that.
I’m very much with you on the pleasures of reading for pure escapism. I’m at my happiest when I’m rereading an old Ross Thomas novel or diving into a good Batman comic. And I’m crazy for a grilled cheese, especially at the Village Lanes.
I’m not sure I’d be so eager to divide Schlock from High Lit, though. I think that the books we read for pure pleasure are just as edifying as the books we were once forced to read. I first read William Gibson because I wanted some exciting science fiction, yet he has turned out to be one of the most influential thinkers and writers of his generation. I go back to Gibson’s books for multiple readings because I enjoy them, but it’s undeniable that his ideas have an impact on me, regardless of whether I’m aware of it as I turn the pages.
It’s never been the case that we can tell in the moment what’s schlock or not. There are books that are widely regarded as classics now that were once thought of as pornography, pulp, or trash. People read these books when they were published not because some self-anointed culture maven told them to, but because they were salacious, exciting, or suspenseful. Charles Dickens published many of his works as serials, and they were as sensationalistic and closely followed in their time as Grey’s Anatomy is today.
So what’s my point? I guess it’s that it doesn’t matter whether you want to read the schlock or the classics, because it’s all the same stuff . Books lead to other books. You can go from The Godfather to King Lear to Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and you’ll be following a thematic thread across several genres, each of which is gratifying to read, and all of which go great with a grilled cheese.
I promised that I wouldn’t try to make you be smart, Arthur, and I won’t, because the truth is that you and Jim Butcher are taking care of that all on your own.
I’m very much with you on the pleasures of reading for pure escapism. I’m at my happiest when I’m rereading an old Ross Thomas novel or diving into a good Batman comic. And I’m crazy for a grilled cheese, especially at the Village Lanes.
I’m not sure I’d be so eager to divide Schlock from High Lit, though. I think that the books we read for pure pleasure are just as edifying as the books we were once forced to read. I first read William Gibson because I wanted some exciting science fiction, yet he has turned out to be one of the most influential thinkers and writers of his generation. I go back to Gibson’s books for multiple readings because I enjoy them, but it’s undeniable that his ideas have an impact on me, regardless of whether I’m aware of it as I turn the pages.
It’s never been the case that we can tell in the moment what’s schlock or not. There are books that are widely regarded as classics now that were once thought of as pornography, pulp, or trash. People read these books when they were published not because some self-anointed culture maven told them to, but because they were salacious, exciting, or suspenseful. Charles Dickens published many of his works as serials, and they were as sensationalistic and closely followed in their time as Grey’s Anatomy is today.
So what’s my point? I guess it’s that it doesn’t matter whether you want to read the schlock or the classics, because it’s all the same stuff . Books lead to other books. You can go from The Godfather to King Lear to Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and you’ll be following a thematic thread across several genres, each of which is gratifying to read, and all of which go great with a grilled cheese.
I promised that I wouldn’t try to make you be smart, Arthur, and I won’t, because the truth is that you and Jim Butcher are taking care of that all on your own.
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