The Gargoyle

Disney/Marvel Versus

2009-09-09T10:19:00.006-04:00

You’ve all heard about it by now: Disney (AKA The Benevolent Mouse-Eared Overlord) has purchased Marvel Comics for an undisclosed sum that is rumored to include a lifetime supply of Mouse Bars. There’s been a good deal of debate over whether this purchase bodes well for either Marvel or TBM-EO. Disney benefits because they get free access to the, ah, heretofore unexploited (read: B-List) canon of heroes. Marvel benefits because… Really, I got nothin’. I guess Marvel benefits somehow. Marvel fans, however, stand to lose. How soon will it be before Disney starts to exercise influence over Marvel? I can see it now: each issue of Moon Knight must feature a full-scale song and dance spread; Super-heroines will have to cover up a bit; Marvel writers can no longer wear jeans but must instead wear Aladdin pants.

Arthur and I have been speculating on what the first massive success to emerge from this union will be, so we’re going to rev up the old Versus engine and take a crack at it.

We’ve flipped a coin. I’ve called Donald Duck, and Arthur has called Howard the Duck. …And it’s Howard! Arthur goes first:

Arthur: My first thought about this versus was: my goodness, where do I go from here? Then as ideas percolated in my mind, one crystallized and rose above the others. So with much further ado, I give to you lady and/or gentleman, the first Marneyvel collaboration, Daredevil Duck, the Manduck with no Fear(?) The title is tentative but the explanation is as follows:

Villains: My primary line of thought on this was which villains line up together well, after all a hero is nothing without a tasty villain. So which villains gel the best? Bam! Kingpin and Scrooge McDuck, two people after one thing: cold hard cash.

Secondly, we need some heroes. Daredevil easily gets the call here; he’s been after the Kingpin for years. Who better to go after a duck than another duck, so Donald scores the invite as well.

The plot is as follows Kingpin and Scrooge team together for crime hi-jinks. In their endeavor they are foiled by the Devil & Duck Duo. A nefarious plan is hatched where Huey, Dewey, and Luey are ducknapped and a rescue mission transpires. The building the baby ducks are kept in is rigged with all sorts of traps that no one could handle alone. Daredevil is forced to rely on Donald and vice-versa. Before you know it they are acting as one cohesive unit. The nephews are rescued and returned to safety while the real threat has been revealed. Scrooge and Kingpin have taken over Wall St. They are emptying out the Federal Reserve.

Duck & Devil descend on Kingpin’s lair where they are met by none other than Kingpin and Scrooge. The villains indicate that they were no match for the heroes and so had to enlist some help. Out of the shadows step Bullseye and Taurus Bulba “an actual bullman”. They quickly beat down our heroes, trapping and torturing Daredevil when Scrooge realizes Donald has gone missing. He looks around where he sees a shadowy duck like figure. Out of the shadows steps none other than Darkwing Duck (let’s get dangerous).

After a quick fight where Bullseye is defeated, Daredevil is freed and takes out Taurus Bulba. The heroes turn to face the villains Scrooge and Kingpin. After another quick fight where Kingpin uses his massive physical presence to challenge the heroes, he is eventually defeated. While attempting to run away from Darkwing, Scrooge falls into a thick fat of cooking oil, where he slowly sinks to his doom.

The heroes wrap it up and part with a handshake. Meanwhile, back in the Kingpin’s lair the vat of hot oil moves as a grizzly fried duck hand rises from the oil. So is born Kung Pow Chicken…

That’s my take, now on to Bill:

Bill: Wow, Arthur. That’s a dang well fleshed-out plot there. I feel like I just sat through an action movie. I’m starting to wonder if you were inadvertently exposed to a radioactive book at some point, giving you heightened powers of imagination.

When we first came up with the idea for this installment of Versus, I thought it would be a breeze. Making fun of Disney using Marvel characters? What could be easier? (Or more fun?) But you’ve thrown down the gauntlet, and I’ll admit to being a little intimidated.

The problem, of course, lies in coming up with an idea that is too ridiculous even for Disney to attempt. And that’s ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO DO. Will we see a movie starring Miley Cyrus as Dazzler? Of course we will. An animated feature in which the Avengers team up with the Rescuers? Someone’s penciling that sucker as I write. Heck, if we don’t see a new Marvel series in which an updated version of Power Man and Iron Fist do battle against the evil, Disney-downloading video pirates, I’ll eat my boots.

You see what we’re up against here? Now, you, Arthur, have a pronounced talent for the ridiculous and awesome. You could be just the super-villain to take down the new media juggernaut (Dis-vell? Marv-ney?) Me, I’m just your sidekick who can turn invisible or see 47 seconds into the future or something useless like that.

That said, I’ll give it a try (and I have to give props here to my friend The Rev, who helped this idea along during our geek-summit yesterday at our own little Avengers Mansion):

Somewhere in the West Village, in a dark attic room, a figure enshrouded in a long, blood-red cloak calls upon the power of the Vishanti to transport him to an alternate reality. His apprentice, it seems, is missing, having vanished in the midst of his cleaning duties. Disturbances in the threads of the universe have led this magician to believe that danger is afoot. He must investigate.

Passing from our plane into the next, the visage of Dr. Strange is revealed to us. He is focused and intent on his journey, but confused and awed by what he perceives. From all around him come the sounds of strings, tympani, brass. Abstract colors flow around him, seeking to distract him from his purpose. Such naked trickery reeks of the demon Satannish. Strange forges ahead.

The next plane holds no clues, only temporal acceleration. Dr. Strange watches as the seasons shift rapidly around him: summer flows into autumn, autumn into winter. Nature’s fauna seem to have become sentient and are either celebrating or causing the smooth but rapid change in seasons. As he passes from this plane, Strange catches a glimpse of the Man-Thing, engaged in a slow pas de deux with a giant mushroom…

As our dark hero breaks through the next barrier between planes, he senses chaos, panic, and danger. He is approaching his destination, and he instinctively draws on the power of the hoary hosts of Hoggoth to prepare himself. What he sees shocks and alarms him. His apprentice is under attack by an army of enchanted cleaning implements. The apprentice hacks away at the demonic hoard with an axe, but the monsters only sweep past him, filling an overflowing basin with water in an attempt to drown him. The air fills with the laughter of the Dreaded Dormammu. Strange's enemy is revealed. He uses his elemental magic to halt the flood and repair the damage wrought on this plane.

Dr. Strange is angry. His apprentice strayed from our plane and attempted magic far beyond his reach, nearly destroying an entire plane of existence. But Strange cannot sustain his rage for long. He was once a young mouse himself.

---

So, there you have it, readers. I’m not sure whether to hope that these projects come to light or are forever buried in the vault of the Gargoyle. If you’ve got ideas for Marv-ney projects, or if you simply want to beg Arthur and me to never enter the comic business, leave a comment. Until then, we’ll see you at the Gothic.

Easygoing, Friendly Bookshop ISO Friends

2009-08-24T11:47:00.005-04:00

Hi Folks!

Well, it's happened. The Gothic Bookshop has joined the, um, latest century. 20th? 21st? 44th? The neo-post-industrial-halfway-hip age? The pre-tweens?

Anyway, we're on Facebook now, is what I'm saying. We're just getting started, but soon you'll see a steady stream of updates about new books, events, and special sales. You'll also find links to things that we just think are cool. (I promise that Arthur and I will do our best to limit the number of links to abjectly nerdy stuff.)

Also, much like the Rockin' Robin, we now tweet. Or twit. The difference twixt the tweet and twit escapes me (though I do know how to do The Twist); regardless, we're on it.

So feel free to friend and follow us! Frankly, you can fawn over us if you're feeling flirty (though as far as I know there's not yet an app for that...).

Twit you later, Facefriends!

New Duke Reads Selections!

2009-08-20T08:11:00.004-04:00

Welcome back to campus, Gothic Shoppers!

We're glad to see so many of you back in the store. We've got stacks and stacks of great new books on the shelves for you to see, including...

THE NEW DUKE READS SELECTIONS!!

That's right, folks. The 2009/2010 selections were announced this morning, and we've got the books in stock here at the store. Remember, when you buy all seven books at once, you receive a 25% discount off the retail price, and we throw in a free Duke Reads tote bag!

And now (drum roll, please!) here are the presenters and reading list for 2009-10:

October 14
Peter Lange, Provost and Professor of Political Science
House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess by William D. Cohan '81

November 11
Ranjana Khanna, Margaret Taylor Smith Professor of Women's Studies and Professor of English, Literature, and Women's Studies
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

January 13
Reynolds Price '55, James B. Duke Professor of English
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

February 17
Blair Sheppard, Dean of the Fuqua School of Business
A Brief History of the Human Race by Michael Cook

March 17
Michael Malone, Professor of the Practice, Theater Studies
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

April 21
Stephen Nowicki, Dean and Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

The summer reading selection for first-year students is The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. The author will be on campus during orientation week and will be giving two presentations August 20 at 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. in Baldwin Auditorium for the entering Class of 2013 and you are invited.

Were Back.....well we will be soon anyway

2009-08-14T14:53:00.000-04:00

The Gargoyle has been away on a much appreciated summer break but we are coming back with a book vengeance Monday August 17th. Until then, check out our completely new and different website.

SIBA Book Awards

2009-07-06T11:45:00.010-04:00

Hi Fellow Gargoyles,

Many (some? none?) of you have been waiting eagerly for this year's list of SIBA Book Award winners. The rest of you are scratching your head and wondering (again) what the heck I'm on about.

SIBA is the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, an organization of scrappy, non-corporate, southern bookstores. These booksellers come together online and out in the real world to celebrate and/or bemoan the bookselling life, to exchange advice on making it in the current economic climate, and -most significantly, for this post- to promote good books for southern readers.

(A disclosure: The Gothic's former commander-in-chief, Gerry Eidenier, was president of SIBA once upon a time. While his dream of an insurgent battalion of armed, poetry-reciting booksellers was never realized, he is nonetheless remembered fondly by SIBA members. For our part, we at the Gothic are predisposed to feel generous towards SBIA as an organization.)

Once a year the SIBA members vote on the best new writing to come out of the South. Now, don't get me wrong: I loves me some Southern Lit. Both of you who read this blog have seen me wax enthusiastic, if not eloquent, on books such as Padgett Powell's Edisto, Donald Hays' The Dixie Association, and Frank Stanford's The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You.

I'll confess, though, to approaching the SIBA awards with a little wariness. As a community of booksellers, we sometimes endorse the same names and topics over and over again. I like a good straight-up narrative yarn as much as the next fellow, and I'll eat grits pretty much any day of the week (especially if served up in a giant make-your-own-grit-bowl over at Durham's own Watts Grocery). But I feel that we SIBA members are inclined to promote books that are broadly palatable and that reinforce an image of Southern-ness that is less nuanced than it could be.

There's good reason for this, of course. We're all trying to sell books here. Slapping our award sticker on the cover of a proven seller such such as Pat Conroy or Rick Bragg (no offense meant to either of these fine writers) is a more profitable move than promoting stylistically experimental writing from the amazing Selah Saterstrom or dark, challenging writing from Robert Goolrick. I get that, and I get that we as a community are often too busy to go digging up writers from independent presses when corporate presses have lots of bells and whistles to draw our attention.

But we owe it to our customers, and to the reading public at large, to reach a little. When we proclaim a book "the best in Southern Literature by the people who would know", let's make sure that it actually is the best and that we actually do know.

You wouldn't believe it, but all this soapbox crankiness is by way of saying that I was particularly pleased with one of the awards this year. Kevin Young's moving, elegiac book, Dear Darkness, was given the 2009 SIBA award for poetry, and I couldn't be happier about it. I've been a big fan of Young's work ever since his book To Repel Ghosts, originally published by the independent press Zoland Books. (Young has since moved on to being published by one of the corporate biggies, which tempers only slightly my enthusiasm.) Dear Darkness is a book of work that reflects on place, family, and history. In the midst of Young's working on the book, his father died unexpectedly. Temporarily silenced by grief, he ultimately turned to writing poems about the food he so closely associated with his Father's Louisiana-based family. Pickled okra, turtle soup, maque-choux, kitchen grease: these and more down-home delicacies get turned into verses that evoke both the complexity of grief and longing and the comfort-food that helps heal such grief. It's truly a knockout of a book.

It seems incredible to say so now, but when I first heard these poems read aloud at the great A Cappella Books in Atlanta, Georgia, I never considered that they might be "Southern" poems. I think that's what makes me so enthusiastic to see Dear Darkness in the ranks of the SIBA awards. Though many of the poems deal with the touchstones of life and food in the South, they are not in structure or even tone what we have come to expect from the canon of SIBA-endorsed verse. Our booksellers reached a little on this one, and I think that with more such efforts the award will carry more significance moving forward.

SIBA is starting a new brand: the Okra Picks, designed to promote newly released southern writing. This is a chance for SIBA to broaden its perceived tastes a little bit, to show that being Southern isn't being static. I'll be doing my best to find lesser-known writers and publishers to recommend. Any (either) of you readers out there who want to direct my attention to a book I might have missed should email me through the blog. I'll be happy to pass on any suggestions.

Congratulations to Kevin Young on his award, and congratulations to SIBA members for a wise selection this time around!

Versus: Monster Blog!!

2009-06-22T15:15:00.007-04:00

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s been a national, runaway sensation. There have been news stories, reviews and editorials on the book. It is far and away our bestselling title, whenever we’ve been able to keep it in stock, that is. . It’s truly shaping up to be the book of the summer, against all odds.

Well, I say “against all odds”, but that’s not really true. In fact, the odds were solidly in the book’s favor. For any of you who’ve been living under a rock or who in fact are zombies yourselves, let me present the basic concept: it’s the plot of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, with scenes inserted in which the characters try to fight off zombies. There. It’s simple, isn’t it? Simple, and flat-out brilliant. The brainchild behind the project, Seth Grahame-Smith, is lurching & staggering all the way to the bank. His fingers are falling off as he counts his money.

Why? Because monsters are hot right now. Zombies are all over the place, that’s for sure. Max Brooks’ World War Z has been a big seller for us, especially since Arthur had it as a staff pick last month. There’s the Zombie Survival Guide, the Zen of Zombie, Zombie Blondes, and Never Slow Dance With a Zombie. For my money, the best of the lot can be found in Kelly Link’s book Magic for Beginners, in which her story, The Hortlak describes a convenience store at the edge of the world in which zombies shop for things that don’t exist. But then I’m something of a Kelly Link nut.

It’s not just zombies that have overrun the book world. We’ve got yetis, Bigfoot, Werewolves—you name it. And we can’t forget the hottest of all hot monsters, the vampire.

Not since Harry Potter came on the scene has there been such a breakout book for young readers as Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight. That title and Meyer’s subsequent books -New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn- have been huge bestsellers, spawning a hit movie with sequels to come.

The monster-driven riches that authors like Meyer and Grahame-Smith are rolling in have gotten Arthur and me thinking about what the next hot (or hott) monster will be. We want in on this. We had a conversation with one of our Schokenly intelligent customers recently. She agreed with us that werewolves are up and coming, but thought there was probably room for the faerie folk to make a comeback. Arthur and I think that she’s the one to write it, so watch out for that somewhere down the line.

As for Arthur and me, we have slightly diverging opinions (as always) on what will be the next big sexy scary. So we’re doing an installment of Versus today. It’s a scare-off!

You first, Arthur:

ARTHUR:

Before I roll out my mythical pick for you I thought I might touch on what I feel are some points that make for a great mythical archetype.

1) Must Appear Human: vampires, werewolves, and even zombies to a degree can appear human at times. It would be difficult for a storyteller to weave a compelling tell about a monster who was always monstrous. Humanity is one of the few things that all of an author’s reader will have in common. Humanity also makes for an interesting plot point. The monsters desire to return to mere humanity. It is what drove the television series Angel.

2) Love: You are much more likely to be interested in something if there is a potential for a love story to be told. I would argue that Twilight is a love story, which just happens to include vampires. We are suckers (no pun intended vamps) for a good love story.

3) Mythos: any good mythical monster comes with a mythos, some larger than others. The larger the mythos the harder the job for the writer. Do you lock yourself into the existing mythos or forge ahead a slightly altered mythos at the risk of offending others?

I have decided on a “monster” that can appear human from time to time. This allows him/her to build relationships with humans and even love them. I chose a monster with a limited mythos so a new fresh one could be rolled out without traumatizing too many followers.

Insert drum roll here

My selection is the Djinn, or genie as we call them from time to time. The Djinn for all intents and purposes is a human who has been granted the rights to make wishes happen.

Several questions come about when thinking of this:

1) Why the lamp? First thing I would do would be to ditch the lamp. I would spin this into a different story. Lets say the Djinn’s spirit is contained with a vessel of some sort, not necessarily a lamp. The Djinn would need to be in constant vigilance over the whereabouts of their spirit vessel.

2) What about the wishes? I think a lot can be done here. Imagine a Djinn who has existed for eons. He has done both good and bad things. He is traumatized by the bad and desires only to do the good. He is at his deepest a good person who wishes to improve people’s lives. (See what I did there? He’s a genie that wishes something for himself. The depth of humanity there.)

3) Where’s the love? Through chance or luck our djinn's spirit vessel ends up in the possession of the most thoughtful woman he has ever met. He desires to stay with her forever but he knows there is a limit to what he can do. He is bound by magic older than himself. What if she desires to stay with him too but understands the condition he is in? They could try to unravel the mysteries surrounding what it means to be a Djinn together.

4) Finally, Where’s the plot? The plot is in the discovery. How did djinns come to be? Who are these people who are now djinns? How did their spirits become tied to these vessels? How or can they ever be free again?

Ladies and gentlemen, that’s it for me. I think the idea is fascinating but maybe I’m in the minority here. Either way I can’t wait to see what Bill’s got cooking:

BILL:

Arthur, that’s a very well thought-out take on the monster novel. I’m totally with you on the Djinn. I wish I could promise the same degree of insight with my pick. I do have a monster in mind, though I have no delusions that my choice is likely to catch on. Out of respect for your thoughtful choice, I’m going to try to get down a few notions of my own regarding what we can call the MLS (Monster Love Story):

1) I’ll take your notion of the monster/human one step further. I agree that a humanoid or even part-time human monster makes for a good story (and especially good film rights- let’s not forget the riches we’re after). But what I think makes a monster appealing is his/her/its reflection of some aspect of the human condition: the vampire is a lonely creature who hides from the light; the werewolf periodically loses control of his animal nature; the yeti… smells bad. It’s what we see in monsters and recognize in ourselves (or wish we did) that makes them alive and enticing to us.

2) Monster love is, ultimately, impossible love. You referred to the TV series Angel earlier (and I will bring you those DVD’s back, honest). I’ll also invoke Twilight here. Both stories feature love that cannot and must not be consummated. The most successful monster/human love stories bring the reader into contact with something dangerous without asking that he (or, more likely, she) commit to something dangerous.

3) The monster must be mortal. This is crucial. And not only mortal, but flawed in some way that makes him more vulnerable than even a human. The vampire is killed by a wooden stake; the werewolf is killed by a silver bullet; the yeti… I don’t know, the yeti dies from breathing his own stench. This of course introduces a measure of fragility to our monster, but more importantly it brings the threat of death. Let’s not forget that these MLS’s are ultimately about temptation and transgression. Nothing like almost certain death to give characters the permission to go walking on the wild side.

So, without further ado, here’s my pick for next year’s hot monster:

fanfare, please

It’s The Blob.

You heard me, The Blob. The Blob is the next great heartthrob. Or heartblob, as it were. Just bear with me. I can back it up using my own three rules:

1. The Blob embodies (sort of –he’s got no body) many aspects of the human condition, especially the adolescent condition: he’s an outsider, picked on because of his size; he’s an out-of-towner (well, an out-of-spacer) who doesn’t know anybody in his new school; he’s afflicted by that social disease that so many adolescents suffer from: mindless, endless consumption.

2. Is there any love more impossible than human/blob love? Beyond the inter-species difficulty, it’s clear that The Blob, in the rush of emotion and/or hunger of new romance, would absolutely smother a girlfriend.

3. Despite poor Blob’s massive size and unquenchable appetite, he’s just so fragile. He’s in terrible health—one hard winter will absolutely kill him.

So there you have it, Gothic Shoppers. Arthur and I have each set forth our picks for the hot monster to come. Feel free to leave a comment endorsing one or the other of the two plans (I’ll go ahead and concede victory to Arthur right now), or let us know what sexy beast you see slouching across the horizon.

2009-04-24T14:01:00.005-04:00

It's a good day, Gothic Shoppers.

Way back when we first got started with this here blog-type-thing, I posted on those bookselling moments that make it all worthwhile. Just a few of those moments every couple of months can get a bookseller through a good long stretch of the doldrums. I bring this up now, because –shockingly—a customer just bought our last copy of Baseball Haiku.

Don’t panic, though. We’re ordering more.

At a former bookselling job, I was roundly mocked for suggesting this fine anthology as “the perfect holiday gift for fans of sports and poetry,” as though such a creature had not yet been invented. In the defense of my colleagues, total sales of the book came to a big fat goose egg. But I never lost hope in that little book. It seemed like a perfect idea. Baseball is a game that, for both spectator and player (well, outfielder, at least), provides ample opportunity for contemplation. Between concentrated bursts of action are periods of near stillness that can seem timeless. What better art form to capture such an atmosphere than haiku, poetry that draws heavily on a sense of stillness within the natural world?

Anyway, we’ve sold the heck out of those suckers.

As soon as it starts getting warm I get excited about going to baseball games. I won’t lie to you, Gothic Shoppers: no one who knows me even a little would confuse me with a die-hard sports fan. I just don’t have a brain for it. But I like baseball. I like its sounds and its pace and its place in the mythology of our country. And its hot dogs and beer.

I also really love baseball novels.

Baseball is by far the sport that gets the most representation in the world of fiction. I’m not sure why this is, though our understanding of it as America’s Game must have something to do with it. Perhaps it’s that contemplative pace that I was alluding to before (golf runs a close second to baseball in the world of fiction). Certainly the structure of a ball game lends itself to written description. Try, on the other hand, writing a chapter than contains a shot-by-shot description of a game between the Blue Devils and the Tar Heels. Your fingers would fall off.

This is not to say that there haven’t been great novels written on other sports. Don Delillo, for example, gave us End Zone, a brilliant postmodern novel about a college football team, and Dan Jenkins’ Semi-Tough is a funny-as-all-get-out story of an epic Super Bowl game. Gothic favorite Nick Hornby’s book, Fever Pitch –weirdly made into an american baseball movie—is now considered a classic of soccer (sorry, football) writing. Boxing been represented in any number of great novels, most significantly Leonard Gardner’s Fat City.

But lest I get off on a tangent, I’ll bring this post back to baseball novels and my fondness for them. The genre has some classics: Bang the Drum Slowly, Shoeless Joe, The Natural. But my favorites have been those odd, lesser-known titles –the ones that have come out of (I really am sorry about this) left field. Here are a few:

The Dixie Association, by Donald Hays – a great southern yarn about an Arkansan minor-league team, owned by a one-armed socialist and populated by ex-cons, American Indians, Cuban communists, and women. This could be your most fun read of the summer.

The Seventh Babe by Jerome Charyn – Charyn is one of those great American writers who has gone almost completely unnoticed by the reading public. In Seventh Babe, Charyn gives us a baseball story that resembles nothing so much as a medieval legend. We follow the ascent and downfall of a Jewish third basemen –Babe Ragland—through a crazy season with the 1923 Red Sox. (One reader who has noticed Charyn is Michael Chabon. If you liked Chabon’s last novel, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, do yourself a favor and read some Charyn.)

Season’s End by Tom Grimes – Set in the malaise of the late seventies and leading up to the players’ strike of ’81, Grimes’ novel is a bittersweet tale of baseball success amidst the escalating greed and racism of that time. It’s a great read, as much for the fan of classic American fiction as for the baseball fan.

The Brothers K by David James Duncan – Those who know Duncan’s work are passionate evangelists for it. His novel The River Why is considered, along with A River Runs Through It, to be the very epitome of the fly-fishing novel. Brothers K is one of those great, sprawling American family sagas. Against the backdrop of our country's Vietnam-era turbulence, the Chance family struggles to reconcile its two driving forces: religious fundamentalism and a love for baseball. It’s a moving and often funny book, and of course there’s a comeback-kid story to follow, as there should be in all baseball literature.

I could go on and on about this (as you all well know by now). But it’s a sunny day out there, and you Gothic Shoppers need to shut off the computer and get outside. First, though, swing by the store and pick up a copy of Baseball Haiku to take with you to a Bulls game. As I recently found out, though, there are no home games this weekend. You’ll have to wait until next Tuesday. Until then:

Blinding spring sun:
Upturned faces
Wonder where the fly ball went.

In Memoriam: Dave Arneson

2009-04-09T12:04:00.003-04:00

I just want to echo the sentiments in this link. I’m not sure how my life would have panned out if it were not for the systems this man created. It is hard for me to imagine a world without RPG’s in it. The sad thing is to many his death will go unnoticed. Many people think RPG’s have nothing to do with their existence, and for many they might not. But, if you’ve ever played an RPG of any type, played a MMORPG, or enjoyed the feel of an RPG on your next generation gaming system then this man was responsible for helping define it.

Some may argue that the Monster Manual or the D&D Rules Book don’t constitute reading a book. I beg to differ those books are equal parts story and textbook, and in a way more difficult to get through than a regular book.

In closing, this man created the skeleton on which all RPG’s are forged today and for that I honor his passing.

Like, Wao!

2009-04-07T08:32:00.004-04:00

Hi again, folks.

Many of you have probably already heard that the summer reading for the incoming class of 2013 is Junot Diaz's book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The book was chosen from an excellent list of finalists, but I will now freely admit that I was pulling for this title all along. It's a challenging but fun read, and I think it will make for a great campus-wide conversation in the fall.

Diaz was on campus a few months ago, giving what I understand was a fantastic reading. Any of you who missed it can go to the NPR website and hear a clip of the author reading a passage from Oscar Wao. Check it out, and if you like what you hear you'll find plenty of copies of the book here at the store.

Taking Stock

2009-04-06T16:02:00.003-04:00

Hi Gothic Shoppers.

The throngs of you who flocked to our doors this past Saturday probably noticed that our doors were locked. At least, I hope you all noticed that; otherwise, our security procedures need some adjusting.

It wasn’t that we’d grown tired of servicing your book needs. No, we were engaged in that great retail ritual to which we all must submit: we were doing inventory. Now, those of you who have not worked in a bookshop before do not know the pure joy of a physical inventory. It involves pulling out every single book, magazine, card, and tchotchke, and scanning its barcode with a little raygun until a beep is heard.

It takes a really long time.

I’d like to tell you a story of how I came to enjoy the process, how I came to feel close to my fellow booksellers as we pursued some common goal. I’d like to say, even, that I was a ray of sunshine the whole time. If I tried to tell you this, though, my coworkers would murder me on the spot. (I acted like something of a you-know-what there towards the end, and I duly apologize)

No, none of us really came to feel anything other than dread and annoyance about the whole thing. However, it did give me a renewed sense of the scope of our stock here at the Gothic. I wasn’t paying too much attention to the titles of the books I was scanning; that just slows a person down. But once in a while I would surface from my ennui-induced walking coma to find myself holding a book on the conquest of the American West, or some random book on mathematics, or a book on making pickles, or Kevin Young’s volume of film noir poetry, or Foucault’s History of Madness, or (I’m not making this up), a copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. And I’d think to myself: wow, we’ve really got the bases covered here.

If it sounds like I’m bragging here, well, I can’t deny it. We do have a seriously well-stocked bookstore, and, after all, the purpose of this blog isn’t to tell the world that we suck rotten eggs.

So, after all, in the midst of the hellish slog that was inventory, I once again found purpose as a bookseller, and was truly glad for the experience...

I’m kidding, of course. I hope I never have to perform that godawful task again. But we do have a lot of great books here.

Dang

2009-03-17T14:00:00.002-04:00

Dang.

Not five minutes ago I caught a glimpse of some actual, honest-to-god sunlight through the coffee shop window. I dug my super-cool shades out of my desk drawer, summoned my co-worker Captain Courageous to man the front counter, and made a break for the outside. But by the time I got there, clouds had blocked out the sun, and that inescapable feeling of gloom that’s been hanging around for the last week or so was back in place.

I’ve been doing what I can to help usher in Spring, Gothic Shoppers. I hauled all those short-sleeved shirts out of the basement. I pumped up the tires of my bike. I’ve even been listening to the Meat Puppets non-stop, and if there’s any better way to draw down summer in a shamanistic fusion of noise and jangle, I can’t think of it.

It looked like it was working, too. We had a handful of nice days. Sitting outside days. Hiking in the park days. Days that promised a near future when you wouldn’t really be able to remember being cold. That was until, ironically, Spring Break. We waved adieu to the departing students, most of them off to warmer climes, and they left in their collective wake one (hopefully) final smackdown from winter.

It’s been almost a week of cold and constant rain. Colds are catching. Basements are flooding. Enough is enough.

Here’s what I’ve decided: I’ve been reading too many gloomy-weather books. Back when we in a serious drought here in the Bull City (those were the days), some bookseller colleagues and I made a list of as many books as we could think of that featured the word “rain” in the title. Our theory was that if we hit upon the right number we’d make some rain. Sure enough, our customers pitched in and we came up with a good long list, after which we got three days of downpour.

Now, Arthur and I don’t really like to be confronted with the fact that with these posts we’re basically shouting into the void, so I’m not going to throw out a plea for any Gargoyle readers to start listing books here. But I will pledge to either of you who might be reading that I’m going to do my part by reading almost exclusively warm weather books for a while. I’m going to try to get our customers to do the same.

I’ve ordered some of my favorite baseball novels for the store (you’ll hear more about those goodies when the Bulls’ season starts in April), and I’ll be shoving them into people’s hands as soon as they get here. That should get spring rolling.

For my part, I’m going to resume the Don Winslow kick that I had going for a while there. Winslow writes killer mystery novels set in southern California that can best be described as surf-noir. When Royal, my good bookselling pal, recommended Winslow’s The Dawn Patrol, I, um, voiced my skepticism. Emphatically. Shows what I know. Winslow is great at writing taut, suspenseful plots while evoking the sunny, laid-back lifestyle of surfers and beachdwellers.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned here on the Gargoyle that Padgett Powell’s Edisto is being reissued. You Gothic Shoppers should come buy a copy as soon as you can. You’ll be doing your part to drive out the late dreariness by diving into Poewll’s excellent novel of languid mischievousness in the South Carolina lowlands.

If these warm-weather reads don’t do the trick. We’ll have to resort to more drastic measures. I’ll keep copies of the Grapes of Wrath and the Worst Hard Time on hand, just in case.

And if I see anyone reading Call of the Wild or A Perfect Storm any time soon, there’s going to be trouble.

I'm Just Tryin' To Find The Bridge

2009-03-09T16:12:00.007-04:00

It may or may not surprise some of you (well, any of the three of you who may be reading this blog) to read that while sitting in a stark white room, listening to a grown man make guttural sounds that were not in any way intelligible but that nonetheless constituted poetry, I encountered a new sense of purpose as a bookseller.

I know what you’re thinking: Again?

It’s true, I’m constantly redefining (or, at the very least, restating) what it is we booksellers do and why we do it. But in addition to the giant sack of money that the Gothic hands me at the end of each work day, what makes me enjoy being a bookseller is the multifaceted nature of the job. The interaction of customers, publishers, authors and booksellers provides for a job that is rarely the same from week to week. In that way, it’s very much like the game of Pinball, although we should probably not get started on that train of thought because then I’ll use up all my allotted space trying to lay out a cohesive argument for why there should be a Gothic Bookshop-themed pinball machine, preferably manufactured by Williams.(Which there really should be.)

So anyway, there are always more reasons out there to be a bookseller, and you can find them if you’re into the job. Which I am, so bear with me here.

See, a couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to be selling books at the poetry festival Infection in the Sentence. (Many thanks to Rebecca Gibson for making that possible) It was a great scene. The mix of poets, from Cecil Taylor to Susan Howe to Tracie Morris to Eileen Myles, was impressive in itself. But the energy that the poets generated in collaboration with the students who organized and attended the conference was something to see. Between readings the conference-goers would spill out into the hall to discuss what they’d just heard. It was, to borrow (steal) from the conference’s title, totally infectious.

Over the course of the meeting, I got the opportunity to chat with some of the graduate students and professors who were in attendance. Many of them are themselves poets and writers, whose books we’ll be keeping on our shelves for some time to come. It was clear that the experimental styles of the visiting poets had energized them, and one could imagine a straight line from the readings to the adventurous work that we’ll see from each of them in the future.

Now, I have to admit that I spent most of my time outside the readings. I was babysitting my table of books, and I was pretty well engrossed in Forrest Gander’s recent novel, As A Friend. (It’s a real stunner of a book and currently featured on our staff picks table at 30% off, hint hint.) At one point, though, a poet whose work I respect quite a bit gave me the heads-up that I needed to catch the Christian Bök reading in person.

If anyone had described to me a poetry reading that was to contain gibberish sound-spews, entire poems using but a single vowel, and invented alien-language love songs sung aloud, I would have fled in the other direction as quickly as I could. But I ducked into the room and was completely blown away by what I saw. The reading was precisely as I describe it above, but in practice it was closer to watching a punk rock show than catching a reading within the halls of academia. While I watched it go on, I had the feeling that I should be running out into the street and pulling people in by force to see what I was seeing. Because something as exciting as Bök’s work should be seen by as many people as possible, and not just by the people in the white room that rainy Saturday.

And that’s where we booksellers come in. At our best we can be a bridge between what happens within an academic community and curious readers who find themselves outside of that community. There’s no denying that experimental poets, novelists, and critics can drive global language and thought towards places as yet unexplored. But there’s an improved chance of that happening when readers have as much opportunity to stumble on such work in the course of random browsing as they do to discover it through intentional and guided study.

That’s why it’s important to us to keep work by experimental writers on our shelves. Sure, it’s not as profitable as loading up with copies of Twilight (which we do have on the shelves, at a 10% discount, hint hint). But it’s one of the ways that we serve both the Duke community and the community of Durham at large. We provide a commercial –which is to say accessible—context for challenging, progressive literature which seems less threatening by its placement next to more familiar and less intimidating books. It’s the democracy of retail (someone shoot me now, please, for coining that particular phrase), and if done right it vastly extends the reach of the impressive work being done and presented here at the University.

Right, thanks for hanging in there with me. Next week I swear I’ll just write about baseball books.

The Winter of Our Bookish Contentment

2009-02-20T09:08:00.002-05:00

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.

You’ll need an extra large book bag to hold all the new titles arriving this winter from the studies, offices and sabbatical hideouts of Duke authors.

From history to politics, from witch trials to the economics of obesity, Duke faculty have been generously sharing insights and personal reflections.

Oxford University Press has just published history professor William Chafe’s book, The Rise and Fall of the American Century: The United States from 1890-2010.

The book describes the rise -- and potential fall -- of the U.S., a nation more powerful, more wealthy and more dominant than any in human history.

Chafe also acknowledges the persistent challenges the U.S. has faced and continues to face -- inequalities of race, gender and income that contradict its vision of itself as "a land of opportunity."

And unlike our memories of U.S. history classes in high school, Chafe brings his account to the present day. The epilogue discusses important economic and political events through 2008, including the financial crisis and the 2008 presidential election.

By the way, Chafe’s groundbreaking set of interviews about African-American life in the segregated South, Remembering Jim Crow, is now available in an affordable paperback edition with a remastered MP3 CD of the companion radio documentary program produced by American RadioWorks. The book was also edited by Duke public policy professor Robert Korstad and Duke history professor Raymond Gavins.

---

Art and art history professor Kristine Stiles wrote the monograph-length survey text for a new book on the internationally renowned Serbian performance artist, Marina Abramovic. The book, Marina Abramovic, has been published by Phaidon in its artist book series.

As the first book in more than a decade to look at Abramovic’s work in its entirety, this monograph will offer a fresh take on an artist whose work is key to understanding the latest developments in contemporary art.

Abramovic was the winner of the Golden Lion at the 47th Venice Biennale in 1997 for her piece "Balkan Baroque," a multimedia installation and performance.

Watch an excerpt on YouTube here.

Art historian Richard Powell's new book, Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture (The University of Chicago Press), offers a stunning visual tour of the evolution of black portraiture from the late 18th century through the modern day, linking art with slavery and the civil rights movement.

The term “cutting a figure” gained popularity during the 19th century and refers to people who make a spectacular display of themselves, he says.

One such figure, the legendary African musician Fela Anikulapo Kuti, is portrayed in truly iconic terms by Barkley L. Hendricks, whose Fela: Amen, Amen, Amen … could be viewed full size (60 X 48 inches) at the recent Nasher Museum of Art show. Powell writes that Hendricks’ Fela “employs his art as a creative offense and his body as a jump-suited defense against moral hypocrisy, political corruption, and, above all, social invisibility.”

This Month at Duke article here.

Professor Powell’s website here.

---

Law professor Jedediah Purdy’s new book critiquing America's ideology of freedom is getting the best kind of advance praise – a starred review in Publishers Weekly.

Coming to bookstores on March 3, Purdy’s A Tolerable Anarchy: Rebels, Reactionaries, and the Making of American Freedom (Knopf) is touted by the magazine as a “tour de force of engaged political philosophy.”

LINK/Publisher’s details:
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781400044474

In his wide-ranging account from the author of For Common Things, we’re reminded that our ideas of self-mastery and freedom have given us both stirring liberation movements and pointless wars.

At this time when economic forces swirl beyond our control, Purdy believes realizing our ideals of freedom today will require the political vision to reform the institutions we share.

---

Visiting economics instructor Eric Finkelstein has been getting timely attention for his new book, The Fattening of America: How the Economy Makes Us Fat, If It Matters, and What to Do About It. Finkelstein, a health economist, told Politico earlier this month that tighter family budgets are making fresh produce and whole-grain foods less affordable, pushing families toward fast food and other less healthful alternatives.

---

Gerda Lerner, a visiting professor of history, is out with Living With History/Making Social Change, a stimulating collection of essays in an autobiographical framework that spans the period from 1963 to the present. The essays illuminate how thought and action connected in Lerner’s life, how the life she led before she became an academic affected the questions she addressed as a historian, and how the social and political struggles in which she engaged informed her thinking.

On Wednesday, April 1, at 3:30 p.m., at an event hosted by the Sally Bingham Center, Gerda Lerner will give a reading and book signing at the Biddle Rare Book Room in Perkins Library. The Gothic Bookshop will be on site to sell copies of the book.
---

Duke history professor Thomas Robisheaux is on the public radio/bookstore circuit this month to let folks know about the release of his new book, The Last Witch of Langenburg.

The release coincides with the anniversary of Anna Fessler’s death on the festive holiday of Shrove Tuesday in 1672 Germany. Fessler died after eating one of her neighbor's buttery cakes. Could it have been poisoned? Robisheaux chronicles one of Europe's last and most complicated witch trials.

He joined “State of Things” host Frank Stasio this week to talk about the roles
religion, gender and fearful imagination play in this vivid story and in
our society. You can listen to the segment here.

I’ll have a few more Duke books to share in a future post, but maybe that’s enough for now to keep us reading -- and thinking this winter.

You’re all so shy….

2009-02-18T18:29:00.007-05:00

Events in the Gothic today (well, not exactly in) brought to mind children’s books. Arthur is the proud father of a new baby girl and I started thinking about what books I give babies. I know lots of people go the traditional route of Goodnight Moon or Pat the Bunny, both wonderful books and ones kids love, but I like to give lesser known ones and ones that I think are fun and hope that the parents will too since they are apt to have to read it out loud over and over and over. My current favorite is SouperChicken, a charming story of a chicken who can read and how this goes from being a bad thing to being a really good thing. Two of my favorites for little girls, as antidotes to the usual roles for girls in fairy tales, are The Paper Bag Princess and Cinder Edna. The Paper Bag Princess is the tongue-in-cheek story of a princess named Elizabeth who has to rescue her prince from a dragon. Cinder Edna is Cinderella’s neighbor who falls in love with the prince’s goofy younger brother, Rupert. There are two shoes left at the ball, one slipper and one loafer, and the contrasts between the two couples will leave you giggling.

So why, you might ask, did this start out with “you’re all so shy?” I know people out there are reading our blog, but no one ever answers my questions. What are your favorite kids’ books to give as gifts -- or read yourself? Show me you’re bold – comment!

Whoa-oh-oh-oh

2009-02-16T14:50:00.006-05:00

Estelle Bennett died just the other day.

Some of you aren’t going to know who that is. Heck, most of you won’t. She wasn’t any grand dame of the publishing biz. She wasn’t some obscure Welsh writer known for talking animal stories. She wasn’t the stoic wife of a famously drunken crime writer. Estelle Bennett was a member of The Ronettes.

You know, The Ronettes: Be My Baby, Wall of Sound, beehive hairdos, all that good stuff? Now, I love me some girl group music. The Marvelettes, The Shirelles, The Crystals, The Supremes – I dig it all. Give me some harmonies and complicated backup vocals over a cheap sound system down at the local watering hole, and I’m happy as the proverbial clam.

You may rightly be wondering, Gothic Shoppers, what difference it could possibly make that I’m a Ronettes fan. This is a blog about books and bookselling, after all. But the thing is, (and you did know I’d make this work, didn’t you?) there’s a Ronettes book connection.

Let’s flash back to the Mesozoic Era: I’m fresh out of college, living in Texas, attempting (and failing) to turn a literary bookstore into a raging success, and inhabiting a rundown house with three other guys. We’re all broke, all the time, so all we ever do is read and talk. And listen to rock and roll. We pass books around and stay up late into the night discussing them as though they constitute Holy Scripture. There are rambling discussions of Thomas Pynchon, Jorge Luis Borges, Gertrude Stein, and (god help me) Derrida. But by far the most discussed book of that stretch of time is, hands-down, Be My Baby: How I survived Mascara, Miniskirts, and Madness or My Life as a Fabulous Ronette by Ronnie Spector with Vince Waldron.

We were obsessed with this book. This is no exaggeration. During the month or so that we took turns reading this now criminally out of print masterpiece, the house was flooded with the thundering, lush sound of the Ronettes’ music. We memorized passages from the book. We debated what the creepiest aspect of Ronnie’s relationship with the great (and twisted) producer Phil Spector was. We lived and breathed Ronnie Spector, her sister Estelle Bennett, and their cousin Nedra Talley.

I still love to read books on music, and there are plenty of killer titles out there. Geoff Dyer’s book on jazz, But Beautiful, is as elegant a piece of writing as you’re likely to find on any subject. In England’s Dreaming, Jon Savage drags punk rock history snarling and spitting through pre- and post- Thatcher Britain, forcing the reader to wonder who gave birth to whom. Durham’s own John Darnielle wrote a nifty little masterpiece for the 33&1/3 series, a novel about one troubled young man’s obsession with Black Sabbath. For that matter, George Pelecanos’ A Firing Offense and Sean Stewart’s Perfect Circle are as much about rock and roll as they are about crime and clairvoyance, respectively.

I could go on and on (and you’ll be surprised, I know, when I don’t) with such a list. But while each of these books is in its own way amazing, it’s been about a couple of decades since those Be My Baby days. I’m skeptical of hitting that level of fandom that I had back then. When you’re in your twenties, music matters in that particular, intense way that tends to mellow across the years. These days I’m more likely to enjoy a book on music for the skill of the writer rather than the appeal of his subject. Heck, I’ll even read about Randy Newman, if Greil Marcus is writing about him.

Still, whenever I hear the opening drumbeats of a good Ronettes song, I’m back in that crappy old house, sitting across a table from my best friends. One of us has the book open and is reading aloud from it. We’re all laughing.

It’s a good memory. Many thanks to the Ronettes. And rest in peace, Estelle.

Versus: Settings

2009-02-13T12:04:00.006-05:00

This week for the Versus installment of the Gargoyle, Arthur and I are going to tackle fictional or mythical settings. We’ve been saving this one up, and I’m excited to see what Arthur comes up with. (Of course, our favorite actual setting is the Gothic Bookshop. Especially that nook under the Religion Sale Books table, which is where I like to nap…)

Arthur first:

Before I launch into a nice meaty chunk of why I picked the locale I did let me first address my criteria for a great book location. In my case, my location is fictional so the number one criterion for me is: is the place believable. Secondly, would be can I close my eyes and see the details the author describes to me. Thirdly, does the location fit within the greater scope of the book? Lastly, Is the location relevant to what is transpiring in the book?

My favorite setting for a book is Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry from J.K Rowling’s’ Harry Potter novels.

Is Hogwarts believable? I think so; after all it’s really just a castle on the outside. The English countryside is dotted with castles. Hogwarts is located in Scotland in the novels so a castle would hardly be a stretch for Scotland. Inside of Hogwarts there are all sort of magical things, paintings that talk, ghosts that walk, and moving staircases. These things would all be typical to find in a castle, especially a magical one.

Secondly, can I close my eyes and imagine the place? Absolutely, I daresay nearly everyone who read the Potter novels has a pretty clear image of Hogwarts. They may differ slightly but I believe they would overall be very similar. Deep down inside I believe a good book to be fuel for the imagination. Rowling does a wonderful job of painting Hogwarts almost as a living breathing entity. The best part is that Harry has never had a home that he felt comfortable and welcomed in. Then he arrives at Hogwarts and realizes that it is his home, and for the first time he feels wanted somewhere. Rowling uses the castle to cement the protagonist. It actual adds something to a character.

Thirdly, does Hogwarts fit in the grander scope of the Potter novels? Well we have schools for lawyers, doctors, and engineers, so why not a school for up and coming wizards and witches? If one is prepared to accept the premise of the novels, that witches and wizards exist. Then certainly one can understand the need for a place to teach them the craft. As the books go on we see Hogwarts importance grow, culminating in the final battles of the books taking place at the castle. In fact I would argue that well over 50% of the Potter books take place inside the castle.

Finally, is Hogwarts relevant to what is transpiring in the books? Well not to sound cliché’ (thanks Obama) but Hogwarts is a beacon of hope in the wizarding community. It is a school for the future of wizardkind. We know that other schools for magic exist but none are revered as highly as Hogwarts. Hogwarts becomes extraordinarily relevant when it becomes the host/home for the Boy who Survived, Harry Potter. Potter’s presence at Hogwarts, and subsequent growing love for the building, cement the place as a relevant, vital part of the books. We see this particularly in the book The Order of the Phoenix with the addition of the Room of Requirement. The room is an area of Hogwarts that becomes available whenever there is a great need for a place. The room becomes available to Harry as a place for him and his fellow students to practice their Defense against the Dark Arts. They are unable to do so normally because of a haggish teacher named Professor Umbridge. Harry states in the book that it is almost as though Hogwarts were helping them fight back by providing them with the room as a place to train.

In closing, there are so many more things I could touch on, which in and of itself is a testimony to how viable a pick I feel this location is.

Now Bill:

Arthur, I’m totally with you on your pick. No fictional setting has absorbed me as much as Hogwarts, not since I was a kid and reading about Sherwood Forest or Middle Earth or the House of Usher. I think I may go a little more abstract, though.

You guys are going to think I’m taking the easy way out, but I’m gonna have to go with The Garden of Eden for my Best-Setting Versus pick today. Think about it. Whether you’re a biblical literalist or a reader who’s inclined to treat Adam & Eve’s backyard as something closer to a mythical ideal, you’re affected by the notion of Paradise. (And I hope I'm not offending anyone by calling Paradise a mythical setting; for the sake of this installment of Versus, I'm treating the Bible purely as a literary text)

When Arthur and I decided on settings for our Versus topic this week, a cascade of ideas ran through my head: Yoknapatawpha, Narnia, Macondo, the futuristic dystopia of Orwell’s 1984, Superman’s Metropolis. It kind of made me dizzy until I realized that each of these settings are defined by the degree to which they resemble or diverge from the notion of utopia.

So where do we get the notion that there is any state of perfection towards which we can strive? What begets the dissatisfaction that we humans feel when all is not right? I’m going to say that we can lay the responsibility, if not the blame, on the book of Genesis and its notion that there was once an environmental manifestation of perfection.

We don’t have a whole lot to go on for a physical description of Paradise, but for generations we’ve been undeniably affected, addled, and inspired by the idea of it.

So that’s my pick, and we’ll see you next week, Gothic Shoppers.

Speaking of pet peeves….

2009-02-11T14:40:00.003-05:00

I’m not sure actually that this is a pet peeve. It may just be a peeve, but for me, it’s a big one. Amazon has announced it will soon be bringing out the Kindle 2, an updated version of their electronic book reader. Now, I don’t object to the Kindle in general. I will probably never use one because I like to see, feel, and smell books too much to give the actual thing up, but I understand the desire to be able to carry around many books without carrying the actual books. What I do object to is that books for the Kindle are only available from Amazon. Why isn’t this restraint of trade? Why do publishers go along with this? Why does Indie Next (the independent bookstore wing of the American Booksellers Association) not bring their collective weight to bear on publishers about this? We can sell regular e-books from our website, why not Kindle format titles? AND NOW, on top of this, Stephen King has agreed to write a short story that will be available only in Kindle format for the launch of the new Kindle. How could he?? Apparently he doesn’t remember what it was like to be an unknown. Only a few writers ever become a commercial success and of those, rarely does one ever become known because of Amazon. They become known because people who work in independent bookstores read their books, like them and get them in the hands of other readers. After all that, then they might end up being a good deal on Amazon.

Okay, I’m done. Not a big rant, but I haven’t had enough caffeine and I have lots of returns to do. Tempted though I may be, I won’t send back all of our Stephen King....

Trans-Nation Boogie

2009-02-09T13:15:00.004-05:00

Welcome to Monday, Gothic Shoppers. Like many of you, I’m not normally inclined to celebrate the first day of the working week, but given that seven days ago I completely spaced out on what day it was and failed to turn in my weekly blog post, I’m happy just to be slightly more on the ball this week.

I should warn you right now that we’re in for one of those sprawling, directionless rambles that I occasionally turn in. It’s a beautiful day; my supplier next door has me on the way to being fully wired, and I’ve got a couple of notions that have been kicking around in my head for a while. I think it’s time to throw them at the wall and see if they turn into anything coherent (unlikely, I know).

What’s up is that I went to hear some incredible jazz about a week ago, and the shortlist for the best translated book award has been announced. You get where I’m going with this, right? No? Well, I can’t be sure myself, but let’s see what happens.

First things first: It’s the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture, and we at the Gothic Bookshop want to offer our congratulations and gratitude to its staff. In addition to the many services that it offers Duke Students, the Center brings excellent jazz to campus, in keeping with the spirit of its namesake. We’re lucky to have them here on campus.

As part of its anniversary celebration, the MLW Center, in conjunction with Duke Performances, hosted the great pianist Geri Allen for a performance of Mary Lou Williams’ Zodiac Suite. My friend Stompy Jones and I made the scene, and I kid you not when I say that this was one of the most exciting jazz shows I’ve seen in a good long time. It was fascinating to watch a performer at her peak bring her talent to bear on an extended piece written by another composer.

When a jazz musician such as Allen takes on a piece by another artist, her goal is to honor the original composition while making the piece a vehicle for her own voice. No two musicians will perform the same piece in an identical manner, and in fact no two performances of that piece by the same musician will be alike. This is how an older standard such as Mary Lou Williams’ Hesitation Boogie stays alive: by being constantly, subtly altered.

Is the same true in the literary world? Certainly there are multiple English translations of almost every classic text, but is the goal of a translator, like that of a jazz artist, to use the text as a vehicle for his own stylings? I’m going to have to say no. A translator’s job, ideally, is not to reinvent a text, but to keep its translation as close as possible to the spirit of the original. And the driving reason behind a new translation of a work is (or should be) a renewed attempt to get the thing right.

Now, that’s not to say that it isn’t entertaining to watch a translator go off the reservation once in a while. One of my favorite translated-lit memories is of coming across a passage in Federico Garcia Lorca’s beautiful book, Poet in New York. In the poem The King of Harlem, there’s a very simple line: Hay que huir. Now, literally this means we must flee, or one should flee. The Simon & White translation, however, has this line translated as there must be some way out of here (!!). I’m sorry, was someone a little distracted by the copy of John Wesley Hardin playing in the background? How did a Dylan lyric make its way into a Lorca poem? Or had Dylan been browsing a little Lorca when he sat down to write All Along The Watchtower? Maybe it's a private joke on the part of the translator, a tip of the hat to Bob's well-known familiarity with Lorca. I love thinking about this kind of stuff (Yes, Gothic Shoppers, I’m a geek, but you knew that already).

Weirdo exceptions aside, translations of books from other countries offer us the chance to understand, even experience, other cultures from our remote vantage point. For this reason above all others, though the translator’s role in the world of books is paramount, he must remain as invisible as possible, so as not to block the bridge he’s attempting to build.

That bridge to other cultures is something we’re dedicated to maintaining here at the Gothic. Whether it’s a book written in English right here in Durham, or any one of the broad selection of translated works we’ve got on the shelves, we like to think that we offer myriad jumping-off points for a reader to go outside his or her own experience.

So come in and browse, or let us recommend a good translated work to you. Then when you get home, slap Geri Allen’s Zodiac Suite Revisited on the stereo for some background music while you cross that bridge.

The Road Less Peeved

2009-02-03T16:09:00.004-05:00

So, I have a couple of pet peeves when it comes to what I read. If I start reading a book at it becomes apparent that any of these peeves are present it makes the book tons easier to put down. Now before you lambaste me for quitting so easily let me tell you that in general I am a very forgiving reader. You have to go out of your way to lose me but some books go above and beyond.

Just the other day I picked up a new read from our hardcover fiction section entitled Beat the Reaper. The book had garnered pretty good word of mouth. It was a Booksense recommended title. I opened it and started reading; within the first 15 pages it had broken at least 3 of my peeves in half.

Let me amend this post to include a warning:

Just because a book possesses my pet peeves, it doesn’t mean it’s not good for someone else.

1- Swearing un-profoundly: I do not like it when an author seems to include a ton of swear words. By and large I think of swear words as weak writing. I believe an author turns to swear words when they lack the imagination to come up with anything else to say. This does not mean I’m against an occasional swear word. I believe that when used properly a swear word can have huge impact. Especially, when said swear word is out of place or character. It can emphasize how much a character is struggling with a situation or person. When every other word out of a characters mouth is a swear word, they lose any impact they ever could have had. A second reason a writer turns to swear words is to appear edgy. Much like why teenagers swear these days, so they can appear cool to their friends, an author might turn to swear words to appear cutting edge or noirish. I'm all for returning the impact to a good swear word by adopting the less is more attitude.

2- Footnotes: If I wanted to read footnotes I would choose a scholarly text. I especially hate it when the author uses footnotes to try an add humor to the novel. Why not add the humor to the actual book instead. As I explained earlier, just breaking a single one of my peeves is not crime enough to stop me from reading a book, and there is a prime example here. The book Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett contains footnotes and I plowed through them and still can highly recommend the book. To me footnotes can add little to the story and distracts me from the actual plot of the novel.

3- Stereotypical Cookie Cutter Characters: The number one offender of this too me is the loose woman. I have read books with women as the heroines, the villains, the partner, the victim, and the professor but I really cannot stand it when without any rhyme or reason a female character is included to give a man something to do (and by that I mean sexually) These are throw away characters that add nothing to a plot. They are merely used again to show a character as a womanizer or to appear edgy again (see #1). Characters in general deserve more than stereotypes. The black rapper, the Italian gangster, the prostitute with a heart of gold, the elf archer, or the cannibalistic serial killer, they all deserve better classifications. When an author includes a character in a story is it too much to ask that they be fleshed out and somewhat original?

When I started thinking of writing a book a few years back (yes I’m still writing it). I bought a book entitled Building Believable Characters. It is a great book that helps you build a characters back-story up so that when they appear in your novel you can figure out how they would react to a plot device by just looking at it. It is a fantastic book and a must read for any aspiring author.

Well those are my pet peeves and I know many of you may not share mine, agree with me on some but not others, or just have radically different ones. Feel free to let me know what yours are because complaining is fun.

Inspirometer

2009-01-27T14:28:00.006-05:00

So, I was looking for inspiration for a blog today. I thought if I looked up some quotes about inspiration I might get inspired. The first one that struck me was:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit”
-Aristotle-

Wow! Thanks for smacking me cold upside the face Ari my man. What do I repeatedly do? I come to work, eat, surf the World Wide Web. Are these the things I’m excellent at? There not necessarily the things I want to be excellent at. I want to be excellent at writing, acting, and creating wonderful things. So according to Aristotle if I want to be excellent at them I have to do them more. Oh man, where am I going to find that kind of time? I guess if these are my passions I need to make the time for them.

Let me see what the next quote that struck me can teach me:

“Motivation will almost always beat mere talent.”
-Norman R. Augustine-

This rings so true to me. Have you ever known someone who just wouldn’t stop talking to you about something, no matter how many I don’t care vibes you sent out? That’s passion; it could be for a book, television show, or just a great idea they have. I imagine someone with a movie pitch that they think is great trying to sell it to the studios. First time out they get the door slammed in their face. Second time the result is the same. Eventually they pack it in and give up. What about the guy who doesn’t give up? Who treats every slamming door as incentive to move on? I just feel like his passion will eventually find an equally passionate ear to listen and act on.

Maybe my lesson here is not to quit. Not take the first distraction or put down and use it as an excuse to stop doing what I’m passionate about. After all, if it’s truly a passion shouldn’t I really not be worried about trivial things?

Excellent, time to move on to my next quote:

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing that you will make one.”
-Elbert Hubbard-

We’re all going to drop the ball every now and then. Sometime were going to be short of the mark but we can’t live our lives fearing those times. If we do we might very well miss the joy of hitting the mark. Some of the best feelings I have had were when I knew I had done or said the best thing possible.

For example, right before Christmas a woman came into the Gothic. She said she needed some suggestions for books for her granddaughter. She had no idea what was popular these days but knew she wanted to encourage her with some good books. She was directed to me by some of the other staff here. I went over and picked out 7-8 strong titles. I figured she would pick 2 and I’d never see her again. Boy was I wrong. She bought all 8 titles and I saw her again after we reopened in January. She actually came seeking me out, stopped me and thanked me for the help. She said her granddaughter loved all the books and they were perfect. Well that’s a feeling I’d like to have a few more time I tell you.

Had I never taken the chance of recommending those titles I would not have experienced that wonderful joy. Obviously, it could have gone the other way. Her granddaughter might have hated those boos, or read them already and disliked them greatly, or even not been her style. Honestly, I never thought about that scenario though. I just recommended books I was passionate about, like City of Ember, Inkheart, and Kingdom Keepers. I knew they were great books so the thought that someone might not enjoy them didn't cross my mind.

On to my last quote, the last lesson of inspiration:

“Do or do not. There is no try.”
-Yoda, character in the movie The Empire Strikes Back-

Trying things indicates the possibility of failure. I should not try to find more time to write, I should just write. I shouldn’t try to finish reading this book; I should just plow through it. I’m an excuse maker: “ I didn’t have the time.”“I forgot.” or my favorite “I haven’t got around to it yet.” My excuses are standing in the way of my progress at things I enjoy.

That’s not a bad truth from a little green Muppet.

The Raw Stuff

2009-01-26T15:28:00.007-05:00

I tried sushi this weekend.

Well, I tried to try it. Seriously, I did. My reluctance to eat raw fish has grown somewhat tiresome even to myself, and I thought it was about time that I turn into a grownup about the whole thing. So I went with a friend to a very fine local spot and accepted suggestions on what I should order. I’m pleased to say that I ate the cooked semi-sushi and liked it quite a bit, but that raw stuff stared me right down, Gothic Shoppers. It’s embarrassing. I just didn’t have the guts to do it. But I’ll tackle it next time, for sure

Why, some might ask, would I pledge to go out and try again to make myself eat something that I’ve always avoided? I’ve got one answer for you there: Hemingway.

Some of you (well, either of you who read this blog) might remember that my list of Books for Lt. Awesome included a Hemingway novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls. I have to confess that at the time I’d only read a small chunk of the book. This is something that we booksellers have to do from time to time: put a customer together with a book without knowing either very well. Across years of experience, good booksellers come to feel that there is a particular kind of intuition that can be developed, almost as if we could lay hands on a title and somehow know when its customer has walked in the door. We don’t consider ourselves to be disingenuous –certainly few of us would ever claim to have read a book we hadn’t—we just come to have faith in our instincts. I’ve never read Le Carre, for instance, but I know his potential readers when I meet them.

Anyway, having recommended For Whom The Bell Tolls to Lt. A., I remembered that I needed to check in with that book again. It’s a title that I attempted to read as a much younger person –a kid, really—and I’d never fully gotten into it. My dad was a big fan of the book; he even put that and another Hemingway title in my Christmas stocking one year when I was about 13. I always felt kind of bad for not having finished it. But there were comic books and Louis L’amour westerns to be read at the time, and the book just didn’t grab the 13-year-old me.

Flash-forward 25 years or so: I’m sitting in a chair, killing time before going out to see some rock & roll. I’m about halfway through the Hemingway book, in the middle of a chapter that’s serving up hard, cynical truth hand over fist using deceptively simple language that is pure delight to read. In the background is Duke Ellington –the 1946 band, one of his best. (And the best of Ellington is the best of anything anywhere, ever.) I’m struck by that rare certainty that there won’t be too many reading experiences that will match the one I’m having right that second.

That’s one of the true benefits of working at (or spending lots and lots of time in) a bookstore. The books that you once put aside or wrote off – they continue to hang around, staying in sight, making themselves available to you so that they’re there when the time comes to take a second crack at them.

And you do have to take a second crack at some things. Faulkner’s Absalom Absalom and Vargas Llosa’s Conversation in the Cathedral were almost maddeningly impenetrable on first try, but my second attempts at both yielded life-altering readings. The same goes for music. Charles Mingus’ Black Saint and the Sinner Lady sounded like base cacophony when I first put it on the record player. So did The Pixies’ Surfer Rosa. Both are among my favorite records now.

I guess what I’m getting around to with all this is that I’m pretty sure the same is true with food. I’ve never been an adventurous eater. I was one of those picky, peanut-butter-only kids. As an adult, I’ve broadened my tastes, but I’m still not as fearless as I’d like to be. But hey, I thought I knew what was what with For Whom the Bell Tolls, and it knocked me on my bookseller’s bottom. Maybe I’m fixing to have one of those quasi-Satori-inducing eating experiences that will reward me for years to come.

So anyway, I’m trying the raw stuff next time.

Four Letter Words

2009-01-20T15:39:00.005-05:00

Hmmmm what can I blog about today? There really isn’t anything going on that I can think of, except snow and hope.

Yeah I know it’s inauguration day and we have a brand spanking new shiny president to drive off the lot. We also got a nice little bit of snow last night that we woke up to. These two things got me thinking about the similarities of the two and eventually about books, or at least a book.

I have always been fascinated with snow. There is no time where I am more at peace than during or right after a snow has fallen. You step out into your yard and it is like a new world. Everything is shiny and clean and beautiful. The mundane has become the magnificent. There are no mud puddles, or dirt mounds. There seem to be no ants or flies. There is no trash or waste. There is only the beauty of the white stuff.

Snow makes the tree limbs take on an appeal they don’t normally have. Makes a chimney with smoke coming out of stir a warm memory. The air seems to be more wholesome, your breath more alive. Buildings seem more mysterious and roads like gateways to other worlds filled with unknown joys.

The world during a snowstorm seems to slow down. Traffic is non-existent; animals lay sheltered in their habitats. Little moves except the snow itself. People seem more content to stay at home with their families, to take time out from their normal routines and swim upstream, do something different. Games are played, hugs are shared, and smiles are plentiful.

Eventually coats are donned, gloves are secured, and sleds are drug out. There are plans of snowball fights, snow angels and sledding at full speeds. Children, teens and adults all take to the ground and participate in these winter activities. Snow reduces us all to childhood in a way. Little bothers seem less important and having a bad attitude more difficult to do.

I simply love snow.

Our country has had a snowstorm, we have a new president and as I write this right now I have no idea what his policies are going to be. What he will end or begin is unknown to me. There is only snow. Many people believe Obama’s presidency holds hope and change some are not as enamored but either way we are on the precipice of something new. Much like the snow makes our normal lives more exciting a new president make our daily politics a bit more exciting.

Eventually, the snow turns to slush and it gets dirty and browned but to me there is always a chance of another layer coming and starting the whole process again. As for Obama, he will soon excite, disappoint, enamor, overjoy, and challenge some of us. Each of us will determine if he remains the pure untouched morning snow or he becomes the dirty slushier snow.

(This all reminded me of C.S. Lewis Narnia books. Snow is a negative metaphor in the books. The land has lain under winter for so long that they have become hopeless but as the kids arrive and bring hope, the thawing begins. My allusion plays out the opposite way but hopefully still makes sense)

The Wall of Promise

2009-01-19T15:17:00.007-05:00

After last’s week’s surprise mention of The Gargoyle in the email newsletter, The Week At Duke (many thanks to Gargoyle contributor Stuart Wells and everyone else over there in the Office of News and Communications), we’ve had a steady stream of Gothic customers coming by to check out our new look. Response has been good, I’m glad to say, and it’s been gratifying to watch people cross the threshold and head straight for the New Arrivals section.

(WARNING: Timely Book/Democracy Analogy Ahead!)

Even for those of us who have worked in books for, well, decades, a wall full of new books holds an amazing allure. You learn after a while that a good percentage of all books published each month are going to be junk. There’s no way around that. Corporate booksellers and publishing conglomerates have partnered up in such a way that pushing a lot of garbage out the door and onto the shelves in the hope of big profits is simply too attractive. And while we here at the Gothic try to be discriminating in our ordering, we’re probably going to get a few dogs on the shelf once in a while, too. (We’ll do our best to sell you exclusively Really Good Stuff, though. Honest.) But when any of us opens a box of brand-spanking-new books, we get a little light-headed. Because before any of the books are cracked, before one delves into a book and assesses its quality for himself, the promise of a fantastic read is intact, seductive, and undeniably enjoyable.

I can’t deny having the same feeling today, the day before the inauguration of our 44th president. There’s a tangible promise in the air, a promise of –as we’ve heard almost ad nauseum—change. Now, I hope I’m not stepping out of bounds here on The Gargoyle by saying that I count myself among those who look forward eagerly to experiencing life under the new administration. I’ve believed in Obama starting with his very first appearance on the national stage. I’m not, however, naïve. I know that reality tends to wreak havoc on aspirations. I know that the nation will experience some disappointments and setbacks as those who have as their goal the betterment of the nation make difficult and pragmatic decisions. Tomorrow, we move from the Realm of Hope into the Realm of How-It-Is.

But from this vantage point, all is promise. All is good. All that follows will be that for which millions have yearned over these months, years, decades.

In a (much) smaller way, that’s what we hope our customers feel when upon entering The Gothic the first thing they see is a big wall of brand-new and as yet unread books: a promise of discovery, of adventure, of many great reads to come.

Versus: Heroes and Villains

2009-01-15T16:30:00.006-05:00

Here’s the thing about the Best Fictional Hero and Best Fictional Villain categories: you’ve got to choose from a range of figures that are larger than life. These aren’t normal characters. Harry Potter isn’t just some dude at a boarding school; Dracula is more than an aging aristocrat with yen for bloody marys. These are Heroes, man. Villains. There has to be some quality that sets them apart.

It’s tempting to identify a certain set of abilities (e.g. super-strength, magic, the ability to consume an impossibly large plate of nachos at one sitting) as the defining element of the hero. I think, though, that it’s a willingness to do what other men or women won’t that makes for a hero. I mean, if Wonder Woman didn’t use her butt-kicking skills & magic lariat to fight crime, she’d just be some lady in a bathing suit, am I right?

Villains are tricky. An awful lot of them, including some of the best, follow the formula H + F = BBV. (That’s Hero + Flaw = Bad, Bad Villain.) Voldemort, one of the most memorable villains of the last ten years or so, is a powerful wizard much like Albus Dumbledore. Unlike ol’ AD, however, Voldemort has a singular obsession that edges him out of the “good guys” column and into the “attack on sight” column: he’s terrified of death, and he’ll do anything to anyone in order to avoid it. Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis, Professor Moriarty, is very much Holmes’ mental twin, save for what A. C. Doyle describes as “a criminal strain [that] ran in his blood.” But there are those villains who need no inverse twin. Hannibal Lecter, one of the classic villains, is moved by his own internal sense of right and wrong and needs no white knight to motivate him.

Aaaaanyway. I’m starting to ramble (again). Today’s “Versus” installment is about heroes and villains, obviously. As I look over Arthur’s and my picks, I see that we’ve once again done practically the opposite of each other. Arthur’s pick for Best Villain is thoroughly larger than life; His Best Hero pick is a character who lives in the shadow of the story's canonized hero. I’ve gone the other way, as you’ll see. It makes one wonder if Arthur and I might be nemeses. But who is the hero, and who is the villain? Only time will tell…

(Arthur, you go first.)

ARTHUR:

My VILLAIN is a character from the Song of Ice and Fire series named Tywin Lannister. Tywin is the patriarch of the Lannister family. The Lannisters are one of the wealthiest families in the world at the time of the novels. Tywin is rarely seen in A Game of Thrones or A Clash of Kings but we learn about him heavily through the actions of his progeny, Jaime, Cersei, and Tyrion. Jaime is the golden boy of the family, the pride of his daddy’s eyes. He has been groomed from a young age to take the family over and I believe he secretly wants Tywin to die so that he can do so. When the books begin he is embroiled in a secret incestuous affair with his sister Cersei. Cersei is the female equivalent of Jaime. She is totally ruthless and uses her sex and attractiveness to manipulate men, including Jaime. Their incestuous affair eventually leads to Cersei telling Jaime to through a young man off the side of a tower because he saw them together. Where Jaime is brawn and Cersei manipulative, neither is as clever or quick witted as Tywin's bastard dwarf son, Tyrion. Tyrion is nowhere near as evil as his siblings. He has led a life of being a bastard and it has caused him to become hardened. His aloneness has however led him to becoming sly. He understands things at a deeper level than his siblings. In many ways he is more like Tywin than the others. Tywin rarely acts on his own preferring to manipulate his children or underlings to do his dirty work. Nonetheless the dirty work is real dirty. He orders Cersei to seduce the king thereby becoming the queen so as to further his own goals. Jaime was ordered to kill the former king because he disliked Tywin. Tywin reign of terror ends in the books, killed by his own son, Tyrion. In the end, Tywin wrought what he sowed.

Samwise Gamgee from The Lord of the Rings is my HERO of choice. The very first time we meet Samwise, we only know him as a friend of Frodo. That is really all we need to know about him, it is what lies at the very heart of Sam, friendship. It is the reason he travels to the very pit of Mount Doom with Frodo. Sam never sees himself as a hero. He is one of the few people the ring has no effect on. I believe it’s because at his very heart there was no desire for the ring to manipulate. He never sought out attention or fame. Throughout the travel Sam never loses track of who he is. He is one of the only hobbits who express a desire to go home. Sam sees protecting Frodo as his duty, not to the world or a higher power, but as Frodo’s friend. Sam is first foremost and forever a friend. Samwise stares into the heart of evil repeatedly and does it all for no gain of his own. Even after the ring is gone he tries desperately to help Frodo hold on to reality. He is a consummate friend and that makes him heroic to me.

BILL:

My VILLAIN of choice is Montresor, from Poe’s story The Cask of Amontillado. Montresor is a small man, driven to murder by nothing more than a profound dislike of a man and an desire to avenge what he perceives to be an insult to his (Montresor’s) character. Poe excelled at creating such characters—driven by greed, pride, and above all madness to commit acts of revenge and torture. Montresor describes his seduction of his victim and his method of murder (no spoilers here) in a detached but harrowing style that has haunted me since I read the book as a kid. He’s cold, he’s ruthless, and he’s got nothing more than mere pettiness driving him to murder. In creating such a small villain, Poe managed to convince a very young reader that evil doesn’t always announce itself with a dark cape and a corny one-liner.

I guess I was very taken with good guys and bad guys as a kid, because I went back to my childhood for my HERO pick as well. I’m going with Robin Hood. Specifically, I’m going with Howard Pyle’s Robin Hood. He’s an outlaw, but only because some really bad dudes are running things. He’s a thief, but he gives all (well, most) of his loot to the poor. After barely escaping from the law, he and his men like to kick back and sing songs and eat and drink. The notion of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor really resonated with me as a kid. (It’s probably why I’m a Democrat today, but let’s not get into that right now…) More than anything, Robin Hood represented a life that was so far away from mine, so remote from my own experience, that I could believe everything I read about him. When I read Pyle’s Robin Hood as an adult (and I do, often), it of course seems in some ways exaggerated and silly. But to the ten-year-old me, Robin Hood was grand, and tough, and true, and believeable.

Imagine Nation

2009-01-13T12:55:00.005-05:00

I have been reading for some time a book about Dungeons and Dragons called the Elfish Gene. I was drawn to the book as it is one mans struggle with his obsession with the aforementioned game. I too had an obsession with the game so as kindred spirits I sought out his knowledge of the addiction and how he felt it impacted his life. Reading the book has brought to light several things that have made me stop and think. Why did I like D&D so much? What drew me to it? So, now it has given birth to this blog in which I will share my revelations about the game.

The most prevalent reason I can think of for why I played D&D was it gave me an outlet for my imagination. At its very heart D&D is a game of imagination. There are really no pieces or game boards. Everything in D&D is wrought out of the pure specter of imagination. As a young man I had an overactive imagination, like so many. D&D offered me a chance to use that imagination to create something for the enjoyment of others. I had no real artistic talent. I was unable to draw, I had put my brief acting career on hold, and I was no lead singer for a rock band let me tell you. So in lieu of honing any of those talents that I did not have, I chose to create dungeons, adventures, characters, new spells and items for my players. As a dungeon master I was able to hone that imagination into an actual craft and make things that I was proud of.

Secondly, D&D gave me something that I think every youth longs for: a peer group. Through D&D I was able to meet people who shared my taste for the fantastical, praised me for my imagination, and always challenged me to go further with it than I ever would have on my own. I also made a ton of friends, first within my own high school and hometown and later throughout the state and even the world. The friends I made playing D&D were every bit as imaginative and creative as I was, some more so. I admired many of them greatly and still hold them in high regard. They are some of the brightest people I have ever had the pleasure to encounter. To this day, D&D is still a bonding point for me. If I meet someone and find out later that they played D&D my opinion of them usually goes up significantly.

Finally, D&D gave me confidence. I admit to being a tad timid when I was a teenager. I lacked self confidence and certainly faded into the wallpaper whenever possible. D&D was no place for the meek and timid. The characters you were forced to play were either strong in word and deed or they would soon meet their end. If a D&D character was quiet then he was being introspective and that was totally cool. I credit the game itself with making me confident. It forced me to carry a bit of it over into the real world. Gradually as I put more and more of myself into the scenarios and dungeons I created the positive feedback I would receive from them would go directly into making me more confident. I am not sure where I would be confidence wise today if it were not for those games with my friends.

In closing, I encourage any would be gamers out there to give D&D a try. It’s morphed and changed over the years but at its heart beats the same fundamental thing, imagination. We here at the Gothic are going to make a point of stocking some of the rulebooks and I would direct any fellow Dukies to their gaming club, Dagger. In a world filled with MMORPGS and IPods, where everything is accessible via YouTube or Wikipedia, don’t we really need a little more imagination afoot?

Wooooooo!

2009-01-12T14:53:00.002-05:00

Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

First post of the year! Check it out, fellow bloggers. It’s my big toe testing out the waters of ’09. MY TOE!

Um, sorry. I got kind of carried away there. It’s a very exciting time here at the Gothic, and we’re all a little prone to flights of silliness. For instance, earlier today Arthur and our co-worker Watson and I came up with a premise for a sci-fi novel (and, later, a rock-opera) in which people have brightly colored saliva and are classified according to their colors.

Why all this tomfoolery? Well, we’ve just renovated the Gothic Bookshop, and we’re a little giddy from the results. The front area of the store is now a pleasant, open space, with big shelves of New Arrival Hardcovers facing you when you walk in the door. It’s taken the emphasis off us Gothickers somewhat and restored books to their place as the most important element of the store. (Shoppers may remember that it was formerly our staff, sitting on a raised platform, that customers were forced to gaze upon when they entered the store. I shudder at the memory of that.) There are plenty of other changes, too. We’ve once again allotted some space for a nice sitting area in the back of the store, and we’ve rearranged the store (we couldn’t resist) in a way that hopefully makes more sense.

All of these changes make us feel like we’re working in a new store. It’s funny; pretty much the same books that were here before the Winter Break are here now, but the simple fact of having moved them is making books that I’ve seen a hundred times suddenly look more interesting. It's a New Year's Miracle!

Seriously, though.

It’s got me thinking about how the best writers can do that—take a common, even pedestrian topic and rearrange it in such a way that it draws our attention anew. Selah Saterstrom is a writer who seems able to pull that off anytime she takes pen to paper. I first encountered her writing in her amazing debut, The Pink Institution, and more recently in her equally killer title, The Meat and Spirit Plan. Both take relatively simple subjects (the hilarity and horror of a decaying southern family in one; a southern burnout girl’s year in Scotland in the other) and, by altering the structure of the narrative through which we approach them, make them something entirely new.

I hope we’ve accomplished the same thing here at the store. Come in and tell us what you think.

Seasons End

2008-12-23T10:20:00.004-05:00

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.

Last List of the Year (I promise)

2008-12-22T19:58:00.005-05:00

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.

Divinity School Authors on Holiday Short Lists

2008-12-19T10:47:00.011-05:00

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.

Versus List

2008-12-17T14:20:00.006-05:00

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.

The Power of Love

2008-12-16T11:05:00.003-05:00

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.

We List You A Merry... oh never mind

2008-12-15T16:17:00.003-05:00

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!

Happy books

2008-12-11T15:46:00.003-05:00

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.”

Books for Lt. Awesome

2008-12-10T14:16:00.002-05:00

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.

Horseshoes, Hand Grenades, and …Hardbacks.

2008-12-09T14:50:00.008-05:00

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.

Chiropterology

2008-12-08T14:21:00.002-05:00

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.

In a rut....

2008-12-04T10:27:00.001-05:00

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!

Readership Up

2008-12-02T13:04:00.005-05:00

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.

What Makes It All Worthwhile

2008-12-01T15:37:00.005-05:00

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.

Thanksgiving (and yet another attempt to find out what you’re reading….)

2008-11-25T17:57:00.004-05:00

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

2008-11-25T11:37:00.007-05:00

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!

The American Mystery

2008-11-24T15:17:00.009-05:00

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!

Enough About Us

2008-11-20T10:10:00.006-05:00

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.

Fallings, Nothing More Than Fallings

2008-11-18T14:03:00.011-05:00

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.

There's Something Happening Here... And Over There. And There.

2008-11-17T16:02:00.002-05:00

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.

Read Anything - Just Read

2008-11-13T10:13:00.001-05:00

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

What I Will Drop Everything For

2008-11-12T13:21:00.002-05:00

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.

The Vetting Process

2008-11-11T14:14:00.003-05:00

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.

BECAUSE I SAID SO

2008-11-10T14:22:00.010-05:00

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 I knew about Napoleon(and why I don’t have time for golf)

2008-11-07T14:13:00.007-05:00

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

Aw, Schlocks

2008-11-06T15:38:00.001-05:00

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.

Wanted: Proffreaders

2008-11-05T15:06:00.001-05:00

I meant to do that. Was it annoying to read that? It was definitely annoying for me to type it and let it stand like that. But over the past several years, I've been noticing an increasing number of typos, wrong words and just plain errors cropping up in the books I read. Books from major publishers, not just tiny houses with stretched budgets or those that are part of the explosion of do-it-yourself print-to-order outfits.

Sometimes it's clear that someone has run spellcheck, but no more than that. I've seen feet instead of feat, bare instead of bear, tenant instead of tenet, cannon instead of canon. All words, but all nonsensical when placed where they don't belong. If I'm reading a work of fiction and I see a glaring error like that, it kicks me right out of the story. It's like seeing an extra in a crowd scene in Gladiator wearing a jeans, a t-shirt and a wristwatch, or seeing the trapdoor through which the Wicked Witch of the West descends, only partially hidden by her cloud of smoke. It's a short-circuit in the text-to-brain loop.

I've been a typesetter and proofreader, and I've seen manuscripts of varying degrees of legibility, but that's why they went through several different people before getting sent to the printer. Proofreading is expensive, both in-house and contracted, but the author put much time and care into producing the work, the least the publisher can do is make sure it is correct. Spellcheck isn't enough. It won't catch the wrong word, it might or might not catch an omitted word, and if the work concerns numbers or data in any form, spellcheck can't catch any of those errors. There is no substitute for a proofreader.

And of course, I just spent a very large span of time hunting for typos in this. It would be just my luck to goof up the word spellcheck. I'd never live it down.

Not Kidding Around

2008-11-04T10:24:00.002-05:00

Some things in life are hard.

As a parent I can tell you one of the hardest things you will ever do is try and get your kids to read. In our culture today there are so many things competing for our children’s attention: television, video games, music, movies, and schoolwork. I love reading. I am passionate about reading but trying to pass that passion on to my kids is nigh unto impossible.

The weird thing about it is all of them are reading at or above grade level and they rarely crack a book at home without there being some sort of edict sent down from the high and lofty seat of power. “Go to your room and read or I will take that Nintendo Wii and hook it up to my TV.”

I think I did everything right. I read to them every night as they went to bed before they could do so themselves. They see me reading. They understand the importance of reading. So, why then do they not read?

The answer is not simple. I almost want to throw my hands in the air and say the answer is “ I have no freaking idea.” But that would be cheating and not a very interesting blog. (Though this might already be uninteresting)

Here’s my answer in a nutshell. I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing. I didn’t really develop good reading habits myself until I was in high school. As a parent I have to continue to provide a good example by allowing them to see me read, to see my passion for reading. I have to engage them in conversations about my book. They need to want to read before there ever going to become a reader.

So in conclusion, I plan to keep buying them books. I’ll read them myself if I have to. I’m going to continue to make a point of reading when I’m around them. I’m going to discuss books in front of them. I’m not going to force them to read. I’m not going to use the force to make them read.

I’m just going to wait, watch, and provide opportunities for my children to grow up strong, healthy, and passionate readers.

Women's Suffrage

2008-11-03T11:07:00.005-05:00

I haven’t voted yet. For me going to the polls on the day of the election is all part of the experience. I don’t care if I have to stand in line. People are usually friendly. It doesn’t matter who you are voting for, it’s the sense of community felt by a group of people waiting in line to do their civic duty even if it means being late for work, or dinner, or a date, or just getting home. Neighbors who haven’t seen each other lately are catching up on each others’ news. I’m sure this year there will also be joking about it finally being over!

I always find myself thinking how glad I am I was born when women can vote. My grandmother couldn’t vote until after my mother was in high school. The 19th Amendment, proposing extending the right of suffrage to women was proposed in May, 1919, passed by Congress in June, 1919 and ratified on August 18, 1920. (The North Carolina General Assembly finally ratified it in 1971!)

So get out there and vote whether you’re a woman or not – but if you’re a woman, don’t take it for granted - savor it!

The Schlock of It All

2008-10-31T11:36:00.006-04:00

Stop trying to make me smart.

No seriously, I don’t need you to enlighten me. I don’t want to hear about how the economy is in a recession and how moved you were by Actress A’s portrayal of Mother Teresa.

I know this may be hard to fathom but sometimes I just want to watch television, see a movie, or read a book that doesn’t make me smarter or enrich my life in any way. Sometimes, I just want to be entertained or more to the point, sometimes I want to shut the brain down and just relax.

I have a friend who just feels the need to let me know how much he knows about everything, movies, books, and sports. I mean this guy is knowledgeable about everything to the point where you just want to slap him and say I simply don’t care.

Not every movie I see has to be Schindler’s List. Not every television show I see has to be on PBS. Not every radio station I listen to has to be NPR. Not every book I read needs to be Atlas Shrugged. You can’t eat salad all the time; sometimes you just want a grilled cheese.

Therein lies the value of “schlock”. Schlock is comforting, schlock is reassuring, and schlock is easy. I don’t often watch VH1 but when I do I assure you I’m not doing so to further my education, or to enrich my knowledge of life. I watch VH1 because inevitably someone is about to do or say something that will be so stupid that I can feel more content with my life. The same can be said for books. I like to read. I firmly believe we as a society don’t do enough of it but not everything I read has to be on the NYT bestsellers list. Not every book I read has to be recommended by Oprah. Not every book I read has to make my brain grow.

So, I beg of you to take some time off from making the world a smart, better place and read some schlock. Don’t know any? Well I got you covered. How about some romance, or fantasy, or even mystery?

The next time you see me on the bus reading the latest Jim Butcher novel I want you to know I’m not doing so because I’m looking to strip down the protagonist and see what makes him tick. I’m not reading it so that I can espouse upon the sweeping arc of the plot. I’m not reading it so that later we can talk about the European influence on science fiction novels.

Nope, I’m just appreciating the schlock of it.

Democracy

2008-10-30T10:07:00.005-04:00

I voted today.

It took five minutes and in some ways was just as routine as filling out the order form at the Armadillo Grill downstairs. I'd be lying, though, if I said that it wasn't an emotional experience for me. When we vote, we are exercising our most basic and important right, one that is the very organizing principle of our country. Though voting is by necessity a partisan act, it is in the act of casting a ballot that we are each of us -Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Anarchist- unified as American citizens involved in something greater than any one person or party.

Perhaps it's my post-voting high, but since returning to my (so-called) desk here at the Gothic, I've been thinking about democracy. Specifically, I've been thinking about the democracy of ideas and how the best bookstores seek to embrace that. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I have very strong ideas about politics, and like anyone else with well-entrenched beliefs I think that I'm right and that anyone who disagrees with me is wrong. But whenever I've had a conversation (or even a knock-down, drag-out fight) with someone who has well thought-out but opposing viewpoints, I've come away the better for it.That's because one's ideas become more nuanced, more complex, when encountering not just agreement but opposition.

In general, we Gargoyles tend to keep our politics to ourselves. Our customers embrace a broad spectrum of beliefs, and we don't wish to create a hostile environment for any of them. But a couple of days ago I found myself in conversation with a colleague and friend whose political leanings are in many ways the polar opposite of mine. This colleague (I'll call him "Wrong-O") and I spent a very pleasant half-hour or so exchanging our points of view. We actually listened to each other and found ourselves agreeing on many principles but differing dramatically on who we thought would be best equipped to run the nation. At the end of the exchange, Wrong-O said, "Now that's how you have a political discussion."

It was encouraging that the two of us could work alongside each other and continue to respect (even admire) each other while disagreeing. A bookstore should be a place that can accommodate a wide range of ideas, and we at the Gothic should strive to ensure that our stock reflects that variety. It's not our job to endorse one point of view over another. It's our job to create an atmosphere in which books and ideas seem exciting and in which customers can choose for themselves what they want to read.

Recently we were discussing a revamping of our under-browsed humor section. It needs more relevance and less hokum. As we discussed what would improve the section, I imagined P.J. O'Rourke on the shelf beside David Rees. Sure, they're at opposite ends of the political spectrum, but both are satirists of the highest caliber. And caliber is, for this bookseller at least, the sole criterion for deciding whether a book belongs on our shelves.

So go vote, Gothic shoppers. It's important, and it's fun. Then come by the bookshop and cast your vote for what belongs in our humor section, our politics section, or any section in the store. Remember: it's everybody's store, not just ours.