tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-180865902024-03-07T19:10:23.367-05:00The Written NerdConfessions of an independent bookseller and unrepentant book nerdBook Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.comBlogger457125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18086590.post-2300584343418004392022-03-28T18:19:00.005-04:002022-03-28T18:19:58.921-04:00House.<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh88fIAGAQP7yvLLBqOAmrvGfKPSZxVJbWaSup2oBqJIL-9UbM3Tx0Qx1_PadeiDf17kALOtrNjfhaEU4tjEuVCNfJygRvlT7fZlq7IMMe6tWJFjLzcp8bNNBsDl57w-GmXHx7D3vEnmcaYV6I0pAbAb2oyBm4tfr2_gtJHBIvcvM4h1kaziVg/s4032/IMG_2661.HEIC" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="434" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh88fIAGAQP7yvLLBqOAmrvGfKPSZxVJbWaSup2oBqJIL-9UbM3Tx0Qx1_PadeiDf17kALOtrNjfhaEU4tjEuVCNfJygRvlT7fZlq7IMMe6tWJFjLzcp8bNNBsDl57w-GmXHx7D3vEnmcaYV6I0pAbAb2oyBm4tfr2_gtJHBIvcvM4h1kaziVg/w578-h434/IMG_2661.HEIC" width="578" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>One of the best things about being a bookseller, wherever you are, is the possibility of developing relationships with authors that have the potential to go beyond fandom. Because of the serendipity of where I live, I happen to be neighbors to some of the contemporary greats. It's not without its pitfalls though. I remember having a nice chat with a nice lady named Jennifer in the bookstore sometime in Year 1, finding out she had written a book, and picking it up -- and gradually becoming aghast that I had been treating this person as a normal human neighbor, when in fact they were a terrifying genius. The book was <i>A Visit From The Goon Squad</i>, which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. </p><p>Luckily Jenny Egan seemingly forgave me for treating her like a regular neighbor (and for all my other faux pas, including vastly under-ordering for the <i>Goon Squad</i> launch party, which we've hopefully made up for by selling hundreds of copies every year since then and shipping signed copies to her fans all over the country.) She's occasionally gracious enough to meet me for coffee, and talk about our respective kids and the state of the world and the book industry and the neighborhood, almost like a normal human. (And then I'll read another book and be flabbergasted and starstruck again.)</p><p>All of which is just preamble to the fact that her new book comes out on Tuesday, and we're hosting another <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/book-launch-jennifer-egan-presents-the-candy-house-tickets-254563615627">launch at St. Joseph's College</a>. I'll be doing the intro, and trying not to make a fool of myself yet again. The below is what I sent to Jenny's publisher when I first read the manuscript of the book back in August; I'm so excited everyone else is about to have this flabbergasting reading experience too.</p><p>--</p><p><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781476716763" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="264" height="400" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/763/716/9781476716763.jpg" width="264" /></a></i></div><i><b>The Candy House</b></i><b> by Jennifer Egan</b><p></p><p>Whenever a writer as consistently brilliant as Jennifer Egan comes out with a new book, I always have a moment of trepidation: what if they can't pull off the same miracle again? With <i>The Candy House</i>, she doesn't: the miracles are entirely new. </p><p>Yes, the book is kindred to Egan's <i>A Visit From the Goon Squad</i> with myriad connections to that constellation of characters; I think it's also reminiscent of Joan Silber's ordinary, epic, interconnected life stories and David Mitchell's ambitious structures and timelines and compassion for flawed characters. </p><p>But Jennifer Egan is a genius like no one else, her triumphs literally dizzying: careening plots, rich and nuanced emotions, merciless humor, priceless set pieces, bold formal experiments, astonishing reversals and thematic connections and deepenings. There's some kind of magic afoot here, as the world she creates expands and contracts simultaneously and scenes get both stranger and more intimately familiar. </p><p>I couldn't imagine how Egan would riff on the scarily prescient imagined future of 2010's <i>Goon Squad</i>, but <i>Candy House</i> raises the stakes on both the imagination and the cultural relevance of a world close to our own, maybe one jump over from us in the multiverse. The many threads of this world are held together by the characters' connections to each other and the endless variations of their desires -- fame, familial approval, social advancement, art, love, freedom, euphoria -- that beckon witchily and always come with a price. </p><p>These characters make so many mistakes, both predictable and original, but the reader always wants the best for them. And sometimes, impossibly, Egan shows us a way that they, and we, are going to be alright; how they, and we, might actually have power to make the world better -- which also feels a little like a miracle.</p><div><br /></div>Book Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18086590.post-89495078925500184382022-03-23T22:43:00.007-04:002022-03-23T22:56:32.345-04:00Heaven.<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNtMSuTvzZ19msHvH5jp7bh3BIi_kpqg5fjvH7cgys3xF43cUvmQN35WoE0AgCG7L--VDkxyqi5LOaBDLmsc4chVdKChuzB0Vk_eM2-_qazJ5J08i9dzPBs-rnMZ-oi_fpnuh4nwGgWRaryRW0Icgz_64yWkWMoOf-3uNU4wdcPTiP6q5gQtk/s4032/IMG_2624%202.HEIC" style="background-color: white; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="People sitting in chairs in Greenlight Bookstore on Fulton Street in Brooklyn, with Jonathan Lethem standing on the left." border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNtMSuTvzZ19msHvH5jp7bh3BIi_kpqg5fjvH7cgys3xF43cUvmQN35WoE0AgCG7L--VDkxyqi5LOaBDLmsc4chVdKChuzB0Vk_eM2-_qazJ5J08i9dzPBs-rnMZ-oi_fpnuh4nwGgWRaryRW0Icgz_64yWkWMoOf-3uNU4wdcPTiP6q5gQtk/w640-h480/IMG_2624%202.HEIC" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Last week, we hosted the first event in the bookstore in almost exactly two years.</p><p>I had to look up our most recent event for reference and it was eerie to read the summary notes from March 2020 -- the regular routines punctuated with nervous laughter -- before bookstore author events and so many other things disappeared instantly and thoroughly for a long, long time.</p><p>This event was not like that one, or the ten years of events we hosted before that. We've learned some things, and some things have changed. Attendance in the store was limited, with mandatory RSVPs -- not "free and open to the public" as it was in the past. Masks and proof of vaccination were required and checked at the door. And we had a camera hooked up to Zoom to livestream the event to the virtual audience we've built up over the last years. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781640093300" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="267" height="255" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/300/093/9781640093300.jpg" width="170" /></a></div>I'm also not the Events & Marketing Director any more -- there's a team of talented folks handling all of that for the bookstore, so I can (in theory) focus on being the solo owner of this creaking ship of a for-profit cultural institution. (More on that later.) And I'm so glad, because I would have thoroughly overthought what the first live event should be, but our events coordinator Jean booked someone I would never have thought of: Adrian Shirk's memoir/social history <i><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781640093300">Heaven Is a Place On Earth: Searching for an American Utopia</a></i>. Both an impressionistic survey of utopian experiments in this country over several hundred years, and an engagement with her own ethnic and cultural history and her search for a more mutually supportive way to live in this strange and broken era, the book is jagged and ambitious, skeptical and hopeful.<p></p><p><br /></p><p>Even before Adrian specifically invited the the audience to ask the question, this book made me wonder: <i>is this a utopian experiment? </i> The "reluctant capitalism" of an independent bookstore is a quixotic and contradictory thing. The fact of being a physical space both makes the kind of connections we're striving for possible, and creates economic burdens that make for potentially complicated ethical choices: what books we can or should carry, who and how many people we should employ, what we can do for the community vs. what we need to do for the bottom line, how much we ask of ourselves and our coworkers. We pivot and reinvent endlessly, to stay afloat and to stay in sight of our ideals, and sometimes it feels like no matter what we (okay I) do it's not quite working, we're just a few more adjustments and transitions away from being really, truly functional in the ways we want to be.</p><p>As Adrian described it in her reading from the opening of the book, utopias seem to be at their best when they are evolving, contingent, in a stage of hopefulness rather than completion. When the idealists brush off their hands and say "just like this, no more changes", things typically start to turn into cults or dictatorships or other kinds of same-old systems. Never being quite finished seems to actually be a characteristic by which you can identify a would-be utopia. So, there's that.</p><p>Adrian was a strong and soulful reader, and her interview with Anna Moschavakis was brilliant and invigorating, and we had maxed-out RSVPs and none of the livestreaming tech malfunctioned. Our events manager Josie handled everything like a calm whirlwind and the other booksellers (almost all of whom had never been to a Greenlight event before) pitched in to make everything work. The audience was enthusiastic and we even sold some books. It was all the bright and beautiful relaunch I could hope for.</p><p>But one of the best moments was earlier in the evening, when I happened to pass by the front door just as someone was asking if they might come in even though they weren't on the RSVP list, as they were traveling with the interviewer -- and I happened to recognize that the person was Jonathan Lethem. On November 5, 2009, Jonathan Lethem gave the first-ever author reading at Greenlight as part of his tour for <i><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780307277527">Chronic City</a></i>, with the subway rattling underneath and all of us agog that this was all real. He's since moved to the West Coast, so to have him present for our next, first event (because duh, we let him in) was another thing I would never have thought to ask for. (That's him standing on the left in the photo above.) We chatted about writing and work and life and acknowledged that we couldn't say we were sure this reopening trend would continue, anything could happen, but we would enjoy it while it lasted. Sometimes, for a minute, heaven is a place on earth, and the place is a bookstore.</p>Book Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18086590.post-63325810896330120732021-12-31T17:55:00.005-05:002021-12-31T17:59:48.526-05:00Small Things.<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh4It_OekjXyhM_4gViLlpRuOx6-P04nXgkQFpY8VyXKXFKdc6_XQSpaePilth6meSujD4-bukRwKx7lewt369hfTG6y9zSrYefc-lWLiOKtgFVzhA8BbLXToCz5NQa_eV30rZMy-wrXCp6useizF4v8Qt5Rm3yqS3zxHDNuNxJ6UEEl1M2osY=s4032" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="452" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh4It_OekjXyhM_4gViLlpRuOx6-P04nXgkQFpY8VyXKXFKdc6_XQSpaePilth6meSujD4-bukRwKx7lewt369hfTG6y9zSrYefc-lWLiOKtgFVzhA8BbLXToCz5NQa_eV30rZMy-wrXCp6useizF4v8Qt5Rm3yqS3zxHDNuNxJ6UEEl1M2osY=w339-h452" width="339" /></a></div><p>Happy end of 2021! In years past I've often done a roundup of books read; the last one was 11 years or 6 blog posts ago. It's such a fun project to look back on the year's reading; I've been practicing with Greenlight's <a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/holidaypicks2021">Holiday Handsells</a> but this is my longlist. It was a rollercoaster of a year in many ways, and my hard-won total of 42 listed below includes everything from religious instruction to middle grade graphic novels to epic fantasy and climate fiction (and a surprising number of rereads and out of print books), ending with the small classic above. I included a bit about each and this ended up getting kind of long... if you make it through, I've made the covers into buy links in case you'd like to purchase a copy from your local indie bookstore. What stood out in your year of reading?</p><span></span><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><br /></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780061120053" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="Little, Big book cover image" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="266" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/053/120/9780061120053.jpg" title="Little, Big" width="133" /></a></div><i>Little, Big</i> by John Crowley</h4><p>This book feels like the best kind of dream: a winding story full of interesting sidetracks and hints of deep meaning, where you might encounter a smoky mirror version of your city, your family, your own life. (I actually started reading it nearly ten years earlier, and set it down because it was distracting me from me real life; it was perfect to read over a few days' winter vacation in the new year.). It's set in an American version of Faerie and in an old country house on its border, and in a version of New York City that feels bleakly and magically familiar. It’s a tale of love and grief and family and enchantment and everyday happiness, and it casts a powerful spell. </p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781984894717" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Doodleville cover image" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="265" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/717/894/9781984894717.jpg" title="Doodleville" width="133" /></a></div><i>Doodleville</i> by Chad Sell</h4><div>Sell's <i>Cardboard Kingdom</i> is one of my all-time favorite kids graphic novels; this one is darker and not as epic but certainly winsome.</div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780393348897" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="Fools cover image" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="267" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/897/348/9780393348897.jpg" title="Fools" width="134" /></a></div><i>Fools</i> by Joan Silber</h4><p>(reread) Joan Silber is top 5 headcanon for me and sometimes I just need to go back to her (I read her newest <i>Secrets of Happiness </i>last year). Interconnected short stories about folks making fools of themselves for God, for each other, for ideas of beauty, heartbreaking and profound in a way that seems to make my thoughts big and quiet.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781635575637" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="250" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/560/373/9781681373560.jpg" width="125" /></a></div><i>The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies</i> by Robert Kirk</h4><p>One of those "idea is more exciting than execution" books, but it felt necessary after the immersion in faerie of <i>Little, Big</i>. Robert Kirk was a weird 17th century Scottish minister who was really interested in abstract theological style proofs of the existence of localized beings on other planes. Could have used more actual elves, fauns and faeries, but the backstory of Kirk alone in the NYRB edition intro is worth the read.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781635575637" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Piranesi cover image" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="259" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/637/575/9781635575637.jpg" title="Piranesi" width="130" /></a></div><i>Piranesi</i> by Susanna Clarke</h4><p>So glad to have another book by Susanna Clarke, though this is no <i>Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell</i>; it's more like Narnia meets Greek classicism meets <i>Memento</i>, and compelling from beginning to end.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://images.booksense.com/images/932/179/9781590179932.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="An Episode of Sparrows" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="272" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/932/179/9781590179932.jpg" title="An Episode of Sparrows" width="136" /></a></div><i>An Episode of Sparrows</i> by Rumer Godden</h4><p>A classic children's novel about poor city kids making a garden despite interfering grownups. Ponderable and recommended. (Look for a second-hand edition as it seems to be out of print.)</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781617758638" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Prayer for the Living" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="286" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/638/758/9781617758638.jpg" title="Prayer for the Living" width="143" /></a></div><i>Prayer for the Living </i>by Ben Okri</h4><p>Okri's stories are often like brief thought experiments, but they grow on you like layered musical motifs. I started out skeptical and ended up loving this collection, which is even better after <a href="https://youtu.be/Q45KEmz-PtE">hearing him speak about it</a>.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781628751918" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Black AF" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="260" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/918/751/9781628751918.jpg" width="130" /></a></div><br /><i>Black AF: America's Sweetheart</i> by Kwanza Osajyefo</h4><p>I'm late to this party but: what if Superman was a Black girl? What if all superheroes were Black folks? Action combined with questions of social justice, identity, loyalty, trust, etc. Strong stuff, well done.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780358380023" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Changing Planes by Ursula K. LeGuin - cover image" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="266" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/023/380/9780358380023.jpg" title="Changing Planes" width="133" /></a></div><i>Changing Planes </i>by Ursula K. LeGuin</h4><p>At least one LeGuin a year is my diet; I'm working my way through her backlist in no great hurry, making it last. This one is a clever stringing-together of world building exercises with the premise of a multiverse traveler. Lots of pages marked in my copy for the ideas as well as the writing and the fun.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781119772934" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Allies & Advocates" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="271" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/934/772/9781119772934.jpg" title="Allies & Advocates" width="136" /></a></div><i>Allies and Advocates: Creating an Inclusive and Equitable Culture</i> by Amber Cabral</h4><p>After seeing the author speak at a bookseller conference we read this together and discussed it as a management team at Greenlight, and I think it positively affected our habits, language, and processes. </p><p><b></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://images.booksense.com/images/975/656/9780525656975.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Great Circle" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="263" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/975/656/9780525656975.jpg" title="Great Circle" width="132" /></a></b></div><b><i>Great Circle </i>by Maggie Shipstead</b><p></p><div style="text-align: left;"><div>The blurbs for this book will tell you that it's an epic adventure, which it is—but it's also about the many ways women are punished for their desires: for wanting too much, or too little, or the wrong things, or the same thing as someone else, or not the same thing as someone else. It made me angry in a way that makes you want to get in a small plane and fly as high and as far as you can, which is what some of the women do. Some of them die, some of them are silenced, but some of them fly and some of them love and connect. It's a big, emotion-stretching story and I've found myself giving it as a gift to smart and driven women I know.</div></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780062643230" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Learning to Pray" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="270" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/230/643/9780062643230.jpg" title="Learning to Pray" width="135" /></a></div><i>Learning to Pray: A Guide for Everyone</i> by Fr. James Martin</h4><p>I had the chance to work with Fr. Martin as an interviewer on a book event and he is the most delightful person. He's a Jesuit but his audience is far broader (I'm not a Catholic myself) and this gentle and open-ended journey of a book was just what I needed at a rough time this year.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780385545136" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Harlem Shuffle" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="263" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/136/545/9780385545136.jpg" title="Harlem Shuffle" width="132" /></a></div><i>Harlem Shuffle </i>by Colson Whitehead</h4><p>Reviewed <a href="https://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2021/09/shuffle.html">here</a>!</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781524748067" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Seek You" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="311" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/067/748/9781524748067.jpg" title="Seek You" width="156" /></a></div><i>Seek You: A Journey Thgrough American Loneliness</i> by Kristen Radtke</h4><p>Kristen Radtke is an awesome Brooklyn neighbor so I sought out this book to read before her event this summer; it turned out to be the best combination of a thoughtful essay collection and a beautiful, stylish graphic novel. Its subject is loneliness, but I found it more meditative than depressing (though there are disturbing passages), with the personal and the statistical intertwined in amazing ways that expanded my idea of what graphic nonfiction can do. </p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780822963318" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="c" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="300" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/318/963/9780822963318.jpg" title="https://images.booksense.com/images/318/963/9780822963318.jpg" width="150" /></a></div><i>Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude</i> by Ross Gay </h4><p>(reread) I'm counting Ross Gay among the spiritual writers I read this year, though there's technically no mention of God in his books; just a deep, unexplainable joy that comes out of close observation of the beautiful and broken world. Worth picking up (along with The Book of Delights) at any low -- or high -- moment in one's life</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781911295136" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Flowers for the Judge" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="259" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/136/295/9781911295136.jpg" title="Flowers for the Judge" width="130" /></a></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><i>Flowers for the Judge </i>by Margery Allingham</h4><p></p><p>This is a book in a mystery series written in the 1940s starring detective Albert Campion, which I like to read for the sheer opacity of the cultural milieu in which it takes place -- unlike Agatha Christie it hasn't been updated for modern readers, so while everyone speaks English it's like reading about an alien civilization where rules around hats and calling cards are never stated but deeply important. Pleasantly baffling if you like that sort of thing. (This cover is not the one I read, but the edition I have from Felony & Mayhem Press is out of print.)</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781779504210" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Superman Smashes the Klan" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="266" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/210/504/9781779504210.jpg" title="Superman Smashes the Klan" width="133" /></a></div><i>Superman Smashes the Klan </i>by Gene Luen Yang</h4><p>This kids graphic novel involves ordinary mortals standing up to anti-Asian racism while Superman deals with his own immigrant/other identity. It's interesting that this and the following (Nubia) are based on storylines and characters from DC comics that are decades old but have been sort of forgotten, made contemporary by new writers</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://images.booksense.com/images/407/296/9781401296407.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Nubia: Real One" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="262" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/407/296/9781401296407.jpg" title="Nubia: Real One" width="131" /></a></div><i>Nubia: Real One </i>by L L McKinney</h4><p>This graphic novel reimagines the Black teen Wonder Woman in a contemporary setting that includes both BLM protests and sexual harassment and has really great dialogue writing.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://images.booksense.com/images/475/050/9781646050475.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Farthest South" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="267" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/475/050/9781646050475.jpg" title="Farthest South" width="134" /></a></div><i>Farthest South</i> by Ethan Rutherford</h4><p>Full disclosure: Ethan a good friend and former bookstore coworker so I was predisposed to like his book, and luckily it came through. The stories are often a sort of domestic uncanny -- bedtime stories that come true, childless couples making eerie bargains for their future offspring, etc. His sense of undefinable (but almost delicious) dread is always really well done. The best story I think is about a pre-teen girl visiting a public pool and encountering some older kids who sort of lure her into a semi-encounter with a ghost, but it's ultimately ambiguous who has the power and who is a threat. </p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781631498831" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="On Juneteenth" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="247" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/831/498/9781631498831.jpg" title="On Juneteenth" width="124" /></a></div><i>On Juneteenth </i>by Annette Gordon-Reed</h4><div>An incredible, eye-opening work of history, disguised as a slight novella-length essay. I'm humbled by my first encounter with Annette Gordon-Reed and now hope to read more of her more magisterial works.</div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://images.booksense.com/images/424/492/9781534492424.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Pizzazz" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="269" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/424/492/9781534492424.jpg" title="Pizzazz" width="135" /></a></div><i>Pizzaz</i> by Sophy Henn</h4><p>The pitch-perfect graphic novel confessions of nine-year-old girl with a fabulous / embarrassing name and fabulous/embarassing superpowers. I read this before giving it to my own nine-year-old because it reminded me of her.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781419740275" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="272" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/275/740/9781419740275.jpg" title="Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid" width="136" /></a></div><i>Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid</i> by Jeff Kinney</h4><p>This book is like that last Seinfeld episode where you realize what terrible people they've all been all along; in this case shifting the narrator to the sidekick of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid hero makes you realize what a jerk that kid is.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781786631558" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Radical Happiness" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="265" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/558/631/9781786631558.jpg" title="Radical Happiness" width="133" /></a></div><i>Radical Happiness: Moments of Collective Joy </i>by Lynn Segal</h4><p>I wanted so much from this book, and held on through the months it took me to get through it, as the writing is a mix of academic jargon and cultural namedropping... I did mark some pages and underline some things and I feel grateful for the context of (especially women's) revolutionary movements in the later 20th century, but I wanted there to be more about, you know, moments of collective joy.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780307948472" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Interior Chinatown" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="260" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/472/948/9780307948472.jpg" title="Interior Chinatown" width="130" /></a></div><i>Interior Chinatown</i> by Charles Yu</h4><p>Charles Yu is a brilliant and lovely person as evidenced by <a href="https://youtu.be/wQe7t0qhVXo">that one time</a> I met him on Zoom, and I finally got to his justly-famous book. It's a deceptively quick read, structured like a film script, and I read it thinking about his comment that his early watching of Loony Tunes means he can never NOT be thinking of stories as meta-stories, and grateful for the proliferation of perspectives on American stories available to us as readers.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780525655459" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Phase Six" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="271" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/459/655/9780525655459.jpg" title="Phase Six" width="136" /></a></div><i>Phase Six</i> by Jim Shepard</h4><p>I'll read anything Jim Shepard writes, even if it's a super-grim pandemic novel (okay all of his books are super grim). Submitted to his publisher in February 2020 (according to him at <a href="https://youtu.be/HiuvetEos4g">this event</a>), this is the best and worst writing about human hubris and human nobility filtered through a very familiar horrorshow.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780062683267" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="The Left-Handed Booksellers of London" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="265" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/267/683/9780062683267.jpg" title="The Left-Handed Booksellers of London" width="133" /></a></div><i>The Left-Handed Booksellers of London</i> by Garth Nix</h4><p>Sometimes as a book nerd you need some pure fun and this is it. Obviously booksellers as heroes is a winner, and this book also offers magic battles, mystery solving, and slightly genderqueer 1980s London romance. And the bookstores are actually slightly realistic in their quirky backend logistics but not so much it felt like work. Wish I could have put this in every bookseller's Christmas stocking.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780307477477" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="A Visit from the Goon Squad" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="260" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/477/477/9780307477477.jpg" title="A Visit from the Goon Squad" width="130" /></a></div><i>A Visit from the Goon Squad</i> by Jennifer Egan</h4><p>(reread) I reread this in preparation for The Candy House, and boy does it hold up, though some things definitely land differently 10 years after the original publication.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781476716763" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="The Candy House" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="264" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/763/716/9781476716763.jpg" title="The Candy House" width="132" /></a></div><br /><i>The Candy House</i> by Jennifer Egan</h4><p>Saving the review of this one for closer to the April 2021 publication date (but you can preorder it now)!</p><p></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780142427378" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="The Inquisitor's Tale" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="265" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/378/427/9780142427378.jpg" title="The Inquisitor's Tale" width="133" /></a></div><i>The Inquisitor's Tale </i>by Adam Gidwitz</h4><p></p><p>This came home from the library intended for the kid but I grabbed it instead... it's a great medieval story, beautifully structured, and an examination of faith and destiny and tolerance I'd compare favorably to G. Willow Wilson's The Bird King which is one of my favorites.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781984801531" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Let There Be Light" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="267" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/531/801/9781984801531.jpg" title="Let There Be Light" width="134" /></a></div><i>Let There Be Light: the Real Story of Her Creation </i>by Liana Finck</h4><p>Another one I didn't expect to fall for as hard as I did -- Liana Finck's female God (very much the Jewish Old Testament God from Genesis through Abraham or so) as told through loosely drawn graphic novel panels is believable, thought-provoking and maybe even endearing. (Forthcoming in April)</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780063040144" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Appleseed" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="264" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/144/040/9780063040144.jpg" title="Appleseed" width="132" /></a></div><i>Appleseed</i> by Matt Bell (reviewed here)</h4><p>Reviewed <a href="https://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2021/09/hello-listens-for-echoes-parts-cobwebs.html">here</a>!</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780393881141" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Bewilderment" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="264" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/141/881/9780393881141.jpg" title="Bewilderment" width="132" /></a></div><i>Bewilderment</i> by Richard Powers </h4><p>Reviewed <a href="https://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2021/09/wild.html">here</a>!</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780802158765" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Five Tuesdays in Winter" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="267" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/765/158/9780802158765.jpg" title="Five Tuesdays in Winter" width="134" /></a></div><i>Five Tuesdays in Winter </i>by Lily King</h4><p>I devoured this seemingly quiet short story collection in less than two days and I'm still asking myself why. Lily King's stories of class, family, feminism and yes, love will just sneak up on you like that. From a bookstore owner falling unwillingly in love, to a teen nanny discovering that beautiful rich boys aren't nearly as interesting as her Jane Eyre fantasies, to a tiresome old man raging against the world at his granddaughter's hospital bedside, these are by turns charming, infuriating, and obsession-worthy characters. And I love a short story collection that might actually satisfy both the readers who like happy endings and the ones who don't.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780545953009" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Shadowshaper Legacy" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="265" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/009/953/9780545953009.jpg" title="Shadowshaper Legacy" width="133" /></a></div><i>Shadowshaper Legacy </i>by Daniel Jose Older</h4><p>I discovered <i>Shadowshaper</i> (the first in this series) as a galley in maybe 2015 and was obsessed; it's such a perfect Brooklyn urban fantasy, and was also part of my education in structural racism and resistance. I finally got ahold of the third book and kind of wish I'd read them all together; the characters are still compelling but I'd kind of lost the thread. Older is still one of the most insightful fantasy writers I know of and I'll always read whatever he's got.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://images.booksense.com/images/660/109/9780374109660.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="The Everybody Ensemble" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="267" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/660/109/9780374109660.jpg" title="The Everybody Ensemble" width="134" /></a></div><i>The Everybody Ensemble</i> by Amy Leach</h4><p>Reviewed <a href="https://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2021/10/ensemble.html">here</a>!</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780061768125" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Wearing God" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="267" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/125/768/9780061768125.jpg" title="Wearing God" width="134" /></a></div><i>Wearing God: Clothing, Laughter, Fire, and Other Overlooked Ways of Meeting God </i>by Lauren Winner</h4><p>As the title suggests, a book of better metaphors, with a lot of passages underlined in my copy. (You can see the description in the link but this one is also out of print; I got my copy through <a href="https://www.biblio.com/?aid=greenlight">Biblio</a> after it was recommended to me.)</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780061478789" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Howl's Moving Castle" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="269" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/789/478/9780061478789.jpg" title="Howl's Moving Castle" width="135" /></a></div><i>Howl's Moving Castle </i>by Diana Wynne-Jones</h4><p>Finally got to reading this after years of loving the Miyazaki filmed, and promptly bought several more copies as gifts; it's the most satisfying fantasy, with bonus points for lots of reasons why becoming an old lady is actually a kind of freedom.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://images.booksense.com/images/443/461/9780316461443.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Shark Summer" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="282" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/443/461/9780316461443.jpg" title="Shark Summer" width="141" /></a></div><i>Shark Summer</i> by Ira Marcks</h4><p>A graphic novel about kids having their own coming-of-age around the filming of Jaws; well done.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781250787316" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Sharks in the Time of Saviors" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="260" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/316/787/9781250787316.jpg" title="Sharks in the Time of Saviors" width="130" /></a></div><i>Sharks in the Time of Saviors </i>by Kawai Strong Washburn</h4><p>I've described this to myself as a Chosen One story if the chosen one were a low income person of color with no mentor to teach them and no clear enemy to fight. It's both awe-inspiring and bleak, as a Hawaiian family deals with having one of their own connected to the deep old magic of the islands, but nothing goes very well for any of them. The writing is so beautiful though.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780547258300" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Gracelin" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="267" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/300/258/9780547258300.jpg" title="Graceling" width="134" /></a></div><i>Graceling</i> by Kirstin Cashore</h4><p>I'm late to this party but this was so fun -- adventure, romance, magic, check check and check.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780593321447" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Sea of Tranquility" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="267" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/447/321/9780593321447.jpg" title="Sea of Tranquility" width="134" /></a></div><i>Sea of Tranquility</i> by Emily St. John Mandel</h4><p>Saving my review of this one until closer to the April publication date (but you can preorder it now)!</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780802158741" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Small Things Like These" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="272" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/741/158/9780802158741.jpg" title="Small Things Like These" width="136" /></a></div><i>Small Things Like These</i> by Claire Keegan</h4><p>Recommended to me by the inestimably wise folks at Three Lives, this book became my Christmas Day reading, and I am grateful for it. Set in a small town in the shadow of a convent in 1980s Ireland, it was full of beautiful sentences about ordinary people and made me think about privilege and ethics in a way that was both uncompromising and hopeful. May the year be full of the small things we can do for each other, especially the ones that turn into big things.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://images.booksense.com/images/514/155/9781684155514.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Lumberjanes" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="260" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/514/155/9781684155514.jpg" title="Lumberjanes" width="130" /></a></div><i>Lumberjanes: Birthday Smarty </i>by Shannon Watters & Kat Leyh</h4><p>The annual Lumberjanes graphic novel in my Christmas stocking. Janes forever!</p>Book Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18086590.post-48903972825990896342021-10-13T22:28:00.007-04:002021-10-13T22:30:34.760-04:00Ensemble.<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjm67E6T9ZRbzhsCEr5p6l6087ZBZu0NiQjwfgakzICgSRs02q_EKqzd0AjQQSbHaQp55BufLER4R4QjWlAawuUC_v2aCdFSyOiXs-KRG5oKLC8vSiN504xNKEw73bVjNzTRqyog/s2048/pen+gala.HEIC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2047" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjm67E6T9ZRbzhsCEr5p6l6087ZBZu0NiQjwfgakzICgSRs02q_EKqzd0AjQQSbHaQp55BufLER4R4QjWlAawuUC_v2aCdFSyOiXs-KRG5oKLC8vSiN504xNKEw73bVjNzTRqyog/w400-h400/pen+gala.HEIC" width="400" /></a></div><p>Last week I went to a literary gala and I may be still processing it. The lovely folks at <a href="https://otherpress.com/" target="_blank">Other Press</a> extended an invitation to their table for the PEN Gala, the annual fundraiser for <a href="https://pen.org/">PEN America</a>'s vital work in freedom of speech for writers worldwide -- though I admit when I saw the invite I was thinking anxiously less about authorial freedom and more about the words "BLACK TIE". Luckily I had a ten-year-old dress I love in the back of the closet (small designer, punkish fabric pieces, long train at the back) so I put myself together as best I could and went to the American Museum of Natural History on a Tuesday night. </p><p>Arriving, I found that Other Press had also extended an invitation to several fellow booksellers, including two of my own Greenlight colleagues, who were a delight to encounter in a sea of suited-and-gowned strangers. We talked a kind of shop, about the challenges of curation vs. the demands of free speech over cocktails around the giant skeletons in the lobby. I even got to run into and chat with an editor and a poet / novelist I know, before we were all called to descend, through the (slightly, charmingly eerie at night) halls of biodiversity, to the glamorously lit room under the beautiful, famous whale. The MC was Awkwafina (!!), who joked about coming on field trips to the museum as a kid from Queens and hearing tales of fancy parties that happened here at night -- and look, here we are!</p><p>The speakers were luminary and the award recipients highly deserving; I took notes on the speeches though I can't quite decipher them now. (And a bookseller friend I admire inhabited the spirit of free speech by silently holding up a sign saying "<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/28/disneymustpay-authors-form-task-force-missing-payments-star-wars-alien-buffy">DISNEY PAY YOUR WRITERS</a>" during the entirety of Bob Iger's award acceptance speech -- what a badass.) But the real thrill of it was just the sensation of hundreds of us in a room together, humans with their passions and ideas and principles and beautiful clothes, feeling a part of human culture, in the midst of all that animal life, in the middle of the city, once again.</p><p><br /></p><p><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780374109660" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="267" height="320" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/660/109/9780374109660.jpg" width="214" /></a></i></div><b><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780374109660" target="_blank"><i>The Everybody Ensemble</i> by Amy Leach</a> (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, November 16, 2021)</b><p></p><p>Amy Leach is part of my secret Head Canon, in the section with Ross Gay and Rebecca Solnit of "Essayists Who Write Like Poets And Somehow Convince You Of The Joy Of Living While Engaging With Complex And Sometimes Dark Realities." Her previous book <i>Things That Are </i>is dog-eared and marked by numerous rereadings, at least of the essays whose metaphors haunt me so I need to go back and remember the details.</p><p>Like many authors I seem to have been reading lately, she is obsessed with the non-human living things of the world, but in a way that translates into a kind of giddy delight and play and an embrace of wildness that is also enormously humane; there's a raised eyebrow at humanity but Leach is too full of joy at the quirky wonders of her (mostly animal) subjects to spend much time on condemnation.</p><p>This is science writing at its most surreal. The title essay imagines a choral gathering of literally all living things, which is very messy but very interesting. Another essay examines the prevalence of wild animals in the book of Job, and what the undomesticated nonsequiturs in that Biblical text suggest about pious and logical answers to our questions about God. There are essays about Robert the Bruce and walruses, single-cell evolution and the absurd trials of baby birds on rocky islands, exercises for cultivating humility and why weirdo Earth feels inferior to its simple and elegant fellow planets. There are more facts than you can shake a stick at, but the real treat is the language, which is tightly witty, endlessly playful, wistful, and so full of puns and wordplay that I recommend <i>not</i> reading this book in one go, as there's just too much to absorb all at once. I frequently snorted while reading in bed, and interrupted my partner reading his own book to read particularly irresistible bits out loud. There's really no way to describe it that compares to itself, so here's a bit from the first essay:</p><p></p><blockquote><p><i>"So all twenty quintillion of you, just go ahead and arrange yourselves however you want! As soon as there's more than one of you, you can be homogenous or heterogeneous. You might sort yourselves by smelliness, sneeziness, spazziness, speckliness -- speckled chachalacas can sort themselves from plain chachalacas, Holsteins from Jerseys. You can sort yourselves by biases and then again by sub-biases; there can be a reflective section and section for those who are all reflex. Ther can be a section for the surreptitious -- we're not sure who you are, but we noticed you arriving, obscured by the leafy branches, pampas grass, and toadstools you were carrying in front of you.</i></p><p><i>There can be an emergency section for the two- and three-year-old humans, who are forever losing their marbles, who act like the stars are sparkling them to death. We will use the emergency singers quite a bit in our program tonight, since most music could use a little emergency. With the toddler contingent, there will be no pathetic, droopy music, no songs of resignation. They may be joined by some emergency singers at the other end of life too, the ones jonesing for time. Along with the emergency singers, there can be a section for emerging singers, like owlets, as well as submerging singers, like crocodiles."</i></p></blockquote><p><i></i></p><p>The near-infinite variety of life forms; the delight of names and sounds; the sense of unwilling mortality, alongside plain old puns -- I feel buffeted by this language, in the best way, like being drunk at a cocktail party with your smartest and weirdest friends. This is a book made to be read aloud, if only in the theater of one's own mind, and returned to, as I intend to, for a taste of what is wild and good.</p>Book Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18086590.post-17891168504077737812021-09-23T11:18:00.000-04:002021-09-23T11:18:13.849-04:00Wild.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRXE0IpcNtsG6fr71ZMmDsyq7L76hmaUOHvzzrD7KmhSWz1mOWztjRIY-bNOgj_wLBcz44g3D9iJsxIYW1TFtT6KzCXfjC8Ge2sy8GlD_4X7of5keruzBo2vObDLoGXnsjG1znhA/s2048/IMG_1932.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRXE0IpcNtsG6fr71ZMmDsyq7L76hmaUOHvzzrD7KmhSWz1mOWztjRIY-bNOgj_wLBcz44g3D9iJsxIYW1TFtT6KzCXfjC8Ge2sy8GlD_4X7of5keruzBo2vObDLoGXnsjG1znhA/w400-h400/IMG_1932.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p>I had the pleasure of speaking with the lovely <a href="https://www.damianbarr.com/">Damian Barr</a> on Instagram Live this morning, as Greenlight was featured as Bookshop of the Month on his <a href="https://www.theliterarysalon.co.uk/">Literary Salon</a>. I feel like I used to be one of those in any gathering of booksellers who was more comfortable with tech than my elders; I've now passed over into being a grownup who needs gentle coaching on how to update the app, etc. But once the transcontinental connectivity issues were overcome, it was great to talk about the bookstore, about mutual friends and events and parties, about ideas and books. Wow I've missed conversation about books -- I'm resolved to re-integrate it into my life, however long it takes.</p><p>We talked about Greenlight's name and its origins in (among other things) the green light at the end of the dock in <i>The Great Gatsby</i>, and whether "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" is ultimately optimistic, an aspiration for a better future, or hopeless, an assertion that we'll never get there. Damian and I both come down generally on the side of optimism, though I'm not sure Fitzgerald does. Surely one of the reasons we read is to feel the most terrible and hopeless feelings, to give them a place among others.</p><p><br /></p><p><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780393881141" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="Bewilderment cover image" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="265" height="320" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/141/881/9780393881141.jpg" width="213" /></a></i></div><i><br /><b>Bewilderment </b></i><b>by Richard Powers (W. W. Norton, September 21, 2021)</b><p></p><p>Richard Powers is in my Head Canon, along with David Mitchell, Joan Silber, and a handful of other authors. <i><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780312422189" target="_blank">The Time of Our Singing</a></i> was a life changer for me and while I still have some backlist to catch up on I will read anything he writes, always. I snagged a galley of <i>Bewilderment</i> a few weeks ago but didn't quite get to writing about it before last Tuesday's pub date; maybe I'm still processing.</p><p>Powers has always been able to take a lever -- am idea or two, a relationship or a handful -- and move the world. He's my favorite literary author who loves science, and the obvious deep research serves up profound metaphors for his human stories. With his last few books -- <i>Echo Maker</i>, <i>Overstory</i>, <i>Bewilderment</i> -- he's been increasingly focused on environmental devastation, for obvious reason. <i><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780393356687" target="_blank">Overstory</a></i>, for all of its message that the best thing humans can do is probably nothing, was the angriest Powers book yet, and perhaps the most powerful.</p><p>If <i>Overstory</i> was an epic of righteous anger, <i>Bewilderment</i> is something smaller, sadder: a jeremiad, a song of lament. The father and son pair at its center wrestle with outsized reactions to the environmental tragedies unfolding in real time, and it's hard to argue with their often hopeless conclusions. There's a possible solution offered to obtain some mental/emotional equanimity to deal with all of this, but you can see its failure coming at you a mile away. </p><p>While Powers specifically references <a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780156030304"><i>Flowers for Algernon</i></a>, this reminded me specifically of another of his own novels, <a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780312429751" target="_blank"><i>Generosity</i></a>, in which a character's happiness -- a psychological state of grace -- turns out to be too good to be true. In both <i>Bewilderment</i> and <i>Generosity</i>, this inspirational character goes viral online, which is terrifying and distorting, before the limitations of their power of "finding the good" are revealed and it all comes crashing down.</p><p>This is a tough book to read, especially for anyone struggling with mental health or anxiety or depression or any of the spectrum of human ills, though for that reason probably a timely one. It is also, though, full of the deep curiosity and wonder at the world that characterizes Powers' work; I went on a hunt for more info about the <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506">relative percentages of biomass on Earth</a> after his allusions to it. Bad news: yes, the ratio of humans and livestock to wild mammals is uglier than it's ever been. Good news: there are far more of plants than there are of us, as well as more bacteria and fungi and arthropods. Like Matt Bell's <i>Appleseed</i>, maybe <i>Bewilderment</i> suggests real peace will only come after we're gone.</p>Book Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18086590.post-87604676299314970492021-09-10T15:26:00.003-04:002021-09-10T15:28:39.085-04:00Shuffle.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmVUedNUahZj0dJ8vNbnGE3zicfy9Ck_gEV3RKarmUTOQYK_tAG2B4Qm94FLLLbu3blveYGsrWwSUA1zR8YzGCyh4lk-z10Yo1tAlqOBt8QQ3lxG5c62tDQ_jVvz4QrX56JlFuGw/s2048/IMG_1934.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmVUedNUahZj0dJ8vNbnGE3zicfy9Ck_gEV3RKarmUTOQYK_tAG2B4Qm94FLLLbu3blveYGsrWwSUA1zR8YzGCyh4lk-z10Yo1tAlqOBt8QQ3lxG5c62tDQ_jVvz4QrX56JlFuGw/w640-h640/IMG_1934.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br />Like every other bookstore I've spoken to or heard about, Greenlight has spent the past year and a half of pandemic-era retail in a state of near-constant reinvention. I could talk about the moment-by-moment agony and uncertainty of it, the second-guessing and the exhaustion of decision making, but in retrospect it looks like a rollercoaster that you managed to stay on. We were lucky we already had an e-commerce website -- we just had to reallocate a ton of resources to expand it it. We were lucky our stores are in dense residential communities where folks weren't going in to the office -- sales in some categories actually grew (and we sold a lot of puzzles). We were lucky to have staff and customers pushing us forward as we examined our own institutional structures -- we're in a still-very-ongoing state of becoming a more transparent, more inclusive business. It takes a kind of gallows humor to see it, but the hustle that has been required to keep our little bookstore's head above water has made for some interesting new moves.<p></p><p>And there's been a lot of self-reinvention too. It's been fascinating to see how many indie bookstores are being opened, bought, and sold, as folks decide what to do with their lives. Our bookstore staff have taken on new roles in the store, or have moved cross-country to be with family to pursue another dream. As owners, my business partner and I have both had moments of realization that as much as we love buying inventory (her) and running events (me), it's just not possible to effectively do that kind of operational role and also run a store our size -- so we've reorganized again, training up new talent both internal and external to take our business into the future.</p><p>Here's a forthcoming book about hustle and self-invention, from an author who <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/nyregion/19bigcity.html" target="_blank">read at Greenlight before there was a Greenlight</a>. See, even the future's not all bad.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://images.booksense.com/images/136/545/9780385545136.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="263" height="200" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/136/545/9780385545136.jpg" width="131" /></a></div><i>Harlem Shuffle</i> by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday, September 14, 2021)<p></p><p>Colson Whitehead, obviously, can do anything he wants. Not just that he has permission, because of all the awards and the TV shows and stuff; he actually has the power, though he holds it lightly. With this book, apparently he wanted to have some fun. </p><p>The only contemporary literary master who has written a zombie novel this time is exploring another genre: the heist film, though the hero is a character who's typically a side character in the heist: the fence, the guy who has to find a way to sell the stolen goods once they're secured. </p><p>I have a super soft spot for Ray Carney, because he's a small business man, running a furniture and appliance store in 1960s Harlem until a ne'er-do-well relative (or two) forces him to get a little more creative with some of his contacts. I love that Ray is genuinely delighted when he gets a young couple the living room set of their dreams, while he's also trying to move into a better apartment, take care of his wife and girls, impress his snobby in-laws, educate himself on the resale value of gemstones (professional development!), and not get caught out by either cops or gangsters while just being ever so slightly crooked.</p><p><i>Underground Railroad </i>and<i> Nickel Boys, </i>Whitehead's last two books, brought deep historic injustices to light, and they were necessarily painful at times to read. In <i>Harlem Shuffle</i>, the violence and evil of racism are mostly a low background hum, and the focus of the story is on the struggles and shenanigans of Ray and his Black colleagues, above board and below. Just like <i>Zone One </i>had all of the satisfactions of a zombie story but much richer, this one has all the satisfactions of heist story, or rather three of them, as the story is structured in three semi-freestanding sections almost like novellas. Even when things go wrong in a carefully (or not) executed plan, the trouble is balletic, kung fu-like, playing out with such a beautiful comedic grace that you want to read certain set pieces out loud. It's also a gorgeous and nuanced panorama of 1960s Harlem, with classy hotels and low-rent joints, private social clubs and street music, and the banter and dialogue that Whitehead is so good at. </p><p>Like Jennifer Egan's forthcoming novel, this book seems to want to give the readers and the characters something nice to make up for all the trouble they've seen. There are enough moments of darkness, sociological and existential, that the humor and joy of living seem well-earned. I'm grateful for the hours I got to spend in this world, and some of the moments and characters will stay with me. Looking forward to sharing this with die-hard Whitehead fans and folks just looking for a good read for the holidays.</p>Book Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18086590.post-10542705412634825362021-09-06T17:15:00.060-04:002021-09-06T22:21:37.794-04:00Seed.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780063040144" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3Wz63IogPyGY7KJ27q767S7zP_nZ3Xta6351n4SUUMIwFbpbkrNbtfcZMNSvNkR2Jf2cSI81K3M-NwJ_ffc21Brp0CKqeEPoJrQkbrH5FjbQ85SiriqqY-agfQ0JuIAYtpKtsCg/w640-h640/IMG_1931.JPG" width="640" /></a></div></div><div><br /></div>I wrote the last entry in this blog over ten years ago -- I was honestly surprised to find it's still here (thanks for saving everything, Google!). In May of 2011 the <a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/">Greenlight Bookstore</a> venture was new, and my focus had shifted from writing and networking about books and bookstores to working all the time, every day on my own little seed of a venture. It was an exciting and transitional time, and it was only a little bittersweet to let it go.<p></p><p>I wrote the first entry in this blog over sixteen years ago, in October of 2005. I was working in a bookstore and starting to conceive of the first seeds of my plan to open my own, but still feeling a little isolated and in need of community. It was a great moment for literary blogs, many/most of which are now gathering their own cobwebs -- largely because their founders (me included) created a platform and developed connections which allowed them to create the next phase of their literary career. This blog served its purpose well, and then I didn't need it anymore.</p><p>Only now I find myself in another moment of transition, and again in need of community and a place to talk about books. I'll write more about that, probably lots. But my goal for now is just plant something small and see what happens. In every post I'll review something new or forthcoming I'm reading, and maybe write a little bit about the book world as I experience it. Here goes.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p></p><br /><i><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780063040144" target="_blank"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780063040144" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://images.booksense.com/images/144/040/9780063040144.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="264" height="400" src="https://images.booksense.com/images/144/040/9780063040144.jpg" width="264" /></a></div>Appleseed </i>by Matt Bell (Custom House, July 2021)<p>I picked up a galley of <i>Appleseed</i> guessing it would be my kind of thing; give me fantasy / sci fi that engages with real world issues, please and thank you. It took me some time to get to it but I dove in on a vacation weekend and finished it up a few weeks later, having put it down for a while in between.</p><p>So let me get out of the way first what I got hung up on in Appleseed: there is a character who is so complicit but so dithering, so pulled around by the last thing anybody said to him, so unable to confront the persuasive but clearly morally bankrupt voice telling him that consolidation of power and resources are the only way forward, that he drove me completely nuts. But then I realized, duh: he's annoying because he's us. So I gave him another chance, and got swept up again in the saga.</p><p>This character sort of... recurs in different forms in the very different sections of the book; he may be John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed), or a faun (the half-wild goat kind) whose sin catalyzed the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, or a regular human caught up in late 21st century climate wars, or a recurring consciousness in a body constantly rebuilt by 3D printers in a post-apocalypse ice age. </p><p>As you can gather, this is climate fiction pitched at beyond epic, building on and drifting through science (both biological and fictional), history, and myth, both the Greek kind and the toxic American capitalist kind. It's a rich and ambitious journey, and the denouement is even sort of satisfying, though none of us will be around to see it. </p><p>This is a book that's made to be talked about as much as read, and there's lots to discuss here; the forces of wildness and civilization and where those live in all of us; whether technologically created organisms are a different kind of life; what political forms the climate-ravaged future might take; whether the world would really just be better off without us; how much is contained in a strand of DNA, or a seed. </p><p>But also (along with Richard Powers' forthcoming novel <i>Bewilderment</i> which I also read recently), <i>Appleseed</i> is a book that invites -- commands -- us to pay better attention to the bodily, specific world of fellow creatures, the extravagant variety of the living world under our feet. (I particularly love Matt Bell's, and his characters', devotion to cataloging the particular flora and fauna of Ohio -- a list that turns out to be vast.) It's one to lose yourself in and to ponder, and I hope it gets the wide and long readership it deserves.</p>Book Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18086590.post-19970906395160381452011-05-10T11:44:00.004-04:002011-05-10T11:57:27.729-04:00Moving On, Moving OverDear readers of The Written Nerd, if there are any of you still out there,<br /><br />As you may have noticed, I haven't posted anything here in almost six months. This blog served a great purpose for me for five long years -- from October 2005, when I declared my geeky book and bookstore love and my quixotic intention to open a bookstore. As you know if you've been reading me, <a href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/our-story">that dream has come true</a>. Which means any blogging time and energy I had is now dedicated to the bookstore. And to a degree, it also means that I don't need this outlet for my thoughts about book culture anymore, since I have coworkers and customers and a whole industry with which to explore them. Not to mention that there's a whole new generation of book bloggers who have a lot more interesting things to say!<br /><br />So I'm officially signing off from The Written Nerd. This means two things:<br /><br />1) If you are a publicist, please don't send books to The Written Nerd anymore. I get far more books than I could ever read through the bookstore (you can <a href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/contact">contact me there </a>if you'd like to send me something or get in touch). If I do get books send to The Written Nerd, I'll know you're not actually reading my blog.<br /><br />2) I'm still reading books, and I'd still like to talk about them, but in a much more low-key way. So I've started a Tumblr blog called <a href="http://smallbookofbooks.tumblr.com/">A Small Book of Books</a>, after the tiny notebook my first boss and mentor Toby used to record his reading. Feel free to read along.<br /><br />Thanks to all of you whom I connected with through this blog -- I'm so glad you've been part of my life, and I love where we're all going!Book Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18086590.post-13404167275083838212010-12-30T19:30:00.002-05:002010-12-30T19:34:49.205-05:002010 Year-End Roundup, and a Call for Ideas<span>Here are all the books I read </span><span> (that I know of) </span><span>in 2010, in crude alphabetical order. This doesn't include children's picture books, cookbooks, single-issue comics, magazines, or uh, the Internet. My own personal Best of the Year are highlighted in bold. And thanks to the superquick book search on <a href="http://www.greenlightbookstore.com/">greenlightbookstore.com</a> (where, ahem, you can purchase any and all of these titles), you get pictures! The call for ideas is at the end.</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/887/714/FC9780375714887.JPG"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 140px; height: 140px;" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/887/714/FC9780375714887.JPG" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">A. D.: New Orleans After the Deluge</span></span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">by Jo</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">sh Neufeld</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">(</span><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a><span style="font-weight: bold;">)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Agents of Atlas </span>by Jeff Parker and Leonard Kirk (<a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a>)<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Air, Volume 2: Flying Machine</span> by G. Willow Wilson & M.K. Parker <a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/04/april-comics-post.html">(reviewed)</a><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Arrow Pointing Nowhere</span> by Elizabeth Daly <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/02/arrow-pointing-nowhere-by-elizabeth.html">(reviewed)</a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Batwoman: Elegy</span> <span>by Greg Rucka, J. H. Williams, and Dave Stewart <a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/07/july-comics-roundup.html">(reviewed)</a></span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Box of Delights</span> by John Masefield: A Christmas book, quintessentially English in a Narnia kind of way, dreamy and eccentric and magical and stiff-upper-lip. Practically perfect.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Co</span><span style="font-style: italic;">wboy Ninja Viking Volume 1 by AJ Lieberman & Riley Rossmo </span><span>(<a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a>)<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Folly</span> <span>by Marthe Jocelyn <a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/06/june-ya-roundup.html">(reviewed)</a></span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Freakangels, Volume 1</span> <span>by Warren Ellis & Paul Duffield <a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/04/april-comics-post.html">(reviewed)</a></span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Ghostopolis</span> by Doug TenNapel <a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/07/july-comics-roundup.html">(reviewed)</a><br /><span><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">A God Somewhere</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">by John Arcudi, Peter Snejbjerg, & Bjarne H</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">ansen <a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/07/july-comics-roundup.html">(reviewed)</a></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/244/525/FC9780385525244.JPG"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 92px; height: 140px;" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/244/525/FC9780385525244.JPG" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Half Empty</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">by David Rakoff</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">(</span><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a><span style="font-weight: bold;">)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Hellboy: The Wild Hunt</span> by Mike Mignola & Duncan Fegred0 (artist) <a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/04/april-comics-post.html">(reviewed)</a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">H</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">ellcity</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">: The Whole Damned Thing</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">by Macon Blair & Joe Flood</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">(</span><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a><span style="font-weight: bold;">)</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/226/984/FC9780810984226.JPG"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 93px; height: 140px;" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/226/984/FC9780810984226.JPG" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">by Barry Deutsch</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">(</span><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a><span style="font-weight: bold;">)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Hipless Boy: Short Stories</span><br />by Sully<br />(<a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a>)<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The Hunger Games</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">by Suzanne Collins</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">(</span><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a><span style="font-weight: bold;">)</span> <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The Hunger Games: Catching Fire</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">by Suzanne Collins</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">(</span><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a><span style="font-weight: bold;">)</span> <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The Hunger Games: Mockingjay</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">by Suzanne Collins</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">(</span><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a><span style="font-weight: bold;">)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">I Kill Giants</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">by Joe Kelly & JM Ken Niimura</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">(</span><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a><span style="font-weight: bold;">)</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/925/060/FC9781607060925.JPG"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 89px; height: 140px;" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/925/060/FC9781607060925.JPG" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I Thought My Father Was God</span> edited by Paul Auster (<a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a>)<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Johannes Cabal the Detective</span> by Jonathan Howard (<a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewe</a><a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">d</a>)<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Kill Shakespeare Vol. 1: A Sea of Troubles</span> By Conor McCreery, Anthony Del Col, and Andy Belanger: Hamlet, Richard, Juliet, Othello and everyone else converge in one world, and everyone's trying to get at a wizard named Shakespeare. Bloody and weird, but not too heavy to be lighthearted fun.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Kraken</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">by China Mieville</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">(</span><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a><span style="font-weight: bold;">)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Madman of Venice</span> <span>by</span><span> Sophie Masson <a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/06/june-ya-roundup.html">(reviewed)</a><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">Market Day</span> <span>by James Sturm <a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/07/july-comics-roundup.html">(reviewed)</a></span><br /><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-style: italic;">The Midnight F</span><span style="font-style: italic;">olk</span> by John Masefield (<a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a>)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/054/739/FC9780385739054.JPG"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 92px; height: 140px;" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/054/739/FC9780385739054.JPG" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The Museum of Thieves</span> <span><span style="font-weight: bold;">by Lian Tanner</span> <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/06/june-ya-roundup.html">(reviewed)</a> <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />Moonwalking with Einstein </span><span style="font-weight: bold;">by Joshua Foer (<a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a>)</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></span></span><br /><span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">New Orleans, Mon Amour</span></span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">by Andrei Codrescu</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">(</span><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a><span style="font-weight: bold;">)</span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/056/125/FC9781565125056.JPG"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 87px; height: 140px;" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/056/125/FC9781565125056.JPG" alt="" border="0" /></a><span><br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Octopus Pie: There Are No Stars in Brooklyn</span> <span>by Meredith Gran</span> <span><a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/07/july-comics-roundup.html">(reviewed)</a></span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">Odd Is On Our Side</span> by Dean Koontz, Fred Van Lente & Queenie Chan (<a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a>)<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Old Mr. Flood</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">by Joseph Mitchell</span> <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/03/old-mr-flood-by-joseph-mitchell.html">(reviewed)</a> <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"><br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/110/554/FC9781935554110.JPG"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 100px; height: 140px;" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/110/554/FC9781935554110.JPG" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Parnassus on Wheels</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">by Christopher Morley</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">(</span><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a><span style="font-weight: bold;">)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The Passage</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">by Justin Cronin</span> <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/03/passage-by-justin-cronin.html">(reviewed)</a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Postern of Fate</span> by Agatha Christie (<a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a>)<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Princess and the Goblin</span> <span>by George MacDonald <a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/06/june-ya-roundup.html">(reviewed)</a><br /></span><br /><span><span style="font-style: italic;">Rasl Pocket Book One </span>by Jeff Smith (<a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a>)<br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Revolution</span> by Jennifer Donnelly (<a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a>)<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Scott Pilgrim Volume 6: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">by Bryan Lee O'Malley</span> <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/07/july-comics-roundup.html">(reviewed)</a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/385/964/FC9781934964385.JPG"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 94px; height: 140px;" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/385/964/FC9781934964385.JPG" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />The Sheriff of Yrnameer</span> by Michael Rubens <a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/04/sheriff-of-yrnameer-by-michael-rubens.html">(reviewed)</a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Superman: For Tomorrow</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Volume 1 and Volume 2 </span><span>y Brian Azzarello (writer), Jim Lee, and Scott </span><span>Williams</span><span> (artists)</span> <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/07/july-comics-roundup.html">(reviewed)</a></span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The Singer's Gun</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">by Emily St. John Mandel</span> <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/05/singers-gun-by-emily-st-john-mandel.html">(reviewed)</a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Summerland</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">by Michael Chabon</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">(</span><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a><span style="font-weight: bold;">)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">by David Mitchell</span> <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/03/thousand-autumns-of-jacob-de-zoet-by.html">(reviewed)</a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/455/065/FC9781400065455.JPG"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 94px; height: 140px;" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/455/065/FC9781400065455.JPG" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/831/343/FC9780385343831.JPG"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 92px; height: 140px;" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/831/343/FC9780385343831.JPG" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The Tiger's Wife</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">by Tea Obreht</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">(</span><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a><span style="font-weight: bold;">)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Traitor's Purse</span> by Margery Allingham <a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/01/traitors-purse-by-margery-allingham.html"><span>(reviewed)</span></a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Two Cents Plain</span> by Martin Lemelman (<a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a>)<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The Unnamed</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">by Joshua Ferris</span> <a style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;" href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/01/unnamed-by-joshua-ferris.html">(reviewed)</a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">A Visit from the Goon Squad</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">by Jennifer Egan</span> <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/06/visit-from-goon-squad-by-jennifer-egan.html">(reviewed)</a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/835/592/FC9780307592835.JPG"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 94px; height: 140px;" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/835/592/FC9780307592835.JPG" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Werewolves of Montpelier</span> by Jason <a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/07/july-comics-roundup.html">(reviewed)</a><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">What Was Lost</span> by Catherine O'Flynn (<a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a>)<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">When You Were A Tadpole And I Was A Fish</span> by Martin Gardner (<a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/all-rest-of-books-i-read-this-year.html">reviewed</a>)<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Y: The Last Man, Volume 7: Paper Dolls</span> by Brian K. Vaughan (writer) and Pia Guerra (artist) <a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/04/april-comics-post.html">(reviewed)</a><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">You Were Wrong</span> by Matthew Sharpe (reviewed)<br /><br />(plus rereads, not reviewed: <span style="font-style: italic;">Scott Pilgrim 1-5</span> by Bryan Lee O'Malley, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Saturdays</span> by Elizabeth Enright, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Four-Story Mistake</span> by Elizabeth Enright, <span style="font-style: italic;">Take This Bread</span> by Sara Miles)<br /><br />That's... 55 I think, plus the rereads? Measly. And a ridiculous percentage of those are comics, which while I will continue to insist on their status as literature, do tend to be much quicker reads. Goal for 2011: read more, especially frontlist fiction/nonfiction, so as to be a better bookseller, and to dig deeper into the world of words.<br /><br />Unlike <a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2007-12-01T00%3A00%3A00-05%3A00&updated-max=2008-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=7">some</a> years past, I'm refreshed to find I don't feel the need for a soul-searching post about the bookstore project. <a href="http://www.greenlightbookstore.com/">Greenlight</a> is a solid reality -- as I reflected with a bookseller friend, I'm in the happily ever after. Rebecca and I have plans for growing and making things better, so it's not about to get boring. But it's been a happy year, chronicled mostly elsewhere, and I'm contented to stick to the book talk on this site -- it's <a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/01/unnamed-by-joshua-ferris.html">still true</a> that "sometimes the best relief from the stresses of working in the book industry is the books themselves."<br /><br />And now my request for your ideas: not for what to read next (I've already got teetering stacks on my nightstand that should take me through the next six months at least), but about how to keep track of reading. I'd like a better way to note what I'm reading now and write about it when I finish, and have it show up on the various book sites (GoodReads, Shelfari, etc.), and on this blog, and on Facebook/Twitter, etc. Does anyone have a good system, easy enough that you don't get bogged down? Is there an app that works (I do have an iPhone now!)? Does one of the sites push out to all the others? Or would I be better off with pencil and paper this year?<br /><br />In any case, it was a good year in books, and 2011 promises old friends returning and new surprises awaiting. Thanks to all of you who read and talk about books -- a very happy new year, and happy reading!Book Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18086590.post-43199812964627048792010-12-07T19:25:00.016-05:002010-12-16T16:47:30.886-05:00All the Rest of the Books I Read This Year<span style="font-style: italic;">Okay, so perhaps I was slightly overambitious, or just unorganized, thinking I would write about every book I read this year in order. Even though I felt like I didn't read nearly as much as I wanted to / ought to this year, the pile of read books grew much faster than my time to write about them (or inspiration to do so). So here's what I didn't get to write about before, but did read -- I can't remember any longer which order they went in, and the shortness that this last-minute approach will require does a disservice to some truly wonderful works, but there you go.<br /><br />To save time and space, instead of including pictures I've added links to the book detail page on <a href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/">greenlightbookstore.com</a> whenever available, if you want to see a picture or read more about the book.<br /><br />Before the end of this month, I'll post the complete list of what I read this year, highlighting my own personal best-ofs, with links to where I wrote about them. Here goes the last round!<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780375714887">A. D.: New Orleans After the Deluge</a></span> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />by Josh Neufeld</span><br />This falls in the "why did it take so long for me to listen when everyone I respect raved about this book" category. Neufeld's research is amazing, his characters compelling, his pictures of New Orleans before, during and after Katrina are cleanly, simply drawn but dead-on accurate (the ALP and I did some real-life comparisons to a couple of French Quarter bars), and I came out of this with a better understanding of the events of 2005 than I'd ever had before.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780785122319">Agents of Atlas</a></span> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />by Jeff Parker and Leonard Kirk</span><br />The ALP tossed this one on my lap recently when I needed bedtime reading. A great little "superhero team" adventure comic, with some unexpected twists and an Asian American hero -- great fun, especially if you're familiar with the Marvel Universe.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781607062615">Cowboy Ninja Viking Volume 1</a><br /></span><span><span style="font-weight: bold;">by AJ Lieberman & Riley Rossmo</span><br />The premise is high concept ridiculous; the plot is nigh incomprehensible. But you cannot resist. One man; three personalities; three fighting styles; an evil corporation that trained him to kill; endless silly banter; crazy (literally) fight scenes. Awe. Some.</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /></span><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780385525244"><span style="font-style: italic;">Half Empty</span></a> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />by David Rakoff</span><br />I felt as though my brain were getting sharper taking in Rakoff's wit and insight, at the same time I was melting with laughter. One of my favorite nonfiction books of the year, with Rakoff's cutting yet deeply compassionate take on everything from Rent to the Disney "Innoventions" house to his own cancer. And he is the nicest man in the world in real life. Read it!<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781607062905"><span style="font-style: italic;">Hellcity: The Whole Damned Thing</span></a> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />by Macon Blair & Joe Flood</span><br />I've been waiting for this since the first half was published years ago by an itty bitty indie comics company. It's a noir set in Hellcity (which resembles New York in August, except with more demons) and Heaventown (which resembles Bedford Falls or some other imagination of Upstate New York in the spring). It's got rock and roll, battles between good and evil, love, redemption, and getting slapped with fishes. It is one of the best undiscovered comic books I know.<br /><br /><a href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780810984226"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword</span></a> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />by Barry Deutsch</span><br />Hooray for this book! I've never read fiction set among Orthodox Jews so insightful and entertaining. Eleven-year-old Mirka's troubles with boring chores and conflicts with her (ultimately nurturing and wise) stempother, as well as her epic knitting battle with a troll and the trickster move she learns to defeat it, feel both universal and unique. Great stuff in the world of appropriate-for-kids comics.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The Hipless Boy: Short Stories</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />by Sully</span><br />I thought I understood this book when I thought it was autobiographical short cartoon pieces; upon finding out it's fiction I find it kind of rambling and unfocused, and frankly odd. Clever and sometimes poignant, but not exactly my thing. (And I find it kind of annoying when characters who have art-star friends and hang out in lofts complain of their lack of hipness. Like whatever.)<br /><br /><a href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780439023528"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The Hunger Games</span></a> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />by Suzanne Collins</span><br />Holy cow.<br /><br /><a href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780545310598"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The Hunger Games: Catching Fire</span></a> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />by Suzanne Collins</span><br />Oh my gosh it gets better/worse.<br /><br /><a href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780545310604"> <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The Hunger Games: Mockingjay</span></a> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />by Suzanne Collins</span><br />Do not read this entire series in a weekend, like I did, unless you want to be utterly wrecked by the end. The "kill or be killed" games of children against children are a great metaphor for adolescence, but this is also about war and freedom and truth and propaganda and compromise and survival and the horror of violence, even if it's necessary, even if you win. Deserves every iota of hype it got, and more; reminded me of Pullman's <span style="font-style: italic;">Dark Materials</span> trilogy in the amount of big philosophical stuff going in a completely addicting fantasy.<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;" href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781607060925">I Kill Giants</a> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />by Joe Kelly & JM Ken Niimura</span><br />So darn good. This is a kids' comic, but it's dark -- the darkness at the center of it isn't revealed right away, so I won't spoil it. It's about a weird little girl who is a D&D dungeonmaster, and has a powerful named weapon that lives in her purse, a brutal wit, and a hard time making friends. It's about the friend she makes and the giant she encounters. The drawing is wild and sketchy and perfect, and makes for a wonderfully odd and satisfying story.<br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780312421007"><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I Thought My Father Was God</span></a> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />edited by Paul Auster</span><br />A collection of the real-life stories Auster collected as part of an NPR project, this is part StoryCorps, part Moth Story Slam, part very weird Chicken Soup for the Soul. Because the things that happen to people that they remember are very, very weird. Many are tragic in the grandest and awfullest sense of the word. Some are funny or romantic or delightful. A lot are just coincidences. At their best they are like the kind of story someone tells you in a bar, or at a family Christmas party, and you never forget.<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780385528092"><span style="font-style: italic;">Johannes Cabal the Detective</span></a> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />by Jonathan Howard</span><br />I loved the steampunk-supernatural-carnival-serial oddity of <span style="font-style: italic;">Johannes Cabal Necromancer</span>, so of course I was going to read the sequel. This one finds our misanthropic but oddly appealing hero fleeing angry folks again (necromancy doesn't make you popular), and pulled unwillingly into applying his weird-science-attuned brain to solving a murder mystery, alongside the antagonistically ethical girl from the first book. And it's mostly on a blimp. If you are a genre lover like me, what's not to like?<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780345497499"><span style="font-style: italic;">Kraken</span></a> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />by China Mieville</span><br />Ooh Kraken. The titular sea-beast, literally disappeared from the museum, is about the least weird thing in this very Mieville-y weird book. Imagine a London full of religions and magic cults, each predicting a slightly different apocalypse, any or all of which might occur. There is a hapless hero, a villain who is a living tattoo and one who is made of ink, a protective imp in an iPod, a sort of board of magicians and the coppers who police them, and Goss and Subby, two of the most truly terrifying villains in ages. It's hard to keep up, but the scenery is never boring. If you have a long plane ride ahead of you, this would be a good bet for a book you will not look up from the entire time.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left; font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781590172902"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Midnight Folk</span></a><br /></div><span style="font-weight: bold;">by John Masefield</span><br />This is a very old-school English children's adventure story, in the vein of Narnia or the <span style="font-style: italic;">Wind in the Willows</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">Five Children and It.</span> Young Kay has a nasty governess and an sea captain ancestor who lost a treasure; how these things get solved involves a lot of people coming out of pictures on the wall, talking animals, seven-league boots, and other strange doings. It is dreamlike the way that an imaginative childhood is, and often funny, and quite uniquely wonderful. It would be great to read aloud, if you are the kind of family who does that sort of thing. I'm now reading Masefield's other book about Kay, <a href="http://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781590172513"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Box of Delights</span></a>, which is a Christmas book and completely delightful.<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;" href="http://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781594202292">Moonwalking with Einstein</a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">by Joshua Foer</span><br />I picked this galley up because we're hosting the author in the spring when the book comes out (and yes, he is the brother of Jonathan Safran). Secretly, I was hoping to get some tips on how to remember the names of customers and publishing industry acquaintances who always seem to remember my name; it's a horrible failing that I seem to forget names as soon as I've been introduced. Foer's book has some tips for name remembering, though not a fix-all; most of the venerated tricks of memory he learns from "memory championship" circuits -- which they learned from the ancient Greeks -- involve really paying attention when the information is first presented. But there are lots of other tricks involved too -- as my bookseller friend Carol says "fun facts to know and tell on every page" -- including the fact that our highly evolved visual/spatial memories can be put to use in remembering more abstract data by using the elegant and ancient technique of the Memory Palace (and often, inventing some absurd or dirty associations, since we're also really good at remembering jokes and sex). I had a great time with the eccentric characters Foer encounters and his reflections on the evolution of memory in human history, from the Memory Palace to the codex to the internet. Good stuff.<br /><br /><span><a href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781565125056"><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">New Orleans, Mon Amour</span></a> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />by Andrei Codrescu<br /></span>I bought this in a tiny bookstore in Pirate's Alley, and read it listening to a trumpet player in Jackson Square, and eating rabbit jambalaya, and wandering through cemetery cities. I fell completely in love with New Orleans myself, so it was wonderful to have a fellow outsider as pithy and eloquent as Codrescu describing the city's morbidly festive charms. Reading essays written over 20 years all at once, they do start to become a bit predictable, and Codrescu is a bit of a dirty old man; still, these pieces were evocative and illuminating, highly recommended for anyone who knows what it means to miss NOLA.<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span><br /></span><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780345515605"><span style="font-style: italic;">Odd Is On Our Side</span></a> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />by Dean Koontz, Fred Van Lente & Queenie Chan</span><br />Why do I read these Dean Koontz manga adaptations? The art is generic, the plot unbelievable, the characters and morality simplistic. I simply cannot help myself, and I eat them like particularly artificial-tasting candy.<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781935554110"><span style="font-style: italic;">Parnassus on Wheels</span></a> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />by Christopher Morley</span><br />I love books, bookselling, and Brooklyn. I am the target audience for this book. I was so delighted to discover Melville House had reissued it, years after I read the sequel, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Haunted Bookshop</span>. I was also delighted to discover that this 1917 novel has a bit of feminism in it: though the fiery bookseller Roger Mifflin is in some ways the hero, the narrator is a 40-year-old "angel in the house" who strikes out on her own as a bookselling entrepreneur after years of unappreciated baking. Immensely fun, with some very quotable quotes, especially for those of a bookselling persuasion.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Postern of Fate</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />by Agatha Christie</span><br />Weird -- a sort of bad Agatha Christie novel. It not only has my least favorite detectives (the fussy bourgeois couple Tommy and Tuppence), it was written near the end of Christie's life and career, and feels oddly circular and repetitive. I guess it's good to know that even the master didn't knock 'em out of the park every time.<br /><a href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781888963243"><br /></a><span><a style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;" href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781888963243">Rasl Pocket Book One</a> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />by Jeff Smith</span><br />Remember <span style="font-style: italic;">Bone</span>? This is like that except kinda the opposite. The sexy, morally messed-up hero, the science (time travel, parallel universes, etc.), the difficult-to-follow plot, the mysticism... did I mention the sex and the science? It's fascinating and gorgeously drawn, but definitely NOT for kids. I'm intrigued by where he's going with this... it may be years before we find out, but it's worth it.<br /></span> <span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780385737630">Revolution</a></span> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />by Jennifer Donnelly</span><br />A rich feast of a YA novel -- achingly sad and authentically adolescent, chock full of local color and telling details in Brooklyn and Paris, with a French Revolution parallel plot to blow you away, plus a love story, plus some nice class/race/ethics analysis of French and Brooklyn culture. It's not perfect (the author does a sort of supernatural and/or dream thing 3/4 of the way through that I found totally uneccessary), but it is immensely satisfying and thought-provoking. And is there any better metaphor for adolescence than the French Revolution?<br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780786816156"><span style="font-style: italic;">Summerland</span></a> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />by Michael Chabon</span><br />This is an epic American fantasy -- a rich stew of our national mythologies from Paul Bunyan to Babe Ruth -- and a fantastic adventure story. It's Chabon's first and only YA book, and I remember it being kind of a flop in terms of Chabon novels, but I found it completely compelling -- added to my own personal pantheon of larger-than-life tales. I read it in the summertime, and finished it looking out at the Statue of Liberty from Red Hook -- one of the most perfect reading experiences of the year.<br /><br /><a href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780385343831"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">The Tiger's Wife</span></a> <span style="font-weight: bold;">by Tea Obreht</span><br />Deeply satisfying and yet entirely unexpected -- a universal story of outsiders, of growing up, of family secrets and cultural misunderstandings, but also a picture of a fascinating and little-known part of the world. Tea Obreht's childhood in the former Yugoslavia, among family stories and traditional legends, informs this story of a woman in an unnamed post-war country who delves into her grandfather's childhood to understand his death. The stories she uncovers -- of an escaped tiger, a man who cannot die, and the coincidences and ironies of a region almost constantly in a state of war -- make for a novel with the suspense of a thriller and the resonances of a myth. An incredible work from an incredible young writer, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Tiger's Wife </span>marks the beginning of the career of a writer to watch.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">[cribbed from my own writeup for the NAIBA holiday catalog]</span><br /><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781608190041"><span style="font-style: italic;">Two Cents Plain</span></a> <span style="font-weight: bold;">by Martin Lemelman</span><br />Interestingly, Pantheon published this in a format that makes it look like a traditional book, rather than a graphic novel. It's a story that will likely have the most fans outside of comics lovers: a memoir of a childhood in a 1950s Brooklyn candy shop, with a dysfunctional family and the shadow of the Holocaust looming on one side and 1970s urban blight on the other. I like the concept slightly more than the execution -- Lemelman's drawings of people get kind of mushy and indistinguishable -- but it's an interesting addition to the world of New York nostalgia books as well as graphic memoirs.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780805088335"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">What Was Lost</span></a> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />by Catherine O'Flynn</span><br />How am I NOT going to read a book recommended by David Mitchell as one of his favorite young authors? And the connections to Mitchell's work are clear: it's a compassionate and realistic world, tinged with the supernatural in a way that enriches rather than cheapens the story. O'Flynn is the only writer I've ever encountered who has really examined the strange tragedy that is the contemporary indoor shopping mall; her evocation of the bleak lives of the employees, the artificial "shopping experience" so carefully preserved with smells, music, and security, and the very old-fashioned sacrifices made to christen the new development, is chilling and familiar. The main characters are believably, hopelessly human, and their redemption is both surprising and inevitable. Can't wait to read more by this young Welsh writer -- and I wish more authors would write about retail culture like this.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9780809087372"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">When You Were A Tadpole And I Was A Fish</span></a> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />by Martin Gardner</span><br />A random impulse purchase from the strand, this is a wonderfully random collection of essays on topics from God to poetry to politics -- always reasoned, never pedantic, though sometimes a little irritated at encountered stupidity. The author, an Oklahoma mathematician who writes for <span style="font-style: italic;">Scientific American</span>, is someone I look upon with great respect, and would love to have a beer or a cup of tea with.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.greenlightbookstore.com/book/9781608191871"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">You Were Wrong</span></a> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />by Matthew Sharpe</span><br />This is the book I feel worst about failing to review earlier -- because it is an amazing, strange, and incomparable small novel, and more people should read it. It was sent to me by the author, whom I know slightly as a bookstore customer (his novel <span style="font-style: italic;">The Sleeping Father</span> was a sleeper hit), and who enjoys a sort of indie cult following. <span style="font-style: italic;">You Were Wrong</span> is a sort of an indie love story... and sort of a mystery... and sort of a country song... and sort of a horror/suspense novel... and sort of a comedic romp... and sort of an exploration of race and family and exploitation and class... and sort of campy... and sort of surreal... and sort of earnest... and it has the best closing paragraph I have read all year. You have to read the whole book to get to it, though, and if you think you can guess how the twists and turns of the plot will go... well, you'll be wrong.Book Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18086590.post-8071950392612571082010-11-25T20:23:00.002-05:002010-11-25T20:41:40.599-05:00BBC Top 100Aw, thanks, Russel. Now obviously the ALP and I had to test our mettle against this list. Next, I hope to post a list of this year's books.<br /><br />Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt. Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses...<br /><br /><b>1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen</b> JSB, MJB<br /><b>2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien</b> JSB<br /><b>3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte/b> JSB, MJB<br />4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (all)<br /><b>5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee</b> JSB, MJB<br /><b>6 The Bible</b> JSB (MJB)<br /></b>7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte MJB<br /><b>8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell</b> JSB, MJB<br /><b>9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman</b> JSB<br /><b>10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens</b> JSB, MJB<br /><b>11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott</b> JSB<br />12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy<br /><b>13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller</b> MJB<br /><i>14 Complete Works of Shakespeare</i> JSB, MJB<br /><b>15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier</b> JSB, MJB<br />1<span style="font-weight: bold;">6 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien</span> JSB<br />17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger</span> JSB, MJB<br />19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">20 Middlemarch – George Eliot</span> JSB, MJB<br />21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald</span> JSB, MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens </span>MJB<br />24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams</span> MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh</span> JSB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky</span> MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck</span> MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll</span> JSB, MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame</span> JSB, MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy</span> MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens</span> MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis</span> JSB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">34 Emma – Jane Austen</span> JSB, MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">35 Persuasion – Jane Austen</span> JSB, MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis</span> JSB, MJB<br />37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere</span> JSB<br />39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne</span> JSB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">41 Animal Farm – George Orwell</span> JSB, MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown</span> MJB<br />43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez<br />44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins</span> MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery</span> JSB<br />47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood</span> MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding</span> JSB, MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">50 Atonement – Ian McEwan</span> MJB<br />51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel<br />52 Dune – Frank Herbert<br />53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen</span> JSB, MJB<br />55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon</span> JSB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens</span> JSB, MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley</span> JSB, MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon</span> JSB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez</span> JSB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck</span> MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov</span> MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt</span> MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold</span> JSB<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas</span> MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac</span> JSB, MJB<br />67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding</span> JSB<br />69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville</span> JSB, MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens</span> MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">72 Dracula – Bram Stoker</span> JSB, MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett</span> JSB<br />74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson<br />75 Ulysses – James Joyce<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath</span> JSB<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome</span> JSB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">78 Germinal – Emile Zola</span> MJB<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray</span> MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">80 Possession – AS Byatt</span> JSB, MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens</span> JSB, MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell</span> JSB<br />83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro</span> MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert</span> JSB, MJB<br />86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White</span> JSB, MJJB<br />88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle</span> JSB, MJB<br />90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad</span> JSB, MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery</span> MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks</span> MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">94 Watership Down – Richard Adams</span> MJB<br />95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole<br />96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas</span> MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare</span> JSB, MJB<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl</span> JSB, MJB<br />100 Les Miserables – Victor HugoBook Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18086590.post-18426294132082329192010-09-02T09:21:00.002-04:002010-09-02T09:57:31.686-04:00Hey, Joe.<a href="http://news.shelf-awareness.com/msgget.jsp?mid=4031617">Joe Drabyak died on Friday</a>. Long live Joe Drabyak.<br /><br />I'm having a hard time getting my head around this. I sat next to Joe at a dinner in April. We compared notes on the appetizer. Everyone said he looked a little skinny but he brushed it off. That was only four months ago.<br /><br />Forgive the maudlin bits for a moment. I can hear exactly how Joe said the phrase "Noir Bar." I can hear the way he would start a sentence hesitantly, as though it was just coming to him, and then deliver an idea so fluid and articulate it was clear he'd either just rehearsed the whole thing in his head, or he'd known exactly what he thought for a long time.<br /><br />He presided over the meetings of the NAIBA board in a manner that was truly presidential: that is, he listened to everybody else. He was the voice of reason when things got heated. He wasn't afraid of new ideas, but he was a great respecter of everyone's concerns.<br /><br />One of the ideas he supported was Emerging Leaders. He was a natural mentor to me and a lot of younger booksellers (as others have expressed), so the idea of providing a network for their education and support must have made sense to him. But that didn't stop him from teasing us about it. He wouldn't stop referring to himself and other over-40 booksellers as "Declining Leaders," despite my embarrassed protests.<br /><br />What I'm sure he knew, despite his characteristic jokiness, was that that's not how we thought of him. He was an Established Leader. He was what we aspired to. He wasn't a store owner, he was a masterful professional bookseller, embodying everything we hoped to become.<br /><br />He always joked, though. I think he joked most when things were serious. His emails after his diagnosis had us cracking up through our tears. There were a lot of groaners -- bad puns and silly costumes. That was part of the style. It must have been what made him such a good handseller on the bookstore floor -- he was like an old vaudevillian, making himself look goofy and winning everyone over.<br /><br />I want him to be the Quizmaster for literary trivia again. I want him to be able to read all the book he ran out of time for. I want to ask him about the book that changed his life, about why he became a bookseller, about what he thought about on his solitary smoke breaks, about why he wasn't afraid. I didn't even know him that well.<br /><br />I know what he wanted, though. He wanted to be Joe. And he is.<br /><br />Someone who lives a life in books can hardly deny that some characters, some creators, live a long time after their deaths. Joe Drabyak put too much of his exuberant life in too many places for him to disappear. He helped create a new generation of booksellers. He taught us ideas and practices that will take on lives of their own. Not to mention his name lives on attached to characters in more than half a dozen mystery novels. I can imagine him twinkling about that, another great joke.<br /><br />Hey, Joe. We miss you already. I hope we can live up to what you offered us.<br /><br />Long live Joe.Book Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18086590.post-7388464503343508422010-08-12T10:31:00.006-04:002010-08-12T10:47:47.468-04:00A Pitch to Booksellers: The Fall Conference<span style="font-style: italic;">We interrupt our sporadically scheduled book reviews to bring you this highly personal pitch, from me (Jessica/Book Nerd) to the booksellers of New York City and the mid-Atlantic region.</span><br /><br /><br />I have to advocate for things I am passionate about -- if you're a bookseller you can probably sympathize. I wanted to make sure that you know all about the <b><a href="http://www.newatlanticbooks.com/fall_conference.html">Fall Conference</a>, this </b><b>September 21 and 22, hosted by the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA)</b>. Like a mini-BEA or Winter Institute, the conference brings together booksellers and publishers from the mid-Atlantic region for professional education, networking, and book buzz to prepare us for the fall season in our stores. The cost is membership in NAIBA, which is $100 per store for a year, plus meals and hotel; discounted hotel rates are available (the conference is in Atlantic city, a cheap bus ride away). You can get all of the details about the conference<a href="http://www.newatlanticbooks.com/fall_conference.html"> here</a>.<br /><br />I went to my first NAIBA conference when I had worked in a Manhattan bookstore for a couple of years, and it literally changed my life. The experience of being a part of the professional community of booksellers, and learning the best practices of the industry, as well as encountering publishers and authors face to face, gave me a new perspective on the work that I was doing. I wasn't just a retail clerk and shelver who loved to read -- I was part of a larger profession, and I had the potential to build a career and contribute to the industry conversation. I went back full of ideas for my store, and with some new thoughts about my future career.<br /><br />Not every frontline bookseller who goes to the NAIBA conference will want to go on to start their own store, but every bookseller has the potential to get something valuable out of it -- for their bookstore's success, their own career, and the future of our business. The education sessions we have lined up for this year (yes, I'm on the NAIBA board) are both inspiring and practical. And the opportunity to talk to other booksellers and publishers always leads to revelations about what we're all doing well and what we could be doing better. It's a great opportunity for store owners to get rejuvenated, and possibly an even better opportunity for staff to pick up new ideas that will make them better booksellers in the long term.<br /><br />I know it's a challenge to find the time, dollars, and scheduling flexibility to go to a two-day conference (we're sending three booksellers from Greenlight, and it has been logistically kind of tough.) So I want to tell you about <b>three things that might make it a little easier, </b>whether you're an owner or a frontline bookseller.<br /><br />1) Publishers are offering a total of 4 scholarships for frontline booksellers, which will cover all of the event/meal tickets for the conference. It's a random drawing, so drop your name (or a staffer's name) in the hat -- details <a href="http://www.newatlanticbooks.com/fall_conference.html#frontline">here</a>.<br /><br />2) NAIBA has changed its bylaws to allow professional booksellers whose stores are not members of NAIBA to join the association with a $25 membership. If you are a bookseller who would like to be part of this professional community but your store is just not into it, you can now take things into your own hands and come to the conference on your own at a reduced rate. Email NAIBA's executive secretary <a href="mailto:readingent@aol.com">Eileen Dengler</a> to learn more.<br /><br />3) If you are coming to the conference and you want to split hotel costs with someone, <a href="mailto:jsbagnulo@gmail.com">email me </a>and I will try to hook you up with a fellow bookseller to share a room. No promises that things will work out, but we're all in this together and we can do our best to make it work.<br /><br />Okay, pitch over. Feel free to comment here or email me if you have questions, objections, thoughts, or ideas. I hope to see many of you at the Fall Conference, as well as in our stores this fall!<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFL64LduxCcpwhHEHgOG41kGYhyZ-WVx82komxLYEyQ0J_1JOrdbbiI0hwjVZk6WobmOwLuHW-_zrugXgYGlojlrxGouiQBf4s5wW-DHRYCdd8of0TRx8plP_MSe5TKOPTlMn0uw/s1600/naiba.gif"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 92px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFL64LduxCcpwhHEHgOG41kGYhyZ-WVx82komxLYEyQ0J_1JOrdbbiI0hwjVZk6WobmOwLuHW-_zrugXgYGlojlrxGouiQBf4s5wW-DHRYCdd8of0TRx8plP_MSe5TKOPTlMn0uw/s400/naiba.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5504534784802916562" border="0" /></a>Book Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18086590.post-14011776163076109062010-07-28T17:54:00.008-04:002010-07-31T15:19:45.090-04:00July comics roundup<span style="font-style: italic;">There is a disturbingly large and teetering pile of books on a chair in my kitchen. They are books that I have read in the last couple of months, that I hope to one day get around to writing up for this blog. Many of them deserve lots of thought, ideally before I forget the reading experience. Also, maybe 50% of the pile is comics -- because I read them faster than straight prose, or because my reading is getting decadently image-dependent, or because it's summer and comics are my beach reading, I don't know. Anyway, despite the fact that several of these are serious books that could totally justify their own post, I'm throwing them together in a roundup, in the interest of getting them off the stack and saving the legs of my kitchen chair.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Superman: For Tomorrow</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Volume 1 and Volume 2</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">By Brian Azzarello (writer), Jim Lee, and Scott Williams</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> (artists)</span><br /><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781401203528?aff=WrittenNerd08"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/528/203/FC9781401203528.JPG" onerror="this.src = 'http://www.indiebound.org/files/book_not_found.jpg';" /><br /></a><br /><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781401204488?aff=WrittenNerd08"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/488/204/FC9781401204488.JPG" onerror="this.src = 'http://www.indiebound.org/files/book_not_found.jpg';" /><br /></a>The ALP, a much more serious comics reader than I, is of the opinion that this one-shot Superman story is about how scary Superman could get if Lois Lane wasn't around for him to care about -- which would explain why some villain hasn't actually offed her, since no one could deal with the destructive power of a Superman unhinged by grief. I'll take his word for it. While this one had some good moments (especially one mind-bending moment of moral complication when Superman admits he could cure someone's cancer, but won't) I found it whizzed by pleasantly and at the end I wasn't sure how the problem (lots of people have disappeared with no physical trace) actually got solved -- it just always does get solved when it's Superman, dunnit? It's fun to read a superhero comic with a beginning and an end, but this one was a bit forgettable for my snobby literary tastes.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">A God Somewhere</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">by John Arcudi (writer), Peter Snejbjerg, and Bjarne Hansen (artists)</span><br /><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781401226831?aff=WrittenNerd08"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/831/226/FC9781401226831.JPG" onerror="this.src = 'http://www.indiebound.org/files/book_not_found.jpg';" /><br /></a><br />While this book is about the closest thing to a true masterpiece I have read in comics in ages, I will hesitate carefully before recommending it to readers. That's because it's also the most disturbing comic I have read in a long time -- the violence is bloody and has consequences, and the sheer existential chaos is unsettling, like reading about Columbine or Rwandan child soldiers. I actually thought about Columbine a couple of times while reading it, because the "why" of the horrors that happen is so unanswerable, in such a terribly familiar way. The premise: a happy-go-lucky, kind of slackerish dude finds that a catastrophic accident has left him with Superman-like (or God-like) powers; at first he performs some dramatic rescues, but the religious language he uses to describe his mission of good starts to sound a little crazy and he's acting kinda weird... and then he really snaps, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. The narrator is the super-person's lifelong friend, an African-American journalist who covers the whole weird story; his character arc is rich and interesting too, a welcome human-scale drama running parallel to the sickening cosmic tragedy of the main story. Not for the squeamish, but I'd guess this book is going to become part of the conversation about "realistic" superheros, about the iconography of power and desire, and about the potential for what comics can do.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Octopus Pie: There Are No Stars in Brooklyn</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">by Meredith Gran</span><br /><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780345520432?aff=WrittenNerd08"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/432/520/FC9780345520432.JPG" onerror="this.src = 'http://www.indiebound.org/files/book_not_found.jpg';" /><br /></a><br />Hooray, comics about Brooklyn! I admit I was a leetle nervous that <span style="font-style: italic;">Octopus Pie</span> would be too scene-y for my tastes (I think I remember picking up an earlier edition in an unbearably hip Williamsburg shop and putting it down again)... but this time around, it was funny and authentic and I was hooked. It's got that classic odd-couple charm: uptight, slightly surly Eve finds herself the housemate of superchill stoner entrepreneur Hanna (they were friends in kindergarten and their moms set them up), and wacky hijinks ensue. But, as ("Mr. Scott Pilgrim") Bryan Lee O'Malley observes about author Meredith Gran, "her jokes are actually funny," both verbally and visually. Cranky organic food buyers, the trauma of a stolen bike, a Renaissance fair (really), and a long, unpredictable storyline about ice skating are just some of the gems packed into this baby, which collects the first two years of the ongoing indie comic. It's a little "Dykes to Watch Out For," a little "Real World: Brooklyn" (okay, maybe not, I never watched it)... anyway, I kept laughing out loud and quoting parts to the ALP, which I feel is a strong indication that there's some good stuff going on here. Also, we went to the release party at Bergen Street Comics and bought the character pint glasses. So there. Even if you are not a Brooklyn booster (Meredith, sadly, has now moved to Portland), it's good cartooning and good storytelling with a compelling cast of side characters, a little foul-mouthed, a little tender, and very funny. (Look for the mantra about ducks and bread - priceless.)<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Batwoman: Elegy</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">by Greg Rucka (writer) J. H. Williams, and Dave Stewart (artists)</span><br /><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781401226923?aff=WrittenNerd08"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/923/226/FC9781401226923.JPG" onerror="this.src = 'http://www.indiebound.org/files/book_not_found.jpg';" /><br /></a><br />So... in case you're not a hardcore DC Comics reader: the new Batwoman is a lesbian. A very lipstick lesbian, as you'll notice if you can make out this cover, and there are all kinds of debates, especially among female comics fans, about whether this is liberating or exploitative or what. I saw what I felt were examples of both in this particular comic, though what's almost more ridiculous is that crazy flowing red hair -- is that practical, when you're fighting crime with a secret identity, seriously? (To be fair, this comes up in an exchange with Batman, and it kinda makes sense.) All that aside though, I found this an actually pretty impressive comic. The villainess is apparently under the impression that she is Alice in Wonderland, which makes for some delightfully insane dialogue amidst the kicking and punching, and the relationship between Batwoman and her dad and stepmom is interesting and touching. What's really impressive though, is how much work the art is doing in telling this story -- the visuals of the chapter headings, especially, offer huge foreshadowing clues about the story's Big Reveal, which isn't hinted at in the dialogue. It was fun to go back and see the significant details after I knew the ending; if I were a more observant... observer of comics art I might have noticed them sooner, but I thought it was an awesome way to tell the story. Slight fare, perhaps, but a very satisfactory and well-executed cape-and-cowl comic.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Market Day</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">by James Sturm</span><br /><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781897299975?aff=WrittenNerd08"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/975/299/FC9781897299975.JPG" onerror="this.src = 'http://www.indiebound.org/files/book_not_found.jpg';" /><br /></a>This book has, deservedly, already been highly praised in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/books/26book.html">high-falutin' literary publications</a>. James Sturm is one of the most serious literary writers of comics out there, and his previous stories about baseball, the frontier, and Jewish and African-American experiences constitute a body of <a href="http://www.indiebound.org/hybrid?filter0=james+sturm&x=0&y=0">rich, intelligent historical fiction</a>I don't think any contemporary cartoonist has even attempted to match. And I like his visual style a lot: a thick, clean line almost reminiscent of the Tintin comics I grew up on, an old-fashioned, muted color palette, an interest in all kinds of faces and bodies. That said, I respected this book more than I actually liked it. The story is that of one day in the life of Mendleman, a rug maker -- young, married with a baby on the way -- taking his wares to sell at market, where he discovers his usual buyer is out of business and has to scramble to find some other way to unload his painstaking, artistic creations; on his way home an odd encounter with some vagabonds leaves him hungover and questioning his entire life. Now that I think about it, it works as a pretty good metaphor for an artist hewing to an old-fashioned standard in a changing world (Sturm wrote<a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2249562/"> a column for Slate </a>about giving up the internet.) But I'm not sure I understood quite what happened in our young rug maker's head at the end, and the 19th century Eastern European color palette is exhaustingly dreary, even when Mendleman is imagining his innovative designs. Maybe I'm just not a rug fancier, or I need to read more Russian novels. This may be a book I come back to later with greater appreciation, but I prefer Sturm's odd and tragic American stories to this one.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Ghostopolis</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">by Doug TenNapel</span><br /><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780545210287?aff=WrittenNerd08"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/287/210/FC9780545210287.JPG" onerror="this.src = 'http://www.indiebound.org/files/book_not_found.jpg';" /><br /></a>Doug TenNapel is not nearly as well known as his Bill Watterson-influenced art and insanely creative fantasy epic stories deserve. This may be partly because he is a Christian and somewhat right-wing, and very explicit Christian metaphors find their way into nearly all of his work; on the other hand, his humor is often scatalogical and his characters foul-mouthed, which means the Christians don't necessarily embrace him either. So I am one of a small contingent who will read anything Doug TenNapel writes, though some are more successful than others. <span style="font-style: italic;">Ghostopolis</span> is one of the more successful, I think: the story of a sort of ghost truant officer who accidentally sends a live boy to the underworld and then tries to rescue him, while the boy meets up with his long-dead grandfather and a host of other denizens of Ghostopolis. The Christ figure in this one is a mysterious Tuskegee airman, who built Ghostopolis eons ago but is now in hiding from its tyrannical ruler. It's a world of good and evil, though not always simply divided; characters learn and grow and make mistakes, while dodging giant insects and zombies and bone animals and animate buildings. It's a romp with moments of seriousness, and even a love story, and it's the kind of thing I love Doug TenNapel for.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Werewolves of Montpelier</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">by Jason</span><br /><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781606993590?aff=WrittenNerd08"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/590/993/FC9781606993590.JPG" onerror="this.src = 'http://www.indiebound.org/files/book_not_found.jpg';" /><br /></a><span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span>Jason is like the Buster Keaton of comics. His animal/people characters have that deadpan expression most of the time, with only an occasional eyebrow wrinkle to express emotion, and yet their stories are often hilariously funny and/or heartbreaking. This one has a built-in gag that's never discussed: when dog-people turn into werewolves it's very hard to tell the difference. But everyone in the story knows one when they see one, and when our protagonist impersonates one he falls afoul of the real werewolves and adventures ensue. The power of the story, though, is in his relationship with Audrey, the girl in the apartment next door, who is doing her best Holly Golightly impression at all times; their thwarted desires and real friendship are affecting in that same deadpan way. It's not my favorite Jason comic ever (though the ALP thinks its his best in ages), but it's a great one to add to the library.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">And a drumroll please...</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Scott Pilgrim Volume 6: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">by Bryan Lee O'Malley</span><br /><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781934964385?aff=WrittenNerd08"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/385/964/FC9781934964385.JPG" onerror="this.src = 'http://www.indiebound.org/files/book_not_found.jpg';" /><br /></a>You do remember <a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2009/02/book-nerd-vs-universe.html">how I feel about Scott Pilgrim</a>, right? The last few weeks have been a pleasant agony of anticipation of both the release of the final volume and the movie (which I was prepared to dislike because I wasn't sure neurotic loveable loser Michael Cera could play happy-go-lucky loveable loser Scott Pilgrim; but <a href="http://www.scottpilgrimthemovie.com/">all signs indicate</a> that the director of <span style="font-style: italic;">Sean of the Dead</span> isn't going to let us down. The ALP and I have plans on the evening of August 13, thank you.) So I picked up my copy at Bergen Street Comics*, and the book is... entirely, eminently satisfying. I mean, how you gonna pull all this stuff together, unless you are an O'Malley level pop art genius? The unresolved feelings for Kim, the fact that Ramona literally disappeared at the end of issue 5, and the band broke up, and Scott has no motivation, much less the skills, to face down Gideon, the Final Boss Man (in video game parlance, which is what the structure of this fight-the-seven-evil-exes story is obviously modeled upon). I, for one, am not going to spoil it for you. I'll just say that everything gets resolved by fighting -- because the whole book almost is one big fight scene, and every issue that's ever come up gets dealt with decisively. Probably I will now go back and read all six volumes just to get the whole picture, because they are that fun and it takes about a day to get through them. So just get all of them already, and enjoy!<br /><br />* Note: because of the peculiar nature of comics publishing, comic shops had their Scott Pilgrims on July 20; regular ol' bookstores will get theirs on August 3.Book Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18086590.post-71066082700364416652010-06-18T09:28:00.004-04:002010-06-18T10:20:49.874-04:00June YA RoundupIf I wrote these things more often I wouldn't have to cram multiples into one post, but my blogging is falling so far behind my reading I need to diminish the stack a bit. And I realize I've had a number of great YA reading experiences lately -- it's a category I don't read super-often, but that I tend to enjoy (if perhaps with an occasional smirk of superiority/relief that I am no longer a teen.)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Folly</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">by Marthe Jocelyn</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">(Wendy Lamb Books, May 2010)</span><br /><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780385738460?aff=WrittenNerd08"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/460/738/FC9780385738460.JPG" onerror="this.src = 'http://www.indiebound.org/files/book_not_found.jpg';" /><br /></a>This book and the following one I read "on assignment" -- I was asked to take part in a YA brainstorming conference call by our inimitable Random House children's book rep Lillian Penchansky, and these two books were our homework for the call. It was kind of a delight to plunge into something that I could read in a day, and the two works, while both historical fiction, were very different. Marthe Jocelyn's <span style="font-style: italic;">Folly</span> was the better of the two -- the story of a 19th century British servant girl who gets knocked up by a dashing soldier (when that was both common and enough to ruin your life), it's told in first person by various characters whose dialects are both defamiliarizing and believable. The backstory of the book is fascinating too: Jocelyn found out that one of her ancestors grew up in a "foundling hospital" like the one in the story, and imagined his life and his mother's from there. Reading this led to a bunch of conversations about how of course, in whatever era you're born, you're a teenager and you're filled with desire, but in this era there's no sex ed and no birth control and no safety net -- in the case of a servant far from home, not even family or friends to take you in. I loved Mary Finn, smart and kind and resourceful but still screwed over; and I loved James, the boy in the foundling hospital whose story intertwines with hers -- his internal monologue contained some meditations on the lived experience of history that I wish I could quote (I gave my galley to a certain bookseller who is said to resemble the girl on the cover -- have to remember to ask her whether she liked it too.) And even the "cad" soldier, Caden, is sympathetic -- he's just a teen as well, and totally clueless about what to do. Though it's got no creatures of the night (as way too many YA novels seems to these days), this book is dark in the way real human life is dark -- recommended for the brave reader of any age, <span style="font-style: italic;">Folly</span> is moving and eye-opening.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The Madman of Venice</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">by Sophie Masson</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">(Delacorte Books for Young Readers, August 2010)</span><br /><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780385738439?aff=WrittenNerd08"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/439/738/FC9780385738439.JPG" onerror="this.src = 'http://www.indiebound.org/files/book_not_found.jpg';" /></a><br />This book, while a charming adventure story with some resonant historical detail, reinforces my theory that YA is just where romance novels have migrated. Reading it had the slightly guilty pleasures of a historical romance: the dialogue is dramatic but not especially believable, the heroine is plucky, the hero is brave but tongue-tied about his passion for her, and it takes some life-threatening adventures to bring them together. Nevertheless, the context gives it some added weight: the British boy, girl, and chaperone are on a mission in Venice to thwart some pirates and find a missing girl, who happens to be a Jew from Venice's infamous Ghetto. There are echoes of Shakespeare's Shylock here, of course, and some not-too-heavyhanded analysis of what it meant to be a Jew in pre-Modern Europe. And yes, there are escapes by Gondola, fights in Venetian <span style="font-style: italic;">castellos</span>, and enough twisted plots that the entire last chapter is devoted to explaining them. Great for a kid interested in this particular place and time, who doesn't mind some mushy stuff in between adventures.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The Museum of Thieves</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">by Lian Tanner</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">(Delacorte Books for Young Readers, September 2010)</span><br /><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780385739054?aff=WrittenNerd08"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/054/739/FC9780385739054.JPG" onerror="this.src = 'http://www.indiebound.org/files/book_not_found.jpg';" /><br /></a>This one is my favorite of the lot -- the kind of fantastic adventure I loved as a kid, that can still keep me glued to the couch on a beautiful weekend day, dead to the real world and immersed in the much more convincing world of the novel. I was invited to an author dinner for Lian Tanner -- which turned out to be a lovely affair, and Tanner the most charming New Zealander, just the kind of person you hope should make their fortune from writing a great yarn. I thought I should glance at the book before the dinner out of politeness, and ended up reading the whole thing in a day, and raving about it like a geek that evening. Set in a town where children under a certain age are kept chained, to their parents or glorified babysitters, the Blessed Guardians, "for their own good," the story's hero is the impatient and irritable Goldie Roth. When the ceremonial Separation Day -- a coming of age that involves literally cutting the cord -- is canceled because of what is essentially a terrorist attack, Goldie in despair breaks her bonds herself and becomes a fugitive. And it really is a dangerous world she lives in, though the danger is not where she has been told. Finding her way to the city's Museum, she comes under the protections of its keepers and discovers that her less-than-legal predilictions make her a perfect candidate to join the ranks of those caring for the weird contents of the building, which is bigger on the inside than on the outside (one of my favorite fantasy tropes, as it rings true metaphorically about so many things). I won't say more about the plot because I don't want to spoil too much of this splendid reading experience -- but the themes of the novel are obviously the tradeoffs of freedom and security, the claims of the official and the illicit, which resonate both politically and for every teen or pre-teen testing the boundaries of the allowable. This is the first of a trilogy (another of my favorite things about fantasy), and I can't wait to pick up the story again -- I definitely recommend this journey when the book comes out in September, whether you are under 18 or not.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The Princess and the Goblin</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">by George MacDonald</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">(Random House Books for Young Readers, January 2010)</span><br /><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780375863387?aff=WrittenNerd08"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/387/863/FC9780375863387.JPG" onerror="this.src = 'http://www.indiebound.org/files/book_not_found.jpg';" /></a><br />This inexpensive little hardcover is part of the Looking Glass Library series, which reissues classic children's books with introductions by contemporary writers. I'd always meant to read George MacDonald, who I knew was a huge influence on C. S. Lewis -- and his story inspires the same kind of <a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2008/12/best-loved-books-of-2008-21-favorite.html">slightly mixed affection</a> for me as an adult reader that <span style="font-style: italic;">The Chronicles of Narnia</span> or even Tolkien's Middle Earth does now. The story of the child princess who is targeted by the kingdom's enemy goblins, and the miner's son who helps to save her, is a masterfully written fable, and also a theological metaphor, masquerading as a children's story. It's all about doing what you know is right, believing in what you know is true even if you can't see it or others don't believe you. The Princess' mysterious grandmother is a God-like figure, and MacDonald's theology of selflessness and a calm faith in the good is one that resonates for me. But his depictions of the goblins can seem kind of... racist. Yes, they are mythical creatures, and so you can make them as nasty and stupid as you want -- but sometimes it seems their very ugliness is held against them, as if having a weird face means that you're a bad thing. In a book clearly intended as allegory and instruction as well as delightful adventure, the lesson of disdain for the ugly and odd is absorbed right along with the lesson of devotion to duty and truth. It's a complicated little morality tale, much like the Victorian era from whence it comes -- in craft and sweetness definitely worth reading, but perhaps with a grain of salt for a modern ethical sensibility.<br /><br />Whew -- now to get my nose out of the books and go play outside...Book Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18086590.post-23991650384688145222010-06-07T17:34:00.004-04:002010-06-07T18:01:46.414-04:00A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan<span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">A Visit from the Goon Squad</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">by Jennifer Egan</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">(Knopf, June 9, 2010)</span><br /><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780307592835?aff=WrittenNerd08"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/835/592/FC9780307592835.JPG" onerror="this.src = 'http://www.indiebound.org/files/book_not_found.jpg';" /><br />Shop Indie Bookstores</a><br /><br />Reading this book was a little like starting a conversation out of general politeness, and discovering that you're talking to someone you passionately want for a best friend.<br /><br />Jennifer Egan -- full disclosure -- is a friend and customer of Greenlight Bookstore. I'd hosted her before for events at other stores, and chatted with her and her kids at Greenlight, but to my own detriment I had never actually read any of her fiction. (Even though, as often seems to happen, it seems in retrospect like obviously the sort of thing I would like: the smart but not overtly political feminism of <span style="font-style: italic;">Look At Me</span>, the Gothic nested stories of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Keep</span>, etc. -- good storytelling in the service of big ideas, or vice versa, without sacrificing the one for the other.) It seemed like now would be the time to pick her up, though, since <a href="http://www.facebook.com/#%21/event.php?eid=123039691052902&ref=mf">we're hosting her launch party for the book on Wednesday</a>. So I opened the intriguingly titled <span style="font-style: italic;">A Visit From the Goon Squad</span> earlier this spring.<br /><br />And found a new addition to my personal author pantheon.<br /><br />As I wrote for our recent staff picks email, <span style="font-style: italic;">A Visit From the Goon Squad</span> is ostensibly (and quite effectively) about the world of rock music, and the intersections of the realms of commerce and creativity (and the dysfunctional folks who inhabit both). But it's really about life on Earth, in all its heartbreaking and maddening and rich and loveable complexity. It's about the mistakes of each generation, about being young and growing up, about adventure and domesticity, about interconnectivity and isolation, and (especially) about the brutality and kindnesses of time.<br /><br />And it doesn't hurt that it is structured in my favorite form: the novel as interlinked stories (cf. my pantheon authors David Mitchell, Charles Baxter, Joan Silber, and others). Some of those were published in the <span style="font-style: italic;">New Yorker</span> -- trust me that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, though each story has its own poignant and complete miniature arc. One of them perfectly evokes being a young and foolish professional woman in New York City (ahem). One is written flawlessly from the perspective of a very young gay man, one about a record exec, several about the intersections of children who have grown up too fast and adults who are not very grown-up at all. One is composed of a series of PowerPoint slides and is alarmingly literate and moving. San Francisco, Italy, and Arizona make appearances, as do the 1970s, the 1990s, and a near-future that is the most believable I think I've ever read (wait till you learn what a "pointer" is). The meaning of the title is illusive, but when it hit me it hit hard, and shaped my understanding of the project of the novel in the way the best titles can do.<br /><br />And did I mention the damn thing is <span style="font-style: italic;">funny</span>, too? Apparently Jennifer Egan is one of those rare authors who can quite literally do anything.<br /><br />I have already seen Jennifer post-<span style="font-style: italic;">Goon Squad</span> reading, and gotten out of the way my mumbled fangirl admiration. Luckily she seems as delighted at how it came out as her readers will, and is in fact the sort of kind and smart and idealistic and charming author that you hope to find at the other end of your favorite novels.<br /><br />So, obviously, go out first thing tomorrow morning when it goes on sale and get yourself a copy of <span style="font-style: italic;">A Visit From the Goon Squad</span>. Then, <a href="http://www.facebook.com/#%21/event.php?eid=123039691052902&ref=mf">come out on Wednesday night and drink wine with the author</a>. If these heights of happiness are not feasible for you, just get your hands on the book as soon as you can, and then find me so we can talk about it. In the meantime, I'm going to need to go back and read everything Jennifer Egan has ever written.Book Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18086590.post-33598366943492574312010-05-17T09:01:00.004-04:002010-05-17T09:19:02.123-04:00The Singer's Gun by Emily St. John Mandel<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhldXNIlhQ7Df_0ZHEhlaKlbqdyS_VzirZOLlmePSBJxI7aZiFj9Y80L7_Jz7xLFQOqANqvl9p5_99h1P3uuE8dMlh-oLJY6nNvP1ZmLWrQU7qMoFTVDiBNEiwqeWe4YNd37Vvmww/s1600/singersgun.JPG"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhldXNIlhQ7Df_0ZHEhlaKlbqdyS_VzirZOLlmePSBJxI7aZiFj9Y80L7_Jz7xLFQOqANqvl9p5_99h1P3uuE8dMlh-oLJY6nNvP1ZmLWrQU7qMoFTVDiBNEiwqeWe4YNd37Vvmww/s320/singersgun.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5472223791524800866" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The Singer's Gun</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">by Emily St. John Mandel</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">(Unbridled Books, May 2010)</span><br /><br />Full disclosure: Emily St. John Mandel lives in Brooklyn and I often run into her at literary events; she is an extremely likeable person and has been wonderfully supportive of Greenlight. And Unbridled Books is, in my opinion, one of the best of the crop of new independent publishers who are figuring out the best way to make this old-fashioned book thing work in a new economy, on a sustainable scale, building on the relationships between customers, booksellers, and publishers. So I was predisposed to like Emily's second novel, especially given the embarrassment of riches of bookseller quotes included in my galley.<br /><br />And perhaps unsurprisingly, like it I did -- but that doesn't mean the book itself is not an astonishing surprise. I read it one day when I was so sick I actually did have to spend most of the day in bed, so my memory of the reading experience is a little like a fever dream -- though that may not be entirely due to my state of health. Mandel has managed a heady, indeed dreamlike mixing of a sort of literary soul-searching amidst the ennui of modern Everyman life, and a rich and strange, violent and dangerous and globe-spanning storyline. If the tone is reminiscent of the post-Franzen and McSweeney's school of alienation and drift, the story is almost a boy's adventure novel, or one of the darker practitioners of thriller writing (Vachs or Connelly). It's disorienting and haunting, addictive and thought-provoking, and it doesn't go away when you're done reading.<br /><br />I like the way I summarized the plot on the Greenlight website, so I'll repeat it here: "From the sinister warehouses of Williamsburg to the soulless shining office towers of Manhattan to the sun-kissed ennui of the island of Ischia, Emily St. John Mandel traces the fortunes of would-be ex-criminal Anton and his associates through moving and astonishing interludes." Anton is one of those anti-heroes you find yourself almost unwillingly drawn to, in spite of his seeming inability to actually do what he wants or care for those he cares about. The fact that he finds something resembling a happy ending is perhaps the novel's biggest surprise, and it's not without its own attendant complications.<br /><br />But for me the most powerful thing about Mandel's second novel are the odd, very dreamlike images that have stayed with me. A shipping container full of scared Russian girls sitting in a circle, waiting for someone to let them out. A basketball on a dirty, glass-strewn Manhattan roof, surrounded by those shining office buildings. A white hotel looking out on the beach at Ischia. A warehouse in Williamsburg full of salvaged treasures. And of course, the image in the title, which is such a huge and weird and unexpected plot point that I didn't realize its significance until I finished the book and turned it over to look at the front again. I'm not going to steal from you the shock of that discovery -- you'll just have to get deep into Mandel's strange and haunting and very real world and find out for yourself.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Note: Emily St. John Mandel reads at Greenlight Bookstore tonight, May 16, at 7:30 PM. You can <a href="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#%21/event.php?eid=111657688871850&index=1">RSVP on Facebook</a>, or just show up.</span>Book Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18086590.post-85553714204664827872010-04-30T11:14:00.008-04:002010-04-30T11:50:45.875-04:00April Comics PostTomorrow is<a href="http://www.freecomicbookday.com/"> Free Comic Book Day</a>, when fine comic shops nationwide will be giving out samples of the good stuff to all comers. In its honor, today's post is a flying tour of the comics/graphic novels I've been reading in the last few weeks and months.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781401210090?aff=WrittenNerd08"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/090/210/FC9781401210090.JPG" onerror="this.src = 'http://www.indiebound.org/files/book_not_found.jpg';" /></a><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781401210090?aff=WrittenNerd08"><br /></a><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Y: The Last Man, Volume 7: Paper Dolls</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">by Brian K. Vaughan (writer) and Pia Guerra (artist)</span><br />I've been working my way through Vaughan's magnum opus slowly for a while now. By Volume 7 the plague that killed (almost) every male mammal on earth is old news, and the implications of a women-only society are playing out in unpredictable ways, while Our Hero Yorick Brown tries to find his girlfriend and help find out how to bring back the other half of the species. Despite the occasionally annoying fact that in an all-women world the hero of the comic is still a dude, Vaughan's writing and Guerra's art always make for good adventure storytelling, and a bit of food for thought afterward. Imagine the implications for Israel, for example (women soldiers) or the Republican party (few women leaders but lots of political wives) or the Catholic church (no women in power but lots and lots of nuns). I'll add my voice to the chorus that says this is one of the seminal graphic novel series of our time. And it's often funny, too.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781401224837?aff=WrittenNerd08"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/837/224/FC9781401224837.JPG" onerror="this.src = 'http://www.indiebound.org/files/book_not_found.jpg';" /><br /></a><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Air, Volume 2: Flying Machine</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">by G. Willow Wilson (writer) and M.K. Parker (artist)</span><br />This series was hand-sold to me by Amy at my great local, <a href="http://bergenstreetcomics.com/">Bergen Street Comics</a>, and it's a winner. With a unique premise (the technology for flight powered by thought, developed by the ancient Mayans and sought after by all kinds of powers) and a cool heroine (Blythe, perky enough to be a believable stewardess despite her fear of heights, and brave and bewildered enough to be a believable heroine), not to mention an affecting romance/mystery and a resonance for anyone who's ever been nervous on an airplane, it's got a lot of cool, original stuff going for it. I liked the first volume a bit better than the second (as the concept of "hyperpraxis" flight gets explained it becomes a bit less believable), but I'm on board (get it?!) for this series, and delighted to find a new creative team with such great storytelling mojo.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/1592910564?aff=WrittenNerd08"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/564/910/FC9781592910564.JPG" onerror="this.src = 'http://www.indiebound.org/files/book_not_found.jpg';" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Freakangels, Volume 1</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">by Warren Ellis (writer) and Paul Duffield (artist)</span><br />Another Bergen Street Comics purchase, this one was actually a result of reading <a href="http://www.freakangels.com/">Ellis' comic serialized for free online</a>. There are superpowers, yes, but the kids holding them are unlikeable and screwed up to varying degrees, and they seem to have brought about the end of the world and also be preventing it somehow. The British dialogue is cheeky and evocative, and while the Freakangels are sometimes kind of scary like a group of teenagers on the sidewalk, I'm intrigued by the post-apocalyptic Steampunk vibe and the potential for this story. (And yeah, I prefer reading it in book form.)<br /><br /><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781595824318?aff=WrittenNerd08"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/318/824/FC9781595824318.JPG" onerror="this.src = 'http://www.indiebound.org/files/book_not_found.jpg';" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Hellboy: The Wild Hunt</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />by Mike Mignola (writer) and Duncan Fegred0 (artist)</span><br />I love Hellboy. (So much so that I always stock Mignola's comics in the bookstore, even though almost no one seems to buy them.) He's a working man's hero, doing his job well with a foul mouth and shoulders sagging with fatigue, and always trying to transcend his origins (i.e. as the son of Satan). And Mignola's depth of allusion to world mythology makes for both great, accessible storytelling and something you could spend years mining. This stand-alone volume tells a couple of stories related to the recurring legend of the hunt in the sky (for a stag, giants, a herd of cattle, whatever) and how Hellboy gets mixed up in them, and what they may imply for the future of his world. It's dark and moody and heartpounding, and I read it twice.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.dccomics.com/vertigo/comics/?cm=14408"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 133px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpR8e3SpfBfyZ-kJOv7lLK3Hazx4hDoaEm5bAT4thcAlEOXsrzpbAnuvFMITrU6xp2pwSM_c8xYxnrCXyFW87IXzuQQv0vIqAY1xMF0CXcFiR7xHsJtLDhp7jDqyWoptvC3M1sdw/s200/jack.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5465955108626676386" border="0" /></a><a href="http://www.dccomics.com/vertigo/comics/?cm=14408"><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Jack of Fables #44</span></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">by Matthew Sturges & Bill Willingham (writers) and various artists<br /></span>My love of the <a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781563899423">original <span style="font-style: italic;">Fables</span> series</a> by Sturges and Willingham has extended to this spin-off, where the ne'er-do-well but lucky hero of many fables, Jack, sets off on his own and has very weird and funny adventures. The series has now left the original Jack behind for a while and is following his son, Jack Frost, a more heroic (i.e. less selfish and amoral) character, which is kind of a relief -- but it's also still silly, which is nice. I wouldn't recommend starting here -- the Jack series has started to comic out in <a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781401212223">trade paperback form</a> -- but this is one of the few series I buy in the $2.99 single issues whenever it comes out.<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-xg-orpIDJCIEwUSpSxo9LgSfVYr9XY28TeKr7EfKdbCy27ripWhOhkgmOYn-XFz7qCHJUlPrvH0MrlQAHAAYWA9OYAmXSVW_UiGg6rPY1bpS3axnMRUazCIDejRJUhHkgmFhoQ/s1600/CNV-cover-issue1.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 133px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-xg-orpIDJCIEwUSpSxo9LgSfVYr9XY28TeKr7EfKdbCy27ripWhOhkgmOYn-XFz7qCHJUlPrvH0MrlQAHAAYWA9OYAmXSVW_UiGg6rPY1bpS3axnMRUazCIDejRJUhHkgmFhoQ/s200/CNV-cover-issue1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5465956323299363426" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Cowboy Ninja Viking #1</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">by AJ Lieberman (writer) and Riley Rossmo (artist)</span><br />Come on, tell me you could resist buying a comic with a title like that?! It's a ridiculous but inspired premise: a shady organization has recruited dudes with multiple personalities, and taught each of them a different martial art. The dialogue is cleverly rendered with icons for each of our hero CNV's three distinct personalities, as he wreaks havoc and tries to figure out who is on his side. I'm not sure whether it will end up paying off as a story, but I'm in at least for issue two, when CNV takes on PGO -- Pirate Gladiator Oceanographer.<br /><br />That's my comics reading lately. What comics have you been reading that you'd recommend?Book Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18086590.post-3447940266663003792010-04-01T09:41:00.003-04:002010-04-01T09:49:32.925-04:00The Sheriff of Yrnameer by Michael Rubens<span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The Sheriff of Yrnameer</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">by Michael Rubens</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">(Pantheon, August 2009)</span><br /><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780307378477?aff=WrittenNerd08"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/477/378/FC9780307378477.JPG" onerror="this.src = 'http://www.indiebound.org/files/book_not_found.jpg';" /><br />Shop Indie Bookstores</a><br /><br />In a bit of a cheat today (come on, I've got to get outside in the sun!), I'm pasting this review in its entirety from an email I sent to a colleague in the book industry. I read it more or less concurrently with <span style="font-style: italic;">Old Mr. Flood</span>, and it provided an entirely different set of pleasures.<br /><br />I read <span style="font-style: italic;">The Sheriff of </span><span style="font-style: italic;" class="il">Yrnameer</span> on my lunch break at the bookstore over the course of several weeks. To be honest, I picked it up because I eat lunch in the back room with the galleys, and it had that funny name and a brightly-colored cover. Lucky me that I picked up the one book from the piles likely to keep me enthralled in small doses for so long (and sometimes the lunch break ran long if I was at a particularly exciting bit.)<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Sheriff of </span><span style="font-style: italic;" class="il">Yrnameer</span> reads like <span style="font-style: italic;">The Magnificent Seven</span> as written by Douglas Adams, with Han Solo as the hero. It punches all the right buttons for a space opera / romantic comedy / postmodern sitcom / satire on commercial culture. The recurring gags become like inside<br />jokes with old friends, and the ending, though I expected it to be enjoyably predictable, was genuinely (and enjoyably) surprising. It also shares with my favorite book of last year, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Gone-Away World</span>, an underlying critique of inter-galactic corporations that is pleasantly affirming to a small indie business owner.<br /><br />Though I did once or twice rue the wisdom of reading it while eating (some lunches are not made to go with descriptions of insectile bounty hunters), I was thoroughly delighted to make such a discovery: a book both warm-hearted and irreverent, morally high-minded but not above the appeal of the gross-out, silly and sexy and secretly serious all at once. And the author is a Brooklynite -- of course. I can't wait for the paperback (which comes out in August of this year) so I can handsell the heck out of it to everyone who asks "Don't you have any FUNNY books? With a happy ending?"Book Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18086590.post-34576586023557083592010-03-26T12:29:00.005-04:002010-03-26T13:14:26.140-04:00Old Mr. Flood by Joseph Mitchell<span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Old Mr. Flood</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">by Joseph Mitchell</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Foreword by Charles McGrath</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">(MacAdam Cage hardcover edition, April 2005)</span><br /><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781596921146?aff=WrittenNerd08"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/146/921/FC9781596921146.JPG" onerror="this.src = 'http://www.indiebound.org/files/book_not_found.jpg';" /><br />Shop Indie Bookstores</a><br /><br />A wise bookseller once taught me that right after reading something really, especially good, it's a good idea to read something completely different, as a sort of palate cleanser. After <a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/03/thousand-autumns-of-jacob-de-zoet-by.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet</span></a> and <a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2010/03/passage-by-justin-cronin.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Passage</span></a>, I felt the need to read something that was definitively not a big fat novel of an unfamiliar world. Luckily, my hand trailing over the unread riches of my bookshelves landed on <span style="font-style: italic;">Old Mr. Flood</span>. As a small collection of three short semi-nonfictional pieces about a downtown New Yorker, it was exactly what I had been wanting.<br /><br />For some inexcusable reason I had never read Joseph Mitchell before, though he's one of those authors you feel you know all about without reading him (the same way I thought, mistakenly, that I knew what Michaelangelo's <span style="font-style: italic;">David</span> looked like before I saw the real thing). Apparently he is the sort of writer other writers go back and reread when they need to remind themselves how this whole business of stringing words together ought to work. This volume came into my possession at a launch party at a bar for MacAdam Cage's reissued edition (I was the offsite bookseller), where I heard Eli Wallach read Mitchell's words in a precisely appropriate grizzled, humorous old man sort of way.<br /><br />The cover is a photograph of an old man at the remnants of the Fulton Fish Market, where the pieces about Mr. Flood are set; it's natural to interpret this as a representation of the title character, but in fact the photo is of Mitchell himself. As Charles McGrath points out in his illuminating introduction, Mr. Flood is not only a composite character of men Mitchell had talked with at the fish market, but also "an alter ego, who has countless things in common with his creator", including a fondness for drink, a graveyard sense of humor, and a love of seafood. (Despite his derision of "goormys", aka gourmets, I kept thinking Flood/Mitchell's sense of what's good to eat has a lot in common with contemporary foodie wisdom: he's not interested in vitamins or processed bread, just food as fresh and natural as he can get it.)<br /><br />Mr. Flood, a retired demolition man who has taken up residence in a hotel near the fish market in the early 1940s, is very old. The subject of imminent death is one often discussed or irritably avoided. But he's also irrepressibly full of life, somehow immortal -- much like the fish market and the New York harbor life itself, which was on its way out even as Mitchell wrote about it. The stories should be depressing, but I found myself laughing out loud quite a bit, and tugging on the ALP's sleeve to read him the good parts. The writing is quite astonishingly good, even as it effaces itself in service of the textures and details and talk and tools and mannerisms of its subjects. I've since been seeking out more of Mitchell's pieces, which are thankfully now <a href="http://www.indiebound.org/search/apachesolr_search/field_contributor_name:Joseph+Mitchell">readily available</a>, and observing the world with his eyes and thinking in his language -- which is a sure sign that a writer has really gotten to you.<br /><br />I'm going to take the liberty to quote in full my favorite passage, which I read out loud to the ALP -- I'm hopeful that Mitchell's publishers and estate won't take it amiss. It's got a bit of all the good stuff that the book delivers: humor, dialect, the texture of details, and good food writing. One warning: I gave up eating any meat for Lent, but this bit made me crave oysters something fierce. As soon as Easter comes, I'm going in search of a place that serves oysters just like this. As a cure for a lingering cold or a spell of bad weather or the uneasiness of mortality, it seems you could do worse.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">Mr. Flood snorted again. "Oh, shut up," he said. "Damn your doctor! I tell you what you do. You get right out of here and go over to Libby's oyster house and tell the man you want to eat some of his best oysters. Don't sit down. Stand up at the at that fine marble bar they got over there, where you can watch the man knife them open. And tell him you intend to drink the oyster liquor; he'll knife them on the cup shell, so the liquor won't spill. And be sure you get the big ones. Get them so big you'll have to rear back to swallow, the size that most restaurants use for fries and stews; God forgive them, they don't know any better. Ask for Robbins Islands, Mattitucks, Cape Cods, or Saddle Rocks. And don't put any of that red sauce on them, that cocktail sauce, that mess, that gurry. Ask the man for half a lemon, poke it a time or two to free the juice, and squeeze it over the oysters. And the first one he knifes, pick it up and smell it, the way you'd smell a rose, or a shot of brandy. That briny, seaweedy fragrance will clear your head; it'll make your blood run faster. And don't just eat six; take your time and eat a dozen, eat two dozen, eat three dozen, eat four dozen. And then leave the man a generous tip and go buy yourself a fifty-cent cigar and put your hat on the side of your head and take a walk down to Bowling Green. Look at the sky! Isn't it blue? And look at the girls a tap-tap-tapping past on their pretty little feet! Aren't they just the finest girls you ever saw, the bounciest, the rumpiest, the laughingest? Aren't you ashamed of yourself for even thinking about spending good money on a damned doctor? And along about here, you better be careful. You're apt to feel so bucked-up you'll slap strangers on the back, or kick a window in, or fight a cop, or jump on the tailboard of a truck and steal a ride."</span><br /></blockquote>Book Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18086590.post-27751923587523603972010-03-12T20:35:00.003-05:002010-03-12T21:17:51.630-05:00The Passage by Justin Cronin<span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The Passage</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">by Justin Cronin</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">(Ballantine, June 2010)</span><br /><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780345504968?aff=WrittenNerd08"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/968/504/FC9780345504968.JPG" onerror="this.src = 'http://www.indiebound.org/files/book_not_found.jpg';" /><br />Shop Indie Bookstores</a><br /><br />Reading Justin Cronin's <span style="font-style: italic;">The Passage</span> was a wonderfully weird experience in so many ways. For one thing, there had been foreshadowing for weeks: my business partner, my Twitter friends, fellow booksellers, the Winter Institute buildup, EVERYTHING and everyone seemed to be telling me to read this book. Not only was it being read by everyone whose tastes I share, it sounded like just the sort of thing I would like. Literary adventure with a <span style="font-style: italic;">soupçon</span> of the supernatural? Yes please thankyou.<br /><br />Weirder though, I'd read Justin Cronin's previous book <span style="font-style: italic;">The Summer Guest</span> -- way back when, when I was young and poor enough to need the $45 they could pay me, I even <a href="http://reviews.publishersweekly.com/bd.aspx?isbn=0385335814&pub=pw">reviewed it for <span style="font-style: italic;">Publishers Weekly</span></a> (login required, sorry). I loved that novel, a piercing but gentle story of a family and its secrets over a summer at a fish camp. But it was a leetle hard to picture that rather quiet literary writer penning something that sounded like, from what people were telling me... a vampire apocalypse novel.<br /><br />But I needed another big fat novel for a plane ride, so I jumped in, salivating with anticipation. And what an freakin' incredible ride it was. It starts with the very first sentence:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"Before she became the Girl from Nowhere -- the One Who Walked In, the First and Last and Only, who lived a thousand years -- she was just a little girl in Iowa, named Amy."</span><br /><br />It opened up a world to get lost in. I had to come back to that sentence a number of times as the story got bigger, more epic and labyrinthine, and I needed to remember where we came from and where we were headed.<br /><br />I love the backstory of this novel, as put forth in the "Dear Reader" letter at the front: that Cronin asked his young daughter what he should write about next, and she said "Write about a girl who saves the world." An unlikely challenge for the average writer of literary fiction -- but Cronin was up to it, with a vengeance. Not only did he write this novel on the full apocalyptic epic scale, but <span style="font-style: italic;">it's the first of a trilogy</span> -- a huge world-building exercise, with heroes and villains and massive set-pieces and romance and destiny and life and death.<br /><br />I don't want to talk much about the plot, other than that first sentence; I'm sure many reviews will come out that outline the story structure, but it was such a pleasure to read in breathless suspense and near constant surprise that this early on I don't want to spoil it for anybody. My impression about half way through was that it reminded me a lot of Dean Koontz, whom I loved as a teen -- adventure with a scrim of sci fi and a Joseph Campbell-ian hero to root for. But Koontz's morality was always a tad too schematic, his bad guys too obviously bad, his emphasis on the value of home and hearth almost a little right-wing, and his dialogue not especially convincing.<br /><br />Cronin is showing us what happens when a writer who has cut his chops on stories of families and relationships takes on an operatic fantasy epic. The villains are sometimes monstrously horrifying, sometimes pathetically well-meaning, sometimes just driven and short-sighted. The social interactions -- the love affairs, the family life, the camaraderie and power shifts of extreme danger -- are exquisitely observed. And the action scenes leave nothing to be desired, except maybe the ability to read faster. At times, yes, it seems a little too overdetermined that the good guys will live through the horrors that have killed countless others -- but it would hardly be a satisfying adventure story (at least in Volume One) if they didn't.<br /><br />What I appreciate most about what Cronin brings to this heart-pounding epic is the Big Themes, which grow on you gradually rather than hitting you over the head. There's a lot of ink spilled these days about what vampires "mean" -- in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Passage</span>, it seems that on some level they just mean mortal danger, of the kind bands of humans have always faced. How to make meaning and value out of a life whose sweetness is likely to be heartbreakingly brief -- is this a question unique to those expecting carnivorous humans to descend on them at nightfall? And there's the question of identity, too. The vampires take away identity into a massive, hungry hive-mind, while Cronin's humans constantly ground their identity in their family name, the work they do, the place they come from -- just like us, just like always. <span style="font-style: italic;">Who are you?</span> is a repeated refrain, sometimes answerable, sometimes not.<br /><br />These are just samplings of some of the stuff I saw going on in this book, which is made not only to quicken the pulse and keep you up at night, but also to interrogate and reevaluate the deep core of being human. The only thing I hated about this book is that it is fully committed to being a trilogy: at the end, after 700 pages of horror and laughter and tears and ephiphanies and explosions, it ends on a cliffhanger. AAAUUGH!! But what more visceral response could a "literary writer" evoke? Kudos to Justin Cronin for this masterpiece, which I think is going to be the book of the summer if not the year -- and here's hoping he hurries up and writes the next one!Book Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18086590.post-57303116676307909432010-03-08T23:13:00.003-05:002010-03-09T00:03:24.724-05:00The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell<span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">by David Mitchell</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">(Random House, June 2010</span>)<br /><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781400065455?aff=WrittenNerd08"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/455/065/FC9781400065455.JPG" onerror="this.src = 'http://www.indiebound.org/files/book_not_found.jpg';" /><br />Shop Indie Bookstores</a><br /><br />Anyone who has ever read my blog, or ever met me, stands a good chance of having heard me talk about David Mitchell. It's rather satisfying, at my age, to have discovered my Favorite Living Writer. Ever since <span style="font-style: italic;">Cloud Atlas</span> left me slack-jawed and inarticulate with its puzzle structure and fearlessly ambitious plots and astonishing humor and humanist compassion and heartbreaking truths -- okay, even before that, when I snapped up <span style="font-style: italic;">Ghostwritten</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Number Nine Dream</span> with the satisfaction of finding just what one wanted to eat, a meal that becomes a sweet memory -- and especially afterward, when I met the man at book readings for <span style="font-style: italic;">Cloud Atlas </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">Black Swan Green</span> and he turned out to be the kind, brilliant, self-effacing person you hope in your heart of hearts that your favorite authors might turn out to be -- David Mitchell has been my model for what writing and writers can be, and I have described myself truthfully if unflatteringly as a slavering fan. (That sentence was just because I could. Sorry.)<br /><br />But having a favorite writer also means you approach every new work of theirs with an inevitable trepidation: will it hold up? Will you have to love it half-heartedly, out of loyalty, or will it blow you away again? Will it move you in the same way -- or better yet, in a different way -- or will it be simply good, and not great?<br /><br />For this reason, after I had gotten Random House's postcard last fall announcing a new David Mitchell title coming in June, and after I had begged the publicist to consider Greenlight for an event*, and after Mitchell's wonderful editor David Ebershoff had stopped into Greenlight and we'd talked about our mutual love for the man, and after Ebershoff had, taking pity on me, <span style="font-style: italic;">sent me the bound manuscript for Mitchell's new book</span> -- I looked at it on my shelf for about a month and a half before opening it. I told myself and other people I wanted to wait until I could set aside time to read it straight through, and that was partly true. But of course I was also nervous about whether he could do it again, and whether I could love like that again. Finally, on the plane to see my family in California for a post-Christmas vacation, I pulled the 8 1/2 by 11 thing out of my bag and started to read.<br /><br />So? What was it like? It was not like <span style="font-style: italic;">Cloud Atlas</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">Ghostwritten</span>; it was a single narrative thread, ostensibly, the story of a Dutch trading post in Japan in 1799 and following. I noted with satisfaction that it was written in third person, a first for Mitchell -- he had noted at a reading I attended that he had always written in first person, since he "wouldn't know where to look" without a single perspective, but that third person sounded like a challenge he should set himself -- and look here, he had. <br /><br />I also noted, as no doubt reviewers will, that one thread of this narrative involves a European (in Jacob de Zoet's case a Dutchman, in Mitchell's case an Irishman) falling in love with a Japanese girl (in de Zoet's case, Orito Aibagawa, a young surgeon in training who has a scar that makes her unmarriageable, but not unbeautiful; in Mitchell's case, his now wife and mother of his children, whom I know nothing more about). Here the similarity ends between Mitchell's biography and the story, but it is a telling detail -- I think during Mitchell's time in Japan he fell in love with Murakami and a kind of Japanese-ness as well as with the woman he eventually married, and Japan looms large in his pantheon of influences. There is an outsider's tenderness and frustration and fascination and longing and homesickness in the book that rings true to life; the part of me that considers myself to a very small degree David Mitchell's friend (we have had dinner together in a group, and he writes very kind things in my galleys and remembers my bookstore plans when he sees me) is glad that he wrote this part of his story, and that he did it in this particular way.<br /><br />In fact, a great many things in the book delighted me, though they swam up slowly, rather than bursting in a flood of revelation. I love that Jacob de Zoet is a Dutch Reformed Calvinist (I am one myself, unlikely as that seems), and that his faith is taken seriously, as are the various faiths or skepticisms of the Asian, African, European, and other characters that populate the book -- they're not neuroses or tools of oppression, though they can be used that way. I love how in this simple through-line narrative about a young Dutchman in Japan, Mitchell manages to include dozens of other stories -- nearly every character in the book finds space to tell his own story, including some of the most contemptible. I love the endless invention that goes into making these many imaginary and believably specific lives, and the compassion that Mitchell, typically, has for them all. <br /><br />I love several instances of good triumphing decidedly and sometimes hilariously over evil, as well as many more instances of good intentions bringing suffering and disappointment. I love that part way through this rigorously historical novel, a never-quite-resolved hint of creepy supernaturalism is introduced, as well as a very real nefarious institution, and the novel becomes, for a while, an adventure story. I love that, though he knows exactly how to write a satisfying adventure story, Mitchell cannot be relied upon to give all of his characters happy endings (though I didn't exactly love it at the time I was reading it -- I was actually a little angry and sad). I love how the novel in the end manages to be drawn together and loosened, resolved and heartbreakingly abandoned, all at once. I love how it stayed with me and grew in me after I had read it (on the plane and during the weekend I should have been hanging out with my family, though they're all readers too so it was mutual) -- as the best novels do. <br /><br />As the ALP has postulated, the works of art that stay with us are usually not the ones that we love easily on first experiencing them. Rather, they tend to be the ones that grow on us, that we find ourselves thinking about and wrestling with and returning to. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet</span> is that second kind. It seems to have made its own distinctive ache in my heart -- for the heartbreaks of the story, and its beauties, and its delights that I will never experience for the first time again. In this way it does seem very Japanese: infused with an appreciation of the ephemeral that is as much about the nostalgia as about the event -- an autumnal beauty, in fact.<br /><br />There is one delight, though, that I have yet to experience. When asked about the occasional recurrence of his characters from one book to another, Mitchell described a sort of waiting room, where every character he's ever written hangs out, and if he has a place for them in a story, they get a new part. I'm wondering whether <span style="font-style: italic;">Thousand Autumns</span> is populated by any of the characters from the first section of <span style="font-style: italic;">Cloud Atlas</span>, which takes place on a sailing vessel around the same time. Now, I'm gloatingly preserving the delight of re-reading <span style="font-style: italic;">Cloud Atlas</span> to discover which characters might have life in both books. And perhaps "gloatingly preserving" is what made me wait so long to read <span style="font-style: italic;">Thousand Autumns</span> anyway.<br /><br /><br /><br />* The Greenlight David Mitchell event, by the way, has been scheduled: Saturday, July 17, at 7:30 PM. Random House is giving us a little budget to throw a party -- we're thinking sake and champagne. Open to ideas, though.Book Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18086590.post-90303678771761749002010-02-13T11:32:00.008-05:002010-02-16T19:41:22.024-05:00Arrow Pointing Nowhere by Elizabeth Daly (Felony and Mayhem Part 2)<span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Arrow Pointing Nowhere</span> by Elizabeth Daly (Felony & Mayhem, May 2009)</span><br /><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781934609248?aff=WrittenNerd08"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/248/609/FC9781934609248.JPG" onerror="this.src = 'http://www.indiebound.org/files/book_not_found.jpg';" /><br />Shop Indie Bookstores</a><br /><br />As I mentioned in the previous post, a large part of the charm of the <a href="http://felonyandmayhem.com/category/felonius-category/vintage/">"Vintage" mysteries published by Felony & Mayhem</a> is the immersion in the past. For a sense of the Agatha-Christie-only-more-so appeal, I can't say it better than F&M's modern back cover copy from <span style="font-style: italic;">Arrow Pointing Nowhere</span>, part of the Henry Gamadge series:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"Take one grand house, stuff it with staff, and make it home to several generations. If they send their sons to Oxford and occasionally knock each other off, you've got a country-house murder mystery, that classic of English crime fiction. But if the boys are at Yale, odds are that you're reading a New York mansion mystery -- a genre largely invented and perfected by Elizabeth Daly."</span><br /><br />Yep, only the boys go to college, and all kinds of extended family share the mansion with the servants -- it's a whole different world.<br /><br />But with Elizabeth Daly's books, the exoticism off the time period is only part of the goods: the other part is Henry Gamadge. If Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade were a bit more bookish and a little less alienated, he might resemble Gamadge (except he's got a happy marriage more like Nick and Nora Charles). He's ostensibly a professional expert in rare books, with a love for solving puzzles. More importantly, he's the kind of guy you want on your side in a pinch. Gracious, diplomatic, perspicacious, infinitely resourceful, quick on the uptake and on the trigger if necessary, Gamadge is your go-to guy if you're in a spot. I love his relationship with his wife Clara (a romance which actually comes about during one of the books in the series and sticks for the rest of them, which is a rarity) and with his assistant/co-conspirator Harold, who in this volume is back from the War on leave. Their mutual trust and profoundly functional relationships are always in contrast to the web of conspiracies, suspicion, and murderous intent found in the (typically rich) families they're called in to investigate.<br /><br />In <span style="font-style: italic;">Arrow</span>, Gamadge doesn't even know which member of the family he's working for. He's received a mysterious message and knows that someone in the Fenway mansion is in mortal danger -- but is it the generous but naive Pater Familias? The invalid former beauty who married in? The grim-looking paid companion? The amiable ne'er-do-well uncle? The strong-willed spinster? The mentally deficient grandson? (I love how you can tell he's "off" by the fact that he doesn't stand when someone comes into the drawing room.)<br /><br />Gamadge will solve it, of course, though there's no guarantee anyone will survive to the end, and Gamadge and his crew end up having to do a lot more physical labor in the course of cracking the case than say, Hercule Poirot. I highly recommend curling up with this or any other book in the Gamadge series, just to see how it all comes out, and to enjoy the setting and the personalities that make this series so original and yet somehow inevitable.Book Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18086590.post-32172110098494829752010-01-28T13:20:00.010-05:002010-02-16T19:39:27.056-05:00Traitor's Purse by Margery Allingham (Felony and Mayhem Part 1)<span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Traitor's Purse</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">by Margery Allingham</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">(Felony & Mayhem, October 2009)</span><br /><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781934609422?aff=WrittenNerd08"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/422/609/FC9781934609422.JPG" onerror="this.src = '/files/book_not_found.jpg';" /><br />Shop Indie Bookstores</a><br /><br />I will take a stand and say that the classic mysteries brought back into print by <a href="http://felonyandmayhem.com/">Felony & Mayhem Press</a> (the brilliant publishing offshoot of downtown Manhattan's priceless <a href="http://www.crimepays.com/">Partners & Crime Bookstore</a>) are one of the great small pleasures of my life. The ALP tends to buy the books in F&M's <a href="http://felonyandmayhem.com/category/felonius-category/vintage/">Vintage series</a> for me, for special occasions or as a surprise, and these are always occasions for pure delight. Having read nearly every Agatha Christie novel ever written, it's wonderful to discover that I haven't reached the end of the treasure trove of early 20th century mysteries.<br /><br />One of the pleasures of the Vintage mysteries is the sense of culture shock -- or cultural discovery -- the Western world in their pages presents. Unlike Christie, who has been consistently in print and most likely edited to remain comprehensible to contemporary readers, the works of Elizabeth Daly, Margery Allingham, and the like retain the cultural specifics of their time. This means that stories of 1940s New York or Britain contain not only familiar extinct delights like dressing for dinner, men with hats, and hired help in even fairly modest households, but also rituals and niceties I can only speculate about. Why is it odd that the paid companion spoke that way? What does the state of the front lawn signify? How do you know that someone is wearing clothes that don't belong to them? What does it mean when the protagonists exchange significant glances over the train schedule, or someone's shoes, or the contents of an umbrella stand or a corner shop? It's like entering an exotic, highly civilized foreign country -- whether New York or London, the citizens' habits and traditions are equally unfamiliar at a distance of 80 years.<br /><br />The sense of dislocation is even more pronounced, but also eased somewhat, in <span style="font-style: italic;">Traitor's Purse</span>, the 11th title in Margery Allingham's series featuring British policeman/gentleman sleuth Albert Campion. I'd never read any of the other Campion books when this one was gifted to me -- but luckily, in this volume Campion wakes up on page 1 suffering from amnesia, so he doesn't know his own backstory either. And not only is he trying to figure out who he is and what he does, but he's been plopped down in the middle of a mysterious matter of wartime National Security, and apparently someone wants him to hang for killing a cop. Then there's the matter of a woman named Amanda who aids him, whom he thinks may be his wife -- but who turns out to be his long-time fiance, who has just decided to call off the wedding. And in the meantime he has to make polite dinner party conversation with people whom he supposedly knows, so as not to give away his mission or his mental state.<br /><br />It's all pleasantly excruciating, and of course it comes out all right. The villain is satisfyingly obvious, but the scheme is quite original and not something that would have occurred to me as a matter of national security. The competence of Campion, his "lower-class" right-hand man Lugg, and his left-hand girl Lady Amanda (who sticks by him in his mission despite his having strung her along romantically for eight years, apparently), is gratifying in the extreme.<br /><br />My only quibble with the book comes at the end, when the plot has been foiled and Campion's memory has been finally restored. After realizing while amnesiac that he's been an ass to his fiance all this time, and having his deep feelings for her roiling under every action sequence, and after she's decided to take him back, their reconciliation is disappointingly perfunctory. But maybe that's a remnant of British wartime sensibilities too -- stiff upper lip, no big displays of emotion, all that sort of thing. It's a story profoundly of its time -- in its fears, its virtues, and its relationships. It makes for not only suspenseful reading, but a plunge into a different world.Book Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18086590.post-85780666817097064622010-01-28T11:28:00.004-05:002010-01-28T12:07:45.498-05:00The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris<span style="font-style: italic;">Note to readers, if there still are any about: I've taken a long hiatus from regular posts on this blog, for the simple reason that I've realized the dream I wrote about in <a href="http://writtennerd.blogspot.com/2005/10/first-installment-my-overenthusiasm.html">my very first post</a> and opened <a href="http://abookstoreinbrooklyn.blogspot.com/">a bookstore</a> -- which, it turns out, takes up a lot of one's time and energy. But I miss flexing my writing muscles a bit, and I find that sometimes the best relief from the stresses of working in the book industry is the books themselves. So I'm returning to this blog and changing its mission just a little. Rather than speculating about the state and future of the book industry and/or chronicling the events of the literary world (both of which are done more competently by the bloggers streaming down the right-hand side of this page), I'd like to just write a little about what I've been reading. I'll try to write something about every book I read this year, more or less in the order encountered. I look forward to it as a kind of readerly/writerly practice. Hope it's fun for you too.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The Unnamed</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">by Joshua Ferris</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">(Regan Arthur Books, December 2009)</span><br /><a class="left" href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780316034012?aff=WrittenNerd08"><img style="border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);" src="http://images.booksense.com/images/books/012/034/FC9780316034012.JPG" onerror="this.src = '/files/book_not_found.jpg';" /><br /></a><br />I didn't read Josh Ferris' breakout debut novel, <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780316016391?aff=WrittenNerd08">Then We Came To The End</a> -- and from what I've heard from other readers, this may have made it easier for me to love his second, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Unnamed</span>. TWCTTE had a scrim of office humor and social satire, but laughs are pretty scarce in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Unnamed</span> -- so readers who loved the first book and were looking forward to something similar in the second seem to be somewhat disappointed. I wasn't disappointed. If it makes any sense, I was blown away in slow motion.<br /><br />I started this book slowly, and later I had to put it down for a while, but not for the same reason. The story starts somewhat quietly, and it only kept me reading by the strength of his sentences and the odd believability of his privileged characters (a corporate lawyer and his pretty wife). Then it started to break my heart, over and over. The premise is pretty well known by now: the husband, Tim, is compelled to walk, far, often, and unexpectedly, and doesn't know whether his problem is psychological, physical, real or imaginary. As one review I read pointed out, this can be read as a metaphor for disease or for addiction, or just as a strange unexplainable thing all its own. Ferris' looping, time-shifting narrative, in which the condition flares up, recedes, seems to disappear, then comes back again with a vengeance, echoes painfully the cycles that physical or psychological diseases can follow. It all just keeps happening again and again, and the family strains against it, and the body screams in frustration, and the job and social life falls apart, and cures are promising until they're not, and eventually it ends, either in wellness or in death. Tim and his wife and his daughter, along with his law firm office mates and the minor characters he encounters, are painted with skillfull realism, but I think there's also a strain of fatalist magic realism through the story. Or maybe it's just that the disease/condition makes for an unwilling position of outside observation that makes all ordinary life seem strange and full of odd meanings, like a fever dream.<br /><br />I had to set this book aside for a while over the holidays, because things in the story started to get so bad I couldn't keep reading it and still be good company. (It was around the part where Tim and his body/mind start to argue with each other about the existence of God, and Tim's protest against the demands of the physical results in the loss of some fingers, and I realized that this wasn't going to end well.) I finally picked it up again in January and finished it in a bar, by myself. It was the perfect place to take in the slow winding down of the story, all the ideas and experiences that filled it, and accept them, as humans have no choice but to do.<br /><br />I've met Josh Ferris at a couple of events for anthologies in which he was included, and I remember thinking of him, half-humorously, as a very nice young man. I'm now somewhat in awe of his talent as a writer and the depth of his insight. This is a story like <span style="font-style: italic;">King Lear</span>, in which one rather arrogant, powerful man's reduction to nothing but a shivering body is an irresistibly truthful portrayal of the nature of human life. That's not all there is to the story, in either of these texts or in life, but it's a deep and tough part of it to grapple with successfully, and Ferris has done it. I'm grateful for this book for the way it broke my heart.Book Nerdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02896226559142059293noreply@blogger.com4